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Yeah, i just looked the local food bank up and they are looking for help and seem to do some nice things.
At the start I also thought that it was just flirting, but it just built up and it is in wvery statement and opinion.
The dangerous part is if i did not have alternative sources of education, I as a baby leftist would probably have internalised that shit.
So thanks to chapo chat among others.
please try to keep in mind that when people offer you these criticisms they are offering them because they have questions about them. most people just don't realise what is shitty and what isn't. if they had someone to respond to whatever trash they've been reading it could do a lot of good. do you have any of their articles or talking points on hand? I'm sure you could crowdsource a lot of good responses from chapos if you did decide to do it.
Thanks,
I should have a list of articles, because they source their stuff. I will also look up some responses to it and learn more about it by myself at first. I have a presentation scheduled in a few weeks, I could probably hijack the topic to talk about intersectionality and against class reductionism.
Cool! I hope it goes well. If you need any help just post :heart-sickle:
thats really bad advice depending on options the OP might have. telling people not to organize with people you disagree with is really shitty. If you're serious enough that you're joining a party you HAVE to realise you're going to be working with people who disagree with you on things. you have to find common ground and make your opinion known. its so much easier to get people to agree with you in person as opposed to online if you approach them non-combatively.
obviously none of this applies if the group is just straight up racist or homophobic, but just being "class reductionist" shouldnt be a deal breaker for anyone. educate yourself, educate others. that's literally one of the biggest goals of organizing anything right now, so if you're not willing to put that effort in you might as well just stay online.
op is being handed an opportunity to correct shitty ideas by being asked to give a talk. that's a good sign. i really hope they go for it instead of jumping ship
Yeah, fair points all! I was probably projecting a bit of my own experiences there
The thing is, they say that about everything. The only thing that ever matters is class. And these are also the only discussions happening right now.
Class reductionist Americans like these are actively hurting the left, not furthering their own cause.
Only protests and they also immediately try to subsume their purpose into the "class is the only thing that matters message" and i don't think i can change that by myself.
If they are only doing protests and not actually talking about organizing around labor or actually creating systems with which to organize around labor (i.e. coordinating unions, working towards co-ops, figuring out temp work and prisoner issues), then they are basically doing things that have been historically ineffectual for the left in the U.S.
And if they are only talking, they should be allowing discussion around topics such as queer liberation, black nationalism, etc.
That being said, part of understanding leftist discourse is understanding that the class war matters not because of the morality of the working class, but because of the power that organizing labor allows the organizers to have over society writ large. Other organization methods are useful, but unfortunately they tend to be coopted by capitalism to elevate a few at the expense of fhe many, while effective labor organization requires buy in from alot of people in order to function effectivly. Having buy-in from POC, native and queer labor is absolutely essential to this end.
Idk if that is their point, but if they haven't conveyed that, then you might be better off going to more action oriented orgs that are less theory focused, because they don't seem very good at effectivly communicating theory.
That was part of why i joined, to learn more about and do organizing and direct action, but for now i haven't really learnt anything, or i don't feel like it and done little outside of going to protests. The only reading groups for theory are always for the manifesto, which is not useful to me anymore.
That sucks. If reading is stuck at the manifesto, then it's pretty clear to me (from what you are saying) that the group is essentially spinning it's wheels and kinda doing this for brownie points (from whom I cannot say, as I am not familiar with the social mileau of your city, but the point still stands).
If you choose to stay, it will be up to you to push through an agenda that dives deeper into the theoretical nonsense, if that is what you want. I would even recommend having the group start listening to the 'Revolutions' podcast (which is free) on the French Revolution so that way they will understand what Marx is talking about in his other writings. As well, you can listen to the Russian Revolution to understand better what Lenin is talking about as well. And then there is understanding the Weimar Republic and Rosa Luxembourg etc. etc. Understanding of theory comes from an understanding of history and there is alot of time and energy that has to be put into those subjects. The message is simple, but the pitfalls are many and understanding the pitfalls are what people like Marx, Mao, Lenin, Rosa etc. sought to do through their writings, but unfortunately they didn't think idiots like us would be reading this stuff a century and a half removed from context (except maybe Lenin because he was an egotistical nerd), so it's important to understand the material circumstances and reality that they were writing in.
If you don't want to stay, that's ok though. There are other groups and organizations out there that are better suited towards direct action and theory. Or take some time to explore stuff for yourself. PSL and DSA are always decent options, and if you want to hang with some cops, you can always join the CPUSA.
