Gulags were made for the purpose of removing social fascists
If we put all the liberals and socdems in gulags
There aren't that many of us, we'd be buggeredLibs can be educated; at least the ones that don't have any real power to defend. One bad interaction with a cop, an employer, or a sufficiently shitty Democrat can send them sprinting left. It's our job to give them the arguments and ideology they'll need once they take that first step.
Gulags are exclusively for the people you can't reach and can't otherwise keep from attacking the working class. Even a sizable group of reactionaries isn't a real threat if they never get near the levers of power.
“We” doesn’t include liberals and SocDems. My future does not include liberals or SocDems
Not if the left is too committed to infighting to take power
Anyone who recognizes significant problems with capitalism is broadly on the left. That includes many people in both of those groups (however they're defined, which is a whole other conversation).
they view the current capitalism system as “crony capitalism”
That's not criticizing capitalism itself -- that's making the "not real capitalism" argument. What I'm talking about is people who see problems with capitalism even if it's some Platonic ideal of capitalism that works exactly as intended.
capitalism has “gone too far” in allowing the free movements of goods and people
This is a reasonable critique of the definition I supplied, but note that these exact sort of people -- people with reactionary social ideas but who recognize the inherent problems of capitalism -- are talked about all the time as people who could be brought over to the left. This is why Bernie did town halls on Fox, for example.
And if you want to argue that we shouldn't be recruiting from this group (and I would agree it would be a waste of time talking to committed bigots), describe who we should be recruiting from. We can't write off these people and libs if we want to have any hope of getting anything done.
Libertarians like to criticize capitalism and inequality caused by capitalism
I'll note that there's a distinction between capital-L libertarians -- the type that grift in the Libertarian Party and that openly discuss ideas like "a free market would have a flourishing free market in children" -- and people who use the label mostly because they're too embarrassed to call themselves Republicans.
For the capital-L Libertarians, they really don't criticize capitalism, and I say that as someone who's spent far too much time around both types. These are the folks who will tell you there's no such thing as a market failure, and who call for natural monopolies -- something practically every economist of every stripe agrees should not be handled by the market -- to be privatized.
What they're doing is manufacturing an excuse for the ills of capitalism that isn't capitalism itself. Some leftist points out a glaring, obvious problem with capitalism? Oh, that's not capitalism, that's crony capitalism. Oh, that's not capitalism, that's caused by government interference in the market. Oh, that's not capitalism, it's actually a personal choice to go out and work for sub-minimum wage under the table when your only other option is destitution. They blame everything but capitalism.
I never disagreed with recruiting from liberals and succ dems.
That's fair. The lib-bashing on here in general gets out of hand at times, though. Hard to recruit from them if shit-flinging turns into something more bitter.
Their critiques of capitalism are idealistic and individualistic, ours are systematic and scientific.
Just acknowledging that there are market failures is a systematic critique, and almost all libs buy into that. They also largely buy into stuff like social safety nets and public education, which are systematic programs that imply systematic problems with a pure capitalist system. You're right that there's a distinction between liberals and leftists, but thinking of them all as broadly on the same team is good. We want to engage them and pull them closer to us, not ignore them unless it's bullying time.
now listen here fats, each one of those SocDems is just a baby leftist who hasn’t had the stuffing knocked out of them by a goddamn pig yet. You just gotta force them into some real politics and by that I mean “not electoralism”. After that they’ll pick up a kalishnikov the same as you or my aunt matthew
Now the moment one of those babies gets near a lever of power ya gotta put em in time out. Never give a baby power, they make crap leaders, bud
WE LITERALLY VOTED IN SOCIAL FASCISTS TO CONGRESS WE TRIED MAKING BERNIE WIN
What you ain’t gawking is they’re part of the anarcho-maoist cabal I shoot craps with on Thursdays. We’re gonna take over, spits . :dem:
Because of liberalist sabotage, and the fact that we aren’t aggressively marketing this on Twitter
Gosh why isn't the left growing faster despite extremely conducive material conditions
Because a SocDem called me a slur on twitter and told me to commit suicide.
If there’s anything I’ve learned from talking to victimized and oppressed folks, it’s to never give your abusers a second chance.
They believe in the same policies. We have real communist parties in this country
What’s the difference? Same shit different day. Don’t fall for it, comrade
Assuming that modern American politics are a direct 1:1 comparison with politics that happened a century ago, a continent away, in a radically different economy, in a system with fundamentally different electoral rules, is one of the most frustrating parts of the left.
History is often informative, but a core philosophical component of any branch of leftism is that we are not bound to repeat the mistakes of the past.
