"We applaud the democratic revolutions that have transformed the former Communist bloc"
I love the rising wave of neo-fascism in eastern europe - National DSA
(many DSA chapters are good and based ok, this post is dunking on the National DSA, not all chapters or the DSA on its entirety)
I see some enormous yankee brains in this thread bending backwards to explain how knowingly repeating and propagated ahistorical anti-communist bullshit, spitting on the lives and graves of the millions of eastern europeans that had their lives destroyed by the fall of communism WITHOUT EVEN BEING FORCED TO is actualy great and necessary 4d chess to build the mass movement .
Imagine thinking that even as a "demsoc" there is no choice but answer the "hmmm how about the USSR? " question bt praising its fall, calling it democratic and improving people's lives. Really ? You cant distance yourself from the USSR unless you repeat takes straight from reagan's mouth ? That this is the right answer to it and otherwise you would drive people away. ? You think this gains you even a dozen more people in a years span than simply saying the basic "nah we just want scandinavia and workplace democracy dude" ? This has everything to do with a great bulk of the org actualy believing this and being anticommunist and people bending backwards to defend this will never wanna "have this conversation in the future" or switch from this temporary anti communism the poor demsocs MUST SIGNAL
Jee i wonder how that terribly unpopular demsoc bernie did it for 50 years without having to out of his way to shit on it and proudly parade his anticommunism and happiness the USSR fell. And he is not even a socdem as far as his political position
i mean why distance yourself from the USSR at all
Because if you don't you can kiss the possibility of growing into a mass movement goodbye.
Caring about "the truth" more than actually achieving anything is liberalism. I don't give a damn about defending the honor of governments that have been dead for 30 years unless it's helpful to building socialism today.
If you can't see how "the USSR was good, actually" is a horrible recruiting strategy, I don't know what to tell you. Thinking that is just out of touch with the vast majority of the country, and we need an approach that has mass appeal. We can have struggle sessions about Stalin and political freedoms in the Warsaw Pact once we get them in the door, but first we need to get them in the door.
Imagine handing people a list of 10 things your political organization believes. 9 of those things are popular, but number 10 is "that Hitler guy wasn't as bad as you might think." It doesn't matter if that's the last thing on your list -- it's going to push away a ton of people who'd otherwise get on board.
That's the reality we're in. There have been decades of "communism = fascism" propaganda specifically to create this problem for us. We can either run headlong into that problem with people who aren't even on board, or we can sidestep it for now and address it later if it becomes necessary.
It’s going to be necessary unless your end goal isn’t socialism but just health care for Americans.
We don't know, and given how little Americans care about the rest of the world and history right now, I'd say we probably don't need to relitigate the Cold War to achieve socialism here. We certainly don't need to do it on the FAQ page of a website.
if it comes up i’m not going to assist in revisionism
You can do this in person far easier than you can on an "about us" section of a website. In person you can have a real conversation. On a website you'll just get targeted with shit like that YouTube link of yours.
“isn’t that word synonymous with gulags, holodomor, mass murder?!?!?!”
Why even lead into this conversation if you can avoid it? It's not at all necessary to get people on board with what the DSA is pushing.
Make people interested and simultaneously trying to unbrainwash 100 years of red scare by text on website? Also, I can make educated guesses what will happen with dsa and so should you, so while it works and people heard of it - comrades should make the most of it.
So? Their faq documents are completely irrelevant then, only interpersonal agitation matters and connections. Rsdlp joined duma despite thinking it’s irrelevant institution to get a platform, not to endorse tzar
Yeah, but we have some comrades from dsa taking shots maybe too close (look through the thread), so we should chill :meow-bernie:
I'm pointing out the difference between a mass media approach and a personal one. What you're suggesting works decently in the latter but poorly in the former.
i can walk and chew gum at the same time
This isn't walking and chewing gum, it's running a race with a weighted vest. It doesn't matter if you can do OK even if you take on an added challenge -- you'd do better without it.
correcting people on the condition that they are receptive to it
Determining who might be receptive to it is impossible in the FAQ section of a website. This is what I mean when I say that the approach you're suggesting does not work in this context.
