• Sandals [none/use name]
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    4 years ago

    Alienating folks because they make a high wage is silly. If they work for a living then they likely identify more with you than their multi-millionaire CEO. Also, a post-revolution society will need individuals who are currently paid well under our capitalist system. Shunning potential class traitors moves them right.

    • hagensfohawk [none/use name]
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      4 years ago

      If they work for a living then they likely identify more with you than their multi-millionaire CEO.

      The CEO also "works for a living."

      It's not about shunning people, but recognizing how the class composition of an organization affects it's politics

        • hagensfohawk [none/use name]
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          4 years ago

          If you're making over $100k a year, you're either a professional, in tech, or in management

            • hagensfohawk [none/use name]
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              4 years ago

              Lol. Don't be so dense. I didn't say the PMC are "the enemy." Just that they have distinct class characteristics that affect their politics.

            • Bread_In_Baltimore [he/him]
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              4 years ago

              Nothing is "leftist" because there is no such thing as "leftism". It's a bullshit meaningless term like "progressive".

              If you don't understand how the petit bourgeois and PMC classes have different class interests than the actual Proletariat than honestly you should do some more reading. There is a very breadtube sentiment among the western left that "anyone who works for a wage/salary is a worker" or whatever and they're right but they're wrong to think that their interests align with those at the bottom. Even blue collar skilled workers who grew up poor but make $85k/yr now as a plumber or electrician have very few interests in common with the Proletariat and are usually the most reactionary segment of society. The reactionary nature of the Labor Aristocracy and Petit Bourgeoisie manifests as overt Fascism, while the "progressive" conservative nature of the PMC manifests as Social Fascism.

              Having your organization be 30% petit bourgeois/PMC is going to effect the class character of its politics. If they're a small fraction that must be subordinate to a Proletarian majority that is fine but 30% is enough to pull any org in a certain direction.

              • PhaseFour [he/him]
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                4 years ago

                Way more than 30% of DSA have a "PMC consciousness." Aspiring graphic designers working service "but it's just temporary" is a serious cohort in the org.

                In their defense, a large portion of the college-educated proletariat thinks this way right now.

            • constantly_dabbing [none/use name]
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              4 years ago

              Subsistence living fetishization isn’t fucking leftist.

              "workers of the world, unite with bourgeois college kids!"

      • Sandals [none/use name]
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        4 years ago

        Sure but their CEO controls mass amounts of capital.

        Yeah the DSA probably doesn't have great foreign policy, but it's one of the best places in the US to find politically active individuals who are going to be more open to leftward leaning ideologies.

        • Bread_In_Baltimore [he/him]
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          4 years ago

          This mentality is inherently liberal. You're putting the superstructure ahead of the base by assuming that people will become revolutionary by pure ideology alone rather than their material and class interests. Honestly it seems to me like most "leftists" would just rather talk to college educated peers than poor black and brown folks who make up the actual Proletariat in this country.

          • Sandals [none/use name]
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            4 years ago

            First off, thank you for the compliment.

            I think people can be radicalized by ideology or material conditions, mostly a combination thereof.

            "Honestly it seems to me like most “leftists” would just rather talk to college educated peers than poor black and brown folks who make up the actual Proletariat in this country."

            ^I don't see what this has to do with my opinion that the DSA could help move people down a path of radicalization. Seems pretty ad hominem at that, you don't know anything about me dude.

            • PhaseFour [he/him]
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              4 years ago

              I think people can be radicalized by ideology or material conditions, mostly a combination thereof.

              Yes, this is the divide between the intelligentsia consciousness & the proletariat consciousness in communist parties.

              Revolutions do not succeed when led by the intelligentsia, because they are not materially driven.

              • Rev [none/use name]
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                4 years ago

                And yet pretty much all successful socialist revolutions up till now were led by the intelligencia 🤔

                • PhaseFour [he/him]
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                  4 years ago

                  Remember when the Soviets of Students' and Academics' Deputies became the base of the USSR? lmao

                  The only members of the intelligentsia that have contributed to revolution made themselves subservient to the proletariat & peasants.

                  • Rev [none/use name]
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                    4 years ago

                    You said "led", not "became the base". No need to move the goalposts. There's a good reason for this too, seeing as how the capitalist system actively discourages the proletariat from thinking about possible alternatives by denying education, propagating lowest common denominator culture and, above all, burdening proles with work and struggle for survival to the point they're too exhausted. All of this besides the point if we're talking about the DSA, because it's explicitly not a revolutionary organisation.

            • Bread_In_Baltimore [he/him]
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              4 years ago

              Not everything is about you personally lol. The only thing I said about you personally I'd that your analysis is wrong.

          • Sandals [none/use name]
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            4 years ago

            Sorry man, I don't really get your point then in context to what I was trying to tell the original comment I replied to.

            • hagensfohawk [none/use name]
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              4 years ago

              The point is that it's worth considering how the class composition affects the DSA as an organization

              • Sandals [none/use name]
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                4 years ago

                I think that's a fair point.

                All I was trying to say to the original comment was that just because people get paid doesn't mean they can't also be comrades.