fossilized tree resin

  • hogposting [he/him,comrade/them]
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    4 years ago

    violent seizure of the means of production by the organized working class

    And you plan on achieving this by alienating a significant percentage of people who are to the left of Bernie, a candidate who was to the left of the most of the Democratic Party? Lmfao good luck

    • anonymous_ascendent [none/use name]
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      4 years ago

      No significant portion of the working class gives a shit about Amber. They don’t even know who she is.

      Failure to oust opportunists and grifters will actually alienate a much greater percentage of the growing proletariat movement than allowing them to fester will

      Trust me, a working class black man gives no shits about the Amber defense squad and is actually more alienated by the white, upper class character of the “left”

      • hogposting [he/him,comrade/them]
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        4 years ago

        If you're willing to cast out someone who is an actual labor organizer, who is actively radicalizing people, and who is one of the farthest-left people in the broadest possible definition of the political mainstream, you're never going to get anywhere. You're not fighting a protracted people's war with the dozen True Leftists who agree with you 100%.

        If you want to organize a significant number of people to do real things, you need to talk to people who are light years farther to the right than wherever you think Amber is. You have to talk to libs, you have to talk to apolitical people who have all sorts of embedded reactionary views, you have to talk to some chuds at least to soften the opposition. And at some point you're going to have to rely on some of those people for help.

        • anonymous_ascendent [none/use name]
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          4 years ago

          No revolution in history has succeeded by allying with the Social Democrats. They have always been betrayers and opportunists.

          There will be no revolution in the US without a huge radicalizing shift from conditions. This is how the communist movement will form and gain momentum. It has nothing to do with diluting Marxism to accept revisionist succs.

          You are distorting history and ideology and class interests to accommodate your podcast friends and it’s pathetic

          • hogposting [he/him,comrade/them]
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            4 years ago

            No revolution in history has succeeded by allying with the Social Democrats.

            I keep forgetting that 100-year-old European revolutions in dramatically different political environments are a perfect predictor of whatever the hell is going on in America today

            I keep forgetting that if your definition of people you can't work with includes 99% of the population that definition might be useless

            • anonymous_ascendent [none/use name]
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              4 years ago

              Oh yeah Marxism is fake, we can’t have any idea what’s going on and we have to start leftism over from scratch! I am very smart

              • hogposting [he/him,comrade/them]
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                4 years ago

                Marxism is a science, not a prophecy, and Marx was empirically wrong about quite a bit. Famously, he never thought socialism would first take root in Russia.

                If you treat Marxism as a science with specific, limited predictive power, you see that movement towards socialism takes different forms in different environments. If you repeat an experiment with all the same variables you should get the same result, but if you change a million variables translating the theory from 19th-century Germany to 21st-century America you might get something different. And if you look at actual, successful revolutionaries you see this pattern borne out: Lenin and Mao didn't treat Marx like holy writ; they took what Marx got right and then wrote revolutionary manuals of their own for their own specific environments. The whole concept of scientific socialism is that you don't just dogmatically follow the past, and the whole concept of socialism in general is that we can actually change the world for the better and aren't just slaves to what came before us.

                • anonymous_ascendent [none/use name]
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                  4 years ago

                  Revisionists always twist Marxism by using the “not a dogma” idea, but weirdly enough the “modern new Marxism” is always a petty bourgeois reformism. What a coincidence?! And what’s weirder still is that Mao and Lenin both had to fight against revisionist reformists too! How weird?

                  Your complete inability to see where you fit into history is pretty funny.

                  Yeah Succs betrayed us the last 100 times, but this time it’s different because of MaTeRiAl CoNdItIoNs!

                    • anonymous_ascendent [none/use name]
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                      4 years ago

                      Weird how every communist revolution is composed of the masses and millions of people, and is opposed by the social democrats.

                      But truly America is exceptional and different and special so we need to accept the social democrats this time!

                      • hogposting [he/him,comrade/them]
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                        4 years ago

                        every communist revolution is composed of the masses and millions of people

                        I bet they don't get that big by denouncing 99% of the population as so far right that they'll inevitably betray the revolution

                          • hogposting [he/him,comrade/them]
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                            4 years ago

                            We've covered this. 2020 America is pretty fucking different than 1917 Russia, and it doesn't matter if you're ideologically perfect if you refuse to work with 99% of the population.

                            I'm done here, champ. Go chase your tail with one of your twelve buddies you're starting that protracted people's war with.

          • disco [any]
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            4 years ago

            You don’t have to ally with them when you’re seizing power, but they provide a necessary service in spreading and mainstreaming left wing ideas.

            You’ve got to till the soil if you want to plant the seed.

            • anonymous_ascendent [none/use name]
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              4 years ago

              They spread misconceptions and distortions of Marxism, not Marxism itself. Radicalizing people in the imperial core and in the west is way more difficult than radicalizing oppressed and colonized people partially because they have all these filters.

              A poor Ugandan worker goes straight to Marxism-Leninism as soon as they radicalize.

              A poor American worker has to go through social democracy, anarchism, ultraleft positions and then finally sometimes arrive at Marxism-Leninism.

              The so-called “mainstreaming of leftist ideas” is actually the spreading of bourgeoise distortions.