our current priority is mass lining and investigation.
a thorough understanding of the mass line is a requirement of understanding what the goal of organizing is. and through mass lining we can investigate where the state fails to address class struggle and where we can fill in the gaps. people know the intricacies of their problems more than anybody else and intellectually identifying these problems will always be insufficient.
i realize many people may not be familiar with what the mass line is so ill wrote a quick explanation. essentially the populace can be divided into 3 categories: the advanced, the middle, and the backwards elements.
the advanced are people that identify that capitalism is the issue and are willing to organize to combat capitalism.
the middle are people who may or may not be aware that capitalism is the issue, but are yet to actively participate in the organizing process. people with typically single issue problems are in the middle.
the backwards are people who are reactive to the idea that capitalism is the issue.
within each category you can also categorize people as advanced, middle or backwards. there are many goals you can use the mass line as a tool to achieve, but one important one is elevating the consciousness of people. one of our goals as organizers is to push people towards the advanced, and members of the advanced towards active participation in organizing. "through the advanced we can reach the middle" and "through the middle we can move some of the backwards".
when we are trying to mass line a person, we are trying to investigate their level of class consciousness as well as their class interests and push them to elevate towards a higher level of class consciousness. through this investigation we can get a realistic idea of the actual conditions of people's lives and this is crucial in informing our tactics.
another important concept is integration. integration is about forming unities where you can. its about listening and helping people with their issues while elevating their consciousness of them. successful integration is translating the principles of marxism in natural language and the other person easily understanding them. this does not mean "watering down" our ideas as this is bourgeois chauvinism that assumes the masses are incapable of articulating their lived experiences.
lastly, there is the issue of commandism and tailism. commandism is failing to maintain a close relationship to the masses and failing to meet their real needs. this can be just saying to random people marxist jargon or organizing events people have no interest in by yourself. tailism on the other hand is underestimating the capabilities of the masses and lagging behind them instead. tailists hesitate to act because they are overly focused on the backwards elements and therefore failing to provide leadership.
as you may be able to see, the mass line is a really flexible tool that is invaluable to organizing and provides the basis for communist organization in any country really. also through mass lining you will meet people who's material experiences have not proven to them the accuracy of marxism and that's okay. learning this is the basis of class struggle
Maoist mass line and people's war tactics are far from being only applicable in jungles and countries that half the working class are peasants. This is a take from 1955 or smth. What did the Black Panther Party do but adjust maoist and leninist mass line and anti-state organizing tactics in the reality of urban america and its minorities and opressed? Sure they "failed" , but they failed much better than any other revolutionary org in modern american history. No reason to believe a maoist approach (which is nothing but a more wholistic and advanced leninist approach) cant be the base for successfull organizing in America. At least no more reason to believe that than to believe it for any other approach, be it anarchist ,demsoc ,entryist or anything
a lot of rural communities have proletarianized agricultural workers. black and immigrant workers who the owners of the land rely on. even a lot of the small "family farms" use hired labor. even the most rural areas will have large towns/small cities nearby, and the services in these cities are provided by some of the most marginalized workers in amerika. less than 1% (3 million) of amerikans own farmland, yet there are 5-6 million ppl who labor in these farms but have no ownership of them. 14% of amerikans live in rural area. thats over 40 million rural ppl who dont own farmland. it would be a mistake to totally dismiss rural folk from organizing
I would argue the objective conditions for socialism are very much present in the US, or at least are close to being ripe.
The subjective conditions are, as you point out, lagging woefully, WOEFULLY behind them. So much so that I think getting into a discussion about whether to control urban centres or rural areas is putting the cart about 100 miles in front of the horse.
Around the world in the imperial core the current job is to reverse the huge losses that proletarian parties have suffered in the last 50 years, starting again from scratch in a lot of cases. It’s going to be hard work but if not now, when? And if not us, who?
"surround the cities from the villages" did not literally mean hide in rural areas to attack urban areas but to stay in the areas where you are liked and have influence over to engage with your targets.
The current iteration of the American left wing is only in it's infancy, but it will grow due to the current trajectory of technology and labor in our post-industrial society. The idea of collective ownership is returning because of the way society is developing, and there is some basis to support this claim as well. Already there is an increased consciousness towards labor unions and workers rights in America, despite the failure of the left to achieve electoral victory, and as Lenin noted a hundred years ago, it's our job to further radicalize and help people understand their class consciousness. It'll be a long process, but we do have several advantages on our side.
Educate, agitate, organise.
Long term goal of any proletariat in any country is to overthrow the national and international bourgeoisie.
