For decades, leftist parties have tried participating in U.S. elections "with their own party and program to indict the system" and have had zero success. Look at all the candidates the CPUSA ran in presidential elections. We have generations of evidence that this strategy does not work, at least not in the United States. This is a perfect example of an idea that might have made sense in Lenin's time and place, but doesn't make sense in ours.
When someone quotes Lenin at you and it doesn't make sense in our current political situation, the response shouldn't be, "well, actually, Lenin really meant XYZ." That's just the leftist version of conservatives geeking out over their guesses at the original meaning of the U.S. Constitution. The response should be, "Lenin had a lot of great ideas, but I'm far more interested in what will work here and now."
The Democratic Party is awful and is a huge barrier to any sort of leftward shift, but I think you could write an equally valid criticism of any other strategy for moving leftwards. For example,
In 2020 only 6.3% of private-sector workers (and just 10.8% of all workers) were unionized. Between the rise of gig work, remote work, and new worker surveillance methods, it's harder than ever for workers to organize. When they do organize, the legal protections they're afforded have been steadily rolled back from their high-water mark in the 1930s. Even when unions were at their strongest -- 35% of the U.S. workforce was unionized in 1954 -- the best they could do was a limited form of social democracy.
Everything is a long-shot option. There are institutional barriers everywhere; there's no single strategy that's even more likely than not to lead to success. Writing off one strategy because it has a low chance of success has never been persuasive to me because that would mean writing off everything.
To me, this suggests that we should be trying all of these strategies. Make advances where we can, because a step forward in one area can open up additional room for movement in another, and vice versa. There's no reason to write off one strategy when our other options aren't any better, and when we don't know what will work in the first place.
Except Vaush is not some rando, he is a prominent "educator" of the online left. Clarifying and calling out his lies is important. We also don't have to guess at what Lenin meant like with the constitution's intent, because the very work Vaush pulls from clarifies what he meant
It makes sense to push back on a prominent person with bad ideas, but I think the best way to do that on this point is to avoid the whole "here's what Lenin really meant" argument altogether. There's no reason to get into it -- as @DetroitLolcat put it elsewhere in this thread, if someone has a good argument for doing X or Y, they should just make that argument on its own merits.
Except this point is specifically about a stupid thing Vaush said about Lenin specifically. This point IS the specific one to get into semantics on when otherwise we shouldnt
But what are we trying to do here? Are we trying to find out who knows their Lenin best, or are we trying to build some sort of mass leftist movement? That "Lenin said XYZ" isn't even convincing to people who love Lenin is a sign that appealing to Lenin is not very productive.
We are not trying to do_ anything, we are in the memes community making fun of Vaush. This is not a freaking grand strategy session, this is not the 4th international; we are in a thread about Vaush being a dipshit and misquoting theory. That is what we are doing. This is a fucking meme thread about Vaush and Lenin quotes, it has fuck all to do with "build some sort of mass leftist movement" jesus christ!!! In the context of a dumbass claiming to know theory and then lying about what Lenin said, what Lenin actually said is far more important than your broad ideas about movement building.
Also gonna go out of a limb and say vaush and his friends are not people who love Lenin in the first place. and also shut up about what is "productive" it IS.A.MEME.THREAD about a specific thing vaush said. You just steered a conversation into a broad strategy discussion no one was having.
"what are we trying to do here?" who is "we"? I am making fun of vaush specifically pretending to use theory to justify something, despite not reading theory. I don't care about whether or not Lenin quotations are an effective electoral strategy for movement building in your opinion, this is a meme thread about a specific thing.
Not everything is an invitation for a struggle session about your opinions on why every other leftist is wrong about elections.
:grillman:
What does the CPUSA do at the local levels to build an actual party and movement that could actually hope to swing a presidential election? You can't just start at the top like that, lol.
No leftist party (and no third parties, period) have made any significant progress no matter what strategy they used. You can find examples of small parties running local candidates and those haven't accomplished anything, either. The U.S. electoral system just doesn't work that way. The big political shifts have all occurred within the confines of one major party or another -- look at Democrats divorcing then hollowing out labor, look at Republicans switching from high-level acknowledgement of climate science to denying it. Look at local Democrats ending the War on Drugs.
Anything we can get through electoral politics (including evidence that we need to also work outside of electoral politics) will only be accomplished by DSA-style entryism. Third parties don't work.