I feel like half the users left on this site have gotten their politics exclusively from youtube videos.
edit: and not good ones, weak-ass breadtube ones
You think this gains you even a dozen more people in a years span than simply saying the basic “nah we just want scandinavia and workplace democracy dude” ?
DSA members say "we just want Scandinavia" too, and terminally-online leftists rip that as much as they rip this. The answer doesn't really matter because the vast majority of Americans don't care about the USSR. It's a talking point you need to disarm, not a detailed discussion people are itching to have.
I'm curious what happens long term when you try to actually implement or push for actual communist policies and you've been repeating USA state dept talking points about the USSR and other similar experiments for so long people are reticent to change. Seems like the ground work for moving past red scare propaganda is better education not appropriating talking points that were designed to undermine our policies.
Me tying the noose this is fine
Me handing the noise to the hangman this is still fine
Me stepping off the platform We made the right decision
It's a pipeline, and DSA isn't the full extent of the pipeline. If they get libs and apolitical folks to take a few steps left, those people will find other leftist ideas -- including analyses of the Cold War that are much more favorable to the USSR and similar experiments. It's far more important right now, with how small the American left is, to get mass numbers of people into that pipeline in the first place.
i'm concerned that it will just end up being a :maybe-later-kiddo: but "socialist." If the dsa gets big enough and ultimately becomes corrupted by recuperation if it gets to big to be dealt with the old fashioned way, i.e. what they did to strikers in the early iww and the bpp party.
That's a legitimate concern, but considering how many Bernie supporters wound up sprinting left in the wake of his campaign, I think it's far from a foregone conclusion.
maybe, but I think there's also historical reasons, particular in america, to be hypervigilant about this. Petite-bourgeois privilege has been an alluring and undermining power to (especially white-led) socialist movements in america and has successful derailed them when raw power didn't (or was being used on poc instead).
It just seems like there's way to onboard people without setting yourself up for more work down the road, and it also seems especially dubious to use that kind of red scare rhetoric if you're thinking "down the line we'll be able to come back around to this." seem like it would have been better to just say nothing at all.
Also tangentially related but I think it's fine for some people to not see the dsa platform as aligning with their politics and criticize it for that. We don't admonish anarchists for not agreeing 100% with ML positions and vice versa, just bc the dsa is big doesn't mean we should have to capitulate to it. It's the same energy as democrats doing "blue no matter who" or setting their candidates up as the most pragmatic even tho they're full of compromises.
edit: also I don't necessarily think bernie supporters are really indicative of how a larger mass of people would operate. Seems more like wish fulfillment than material. I think the berniecrats that ended up going super far left are mostly a particular type of group and I can't imagine they make up most of the broader left in the us. I don't think most people will naturally find their way more left if we're repeating propaganda that would work to keep them intellectually uncurious about
If there's a better way to onboard people in mass numbers, no one else has found it. It's fine to discuss alternate ideas, but we can't assume that a superior approach definitely exists. And we may never need to address any of this down the road -- we're talking about governments that have not existed for decades.
And you can't say nothing at all, because you have to have some response to the #1 reactionary talking point.
So most people will be satisfied with the bare minimum answer, which was given and has been given by orgs distancing themselves from the ussr and authoritarian communism or whataver for decades now. By the most popular politician in the country who's retoric was exactly what you say the dsa needs to focus on as a first step in building a mass movement. The point is that they chose to go above and beyond with anti-communist lies without even being asked to and in a question that has been asked and answered a million times with just political bullshit. Jumping at the chance of Propagating and regurgitating anti-communist talking points while pretending that thats a compromised answer you had to give and not something that represents actual core characteristics of larg parts of the org but also saying "this is open tent and its a conversation for later" isnt at all convincing. I attack it as something that shows the the anti-communist brainworms that are rotting big parts of the dsa and the american organized left, i dont consider this as pretending to be anti-communist and give that answer cause its the only prgamatic thing (again this isnt even true, could have been way better) but as actualy outlining what they think the basic beliefs of the org is and should be
By the most popular politician in the country who’s retoric was exactly what you say the dsa needs to focus on as a first step in building a mass movement.
Bernie focused almost entirely on domestic policies. When he did defend a socialist state even in the tamest possible way -- saying that Cuba had good healthcare and education -- he got roasted for a week in the middle of a tight primary race.
they chose to go above and beyond with anti-communist lies
Their answer is basically what you'd hear in an 8th-grade history class; it's far from "above and beyond."