Medium term goal in the imperial core should be building the power of your national proletariat to a level where it can get the boot of imperialism even slightly lifted off the throats of the third world.
In the immediate term that means building a Marxist-Leninist party and leading the masses of workers in the class struggle, raising their class consciousness.
A party in the IC can win over workers not through petit bourgeois adventurism or purely “social work as revolution”. A communist party should differentiate itself from the thousands of liberal (and even avowedly capitalist) organisations by not eschewing confrontation with capitalist state power, but doing so tactically and always with the mind of fighting for and alongside the workers.
Essentially, build a party while avoiding adventurism but also economism.
The premise of your question is slightly flawed, at the moment there is no American proletariat in the sense Marx and Engels used, that is to say “a class FOR itself”. The American working class is currently in the less developed stage of being “a class in itself”. Further enhancement of the subjective forces of revolution is impossible without the development of a self-conscious revolutionary proletariat - it is the job of a dedicated and ideologically sound (and well-resourced) communist party to develop that consciousness.
Build a party. Raise consciousness. Educate, agitate, organise.
:anarchista-chad:
Undermining the US state by any means necessary while pushing back against propaganda against designated enemies is all we can do.
This of course means bolstering mutual aid efforts to catch people from falling into the hands of reactionaries.
Maybe trying to form a vanguard party but frankly I don't think that will come to pass in time before the empire collapses.
Maybe trying to form a vanguard party but frankly I don’t think that will come to pass in time before the empire collapses.
If you truly think the collapse of the empire is imminent then building an effective and strong communist party is literally the most pressing concern you should have. If the US empire collapses and there is no ideologically and materially sufficient communist party to guide the proletariat, we are all totally fucked. The power vacuum will be left totally in the hands of reactionaries.
I’d say that’s a good idea. Without getting too into the weeds, this is a Marxist comm so I’d say this:
Find how the contradiction between capital and labour is most pointedly expressed in your area. If there are groups working in that sphere who don’t seem totally useless, join them. If not, try to start one. Hopefully you’ll find some people who don’t think that differently to you. People who you can talk to about Marx, and Lenin, and how Marxist theory applies to all of your concrete lives.
But remember that everything is to build power for the proletariat. As I said in another thread, feeding people is a beautiful thing, I’d never say “don’t feed the starving”. But to be an effective communist it has to be married to a political project, otherwise you’re just spinning your wheels.
(This is assuming you don’t have a decent CP in your area, and seeing as we’re talking about the American ecosystem I imagine you don’t)
Yeah sure you can try I just don't see it happening in time and we can still organize adjacent groups that can help prevent people from falling into the hands of said reactionaries.
Look to the Black Panthers. They have their own contradictions and failures, especially as the project fell away in later years. But they were masters of synthesising “charity” with political work.
Doing charity for the sake of alleviating some of the sharper effects of capitalism on the downtrodden is obviously a great and humanitarian thing to do. But distributing food for its own sake is meaningless if you are trying to bring about socialism.
In every action an organisation takes it needs to ask “how does this advance the cause of revolution? How does this develop the consciousness of the proletariat? How does this increase the ranks of the communist party?”. The panthers didn’t just feed people, they told those people how and why they were starving, who was doing it to them, and taught them the ideology that could free them from their condition.
If you’re just going out once a week to hand out free food you are doing just as much to challenge capital as the local church or bleeding heart liberal community group.
Organize wherever you can. Learn to organize, spread your ideas, and get people to act on them. The places where class struggle occurs are where we want organizations but sometimes you gotta build to that. Turn your happy hour with coworkers into a union organizing committee. Invite some neighbors over for dinner and after a few good nights form a neighborhood committee or tenant's union. Go to city meetings and talk with the people there about how to make things better. You have friends? Invite them to go volunteer at the local soup kitchen with you.
Practice the mass line. Identify the people's problems, plan how to solve them, and solve them, involving the people in every step of the way.
Join an org. If you can't join a serious org join the DSA. Not only do they have resources for you, but if you can't join an org, chances are other people like you can't join an org either and went to your local DSA. Other similarly directionless but well intention groups also exist if you really can't stomach the DSA. Also get involved with interest groups to be tied to the broader movement.
Read and study, not just theory, history and economics as well. Try to find a group and read with them.
Unless you're part of a disciplined org in an area they're active in (chances are you aren't) your job is to be an activist within the narrow field that you can see. If you are part of an org they'll give you direction and you won't have to ask this question.
