(instead of starting with the motivation behind this approach, or listing the problems with other approaches, I'll just launch right into it.)

We need an expanding network of co-ops, secretly coordinated, behind the scenes, by some kind of vanguard party.

The network attempts to assimilate local businesses and, eventually, entire local economies, and use the profits to buy out residential land from the banks and landlords. We lower rent (almost?) to nothing. We then cut the workweek and spread less work across more people.

With a much shorter workweek and higher net income, workers now have the time and morale to 1) volunteer in community life, 2) attend political meetings, and 3) develop a revolutionary consciousness, preferably without even realizing it.

To help that along, we assimilate (or displace and replace) local news outlets to reduce the impact of propaganda. We start removing billboards and advertisements from public spaces. We also organize our own on-call social services which essentially function like citizen police. These services gradually supplant the local police.

Throughout this process, we avoid using marxist language. We hide the communist character of the whole thing, even though we are literally doing communism. We gotta keep everything low-key as long as possible. Our goal is to grow this network as big as we can before capital gets wise.

When capital does get wise, we'll see 1) media attacks, and 2) maybe attempts to frame vanguard members for various crimes. These are under-the-radar attacks. Somehow we need to prepare defenses against these. We want to force capital to respond above-the-radar, in ways normal people will perceive as attacks, so that each response radicalizes more and more people.

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How we assimilate businesses and economies is its own conversation. I think there are numerous ways to do it, and the approach will depend on the situation. Personally I think we should couch this assimilation as a social movement, not just an economic process. But I don't want to distract from the main post.

Ok, tear my idea to shreds folks, let's hear it

  • coinflip [none/use name]
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    4 years ago

    The point of "hiding the communist character of the whole thing" is to delay a serious response from the state, not get ordinary people to go along with it

    Similar thing for avoiding marxist language. The word "socialism" is gonna occur to people almost immediately. But the more jargon we use the more culturally foreign we are, and the less accessible our ideas are, and the easier we are to win court cases against or bash in the press, and the harder it is for people involved with us to explain to those not involved what exactly their job is.

    The act of organizing and wielding power is what radicalizes

    That's the whole point of this.

    How does a vanguard party work when it can't even source ideas from marxism?

    They would source ideas from marxism. They'd all be marxists. They just wouldn't use weird jargon in public. "If you can't explain it simply you don't understand it" and all that. Avoiding jargon makes ordinary people feel more comfortable involving themselves with what you're doing. They won't worry so much that others might judge them, or that the media will tar and feather them.

      • coinflip [none/use name]
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        4 years ago

        This is sort of responding in platitudes. Like "propaganda can reinforce a material argument but not replace it" has a nice ring to it but it's not specific enough to argue against. Both your perspective and my perspective are way too complex to compare using sentences like this one. It's a great way to end up talking past each other.

        I kept editing this because it was hard to put into words why this bothered me.

      • coinflip [none/use name]
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        4 years ago

        The state hasn't crushed REI. There is a range of behaviors that the state won't crush. The aim is to pretend, for as long as possible, that this is what you are.

        As you're perceived to leave that range of behaviors, the resolve of the state to crush you increases the further away you get. It might be possible (and this discussion cannot determine whether it is or not) to build up your resistance to ways of crushing you, at the same rate at which the state increases its resolve to crush you, so that you remain ahead for a little while even outside the range of acceptable behaviors.