Bernie focused almost entirely on domestic policies
and the dsa at large isnt ?
When he did defend a socialist state even in the tamest possible way – saying that Cuba had good healthcare and education
and literally took zero hit in the polls around that time or lost noticable support due to that. Something that was 1000% more pushed in the media than if the DSA toned down the anticommunism in simmilar answers. Also did you read anywhere me saying that the dsa should have been positive about the ussr actualy ?
Their answer is basically what you’d hear in an 8th-grade history class; it’s far from “above and beyond.”
which is above and beyond when you literally arent asked to sing a joyfull memoriam for the fall of communism
literally took zero hit in the polls around that time
It was a week and in the middle of a rapidly-changing primary -- polling isn't going to say anything useful about that. But we know that propaganda works, and that his Cuba comment earned him a ton of critical propaganda, and that his support was ultimately revealed to not be firmly entrenched.
Also did you read anywhere me saying that the dsa should have been positive about the ussr actualy ?
How do you think they should answer the #1 anticommunist talking point, if not in the way they did?
How do you think they should answer the #1 anticommunist talking point, if not in the way they did?
This can be either demsoc believing this or power level hiding
"It doesn't discredit it cause first of all socialism doesn't mean the Soviet system . It has a huge history with dozens schools of thought with dem socialism being one that always critiqued the USSR, existed before it and had nothing to do with the way that system was set up and run. The reasons the Soviet system collapsed have nothing to do our socialist policy positions of freehealthcare, racial and economic justice, equality and democracy in the workplace, things that democratic socialism always stood for and attacked the USSR for not having by the way
- (side note: the USSR did have them in various degrees but the fact is that demsocs always did criticize the USSR on these grounds so you aren't even lying here)-.
If a completely different system in a completely different country and conditions collapsed for much different reasons would that mean that we should stop our struggle for those goals I mentioned"
That would be an improvement over the DSA's current answer, but it still doesn't make their approach bad. They're basically punting on a topic most people don't care about anyway.
On one hand I think, there is a danger inherently in that (document) position, on the other - comrades already piling on unfairly I think, dsa is non-marxist non-centralized organization, still better than nothing. Fighting dead general wars is less productive than participating in dsa :shrug-outta-hecks:
- GDP instantly halves Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/Soviet_Union_GDP_per_capita.gif 42% decrease
- 40% of population drops into poverty Source: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2003/07/unpo-j28.html Article cites a 2003 UN report. Here is that report too: http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/reports/264/hdr_2003_en_complete.pdf
- 7.7 million excess deaths in the first year Source: http://www.academia.edu/1072631/Review_Red_Plenty_by_Francis_Spufford Really difficult to find this exact figure, original link I had was dead. Also: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC259165/
- one in ten children now live on the streets Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/an-epidemic-of-street-kids-overwhelms-russian-cities/article4141933/
- infant mortality increase Source: https://knoema.com/atlas/Russian-Federation/Nenets-Autonomous-District/topics/Demographics/Mortality/Infant-mortality-rate-deaths-before-age-1-per-1000-live-birthsWas 29.3 in 2003 which is around (current) Syria and Micronesia, 7.9 in 2013. Given the trend downwards, it was likely to have been much higher in the 90s. There's a weird amount of variation between years – I have no clue why. Infant mortality in USSR was 1.92, literally the lowest in the world. What the actual fuck. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Soviet_Union#Life_expectancy_and_infant_mortality
- life expectancy decreases by 10 years Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia#Life_expectancy Approximately true for men, women were less affected apparently. https://i.stack.imgur.com/8Fj8E.png 1996 election rigged Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_presidential_election,_1996
- modern Russians still consume 700 less calories per day than Soviet citizens Source:http://euromaidanpress.com/2017/02/06/russians-consume-700-calories-a-day-fewer-now-than-at-the-end-of-soviet-times/
All this for fucking Pizza! Not even good pizza!
Some person i knew irl has turned their Instagram into a platform to showcase their intellect on economy and capital, with a focus on design and how that will save us (guess what they do for a living)
Anyway, one post said how when they were young they were inspired by people toppling totalitarian governments with their own hands (lol) and how moved he was by people dying for their right to blue jeans. And I'm like motherfucker how pathetic is it to sacrifice your life for fucking jeans.