There are lots of different resources to learn to organize and a lot of it you kind of just have to learn through practice. Many socialist, anarchist, and labor oriented websites have basic guides. Sometimes unions or worker's centers offer trainings (my local AFL does). EWOC does regular trainings. Read books about organizing like Jane McAlevey's stuff. If you want more specific recommendations I'll try my best to get you them.
join a party, organize mutual aid, agitate, unionize, etc. etc.
or have tedious arguments about what dead people are your favourite as the world burns around us1: Join a communist org based on whether your ideological positions align with their stated party line regardless of whether there's a local presence in your area or not. Getting your foot in the door to actually being a communist and not a terminally online larper is the biggest first step you can take. One more thing, actually take the time to read the ideological positions, membership requirements, and other party documents of whatever org strikes your interest to make sure you fully know what you're getting yourself in to.
2: Dedicate yourself to doing the collective work that comes in building your party. The next big step after joining a party is consistently doing party work. This can take many forms ranging from doing work to support larger cells such as if you have graphical art skills you can help design agitprop for your comrades to distribute. This also extends to being willing to learn new skills to help the party that can help you in your own private life, ranging from learning web design and setting up internet infrastructure, organizational level accounting and financial record keeping, or even on-the-ground administrative work in organizing non-political people into political groups or building political alliances between pre-existing political groups in addition to learning how to navigate the state bureaucratic system in order to use the bourgeoisie own book of laws against them to publically build public perception of the existence of Communists and what we stand for.
3: if for some reason you do not fit with the party you joined after a good period of time (1 year at minimum in my opinion. It's enough time to learn about the group your in, the people on it, the level of work they're doing, the goals they set, etc. Don't be one of those loser individualists that come in saying they know all the answers and will lead the party to communism then immediately quit to join another party and repeat the process. There is very few things more frustrating for both the recruiters and the recruited than having your efforts be an objective waste of time) then it is perfectly understandable to leave your party on good terms and then repeat your search for a new party you fit in but as a more experienced organizer that can help bring their wealth of experience to their new group and mutually enrich their movement.
I'm digging all the answers in here, but I'd offer an alternative. Get out. America sucks ass and the world is a huge place. I moved to Vietnam in September, and I hope I never have to go back. Housing/good/healthcare are all affordable, it's safe, the people are so kind, the food is amazing, and you're in close proximity to many other countries/cultures. My partner and I aren't ballin' out here or anything, but our needs are met with some left over with both of us working 20/hr weeks. Living in a country trying to establish a legitimate floor for its people and then slowly raising that floor is honestly incredible.
I lived in Seattle and saw 'progressives' persecute the people in society with the absolute least day in and day out. Read up on King County Jail right now and its mountain of extrajudicial deaths in the past year. Local politics is completely owned by big capital so even the local,grassroots organizing is a burnout machine.I paid 2.5k/mo in rent. My partner was barely treading water at work while putting in 60+ hour weeks. The cheapest meals were still 20-25 dollars for the two of us. And even considering all of this it was still better than Dallas. Seriously, America is garbage.
but our needs are met with some left over with both of us working 20/hr weeks.
Love it when first worlders move to the global south to live easy lives that aren't open to 99% of local people because those locals don't get to enjoy Western privilege.
Nothing colonial about this at all.
If you're going to a colonized country, then yes. Vietnam and China are run by workers, however, and they are inviting westerners to teach them English, so I don't think it's as much of an issue. A more viable IMO argument I've seen against this is that, since we live in the imperial core, it's our duty to stay here and destroy it rather than run away. That being said, I have been trying for quite some time to get a decent job in China, mostly because, AFAIK, a successful workers' revolution has never taken place inside the imperial core. I almost think there's a better chance of China inventing some kind of ICBM-disabling device and blockading the imperial core rather than workers rising up and overthrowing the bourgeoisie here.
they are inviting westerners to teach them English, so I don’t think it’s as much of an issue
English teaching as an industry is extremely worthy of criticism.
First of all, a large proportion, maybe even a majority of English teachers in the global south are not hired by universities or schools, but by private, for-profit "schools". This should already set off alarm bells in the heads of most leftists, so add onto the fact that most of these "schools" are extremely poorly regulated and don't follow any sort of set curriculum.
Second, the vast majority of English "teachers" in the global south are not qualified university or even school level teachers. Teaching is a skilled job that, in most counties, requires a teacher to have qualifications in either the subject they're teaching, or in education. If Vietnam or China or Cuba were importing a bunch of Americans to teach math and those americans only had a high school math educstion under their belt, most of us would be criticizing that as hugely irrational.
