We’re all just products of our environment which none of us can change on our own, and as much as we can change our environment as a collective is decided upon by current conditions which are determined by oast conditions, etc.

I think this is an unfair reading of historical materialism. Part of the material conditions is whether or not people choose to act. It's not that people won't act or can't act if the conditions aren't right for revolution. It's just that revolution won't happen if the conditions aren't right because the conditions include people choosing to have a revolution. We shape our environment and it shapes us. It's not that our environment shapes us but we only shape it when some magical set of conditions are met. People have to choose to act as part of creating those conditions. Let me tell you right now, the world is ripe in terms of material conditions needed for change. I can't speak for every other country but at least in the US, it's time. People get paralyzed because they think that when the checklist of conditions are met, then action spontaneously happens. But it doesn't happen on its own, we're the ones who have to do the work and make it happen. It's not a chemistry set where if you just dump chemicals in a tub a reaction will happen. It requires us to make a choice. The conditions for revolution can exist indefinitely and if people choose not to have a revolution, it won't happen indefinitely.

The main challenge of this leftist shit is to get people to realize they have more control than they think. It's to get people to choose something more than the status quo. And it's true that a person with 3 jobs won't revolt if the alternative is destroying society and starving to death or being killed by fascists. But that's why it's up to us to create an alternative to the status quo that doesn't involve those things. If you think the only choice is exist right now or go try to overthrow the government and be shot, then of course it seems hopeless. That's why we should be working to create an alternative vision. The revolution will fail if we don't have a plan for what happens if we win.

This is why I go on tears about people putting so much importance in creating and managing online spaces. People need to come up with how a new society will work and our political operatives need to be building a popular campaign around that idea and then we need people on the streets talking to people face to face. Users here will shit on electoralism all day long because they want an excuse for why they don't have to do anything other than keep posting. Electoralism is the building popularity part. The reason why electoralism doesn't work as it exists right now is because there needs to be a clear and unified vision to build popularity around. We just don't have that yet. The DSA, the People's Movement, etc all have different ideas about what should happen. They're focused on getting people into power rather than what should happen once people are in power (outside of a few issues like healthcare and taxes). That's fine because it's necessary but we really have to build our vision for the future. To do that we have to talk to people, not just other chronically online leftists. We have to actually go do politics rather than convincing people to come to a website or reading more Jacobin articles or getting them to listen to the right podcast. It means a lot of tedious, boring shit that people are either scared to do, or they just don't feel like it. But then that makes them feel guilty so they construct this idea of how politics works where arguing with liberals on reddit is doing politics and convincing people to join us. The indicator for their political change? They now go to a different website and listen to a good podcast. When doing this for years doesn't result in Bernie winning, people feel defeated and like everything is hopeless.