I think of all the old Boshleviks and Great Patriotic War vets and look at Russia and Eastern Europe now, and it does hurt my soul.
Watched some guy interviewing Russians about their memories of the USSR and one guy was like "we wanted blue jeans! But we had healthcare" and the camera pans down to his jeans "you have jeans now" "yeah, but I'd prefer healthcare"
Here it is looks like I got two guys confused near the end, but the whole video is worth watching
" Democratic " "Revolution""
Aren’t you a party that’s in competition with the Democratic Party for votes and support?
No, we are not a separate party. Like our friends and allies in the feminist, labor, civil rights, religious, and community organizing movements, many of us have been active in the Democratic Party. We work with those movements to strengthen the party’s left wing, represented by the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
You love to see a party which will endlessly critique ML states for "not being real socialism" also say that they are not fundamentally separate from the fucking Democrats.
for the national DSA, democracy is when you coup the goverment and declare a right-wing oligarchy in its place
The "democratic revolution" that transformed the USSR killed at least three million people in Russia alone. Russian GDP has only recently caught up with that of the Soviet era. — A small price to pay to introduce such marvels of freedom and democracy as unemployment, poverty and vulgar displays of wealth.
Not being American is fucking awesome. None of this matters to me at all!
im very happy the labour party of my country doesnt have the anti-communist brain of many american orgs
I have a cool choice of conservative succ-dems called communists, unironic chuddy stalinists, personality cult with trotsky bent (which maybe died), and reading groups which swing violently into myriad of sects :ohnoes:
Bring back the International Worker's Association, no more sects, just proles doing dialectical materialism.
Oh they totally do but they also get a good amount of seats in parliament and are very mainstream so that's to be expected. They aren't the "radical party"
i was talking about morena in mexico, but the Labour Uk is still better than the democrats
what the fuck
are any of the states in the former bloc even left-wing?
They kinda range from neoliberal to fascist thanks to these 'democratic revolutions' lol. Get me outta here :sicko-no:
Belarus is kinda SPD-level succdem, other states are even worse ranging from hardcore neoliberalism to shy fascism.
Ummm Belarus is really, really weird. Can't really call it "SPD level succdem", it's basically ruled by a socdem military general who decided to retain some elements of the old AES times while also getting some nationalism going on all while trying to do a weird balancing act trying to side with Russia over Europe but ALSO avoid Putin gaining full power over the country. It's pretty complex.
It's not even socdem military general but socdem former kolkhoz chairman.
I'm pretty sure he's also, like, some kind of former high ranking military officer or something right?
IIRC, he reached rank of Senior Leutenant before he retired, however, he became Lt. Colonel after being elected.
i have seen some SWCC's saying belarus may count as one, but really all of them are conservative or in the case of hungary, ukraine and poland they are fascist governments
This is what happens when you refuse to purge the nazis and then execute and ban from politics all the communists.
thank god Lukashenko has made sure to block all far-right belorussians from having gov positions
I stated this in another thread, but the DSA's decentralized nature leads to contradictions at every level. As someone who was part of DSA in the past, it's a complete crapshoot as to what any potential leftist will encounter at any level of the DSA hierarchy. It isn't unlike what you see with BLM - good work being done in some chapters, some chapters being lib or full of feds, while BLM nationally is just a jobs program for radlibs
Tyranny of Structurelessness by Jo Freeman is a good read on why this happens
My local frequently organizes with PSL and while there are a few anarcho-libs in it, they mostly just do yoga on weekends.
Absolutely, some people are actually trying to turn it into a yoga/theory thing which is cool.
"however, the improvement of people's lives requires real democracy" Like the improvement of people's lives experienced in former soviet countries after the transfer to neoliberal rule?
Begging DSA to look at democracy as something more than bourgeois electoralism
You see the real socialism is when you are a capitalist demsoc
Weirdly, the national IC is pretty decent at anti-imperialism. I think this might be from the main national committee.
the IC is elected by the NPC, i've been involved with it for a while and its been moving in a great direction cause of the leadership and opening up process they've started. unfortunately still a ton third campist and lib shit among the general subcommittee membership