And only under these conditions do we fight in the sole permissible way for what is at any time ‘possible’. Now if one says that we should offer an exchange – our consent to militaristic and tariff legislation in return for political concessions or social reforms – then one is sacrificing the basic principles of the class struggle for momentary advantage, and one’s actions are based on opportunism. Opportunism, incidentally, is a political game which can be lost in two ways: not only basic principles but also practical success may be forfeited. The assumption that one can achieve the greatest number of successes by making concessions rests on a complete error. Here, as in all great matters, the most cunning persons are not the most intelligent. Bismarck once told a bourgeois opposition party: ‘You will deprive yourselves of any practical influences if you always and as a matter of course say no.’ The old boy was then, as so often, more intelligent than is Pappenheimer.[A] Indeed, a bourgeois party, that is, a party which says yes to the existing order as a whole, but which will say no to the day-to-day consequences of this order, is a hybrid, an artificial creation, which is neither fish nor flash nor fowl. We who oppose the entire present order see things quite differently. In our no, in our intransigent attitude, lies our whole strength. It is this attitude that earns us the fear and respect of the enemy and the trust and support of the people.
Precisely because we do not yield one inch from our position, we force the government and the bourgeois parties to concede to us the few immediate successes that can be gained. But if we begin to chase after what is ‘possible’ according to the principles of opportunism, unconcerned with our own principles, and by means of statesmanlike barter, then we will soon find ourselves in the same situation as the hunter who has not only failed to stay the deer but has also lost his gun in the process.
:rosa-shining:
What we want to do through third parties and what we can gain through electoralism is different, we don't share the same goal there. Some of us suggest third parties not because we think they can compete, but because the alternative is needed and they provide an organization on a national level with a party structure. You are free to chase after the "possible" but don't call us fools for failing to do what we didn't set out to do in the first place.
Exactly, winning conventional power in liberal democracies is not the goal for a revolutionary party, so of course we are not going to attain those things
It is clear we have different goals and intents, so what we have to show for it is not really gonna mean much to the other. The point is not to get electoral wins or to become a viable party if it sacrifices the party line and interests. What would be something to show for it for me does not seem to be what you intend to get out of a third party.
But beyond that, CPUSA proved incredibly effective at organizing. They didn't hold seats, they didn't win big elections, but they got victories in fronts that didn't disappear when you lose seats or a new bill is passed. They helped prevent tenants from being kicked out during the Depression, they armed and waged a guerilla war in the South with sharecroppers, securing the 8-hour day, ended lynching and saved the Scottsboro Nine, they fucking organized units to fight fascists in Spain, and a shitload of other victories just by existing and lasting as long as they did during the Cold War.
That stuff is not flashy, it does not get you a seat in congress or the white house or a bill, but it saves lives, it organizes people, it showed that the working class and its fighters where still here and willing to fight. I would say that saving the Scottsboro Nine alone is plenty to show for it. The farthest the People's Party got by playing "smart" electoralism and joining the dems with supporting democrat Bryant for office in 1896 with the assumption they would pick VP Thomas Watson. The dems didn't even let them manage that, and went with Sewall but dragging the Populists through supporting their issues like the gold standard only to crash and burn hard and then be blamed for the dems losing. Compromises, joining the dems, playing "possible" electoral politics and it killed them in their crib.
CPUSA never came that close and yet it made lasting change and seriously saved lives
I'm guessing we have the exact same goal -- a stateless, classless, moneyless society. I'd bet that we both even want a dictatorship of the proletariat as a transitory period in the short term. Do you have a different goal?
They helped prevent tenants from being kicked out during the Depression, they armed and waged a guerilla war in the South with sharecroppers...
If this stuff is significant to you -- and it should be -- then you must love the Democratic Party. Setting aside all the nationwide material improvements they passed during the decades when the CPUSA was most active (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc.), in the past ten years they've legalized marijuana in 18 states, decriminalized it in several more, and elected a number of local prosecutors that are declining small charges, eliminating cash bail, and enacting other decarceration policies. They're providing free breakfast and lunch for all students in the country's most populous state. There's no way to write this stuff off. It's people let out of prison and hungry kids getting fed -- as materialists, we should see that this is no small part of why the party remains popular despite its many faults.
