• Awoo [she/her]
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    4 years ago

    This is revisionism to justify opportunism because you want to avoid the longer and more difficult task of cutting through the distortions present in a population that has been propagandised against collectivism and in favour of individualism for a century. I understand why you would desperately want to avoid addressing that problem, it's a daunting prospect and the level of obsession with individualism present in the American psyche is terrifying.

    The problem however is that if you do not cut through that propagandised population and create collectivisation the result of your revisionist revolution is far more likely to result in fascism, not socialism, and thus it would be better to have not engaged in revolution at all. Attempting to take shortcuts to reach the goal sooner is exceptionally dangerous, especially in the American landscape.

    • hogposting [he/him,comrade/them]
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      4 years ago

      you want to avoid the longer and more difficult task

      We don't have time for a longer solution. We're in a climate crisis, a pandemic, and an enormous economic collapse right now. We can't let perfect be the enemy of good.

      the result of your revisionist revolution is far more likely to result in fascism, not socialism

      I don't see how "selfishness is bad, but go ahead, have your own individual identity while we help each other out" will lead to fascism.

      Attempting to take shortcuts to reach the goal

      Shortcuts? We don't know what the road to socialism will look like -- existing or past socialist countries got there in different ways, and trying to directly copy/paste the experiences of poor developing nations onto the imperial core is just begging for failure. History and Marxist theory are a useful map, but a map doesn't prepare you for all the potential issues along the way. It gives you some things to watch out for and some good advice, but ultimately you have to get from Point A to Point B on your own. And again, there's nothing in Marxist literature that says even non-selfish personal identities are incompatible with socialism. There's not even a theoretical map telling us not to do that even if you believe such a map can take you step by step to socialism.