US “socialists” be like “Vote for Anticomunism 
”
the failings of capitalism continue to be socialisms fault. DSA having socialist in their name is worthless.
Setting aside the misuse of “socialism”, the quote also whitewashes capitalism. We are, in fact, living in capitalism; capitalism does, in fact, inevitably get this bad; and in itself provides no way out.
Capitalism is light itself. Capitalism can only be failed, by us.
Typical landlord brain. I fucking hate landlords. One guy I know owns an apartment they rent out and gets angry when I call landlords parasites that want to east steak on their tenants dime lol.
Socialism is when bad thing
No capitalism > corpo bad > socialism but done bad > capitalism after all.
Okay buddy bakka.
Educating others is not necessarily hard work, it’s just steady and tedious. Liberals treating theory like it’s fundamentally alien and therefore not worth engaging with is endlessly frustrating, but it’s not an unwinnable battle (not that you made it seem that way).
To be fair you need to read like 2-3 books to fully understand the modern concept of socialism fully.
However in this case even reading a wikipedia article would be a massive improvement
I think one can grasp socialism in essence in as little as a pamphlet. “Full understanding” on the other hand takes many, many books and practical experience. The floor is actually pretty low, but the ceiling is very high. Bringing that ceiling down to digestable components to bring people above the floor is a core part of educational praxis.
All we need is some kind of manifesto, to get the ball rolling. Its a shame no one has ever written one
Rest in peace
https://www.marxists.org/archive/olgin/pamphlets/1933/ch01.htm
But updated with more modern lingo.
Oh, haven’t seen that one! And yep, a contemporary, clear, sober analysis of the political movement in the imperial core and an exposition on the basics of capitalism, imperialism, settler-colonialism, the struggle for socialism, and how we move forward would be a fantastic bit of agitprop. I know the various parties have their own pamphlets, but I’m curious if the method of distribution needs to be reconsidered. The core is rapidly changing and we can’t fall behind.
Personally I’m starting to think the greater question for communist parties is the question of how to forge quality membership and Cadre. Like this is something I’ve been thinking on for months, prior to the current shake up - in polite words - at PSL. I’m coming to believe the greatest weakness of the western left is our hyper-individualistic petite bourgeois baggage. General growth of the class consciousness of the masses will occur regardless of us handing out pamphlets as the rapid decay of our material conditions radicalizes people out of their slumber.
As far as the PSL is concerned, every member I have met has been extremely principled. Based on what PSL members past and present have stated here, it seems that it is genuinely effective at raising capable cadre. The PSL grew to the point it is today because it actually does have that strength. The current shake-up seems to be primarily driven by the fact that the cadre development is largely effective, while the org itself is facing a conflict between the old and the new.
Where that leaves any org that may be seeking to learn from PSL, it seems that, above all, the cadre are the actual gems of any org. Any effective org needs effective cadre for democratic centralism to properly function, and it must have the democratic means by which to change and adapt to the will of the developed cadre. In the coming weeks and months, we will see if PSL actually does have the democratic institutions required to grow from this shake-up and become a better org, or if this will spell a crisis for the org that cadre alone cannot fix. My hope is obviously for the former.
Creating cadre isn’t as simple as a reading list. It takes practical work and struggle, leadership experience, a flexible org that can adapt, grow, and change, and a tight connection with the masses. The purpose of a pamphlet is to bring the masses towards a more correct understanding of Marxism, not to train cadre. The masses are limited to trade unionism without a party of effective cadre that can bring the local struggles to a connected and interdependent struggle, and the pamphlet is a good vehicle for connecting these points ideologically and in a mass manner.
Ah fuck it says “communism”
Might just be the circles I find myself in, but does anyone else know socialists who are actually kinda made uncomfortable by communism? The more time I spend with the DSA, the more skeptical I become
People who call themselves socialists but reject communism are either utopianists, electoralists, or confused social-democrats who reject the historically accomplished and real communist projects in favor of a pure as the driven snow mythical socialism that must be ushered in by the masses legally ascending to power within the bourgeois system. They are haunted by the actions of Leninists under the baggage of petty bourgeoise moralizing brainwashing we all go through in the West to view every success as a failure and every failure as a success, and thusly shrink under the accusations from the enemies of the working class of having association to the Revolutionary Left.
