This “Power and Strategy” course seems interesting!
Does anyone know where I can find it?
Anyone, it's good that they taught them people like W.E.B. DuBois and the Combahee River Collective's own texts.
Definitely give the article a read-through or at least a skim-through.
"Solidarity power was also used to do base-building work among formerly enslaved people, free Black people, Quakers, and other allies. Numerous organizations were founded in different countries in the late 1700s and early 1800s, such as the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, formed in London in 1787, and the Anti-Man-Hunting League, a secret society formed in 1854 by about five hundred Black and white men in Boston to prevent Black people from being kidnapped and enslaved."
Never heard of these organizations.
Quite intereseting...
While I won't say to not read these materials, I would recommend being skeptical so long as they do not have a goal of building revolution. There is an entire cottage industry of organizing recommendations by people with much simpler, liberal, and reform-friendly goals that suck up all the air in the room with inadequate strategies and often ones that are just plain incorrect. Example: a fellow organizer once got me to read a book where one of the examples of alleged good organizing was in opposition to an enemy of the US empire that was deposed through US military action. The book praised the activist group's tactics and coalitions and theoretical basis and tried to ignore the fact that bombing the country did infinitely more.
Instead, I recommend throwing yourself into the work and prioritizing strategy itself, as a rule. Ask the obvious questions if your goal is to establish, carry out, and evaluate strategy. What does success look like? What are your goals? How will you know if it's working? How will you adjust? How do tactics compare to the strategy?
Example: a goal might be to increase engagement among membership that is dissatisfied. Your strategy meetings should be about how to retain and engage them. The tactic might be to have direct conversations with them about what single thing they'd like to see changed. Then you have a strategy meeting to pick a campaign that has overlap with their interests. Then you do the campaign and see whether it had the desired effect. By doing this, you will learn what is effective and how to probe more effectively. You'll find, for example, that people need to see value in their own contributions, so organizing "for the cause" but against their theoretical grounding will lead to alienation, so you need to address one of two things: (1) further a shared theoretical base or (2) adopting different actions.
Anyways I don't want to get in the weeds. I just want to share that in my experience the thing that is missing is a lack of seriously doing any strategic planning at all, let alone constructively criticizing that strategy. Doing serious strategizing is the creation and testing of theory and the theory you develop will be wrong often enough that you need to be able to reorient around correct ideas, and to recognize when they are wrong because the impact is counterproductive or leads to an unscientific approach.
"While I won't say to not read these materials, I would recommend being skeptical so long as they do not have a goal of building revolution."
I think this is wrong-headed, tbh. You should be learning from other orgs, otherwise you can't start a movement and build dual power.
That doesn't contradict what I said. I didn't say, "don't learn from other orgs" lol.
If you don't consider different goals and allies, as I mentioned, you'll end up with counterproductive strategies. For example, attempting to emulate an org that only "succeeded" because of a US bombing campaign is an unscientific approach, you'd be missing the obvious alternative hypothesis. If you try to run your org as if the bourgeois media apparatus will do your work for you, for example, you'll be quickly scratching your head about why your propaganda isn't reaching people like these others said it would. Similarly, if you try to organize like student groups that only ever achieved some protests and then petered out, don't be surprised when you fail to retain members. In all of these cases, a skeptical approach should have been taken to either rule the strategy out (your org cannot rely on friendly treatment from bourgeois media and military) or to be hyper-aware of its historical limitations so that you can change course if you see the same thing developing. Or, at least weigh the likely downsides when making a decision.
In my experience, Western orgs often fail at all of this because they simply aren't asking the right basic questions or allowing themselves to avoid harmful dogmas. The foundations of good organizing isn't a set of tactics, which people tend to focus on, but a healthy process that discovers, wields, and discards them relative to their conditions. Ask yourselves what your goals are. Ask yourselves how you'll develop your hypotheses (usually reading or gathering info from a community). Ask yourselves how you'll know whether a hypothesis is wrong and you should change either tactics or strategy. Figure out how to do this without alienating each other, because people will get attached to failed strategies. Free yourselves to reject core strategy tools that were extremely valuable in other conditions but that limit you now - e.g. demcent is often adhered to solely due to its efficacy under conditions that do not apply to your imperial core city, and actually prevents a given org from experimenting to identify how you'll build your base in these conditions. If it's not having the desired effect, jettison it. Make a front group that experiments with not using it for a domain for a few years. See if the experiment fails. It might! Maybe Demcent is appropriate under the conditions for your org. If you ask the question of how you'll measure failure at the beginning, you'll find it easier to make these decisions later and it won't be a surprise if the experiment is ended.