Add those two factors together and what kind of positive educational outcomes can we expect? Well we really can't say for certain because most of these English "schools" are almost completely unregulated and don't do any sort of academically useful testing or reporting. Parents put their kids in these places because those same privately owned "schools" have sold parents a vision of their kids becoming fluent English speakers (and in all my time living in various places in Asia I have yet to meet a single person who became fluent or even proficient through private "school").
So okay, English schools might as well be Amway or some scummy snake oil bullshit, but no ethical consumption under capitalism, etc etc?
What if I told you that many private English "schools" in Asia deliberately trade on perpetuating white supremacy? It is a pretty open secret that most schools will hire a white native English speaker first, above most PoC native speakers. What you may not know is that many of these places will prefer to hire white non-native speakers over PoC native speakers. Anecdotally, I've known a Belgian who spoke with a thick accent and wonky grammar teaching English, as well as a Russian who barely spoke English at all doing it. Not only that, but I also know a Western born Asian with a masters degree from a western university who got passed over in favor of these white Euros.
So yeah, Xi was right to crack the fuck down on these English "schools" a while back and it sounds like Vietnam needs to follow suit.
It's literally international gentrification lmao.
I don't mind actually as a resident of one of these countries, just so long as they don't try to change stuff. If it develops the economy and they're respectful, it can work well. I don't understand why any first worlders would come to South Africa in its current state anyways, we have fuck all electricity lmao. Even solar power and generators isn't enough when all the supply chains break down.
But if they're assholes that come in with a superiority complex, then yeah go back to Yankeeland or Euroland.
I've been on the receiving end of too many lectures from Western Leftists about what the CPC is doing wrong to have any faith that they won't come in and just agitate to change things to fit them.
Like yeah, I'm sure the CPC and its whole university faculties dedicated to studying Marxism and Socialism just need the advice of one unqualified English teacher to achieve Communism.
It’s literally international gentrification lmao.
if they aren't pricing locals out or ruining the already existing community it seems like there's enough difference to me.
Well fuck me - guess we should just suck it up in the imperial core then? I get that teaching English is an inherently colonial act, but specifically framing it as colonial when the opportunity arises in the classroom helps.
We're also not out here living it up. We have a small apartment in a normal-ass community. I didn't move to the expat area in town intentionally. We don't have any luxuries like a cleaning service or valet or whatever the hell else white folks get in foreign countries. We're working on learning the language so we don't have to rely on translate apps. I honestly don't think we're taking advantage of anything here. We're just trying to live somewhat comfortable lives while very much minding our own business. When I engage with locals it's so I can learn from them and their experiences not try to push mine. Your comment was super hostile without knowing me at all.
guess we should just suck it up in the imperial core then?
Yes lmao. Get off your asses and do something you don't personally want to. You chose this ideology.
I did for years and it amounted to shit-all so I wanted to try living somewhere that is doing the actual ideology for a change. I really don't think it's that outrageous a concept.
Every single refugee I know living in the West is working full time, overtime, or desperately trying to look for full time work, while also trying to learn English, overcome whatever traumatic event caused them to become refugees in the first place, and often raise a family.
How many Vietnamese people do you think can afford a small apartment in a normal neighborhood working 20 hours a week?
You are in the global south exploiting white/Western privilege and encouraging others to do the same. I have very little sympathy.
Fortunately I need no sympathy. I'm encouraging others to get out of Amerikkka. I don't think that's a bad thing.
Any tips for moving to Vietnam? What kind of education or resources would one need?
All you need is a BA and a pulse: https://www.eslcafe.com/jobs/international
We need more education and we need to be more flexible to consider political projects that aren't just unions because we are likely missing something considering that our present failures indicate that our ideas need to be developed further to discover the "right" ones.
If it really just comes down to "waiting until the proletariat come around to socialism more" as it seems like they are doing, then one of the most important roles we can play is in education: education about theory, and education about organizing.
In either case, education is vital. There are plenty of agitprop outlets out there and lots of organizations. Certainly we can have more, and why would I want to limit that anyways, but in my experience the lack of education in the US is massively hindering.
consider political projects that aren’t just unions
I’d put forward that dedicating only to union organising in the current climate of captured bourgeois unions (often intimately affiliated with whatever centrist political party inhabits a certain country) is even less effective than the economism that Lenin warned against.
waiting until the proletariat come around to socialism more
Lenin also warned against this tendency. He correctly highlighted that while the workers most definitely WILL spontaneously struggle with the bourgeoisie for economic gains, this spontaneity will never magically create hordes of dedicated, ideologically sound Marxists. It’s our job as more conscious and developed workers to form and build a communist party that can insert itself into that contradiction and raise the workers to a higher level.
