Edit- y’all are getting salty. Clearly I agree with Lenin that revolutionaries should work in reactionary parliaments. But that is not the same as the DSA who think electoralism is the key to meaningful change, and not a combination of legal and illegal strategies.
Step 1: Get as many people in your socdem party as possible on the promise of free healthcare
Step 2: Run them headlong into the contradictions of capital and the impossibility of winning power through the electoral process
Step 3: ?????
Step 4: Communism
The Bolsheviks just appeared magically out of nowhere in 1912.
No, wait, why are you opening up that history book? Stop!
i really really doupt the the russian social democratic party and situation of pre revolution russia ,regardless of its name, can be used as a parallel to make any pro DSA point in modern America
Of course it's not a 1-to-1 comparison but dismissing the largest "left" org in the US that does far more work than electoral politics as a waste (which is the implication of this meme) just so that some ultra-online leftists can feel better about themselves doing nothing can get pretty tiresome so I'm not going to do more work on finding a more apt comparison.
largest “left” org
Sure if you think social democratic reforms from them are acceptable
Local DSA in my area has literally fought police, pushed to defund them, organized labor , fed those that are hungry, and break people into homes to squat who need them.
Those are slightly more than socdem reforms but go off.
Oh are they based in revolutionary theory and identify themselves as a vanguard party?
identify themselves as a vanguard party?
Forgot that strict application of ML ideology is the only way to abolish capitalism my bad.
Make sure you get up every hour or you'll get sores from your armchair.
while in the Party we are organizing, distributing agitprop, and education people on the destructive nature of capitalism?
Thats great & I really hope you are able to make headway on that. We're all in the same struggle, but I hope you aren't as prickly IRL as you are online because if you have this attitude in person it is going to be a lonely time trying to organize. I hope you are happy and more importantly active in the party so that one day we can work together.
You're also moving the goalposts on what I'm saying, though. You're shitting on people in the DSA for not having pushed the communism button already. What I'm saying is its the largest "left" vehicle in the US and lots of the local orgs do good, revolutionary work. What I'm saying is not everyone is going to slot in to a newly formed vangaurd party (or have one locally to slot into) and shitting on those trying to move the world forward is needlessly confrontational.
The influx of soc dems on this site change the rhetoric and goals of people here overall. We shit on Bernie and AOC for doing A and B, yet the cognitive dissonance about the effectiveness of the DSA is ignored. If they are arguing that reforms can be voted in, then that is what they’re going to believe how actual, meaningful change is brought about.
I’ll refer to Lenin’s LWCAID, specifically the chapter Should We Participate in Bourgeois Parliaments?
I'm once again begging you to actually read my comments before soapboxing against things I'm not even saying.
I'm not saying that telling people to :vote: is the good part of the DSA. It's not. I'm not an electoralist, I don't find it a useful vehicle for material change. However, there ARE good parts of the DSA where many localities have book clubs that participate in education revolutionary theory, organize labor, and perform direct action against the state.
You also just linked something from 1920, which was written by someone who had to learn throughout his life through his own experience that electoral reform is a dead end, yet shit on people going through that on their own.
How will libs move further left if the organization overall wants soc dem style reforms? If the leadership is full of libs, how will that not effect the actions of the group as a whole? If it is not centralized and chapters/localities are doing things on their own, won’t that lead to individualism and idealism , and a dissolutions to how the masses can come together and agitate for change?
And if I linked to a book someone wrote about in the past struggles with bourgeois parliaments, why should people need to go through this struggle on their own? Read theory and see how past revolutions and revolutionary experiences have worked and how they relate to us today. If it wasn’t relevant, it would have been lost to time and chastised by other communists. But Lenin don’t miss. :lenin-shining:
Lol go say this to an Amazon delivery drivers face and report back
A meme is a meme, i dont expect it to provide in depth critique of the function of the DSA and the person's outlook on whether or not organizing around and inside it is the correct way forwards. If thats where they are coming from its simplistic and infamatory to channel your opinions on the subject in a gotcha meme format. Unless you drop the 10 paragraph leftist meme format you are basicaly begging to be interpreted as " DSA does nothing , nothing correct ,arent allies and sucks ass lmao "
In general maybe im projecting my own critiques to this and OP doesnt have any nuanced critique on the matter but dismissing the DSA as the main vehicle for struggle and radicalization towards socialism in america, thinking that its general approach and structure has a very low ceiling of results it can bring and revolutionary progress it can make is a position that i think is legit from a leftist perspective, even if its simplisticaly and secreterian-y presented in the meme. Its normal these dumb internet enviroments for some comrade that may have these critiques and nuanced "anti-dsa" stance if you ask them to elaborate to present them in this negative and surface level antagonistsic way .