Edit: and that's just the European and Asian side of things. There is a history of organization in the U.S. and especially in Latin and South America, and you should learn about those as well and use them to think about how you should be organizing your labor in the current moment.
This is the big difference between online spaces and real life. Online you just leave or start shit. If it's the only org in your area, stick around and try to share your point of view. Brush up on what identity politics means to you, and why they are important. If you are pushed out, you're pushed out. But really the onus is on you to fix it. That's what "getting organized" means.
It's just hard, I don't think I,as someone kinda new to leftist thought, am ready argue with people who do this stuff for a living.
being new is not an impediment to being right.
you may not yet have all the language, sources, quotes, theory, etc down so well you can pontificate at length using verifiable history as a backdrop for your argument or whatever
but youre still right, and theyre still wrong, and at the end of the day what changes peoples minds isnt what some long dead person said, its being confronted by someone that tells them otherwise in the here and now
edit: to anyone that gives you shit about spouting off when you arnt a long standing so and so of whatever org i say
"to hear incorrect views without rebutting them and even to hear counter-revolutionary remarks without reporting them, but instead to take them calmly as if nothing had happened. this is a sixth type of liberalism.
to be among the masses and fail to conduct propaganda and agitation or speak at meetings or conduct investigations and inquiries among them, and instead to be indifferent to them and show no concern for their well-being, forgetting that one is a communist and behaving as if one were an ordinary non-communist. this is a seventh type of liberalism.
to see someone harming the interests of the masses and yet not feel indignant, or dissuade or stop him or reason with him, but to allow him to continue. this is an eighth type of liberalism."
:mao-shining:
Thank you for your help. I will learn more and try to have a sound argument before i try to speak with them about it. If it failes at least i have tried.
to add to what cripyhexagon said, you don't even have to talk about broader leftism or argue anything at all. talk about your personal experience and what left politics mean to you and why you want to be involved. obviously if you don't feel comfortable enough, you don't feel comfortable enough, but it's a real opportunity to have your voice heard and I do think you should try to step out of your comfort zone. You might like it.
They sound like boring nerds , if it were me I'd GTFO. I've generally had better luck meeting cool real-life comrades via orgs doing work on the ground, e.g., mutual aid groups, infoshops and community centers, prisoner support networks, etc. I've found sitting around with a bunch of dorks arguing about theory for hours tends to suck most of the time. However I've found working side-by-side with people who may or may not share your exact politics, but are united around a set of common goals to be much more rewarding. YMMV though.
I’ve generally had better luck meeting cool real-life comrades via orgs doing work on the ground, e.g., mutual aid groups, infoshops and community centers, prisoner support networks, etc.
I've literally never met a single one of these types that actually does anything, let alone what you guys are talking about.
They say post-modernism and liberal identity politics have been a direct consequence of it and they also use all these terms interchangeable. The Idea is that Saiids view of the east and the west opened the gates for post-modernism and liberal identity politics and that thus all post-colonial thought shall be treated like it's radioactive.
I asked them directly about it because i also couldn't understand.
I think it is fun if they say that Said's 1978 published book is responsible for postmodernism (and identity politics) which are depending on what you look at roughly 40 years older. Even Hasan's The Dismemberment of Orpheus: Toward a Postmodern Literature is written in 1971. Postmodernism is a huge field and contains structuralists like Levi-Strauss, the Marxist! Althusser, Lacan (the Zizek psychoanalyst, there is the real, the imaginary, the symbolic), then there are post-structuralists like Foucault (things are like prisons, Baudrillard (simulacra and simulacrum, we can't really tell the difference between simulation, simulated and reality, the difference doesn't matter anymore, stuff is hypernormal), Deleuze, Derrida, Bourdieu. A lot of the thoughts of them can be reduced to: The thing doesn't matter so much, what matters more how it differentiates from other things and is not them.
Then there are deconstructivists (also Derrida) and others.
The point is that while a lot of moves into wrong directions (might) have happened a critique as shallow might actually mean people don't really want to dive deep (which is understandable). To just put modern/contemporary postmodernism and Said onto one level is just shallow and seems to be used as tool to not integrate with intersectional movements and such.
just be like "i don't like that this org is class reductionist, bye" they'll get the message
Maybe you are right, i just hate having to quit things, feels like giving up.
they'll get the message that OP is a radlib who wasn't really down for the rev anyway. the "cut off toxic people" meme works great for maintaining healthy friendships, not so much for political organizing.