Lenin quotes Kautsky of all people in What Is To Be Done?:
Of course, socialism, as a doctrine, has its roots in modern economic relationships just as the class struggle of the proletariat has, and, like the latter, emerges from the struggle against the capitalist-created poverty and misery of the masses. But socialism and the class struggle arise side by side and not one out of the other; each arises under different conditions. Modern socialist consciousness can arise only on the basis of profound scientific knowledge.
…
Accordingly, the old Hainfeld programme quite rightly stated that the task of Social-Democracy [read as “communists” in our parlance] is to imbue the proletariat with the consciousness of its position and the consciousness of its task. There would be no need for this if consciousness arose of itself from the class struggle.
I would caution against abandoning reactionary unions just as Lenin urged communists to engage with them just over a century ago. Many have emerging reform movements and we need to be able to provide political leadership to them which necessitates a degree of trust and organization.
I don't want to be dogmatic, but it will be at least a few more years before we can outright abandon these unions and call for an independent alternative. If TDU successfully leads a Teamsters strike this year (which, for the record, I'm not optimistic they will) that will completely uproot the idea of reactionary unions being unfixable. If we continue to see existing unions shoot themselves in the foot though it will probably be their death (at least as a viable place of struggle, if not literally).
this is the correct take. the class struggle within the unions themselves are unclear to most people and while trade union opposition and the formation of class struggle unions are historically avenues of struggle that communists have undertaken. it won't be until class struggle unionism is an emergent and apparent contradiction that "trade unionism" as Lenin put it needs to be addressed
Most definitely there is work that can be done within unions, we should be wherever the class struggle manifests itself. I was more cautioning against the tendency I’ve seen online and irl for some comrades to valorise unionism, thinking that forming a militant minority and attempting a hostile takeover of a union totally in thrall to a bourgeois political party is a worthy project to pour all your energy and resources into.
It’s the same as bourgeois parliament, there’s certain strategic reasons that make it a useful place to do some entryism under certain conditions, but shouldn’t be the be all and end all of our movement.
Lenin also warned against this tendency. He correctly highlighted that while the workers most definitely WILL spontaneously struggle with the bourgeoisie for economic gains, this spontaneity will never magically create hordes of dedicated, ideologically sound Marxists.
Full agreement, I was juxtaposing the two positions of "attempting to build a political movement" with "waiting until the contradictions are heightened enough" to basically point out that "in either instance education will be key" because when we have many leftists not able to correctly identify the fundamentals of Marxism, it will not spell good for a hypothetical political movement nor transforming agitated proles into ideologically sound Marxists.
That being said I would just share this particularly bloomer quote that Mao has in "Where Do Correct Ideas Come From?" that,
In social struggle, the forces representing the advanced class sometimes suffer defeat not because their ideas are incorrect ! but because, in the balance of forces engaged in struggle, they are not as powerful for the time being as the forces of reaction; they are therefore temporarily defeated, but they are bound to triumph sooner or later.
here being that: suppose our ideas for revolution may in fact already be correct. We should not sit on our laurels about it then. We must educate the proletariat on these ideas so that they will be enabled to use this to continue to adapt to a changing situation. Perhaps along the way we find out our ideas need modification and so we make the modification at that time. I don't believe this is in contradiction with Lenin's warning.
Many good answers here, I'm even upvoting people who are arguing with each other because I can see the benefits and drawbacks of each side.
Unionize, radicalize unions, get unions in a given geographic area to work together. (Lula's party, imperfect as it is, was born out of Brazilian unions; we all know where the Democrats came from.) Nobody is stupid, actually; stupidity/intelligence is a eugenicist concept. People are guided by their material needs. Large numbers of white Americans aren't burning down the country because they still benefit immensely from imperialism and settler-colonialism.
I think this means we should adopt strategies for dealing with each. WRT settler-colonialism, the strategy should be to connect with BIPOC both within and without cities. Whites in cities could potentially be comrades, but as for rural whites, they are 99% a waste of time. (I pass as white and live in a very rural area, so I know we aren't a complete waste. But we're almost a complete waste.)
WRT imperialism, the USA losing the Ukraine War would strike a devastating blow and rapidly intensify contradictions both within and without the imperial core as the world senses its strength and unites against America and Western Europe. I can't go into specifics for obvious reasons, but you can probably guess what I'm advocating here.
Be gay and do crime but you don’t have to be gay only if you want to be
organize. overthrow the empire from within. help the proletariat that are oppressed by the american elite in other countries.