Its doesnt and shouldnt mean a dismissal to all things the dsa does, hell not even most of their local work and neither a dismissal for the comrades that organize there. Doing that is ultra leftism i agree. But the original position about the dsa can exist without these ultra leftiss and i wouldnt call any comrade that holds this opinion an armchair larper shit on him cause "DSA big left org in america" and comparisons that dont hold water. Tho the way OP chose to post his brainworms on the subject doesnt leave much room for good faith discussion
These opinions and discussions shouldnt be posted and be had in meme posts and presented in their most simplistic , and thats the OPs fault. I'd probably agree with their position on how and why the dsa isnt the viable org for the american left going forward unless its reformed in structure and approach
But if political specifics from a century ago and a continent away aren't that applicable to the United States in 2021, what are we supposed to do? Seriously engage with modern politics and make a real effort to build a mass socialist movement?
thesis: electoralism
antithesis: revolution
synthesis:?????
Venezuela and Bolivia made big strides leftward through elections. And no American revolution is going anywhere until we create a bunch more leftists, which the DSA is at least trying to do. But memes are fun.
That, and Bolivia and Venezuela have not actually yet escaped from capitalism, both still have majority private sector economies. In other words it’s still an open question whether electoralism “worked” to overthrow capitalism, but they have made major gains.
Yeah, it's much more difficult for exploited nations to do this. If they can make real leftward progress through elections, we should be able to do the same.
You can't just do incrementalism. Incrementalism never produces the immediate unequivocal results I crave.
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
idk some lib probably
You need more than 1000 leftists in a trench coat to do a revolution
Tbh at least in Chavez's case he armed the people, made basic socialist structures on the ground with collectivos and completely made the ermy from scratch as a people's army. Way more in line with the Leninist line of doing things after getting power , whatever way you happened to find a way to get it(well surpise he and the other people around him were trots) . Social democrats and democratic socialists in the west never have even shown any inclination of actualy taking such lines of trying to repurpose and rebuild the state machinery after taking power at any degree, and any even remotely possible electoral success in America will be way too far from such actions as it will be at best Bernie level miliquest social democracy. Its much ,much ,much more logical to compare any socdem/demsoc electoral success that may happen in the US to those that have happened by socdem/demsoc parties in the west and particularly Europe in the last 60 years and see what the outcomes were, how and if they helped with class conciousness and unionism, if they correlated with the socialist movement making progress etc (spoiler alert, none of those things happened)
Latam electoral success was it riding an actualy revolutionary anti-colonial movement and sentiment with Chavez and co being communists that won through elections and found themselves in a situation of just being able to enact strong welfare state policies and nationalization economicaly but aditionaly they worked to keep internationalism as a major point, they worked to transform the state to a more workers state, not just "workers friendly" and consolidated power in army and police by tranforming them away from bourgeois forms. Also they constantly tried to elevate the class conciousness of Venezuelans and have the people coalesce around the government in revolutionary and anti-imperialist terms. I dont see any reason to believe that any electoral socdem/demsoc movement or success in america will emulate any of those characteristics and not the charactersics of the dozens and dozens of socdem/demsoc electoral "successes" in various countries in Europe and follow the same story. The cultural ,historical and material conditions in Venezuela and bolivia (morales similarly describes himslef as a marxist lenninist lmao, but also is closer to Allende than Chavez), the character and ideology of the parties and masses behind those movements and the actions they did when they got in power seem way too divorced from America to site them as examples that electoral organizing can strive for , especially when you have way way more examples of how things turn out in much more comparable conditions and populations/countries
no one in the DSA thinks they are ending capitalism through electoralism, they do however think that electoralism is a way to materially improve lives and lessen suffering.
I think some folks in the DSA think exactly that but luckily they seem to be dwindling in influence
Unless you know of another vanguard party building it’s base and support? Let me know how trying to reform bourgeois parliaments through electoralism works. :lenin-laugh:
Just another US "communist" party that will reach at most 2000 members then split or devolve into crank bs
Yeah the PCUSA is a split and not say, a continuation from the original CPUSA because liberalism that infiltrated and individualism that was not combated in time, government agencies put in their own agent provocateurs, losing the revolutionary fervor, amongst other issues.