But I'm guessing you don't love the Democratic Party, because you don't just want some material improvements here and there, you want socialism. My point is that third parties have shown zero promise of either taking control of the state from the inside or smashing it from the outside. They've shown zero promise of building any sort of mass movement. What has shown some promise of channeling mass politics into something useful is working the left edge of the Democratic Party. It's not the only thing we should be doing, but it should absolutely be on the menu.
The democrats come from the class and system that created sharecropping, that created this immiseration. The Dems don't get credit for building a communist movement, when they do something decent it is FDR attempting to save capitalism while laying the groundwork for those attempts to be undone later. CPUSA managed to do all it did without raping and pillaging the global south, it did it while building a mass movement which yes they DID regardless of what you want to think happened. Zero promise of building any sort of mass movement? I just gave you examples. Being on the ground floor of the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement, etc IS building mass movements. You want to give the dems credit for things they got dragged to do half-assed kicking and screaming and later killed, but CPUSA doesn't get credit for a mass movement ie its own members? I get that you want to work backwards to justify your point and call it materialism, but come on. CPUSA also gets credit then for that shit, you don't get to have it both ways.
Also you are utterly misunderstanding what I mean by goal, I don't mean the fucking end goal for humanity, I mean what we would want to get out of a third party. What would be a success for a third party is entirely different between us. Working on the fringe of the democrats hasn't been proven to work any more than CPUSA's method. You just disregard materialism when it doesn't suit you. Working the left edge of the dems got the Populist party killed, how is that better for mass movement building? If we can evidentially get those wins without sacrificing our ideals via CPUSA, then why would we bow before the dems to get kicked in the face again and again? We can and have pushed for shit like social security without working the edge of the democrats, but rather by agitating. CPUSA was involved in the push for social security BTW
CPUSA managed to use its third party status and organizing to actually force the democrats on shit, not by playing with the edges of the party.
https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-8/lrs-cpusa.htm
In describing how the party extended its influence during the period that followed, Klehr cynically claims they were just riding Roosevelt’s coattails, and they were effective because their political line had changed, on Moscow’s orders, to make them virtually indistinguishable from liberal Democrats. In truth, it was the mass base the communists had already built up, and the effective independent work they had already done, that made an alliance with Roosevelt possible. In one of the few really useful chapters of his book, Klehr gives a sense of how effective this alliance had become by 1938. In California, Washington, New York and Minnesota, the CPUSA was deeply involved in the electoral campaigns of various left-wing Democrats, and in getting out the vote for Roosevelt. They built up strong progressive political organizations whose usefulness was not lost on the president. Though the communists never openly acknowledged their role in these electoral campaigns, Roosevelt found it increasingly important to woo CPUSA support.
Klehr has less to say about the CPUSA’s role in the historic drive to unionize workers in basic industry under the banner of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), but what the party achieved here was even more impressive. When General Motors workers launched their dramatic sit-down strike in late 1936, party cadre provided tactical leadership, and a communist, United Auto Workers Vice President Wyndham Mortimer, represented the strikers at the bargaining table. Communists edited the CIO’s newspaper and served as its top legal counsel. Party organizers brought thousands of workers into fledgling CIO unions like the Steel Workers Organizing Committee, the United Rubber Workers and the Packinghouse Workers.
And yet this was actually too close, while they had massive wins like social security, they did so by using their strong third party support to pressure and boost FDR which put them in a position that lost them some of that outside opposition strength which proved disastrous.
In Harlem and elsewhere, the communists’ work was undermined by a more serious failing. They never did find a way to bridge the kind of mass revolutionary agitation they had done in the early 1930s with the broad united front work they did in the latter part of the decade, and again in the World War II years covered in Isserman’s book. The more their organizational influence grew, the more they tended to liquidate their independent role as communists, and the weaker their ties to the masses became. No sooner had they begun realizing the full potential of their tactical alliances with Roosevelt and CIO chief John L. Lewis than they began uncritically tailing them.
This contradiction became apparent during World War II, as Isserman shows. Throughout the war, the communists retained their positions in the CIO national office, and they gained unprecedented influence in the federal government. They used these positions to engineer a high-level deal which was supposed to insure uninterrupted war production without sacrificing the living standards of workers in the war industries, or threatening the organizational strength of the CIO.