What’s wrong with explaining it in a couple of sentences, like this?
“We live in a society where capitalists, i.e. people who invest their money in various ventures and collect profits from them for a living, run both the economy and the government. Socialism is just about building a society where instead of capitalists making the decisions everywhere, workers do instead.”
We live in a society
Socialism is when the workers control the means of production. Do workers control the means of production in the USA? No. So we aren’t living under socialism. That’ll be five bucks.
lol fuck this guy
" we don’t live under capitalism"
opinion safely discarded
Yeah we live under crony capitalism, sweetie.
All this shows is he has absolutely zero understanding of political theory or economics.
dude is selling himself to the people of michigan who largely believe socialism is evil. whether he actually understands the basics of socialism isn’t material to that goal.
It is because you don’t “sell” socialism by lying
This is blatant tailism. Conceding to reactionaries undermines your goals long term unless you yourself are a reactionary.
We shouldn’t be fucking galvanizing the masses to take brutal action to suppress “socialists”.
For generations Michigan has been the center of American working class resistance. You can talk about class politics there.
You can do that without making further political development more difficult. That’s why I despise framing welfare as socialism, or tax breaks for capitalists as “socialism for the rich,” confusing radicalized liberals inevitably leads to socdem politics as reinforced by bourgeois cultural hegemony.
He’s personally never claimed to be a socialist. He has no ties to any movement that would benefit from people wanting socialism. He’s just one guy who cares about his career as a senator.
Agreed.
Yeah, you’re not about to catch me saying that this isn’t a limit of electoralism or it’s a good thing. But what it is is an example of someone who has undoubtedly looked at some kind of opinion poll, social media sentiment check (especially as is relates to smears made against you), and recent election messaging response to determine what kind of phrasing moves the needle. More correct != more votes. In my personal experience tying yourself into a knot to be correct and still appealing only serves to confuse your audience who doesn’t understand the domain enough to understand what you’re being correct about. Socialism is when the government does stuff it the prevailing understanding, socialism is when the government does stuff for corporations is a critique that the GOP can’t untangle in the voter’s mind because Rogers gets a Gorillian dollars from AIPAC.
That’s the way I’ve been observing the landscape recently.
This is true. The calculus then asks “can he win the race without saying this garbage” and if the answer is yes, then he shouldn’t have said it. But seeing as he has no personal investment in the success of socialism, he isn’t bothered to ask that question or take the risk of being conscious not to punch left for no reason.
I blame Bernie Sanders for spreading this worthless meme and convincing socdems that it’s a good argument, it arises from the same place that convinces libs to try and “out flank” the right-wing in terms of reactionary signaling, except in this case it’s somehow worse because the socdems don’t even realize they’re being reactionary
The problem is it fails at a fundamental level as agitprop and rhetoric, people don’t hear the “corporate” part (because the word is politically inert in the eyes of normies) all they hear is the socialism part, and voters are not gonna bother making the mental leaps necessary to figure out “oh he means the capitalists are hypocrites because they love “socialism” for their class, but they don’t want us to have it, so actually socialism is cool”
Like how many goddamn leaps of logic would that take an uneducated normie to get to that position, even the people claiming it’s anti-socialism are wrong, because this rhetoric does nothing but confuse the average person, and confusion translates to apathy and disinterest among voters, in other words “in one ear, out the other”
In the end who cares, Abdul is popular because of his polices not because he borrows worthless rhetoric from Sanders, but of course some people elevate rhetoric and it’s perfection as the highest virtue
Thank you for acknowledging this came from bernie sanders
I get the idea here, trying to communicate that the state serves the hegemonic class, there’s no fairy tale system in which it is neutral. But this particular framing just muddies the waters and reinforces the “socialism is when state does things” misconception.
no you don’t understand, by voting for anticommunism we will make americans more amenable to the idea of communism
We don’t live in Capitalism! We live in *perfectly describes capitalism*
