You're conflating the long-term benefit of social cooperation with evolutionary-psych level machiavellianism. If your reasons for joining a social movement are calculated like you're an investor buying stock options, then when it comes down to doing things that don't directly benefit you like community work or challenging your own racism, or internationalist activity then you become a liability to the community. This isn't new shit. A lot of western leftists are just too inward focused and navel gazey to notice when they exclude minorities within their ranks or build what basically amounts to a book club where a bunch of middle class people circlejerk without any thought toward direct action.
People keep asking "why can't movements get off the ground?" And when minorities point out what they don't like about leftists they get shat on and find out that socialism isn't for them. The benefits of organizing need to come from being in a community and the positive effects that naturally confers. Mao-Zedong-style being concerned with the well being of the masses will come when the resources are there and the group decides how to handle that. But setting up an org for immediate satiation is just making a cult.
I think you and the above poster are not in contradiction. You are both talking about distinct phenomena.
Time economy
Non-transactional community
These things both need to be accommodated. If an organization doesn't respect people's time then it will fizzle out due to sheer attrition. Humans can only spread themselves so thin and revolutionary zeal even has its limits (the limit here being that the org is deemed ineffective, so the zeal isn't being meaningfully channeled by the org). While capitalism has a variety of motives to inundate and physically/mentally/emotionally exhaust its subjects, a very prominent reason is so that the working class is simply too tired to organize politically. This can't be ignored by leftist orgs - leftist orgs that want to last a meaningful amount of time need to find a way to decrease the burdens/stresses of living within capitalism for their members lest the members abandon the org - not due to any disagreement in ideology but simply because they cannot sustain what the org requires of them in tandem with what capitalism requires of them. Leftists love to harness economics for their critiques of capitalism but then they fail to employ economics as a sound basis for their organizations - dooming them to deterioration.
When I work with an org I don't expect them to only focus on my personal struggles - I do expect them to be realistic; the more energy they use from their members, the more the org needs to reimburse those people in some manner - not because the people are selfish, but because their energy is finite. Every victory in terms of freezing rents, raising wages, securing benefits, etc is a rejuvenating property which will allow the org to continually renew the participation of their members.
I like this comment. I think I'm just still kinda butthurt about how ego-centric libs can be. But you're right that there's a difference between an org spinning its wheels vs being effective/actualizing. I just think like the idea of selling actualization as a product is a bit counter-intuitive/closer to being a weird yoga class. It's especially prevalent when talking to people with utopian ideologies.
No you're absolutely right that organizations should not be actualization projects for radlibs/nascent leftists and they often are treated that way. That's a definite problem.
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You're conflating the long-term benefit of social cooperation with evolutionary-psych level machiavellianism. If your reasons for joining a social movement are calculated like you're an investor buying stock options, then when it comes down to doing things that don't directly benefit you like community work or challenging your own racism, or internationalist activity then you become a liability to the community. This isn't new shit. A lot of western leftists are just too inward focused and navel gazey to notice when they exclude minorities within their ranks or build what basically amounts to a book club where a bunch of middle class people circlejerk without any thought toward direct action.
People keep asking "why can't movements get off the ground?" And when minorities point out what they don't like about leftists they get shat on and find out that socialism isn't for them. The benefits of organizing need to come from being in a community and the positive effects that naturally confers. Mao-Zedong-style being concerned with the well being of the masses will come when the resources are there and the group decides how to handle that. But setting up an org for immediate satiation is just making a cult.
I think you and the above poster are not in contradiction. You are both talking about distinct phenomena.
These things both need to be accommodated. If an organization doesn't respect people's time then it will fizzle out due to sheer attrition. Humans can only spread themselves so thin and revolutionary zeal even has its limits (the limit here being that the org is deemed ineffective, so the zeal isn't being meaningfully channeled by the org). While capitalism has a variety of motives to inundate and physically/mentally/emotionally exhaust its subjects, a very prominent reason is so that the working class is simply too tired to organize politically. This can't be ignored by leftist orgs - leftist orgs that want to last a meaningful amount of time need to find a way to decrease the burdens/stresses of living within capitalism for their members lest the members abandon the org - not due to any disagreement in ideology but simply because they cannot sustain what the org requires of them in tandem with what capitalism requires of them. Leftists love to harness economics for their critiques of capitalism but then they fail to employ economics as a sound basis for their organizations - dooming them to deterioration.
When I work with an org I don't expect them to only focus on my personal struggles - I do expect them to be realistic; the more energy they use from their members, the more the org needs to reimburse those people in some manner - not because the people are selfish, but because their energy is finite. Every victory in terms of freezing rents, raising wages, securing benefits, etc is a rejuvenating property which will allow the org to continually renew the participation of their members.
I like this comment. I think I'm just still kinda butthurt about how ego-centric libs can be. But you're right that there's a difference between an org spinning its wheels vs being effective/actualizing. I just think like the idea of selling actualization as a product is a bit counter-intuitive/closer to being a weird yoga class. It's especially prevalent when talking to people with utopian ideologies.
No you're absolutely right that organizations should not be actualization projects for radlibs/nascent leftists and they often are treated that way. That's a definite problem.