Maybe as an experiment, let's try to understand each other's positions ITT and not have the same boring old arguments (because they're boring).
Edit - nice discussion everyone, thanks <3. I'm seeing a lot of responses from ML and not many from anarchists, but maybe I'm the only anarchist on this site lol
Anarchists get out there and do shit. It may just be an American numbers thing, but while anarchists went out there and fought cops for weeks during the summer of 2020, there was next to no abnormal mobilization by communist orgs in the US. Obviously there's nuance about theory and praxis, but goddamn were some of those nights in Portland or Minneapolis delicious, while PSL and CPUSA just marched and dispersed, if they did anything at all.
Be the change you want to see in the world, I guess. Nobody else is going to do this but us, regardless of tendency
I think that's a byproduct of many ML groups in the US unfortunately trying to operate as primarily electoral parties. My local PSL branch had some people run for city council. Might also be a byproduct of the newspaper focused school of organizing.
Also, might be a fear of getting infiltrated by feds again. PSL takes cop/fed infiltration very seriously, possibly too much. So that probably limits how much illegal stuff they wanna do.
That's a good point, I also think maybe anarchists efforts and groups tend to have a lower barrier of entry for baby leftists and newly radicalized people. Most anarchist projects I've been involved with (esp. mutual aid stuff) invite people to participate and help out regardless of their particular ideological tendency (as long as they're not fascists/chuds/assholes). That means people can jump in and start doing useful stuff without committing to a party line. This dynamic, of course, has it's own set of drawbacks, but I do think it's part of the reason why you see more anarchists out on the streets.
The infiltration angle is another good point - decentralized orgs can't be as easily shut down by co-opting/murdering/blackmailing/discrediting the leadership.
oh no, the trots are inside the party
I think tbh the ML orgs were essentially caught flat-footed by the summer of 2020, to put things charitably… but also those ML orgs, or at least the PSL, have doubled or quadrupled in size, in large part because of the summer of 2020 and the radical change in consciousness it brought. Their existence before was quite small, all things considered.
In terms of rioting and propaganda of the deed, it is also important to ask what an ML org would seek to accomplish by leading a riot when they are small and weak. A realistic assessment of the power that US ML groups hold —none— really points to a heavy repression and the complete dissolution of their party in the face of that kind of repression. In Denver, several PSL (and other) organizers were all arrested and slapped with kidnapping charges just for organizing a protest outside of a police station. It took a tremendous amount of resources to get those organizers out of jail and get the charges dropped, and some organizers were facing +50 years in prison.
It is an inarguable advantage anarchist organizing has, that the state essentially cannot repress what is formless, or nearly formless. Individuals can be harassed, imprisoned, or intimidated, but there is no central org to bring down. And it is certainly true that the only minor concessions that were made in the summer of 2020 were in response to direct action by the masses of people led by anarchists. But then, what change was made and has it lasted? What is the goal of any action, direct or otherwise? I think the MLs generally see that challenging the state directly will only be fruitful when their own size and relative power has grown, and political consciousness has changed such that the public will largely view their actions as legitimate and correct, and they would be correct in thinking they are a long ways away from that.
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Ok? All of this can be true alongside my original point. Nobody is bringing political change rn, but some people went out, propagandized through rioting, mutual aid, and cophating, and some people did not
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Fair enough
That's been something I've thought about a lot. That has to be why you see such differences in organizing strategy.
But who would be here to post then?
That is temporary. Its kind of hard to organize again when your entire movement was ruthlessly ripped apart for decades
I don't disagree! I was just thinking "what tendencies do I like in anarchists," and that was one. If only Americans weren't deathly allergic to the words "communism" and "collective action"
Also does anybody have any info about PCUSA
dissolving into thesplit that formed the ACB? Weird shitIt didn't.
Y'all gotta get a new Twitter, there are international parties following the old account
https://twitter.com/communists_US?t=6yFRjtCzyD7_VcvCaDv9jw&s=09
There are things happening behind the scenes to remedy the theft of the party's platforms.
Our international department is the organ that communicates and maintains relationships with other fraternal parties.
Twitter is simply an online platform for distributing agitprop.
I was actually just about to point someone to the PCUSA last week, since they're wary of the CPUSA and at least our local PSL. I looked it up to see if it was still a thing or not, and saw the whole thing with the website, so I didn't really know what to think about it lol
The Midwest twitter-posting wreckers were members of the media department and had stolen most of the credentials to online party property and the online and offline identities of everyone in the party.
They stole what was never theirs and are lashing out by throwing every accusation they can to smear the party in hopes to legitimize their sectarian split of 20 terminally online armchair ultras.
Also here's the actual website
I kind of figured it was something like that. If any of the claims actually had some substance, I assume it would have come up elsewhere at this point.
I hope it doesn't hurt the party too much. I don't really have the time or resources to really commit to party work right now, but I've kept an eye on PCUSA for a while, it really looks like a good party from what I've seen.
Thanks! I'll send it along when I talk to them next
Yeah that's the second big thing that gets us to loose people (first one being internet people with internet ideologies as their personalities encountering the reality that you actually have to do work and not just post hot takes eat chip and lie online).
It's honestly understandable, the honest to God living conditions of so many people that join really reveals that the American economic systems designed to grind you down into a little nub that can barely function beyond going to work, and going home to recover. God forbid you are becoming a parent or are a parent and you'll have so much less time to be yourself.
I always have sympathy for anyone who's just to busy trying to stay afloat but have their hearts in the right place.
I guess it's kind of ironic, my commitment to party organizing is the exact reason I'm not in a party lol, because I don't want to join one unless I can actually devote the time and effort to it that it deserves. I'm already a dues paying member of the IWW, the SRA, and a local org, and I'm only even remotely active in the last one.
That's pretty much my situation right now though. My wife is pregnant, so I'm working extra to try and prepare as much as I can. I worked 51 hours last week for example lol. I'm still taking every opportunity I can to read theory, or listen to a communist podcast, or anything else I can do to develop my understanding, but it'll probably be a while before I can really commit to anything that takes more than like an hour or two a week
Ah we had someone in my cell that just had a kid and had to step back from the party altogether because of how rigorous it is to take care of a baby.
Just gonna tell ya based off of what he told us, you're in for one hell of an adventure when your kid's born. You'll most likely enjoy it and won't trade the experience for anything, but damn will you be effin tired.
Appreciate the update comrade, I'm glad to hear the party as a whole remains
I think this is a really important point. Americans largely believe (not incorrectly) that the government doesn't do anything which is why we're so anti-government. At the same time progressive, socialist, and communist organizations are almost all trying to win concessions from the government. We could instead just start doing our own shit and when the state inevitably shuts it down suddenly all those people we were helping get fucked over and now have an actual political reason to hate the state instead of thinking the state just kind of exists on the periphery. We could be actually affecting the world around us rather than asking the state to do it on our behalf.