The deal broke down because, despite all the talk of “equality of sacrifice” in the battle to defeat fascism, the capitalists took advantage of wartime conditions to intensify the exploitation of their workers and send their own profits soaring. When workers fought back, the CPUSA, unwilling to jeopardize its influence in high places, failed to back them up. Many workers who had won the right to union protection a few years before because of the party’s militant dedication now concluded that the communists could not be trusted to defend their rights.
So working the edges ended up destroying the power and force they had in the '30s all to help the dems, and what became of this influence in the democrats?
Naison is closer to the mark when he suggests, towards the end of his book, that the party’s growing unwillingness to jeopardize its political alliances with the leadership of the CIO and the Democratic Party led it to temper its aggressive defense of the interests of the people of Harlem. Naison does not really analyze this politically, but he does put his finger on a sore spot. The communists began as political outcasts who pinned their hopes for revolution on the notion that the masses would turn to them out of desperation when capitalism had so destroyed their lives that they would have no alternative but revolution. By 1938, the party’s effective and often heroic work to build the organizational and political strength of the working class had brought it close to a prominent position in U.S. life.
If the CPUSA was seduced by this newfound respectability, it wasn’t simply because “power corrupts.” It was because the party had failed to analyze how its day-today work contributed to its long-range goal of working class revolution. Having lost its bearings, it was unable to develop its impressive gains into lasting victories. But it left a rich history from which the present generation of communists can learn a great deal. A half century later, a central task of the revolutionary movement in this country remains the building of a genuine communist party to lead the working class struggle.
Social security is being cut, welfare is non-existent, and we don't have a strong agitator force of a third party that the oppressed KNOW have their backs against the democrats. So no we don't have the same goals for parties, I don't want to cozy up to the dems or get a better position in bourgeoise democracy. Holding less power, and no institutional power but having the freedom to do what Rosa said is infinitely more effective than edging Schumer
Indeed, a bourgeois party, that is, a party which says yes to the existing order as a whole, but which will say no to the day-to-day consequences of this order, is a hybrid, an artificial creation, which is neither fish nor flash nor fowl. We who oppose the entire present order see things quite differently. In our no, in our intransigent attitude, lies our whole strength. It is this attitude that earns us the fear and respect of the enemy and the trust and support of the people.
I do not intend to say yes to the existing order as a whole. Our no, our intransigent attitude lies our whole strength, in the 1930s as well as today if we have the guts to actually earn the fear of the enemy. You saw materially in the previous excerpts that staying truly third party got more loyal and wider support for CPUSA than becoming linked with FDR and the democrats. They began viewing their power as being with the CIO and war industries board and it got them cast out once the dems no longer needed them. They didn't build dual power, they latched onto the power of the very thing we must destroy. Suddenly they are powerless and don't have that third party ability to protect social security or welfare programs. Suddenly we are at the behest of at best, people who have to first and foremost be in the good graces of the democrats. So yeah there in actual writing is why I reject simplistic blanket statements about "zero promise of building any sort of mass movement" a statement which frankly is blatantly anti-materialist
For decades, leftist parties have tried participating in U.S. elections "with their own party and program to indict the system" and have had zero success. Look at all the candidates the CPUSA ran in presidential elections. We have generations of evidence that this strategy does not work, at least not in the United States. This is a perfect example of an idea that might have made sense in Lenin's time and place, but doesn't make sense in ours.
When someone quotes Lenin at you and it doesn't make sense in our current political situation, the response shouldn't be, "well, actually, Lenin really meant XYZ." That's just the leftist version of conservatives geeking out over their guesses at the original meaning of the U.S. Constitution. The response should be, "Lenin had a lot of great ideas, but I'm far more interested in what will work here and now."
deleted by creator
The Democratic Party is awful and is a huge barrier to any sort of leftward shift, but I think you could write an equally valid criticism of any other strategy for moving leftwards. For example,
Everything is a long-shot option. There are institutional barriers everywhere; there's no single strategy that's even more likely than not to lead to success. Writing off one strategy because it has a low chance of success has never been persuasive to me because that would mean writing off everything.
To me, this suggests that we should be trying all of these strategies. Make advances where we can, because a step forward in one area can open up additional room for movement in another, and vice versa. There's no reason to write off one strategy when our other options aren't any better, and when we don't know what will work in the first place.
