i can't speak for everyone here, but I've had mostly negative experiences with orgs over the past 10 years or so. They tend to devolve into personal drama before anything meaningful gets down outside of a few weekends of volunteer work. Some genuine good moments of helping one or two people out every few months, then it's back to just glorified book club meetings. This could be a problem of living in a very depressing conservative area though. Food not Bombs was the org I was in that did the most work, but it always felt like a hamster wheel. Constantly running against the wind and never getting anywhere. I got tired and burnt out and that's probably my fault, so I haven't done org stuff in a while.
This forum tho is probably the most well-adjusted forum I've ever been on, with a lot of people who have academic pursuits or have traveled the world, or otherwise had a lot of cool life experiences. It's interesting that you see it from the opposite angle, that we're more poorly adjusted than anywhere you've been (i mean that in a genuinely interesting way)
yh sorry to hear that you've had those experiences.
For what its worth tho even in places where orgs are more in place and developed and have alot of genuine comrades in them, whether commies or no, I think you'd very likely still have to go through alot of different orgs before u got to one that u found both ideologically and practically good, and (importantly) where the actual people in it and their interpersonal dynamics were relatively good and healthy (difficult in politics). You'd then have to deal with the near constant beefs between different groups, factions, and sects, all accusing one another of sectarianism. It's still exhausting everywhere else, and imagine doing it outside the west and with more explictly non-liberal govs.
You'd also have the issue (in the west), which maybe you can guess from places like this site, that it often becomes pretty weird, mostly white dudes, in a cultish kinda of scenario. Trots are often guilty of this, but unlike the impression you might get from this site theyre deff not the only ones. Met leninists, maoists and anarchists who are just as guilty. there's often still a pretty 'in-group' dynamic to alot of them, and mistrust of outsiders apart from relating to you in a weird way like a potential convert to the cause, which can be alienating and isn't very effective politically.
Also, when comparing hard left commie orgs in the west with those outside of it, those in the west (moreso in Europe), unless they've tried to legitimize themselves by electorialism, soc-demism, eurocommunism etc, sometimes try to give the impression that they're organizing like military bolsheviks during the civil war, which is weird because not only is that not really how they were organizing during that time, but also because when they were most successful before then that's not really how they organized, and because their increasingly military form during the civil war as a necessary but unpleasant organization decision given the challenges.
yeah you hit the nail on the head, lots of weird white college guys and odd cultish environments. We'd regularly hand out newspapers too, and usually people were interested only if they were really strange too. Like one time I remember we were doing community outreach and had pamphlets about how poorly operated the medical system in the US is, and the only people who talked to us were anti-vax, crystals, and reiki healing types.
Definitely true too that orgs I've been with saw themselves as a military apparatus of some kind, despite everyone being untrained and not exactly the most disciplined.
I recognize the problem though, the problem is that leftist organization over the past 60 years has been so thoroughly discouraged that it's just glorified book clubs now outside of small pockets. It's a subculture more than a movement. It's an ambient feeling without any outlet. That stereotype of American communists being white college students from the suburbs is not totally inaccurate, since most American leftists seem to be arriving at the theory through academics, encountering student organizations, having a a greater than average interest in history, that kind of thing.
i can't speak for everyone here, but I've had mostly negative experiences with orgs over the past 10 years or so. They tend to devolve into personal drama before anything meaningful gets down outside of a few weekends of volunteer work. Some genuine good moments of helping one or two people out every few months, then it's back to just glorified book club meetings. This could be a problem of living in a very depressing conservative area though. Food not Bombs was the org I was in that did the most work, but it always felt like a hamster wheel. Constantly running against the wind and never getting anywhere. I got tired and burnt out and that's probably my fault, so I haven't done org stuff in a while.
This forum tho is probably the most well-adjusted forum I've ever been on, with a lot of people who have academic pursuits or have traveled the world, or otherwise had a lot of cool life experiences. It's interesting that you see it from the opposite angle, that we're more poorly adjusted than anywhere you've been (i mean that in a genuinely interesting way)
yh sorry to hear that you've had those experiences.
For what its worth tho even in places where orgs are more in place and developed and have alot of genuine comrades in them, whether commies or no, I think you'd very likely still have to go through alot of different orgs before u got to one that u found both ideologically and practically good, and (importantly) where the actual people in it and their interpersonal dynamics were relatively good and healthy (difficult in politics). You'd then have to deal with the near constant beefs between different groups, factions, and sects, all accusing one another of sectarianism. It's still exhausting everywhere else, and imagine doing it outside the west and with more explictly non-liberal govs.
You'd also have the issue (in the west), which maybe you can guess from places like this site, that it often becomes pretty weird, mostly white dudes, in a cultish kinda of scenario. Trots are often guilty of this, but unlike the impression you might get from this site theyre deff not the only ones. Met leninists, maoists and anarchists who are just as guilty. there's often still a pretty 'in-group' dynamic to alot of them, and mistrust of outsiders apart from relating to you in a weird way like a potential convert to the cause, which can be alienating and isn't very effective politically.
Also, when comparing hard left commie orgs in the west with those outside of it, those in the west (moreso in Europe), unless they've tried to legitimize themselves by electorialism, soc-demism, eurocommunism etc, sometimes try to give the impression that they're organizing like military bolsheviks during the civil war, which is weird because not only is that not really how they were organizing during that time, but also because when they were most successful before then that's not really how they organized, and because their increasingly military form during the civil war as a necessary but unpleasant organization decision given the challenges.
yeah you hit the nail on the head, lots of weird white college guys and odd cultish environments. We'd regularly hand out newspapers too, and usually people were interested only if they were really strange too. Like one time I remember we were doing community outreach and had pamphlets about how poorly operated the medical system in the US is, and the only people who talked to us were anti-vax, crystals, and reiki healing types.
Definitely true too that orgs I've been with saw themselves as a military apparatus of some kind, despite everyone being untrained and not exactly the most disciplined.
I recognize the problem though, the problem is that leftist organization over the past 60 years has been so thoroughly discouraged that it's just glorified book clubs now outside of small pockets. It's a subculture more than a movement. It's an ambient feeling without any outlet. That stereotype of American communists being white college students from the suburbs is not totally inaccurate, since most American leftists seem to be arriving at the theory through academics, encountering student organizations, having a a greater than average interest in history, that kind of thing.