Who knows. It’s up to those in the party to follow the party lines and guidelines. Communication is easier now amongst the members. And elections are held every year. I mean you can go the DSA route if you want, just DM me whenever their plans actually work and don’t just reform capitalism to be “nicer.”
Nothing will stop Capitalism because nothing has stopped Capitalism yet. As soon as Capitalism is gone, the panacea will be obvious and anyone who did something different will be labeled a fool.
But how else will I get valuable experience organizing in an explicitly non-democratic-centralist manner? I'll come around to communism later after I'm thoroughly trained in individualism, factionalism, and normalizing party disunity.
DSA who think electoralism is the key to meaningful change
[citation needed]
The capacities we seek to develop include recruiting and running candidates on a unified political platform; training campaign organizers and legislative staffers; providing access to financial resources; crafting working-class policy to be introduced in government; and organizing members and voters to support not just candidates, but also fight for reforms around immediate material demands
This strategy surely been working. I refer to Rosa Luxemburg’s Reform or Revolution
You are approaching this as if every chapter follows national to the T, most people I know hate national and know they're libs
Why not have a democratic centralized party where clubs and regions work independently but still within the same revolutionary theory passed down from successful past revolutions and communists parties? If your leadership is libs, then how will that not transfer to those in the organization?
read the last clause again...? what do you think it says? it’s explicitly about working outside of elections. or how about the verb “include” at the very start of your handpicked paragraph? why are you pretending that says something it does not say? did you actually read the rosa text? remind me of the passage where it says there are no immediate material demands to make or any struggles outside of the revolution itself
I’m not a DSA guy, I’m not even politically or ideologically aligned to them, but look how easy it is to just make shit up about a political program and then wonder how our enemies get to do that to us.
Join the DSA, push it to actually punish/vilify/remove endorsed candidates that stray from the platform.
With this one, cool trick it will magically go 80% of the way to the electoralism that Marx and Lenin correctly approved of.
Still better than CPUSA. At least you have an easier time convincing libs to abandon their liberalism after they watch their electoralism strategies get stomped in favor of the shittiest candidates that make up America's political structure, than it is to try to convince a bunch of libs that think they're applying Dimitrov's theory of the United front by saying to vote for the lesser evil and then claiming it's a victory for the communist cause that the capitalist class switched what colour their puppet is that time around.
That said I still find it easier to work with CP members over DSA members since I'm less likely to be called a red-fascist for suggesting they read Engel's "The Principles of Communism" so they can get beyond "communism is when the government does stuff" phase.
We still need to build leftist power structures inside and outside of the electoral system. Obviously voting alone isn't enough, but having political leaders is hugely important.
Is anyone building any power structure outside of the electoral system yet? Otherwise it's putting the cart before the horse.
The DSA is building connections with labor power / unions, which is pretty hilarious given OP.
lol look who's never done union organizing.
What's your plan for building power structures? Both electoralism and dual power are out, apparently, regardless of strategy and tactics.
My question was not rhetorical. What do you plan to do to build power structures in the imperial core if you rule out both electoralism and dual power out of hand?
I don't plan to build power structures in the imperial core, I intend to destroy power structures in the imperial core.
With what? You defeat power structures with power structures. Otherwise it's just you doing terrorism.
So that's it? Your idea of defeating the imperial core is for you, by yourself, doing some terrorism?
All you're gonna do is get them to immediately clamp down even harder on everyone else, on top of whoever you end up hurting.
Edit: oh and also alienate everyone.
They're already clamping down all the time and everyone is already alienated.
"Clamp down even harder" implies they're already clamping down. The point is it will only hurt the cause by giving them a new and very popular excuse to fuck with socialists, a present to the imperialists. Though I seriously doubt this is anything more than a larp, that is what it would actually do.
Ted Kaczynski had the same idea. It has not exactly blossomed into a strong anprim movement to destroy the US system from within. In fact, most people only understand him as a terrorist and not an anprim because there was nobody but the feds and the media to propagate his message. Killed a bunch of clerks and shit, real revolutionary times.
This is the alienation that would occur. I'm not talking about the Marxist sense or some kind of neoliberal commentary on psychology, I mean literally everyone will want to distance themselves from you. You will become the new Vuvuzela for chuds and no socialist will touch you with a ten-foot pole. Though we should also consider the possibility that your message goes ignored just like Kaczynski's, so all you really ended up doing was murdering some people or blowing some shit up or whatever, none of which will ever take down the imperial core.