Except Vaush is not some rando, he is a prominent "educator" of the online left. Clarifying and calling out his lies is important. We also don't have to guess at what Lenin meant like with the constitution's intent, because the very work Vaush pulls from clarifies what he meant
It makes sense to push back on a prominent person with bad ideas, but I think the best way to do that on this point is to avoid the whole "here's what Lenin really meant" argument altogether. There's no reason to get into it -- as @DetroitLolcat put it elsewhere in this thread, if someone has a good argument for doing X or Y, they should just make that argument on its own merits.
Except this point is specifically about a stupid thing Vaush said about Lenin specifically. This point IS the specific one to get into semantics on when otherwise we shouldnt
But what are we trying to do here? Are we trying to find out who knows their Lenin best, or are we trying to build some sort of mass leftist movement? That "Lenin said XYZ" isn't even convincing to people who love Lenin is a sign that appealing to Lenin is not very productive.
We are not trying to do_ anything, we are in the memes community making fun of Vaush. This is not a freaking grand strategy session, this is not the 4th international; we are in a thread about Vaush being a dipshit and misquoting theory. That is what we are doing. This is a fucking meme thread about Vaush and Lenin quotes, it has fuck all to do with "build some sort of mass leftist movement" jesus christ!!! In the context of a dumbass claiming to know theory and then lying about what Lenin said, what Lenin actually said is far more important than your broad ideas about movement building.
Also gonna go out of a limb and say vaush and his friends are not people who love Lenin in the first place. and also shut up about what is "productive" it IS.A.MEME.THREAD about a specific thing vaush said. You just steered a conversation into a broad strategy discussion no one was having.
"what are we trying to do here?" who is "we"? I am making fun of vaush specifically pretending to use theory to justify something, despite not reading theory. I don't care about whether or not Lenin quotations are an effective electoral strategy for movement building in your opinion, this is a meme thread about a specific thing.
Not everything is an invitation for a struggle session about your opinions on why every other leftist is wrong about elections. :grillman:
What does the CPUSA do at the local levels to build an actual party and movement that could actually hope to swing a presidential election? You can't just start at the top like that, lol.
No leftist party (and no third parties, period) have made any significant progress no matter what strategy they used. You can find examples of small parties running local candidates and those haven't accomplished anything, either. The U.S. electoral system just doesn't work that way. The big political shifts have all occurred within the confines of one major party or another -- look at Democrats divorcing then hollowing out labor, look at Republicans switching from high-level acknowledgement of climate science to denying it. Look at local Democrats ending the War on Drugs.
Anything we can get through electoral politics (including evidence that we need to also work outside of electoral politics) will only be accomplished by DSA-style entryism. Third parties don't work.
:rosa-shining:
What we want to do through third parties and what we can gain through electoralism is different, we don't share the same goal there. Some of us suggest third parties not because we think they can compete, but because the alternative is needed and they provide an organization on a national level with a party structure. You are free to chase after the "possible" but don't call us fools for failing to do what we didn't set out to do in the first place.
What third party has actually done this? I understand the theory -- I'm saying it's been tried a bunch and there's nothing to show for it.
deleted by creator
Exactly, winning conventional power in liberal democracies is not the goal for a revolutionary party, so of course we are not going to attain those things
It is clear we have different goals and intents, so what we have to show for it is not really gonna mean much to the other. The point is not to get electoral wins or to become a viable party if it sacrifices the party line and interests. What would be something to show for it for me does not seem to be what you intend to get out of a third party.
But beyond that, CPUSA proved incredibly effective at organizing. They didn't hold seats, they didn't win big elections, but they got victories in fronts that didn't disappear when you lose seats or a new bill is passed. They helped prevent tenants from being kicked out during the Depression, they armed and waged a guerilla war in the South with sharecroppers, securing the 8-hour day, ended lynching and saved the Scottsboro Nine, they fucking organized units to fight fascists in Spain, and a shitload of other victories just by existing and lasting as long as they did during the Cold War.
That stuff is not flashy, it does not get you a seat in congress or the white house or a bill, but it saves lives, it organizes people, it showed that the working class and its fighters where still here and willing to fight. I would say that saving the Scottsboro Nine alone is plenty to show for it. The farthest the People's Party got by playing "smart" electoralism and joining the dems with supporting democrat Bryant for office in 1896 with the assumption they would pick VP Thomas Watson. The dems didn't even let them manage that, and went with Sewall but dragging the Populists through supporting their issues like the gold standard only to crash and burn hard and then be blamed for the dems losing. Compromises, joining the dems, playing "possible" electoral politics and it killed them in their crib.