Anyways feel free to do whatever you'd like.
Western orgs are quite successful and have to deal with a lot so, yes, we should definitely learn from them as the communist movement in the West is back in Square One, more or less.
I did.
Then why are you continuing to mischaracterize my point as being against learning from other orgs, including Western ones? I've explicitly stated and explained how that's not the case, and nothing in what I've said could even be characterized as such. I see no acknowledgment or engagement with the points I've raised, including patiently explaining your misunderstanding.
You're not reading most of the articles by cpusa.org.
What does that have to do with anything here?
I am not mischaracterizing your point so don't mischaracterize what I'm saying or myself as well.
"What does that have to do with anything here?"
You don't understand the CPUSA and are not a member, as far as I can tell, and are just going off a few things said.
I am not mischaracterizing your point
Yes, you are. I've explained how. You can choose to engage with that, but it is uncomradely to belabor this falsehood in such a flippant and dismissive way.
so don't mischaracterize what I'm saying or myself as well.
In what way am I mischaracterizing you?
"What does that have to do with anything here?"
You don't understand the CPUSA and are not a member, as far as I can tell, and are just going off a few things said.
Literally nothing in this thread is about CPUSA. Unless you're outing the authors of this book as members, something they're presumably avoiding being public given they do not state that association anywhere online?
"Yes, you are. I've explained how."
You have not and can't read my mind.
"In what way am I mischaracterizing you?"
By saying that I'm mischaracterizing you.
"Literally nothing in this thread is about CPUSA."
Oh nvm, wrong thread, but you're still wrong.
You have not and can't read my mind.
Why would I need to read your mind to know whether you've mischaracterized me? You're not making any sense.
Anyways, you have done so twice, I've patiently explained how, and you have yet to engage with what I've said there. Please consider doing so before continuing this discussion.
By saying that I'm mischaracterizing you.
You're confusing disagreement with mischaracterization. I can't have been more clear that my position is not "don't learn from other orgs". There's nothing in what I've said that can be called, "hey don't listen to other (Western) orgs". I've explicitly stated that it's not and have literally used examples drawn from other orgs. Yet you persisted in this straw manning.
I invite you to engage with the substance of what I have said and to please avoid these defensive behaviors. While I am very patient, most people are not, and these behaviors would be very off-putting to them.
Oh nvm, wrong thread, but you're still wrong.
Please use this opportunity to ask yourself whether you're paying sufficient attention to what I've said.
"Why would I need to read your mind to know whether you've mischaracterized me? You're not making any sense."
Uh, because I know that I haven't?
"You're confusing disagreement with mischaracterization."
Uh, that applies to you.
"I invite you to engage with the substance of what I have said and to please avoid these defensive behaviors. While I am very patient, most people are not, and these behaviors would be very off-putting to them."
But you haven't even engaged with the substance of my posts.
"Please use this opportunity to ask yourself whether you're paying sufficient attention to what I've said."
I've already said that I'm without ADHD medication.
Uh, because I know that I haven't?
This is getting very silly. You claimed or implied, twice, that I'm suggesting not listening to (Western) organizations, generally. It's basically all you said in response, in fact, despite me writing several paragraphs explaining what I mean and am actually recommending. Your replies did not apply to what I said and I've explained why. I'll avoid trying to figure out why you'd rather die on this hill than listen to and engage with a patient comrade.
Uh, that applies to you.
If this is just turning into a childish "no that's you" thing, where you don't even deign to explain how, I will have to disengage. I know what defensive tu quoque looks like lol.
But you haven't even engaged with the substance of my posts.
The absolute gall to say this.
So it is going to be that way...
I've already said that I'm without ADHD medication.
You actually didn't. However, as someone who also has ADHD I know that does not excuse uncomradely behavior. If you're not ready to pay attention to what someone is saying, responding with dismissive certainty will only dig holes you'll have trouble getting out of and will probably alienate the people you're trying to bring to your position. You can do whatever you'd like to, of course, but I'd prefer that you had fruitful engagements with others, especially to the extent that it advances socialism.
I will not be replying further in this thread. Please feel free to let me know if you are interested in and ready to discuss strategy or organizing in the future, though.