CPUSA never came that close and yet it made lasting change and seriously saved lives
I'm guessing we have the exact same goal -- a stateless, classless, moneyless society. I'd bet that we both even want a dictatorship of the proletariat as a transitory period in the short term. Do you have a different goal?
If this stuff is significant to you -- and it should be -- then you must love the Democratic Party. Setting aside all the nationwide material improvements they passed during the decades when the CPUSA was most active (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc.), in the past ten years they've legalized marijuana in 18 states, decriminalized it in several more, and elected a number of local prosecutors that are declining small charges, eliminating cash bail, and enacting other decarceration policies. They're providing free breakfast and lunch for all students in the country's most populous state. There's no way to write this stuff off. It's people let out of prison and hungry kids getting fed -- as materialists, we should see that this is no small part of why the party remains popular despite its many faults.
But I'm guessing you don't love the Democratic Party, because you don't just want some material improvements here and there, you want socialism. My point is that third parties have shown zero promise of either taking control of the state from the inside or smashing it from the outside. They've shown zero promise of building any sort of mass movement. What has shown some promise of channeling mass politics into something useful is working the left edge of the Democratic Party. It's not the only thing we should be doing, but it should absolutely be on the menu.
The democrats come from the class and system that created sharecropping, that created this immiseration. The Dems don't get credit for building a communist movement, when they do something decent it is FDR attempting to save capitalism while laying the groundwork for those attempts to be undone later. CPUSA managed to do all it did without raping and pillaging the global south, it did it while building a mass movement which yes they DID regardless of what you want to think happened. Zero promise of building any sort of mass movement? I just gave you examples. Being on the ground floor of the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement, etc IS building mass movements. You want to give the dems credit for things they got dragged to do half-assed kicking and screaming and later killed, but CPUSA doesn't get credit for a mass movement ie its own members? I get that you want to work backwards to justify your point and call it materialism, but come on. CPUSA also gets credit then for that shit, you don't get to have it both ways.
Also you are utterly misunderstanding what I mean by goal, I don't mean the fucking end goal for humanity, I mean what we would want to get out of a third party. What would be a success for a third party is entirely different between us. Working on the fringe of the democrats hasn't been proven to work any more than CPUSA's method. You just disregard materialism when it doesn't suit you. Working the left edge of the dems got the Populist party killed, how is that better for mass movement building? If we can evidentially get those wins without sacrificing our ideals via CPUSA, then why would we bow before the dems to get kicked in the face again and again? We can and have pushed for shit like social security without working the edge of the democrats, but rather by agitating. CPUSA was involved in the push for social security BTW
CPUSA managed to use its third party status and organizing to actually force the democrats on shit, not by playing with the edges of the party. https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-8/lrs-cpusa.htm
And yet this was actually too close, while they had massive wins like social security, they did so by using their strong third party support to pressure and boost FDR which put them in a position that lost them some of that outside opposition strength which proved disastrous.
So working the edges ended up destroying the power and force they had in the '30s all to help the dems, and what became of this influence in the democrats?
Social security is being cut, welfare is non-existent, and we don't have a strong agitator force of a third party that the oppressed KNOW have their backs against the democrats. So no we don't have the same goals for parties, I don't want to cozy up to the dems or get a better position in bourgeoise democracy. Holding less power, and no institutional power but having the freedom to do what Rosa said is infinitely more effective than edging Schumer
I do not intend to say yes to the existing order as a whole. Our no, our intransigent attitude lies our whole strength, in the 1930s as well as today if we have the guts to actually earn the fear of the enemy. You saw materially in the previous excerpts that staying truly third party got more loyal and wider support for CPUSA than becoming linked with FDR and the democrats. They began viewing their power as being with the CIO and war industries board and it got them cast out once the dems no longer needed them. They didn't build dual power, they latched onto the power of the very thing we must destroy. Suddenly they are powerless and don't have that third party ability to protect social security or welfare programs. Suddenly we are at the behest of at best, people who have to first and foremost be in the good graces of the democrats. So yeah there in actual writing is why I reject simplistic blanket statements about "zero promise of building any sort of mass movement" a statement which frankly is blatantly anti-materialist
Lenins advice was too advanced for the stage of bourgeois democracy in the US. this country is still trying to roll back universal suffrage