https://twitter.com/the_vello/status/1321435262023536641
Feels like (the good parts of) old chapo again, drop an AOC post and go grab some lunch... come back and there are over 60 replies :)
https://twitter.com/the_vello/status/1321435262023536641
Feels like (the good parts of) old chapo again, drop an AOC post and go grab some lunch... come back and there are over 60 replies :)
I mean she's not hiding her "Powerlevel" at all. This idea that anyone who says anything slightly good must be a secret communist is like... inverse McCarthyism.
These populist orators will point out with amazing clarity how terrible the current neoliberal system and its governmental enforcers are, and then pointedly don't say what they'll do to correct it. That way you can fill in the gaps in their platform with exactly your idea of the solution, and poof, now you're a huge fan of 25% a real person and 75% the person you invented in your head.
Kill the stan in your head.
This is precisely why I refuse to trust AOC and other DSA-adjacent Dem entryists, so long as they confine themselves within the Democratic Party. AOC, Bernie, The Squad and other so-called "democratic socialists" like them are opportunists and careerists steering socialists and workers away from the gruesome and thankless - but nevertheless ultimately necessary - task of building an independent vehicle for working class political representation.
I'm going to link this 2018 article by Howie Hawkins again because it's evergreen. Even if you prefer PSL, you'll probably find yourself agreeing with Hawkins's analysis and call to build a workers' political coalition. https://isreview.org/issue/107/case-independent-left-party
I don't think channeling energy away from the democratic party into a horizontalist socdem party does anything at all. If anything it's actively damaging to the left movement as a whole as the current first past the post electoral system we have only really works with 2 parties. Should the greens or something ever develop power there's absolutely nothing stopping them from just turning into the democratic party of today, look at what happened to the British labour party.
The explicit value dem centralist socialist parties provide is that they have levers within them that make co-opting things much more difficult. You can still have wreckers that split the party, but the party itself won't suddenly become much more centrist or something.
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Yeah I totally agree, and it's even more rediculous that people are interested in the movement for a people's party project.
I also know this stuff not because I'm projecting, I got involved in the green party during Obama's first term. These folks know absolutely nothing, they are less competent than a 20 member trot party who at least know that they need to produce their own propaganda/media. Long time green party folks (like people who have been active since before Nader) still regularly complain about how they're ignored by the mainstream media and then do absolutely nothing to work around that fact.
Yeah you right. Bad take on my part.
I wouldn't say completely bad. I do think with the right people around her, she could move further left, but the problem is, everyone who is further left wouldn't (understandably) want to work for a congressperson.
People on here have insane standards for how everyone should act
They hate libs so bad any tiny amount of possible lib-ness must be snuffed out
Like a incel rating models 3/10 for having pointy elbows
That's because a lot of us are marxists and don't see politics as a neat little spectrum where liberalism is just a bit to the right of us.
Problem is our strategy to get people left of socdem just isn't working
Yea, it's becoming toxic
We don't need a rage fest on here
People respond to ideas with a little explanation
😍
Left politicians regularly hide how far left they are, Kshama Sawant does things like try to differentiate between small and large landlords acting like small ones aren't a problem. Everyone knows she believes different stuff, but still.
Kshama at least has the sense to continue running as an independent, and continues to openly present herself as a Trot rather than a succdem, but she's grown weaker and more lib in recent years. One of the causes of the CWI splitting in 2019 was her and SA's increasingly dubious endorsements of DSA Dem and Justice Dem entryists like AOC and Salazar, rooted in the colossal mistake that was the 2015 Bern Turn, an avoidable mistake SA repeatedly doubled down on until class consciousness lurched forward in March 2020 and they had no choice but to self-correct. Kshama rightly continues to be a pain in the ass to Amazon but is in a much weaker position than she was when she first won her city council seat, especially as her district continues to gentrify and the voters living there necessarily become more petty-bourgie.
There are a ton of problems with the CWI and SAlt national that I'm aware of, I just point this out because opportunism isn't an inherently abhorrent thing that suddenly stops a group or a particular set of politicians from being socialist.
We live in a deeply right wing country, sometimes holding onto and growing power is more important than every single principal.
It's not that a mere moment of opportunism doomed SAlt or Kshama in 2015, it's that they made a mistake under opportunist pressure in 2015-2016 and then spent most of the Trump years refusing to acknowledge their mistake and correct course, instead making similar mistakes under the same pressure, thereby neglecting some of the work needed to sink roots into the working class.
The ends have to justify the means, but there are hard lines a Marxist party should never cross. Holding onto political power at the cost of tossing out foundational Marxist principles is practically the definition of opportunism, it's what turned the CPUSA and other vestiges of the 3rd International into liberal parties, and it's also what ruined the social-democratic parties left over from the 2nd International. What is even the point of winning and keeping power as a socialist party if you're not going to effectively represent the interests of the working class? Why call yourself "Communist" or "socialist" if you're going to act as the left wing of liberalism and get into the awful habit of co-signing social-imperialist and neoliberal policies?
Opportunism the way I like to approach it is be as left as you can possibly be in the political arena without totally abandoning your ability to get anything done in that space, and still remaining accountable to the socialist movement overall. I definitely have criticism for both AOC and DSA as a whole in it's ability to maintain this sort of stuff, but they are definitely trying. It's a lack of attachment to theoretical principals that is holding back the movement in a major way.
The most important thing is that outside this legislarive arena you are supporting major grass roots type efforts around mutual aid, left media, union building, and protest movements such that they become full vested parts of your left wing political machinery. The difference between the squad+Bernie and the most left wing legislative members like Barbara Lee is that they do make at least some effort in building out the above. Both the squad and DSA are far worse at doing this sort of stuff given their resources than Sawant/SAlt, PSL, ect, but they are doing it and it's why I still consider them to be left of succdem. DSA and squad democrats are much better at doing this sort of thing than a future third party like MPP or the green party does.
Also Sawant can be further left wing in the legislative arena than someone like AOC by virtue of the fact that she's one of nine in coalition with 6 other socdem legislators, rather than 1 of 435 in a split government. Someone like Sawant would be totally ineffective in a legislative body that large. The real test comes once we see a DSA type figure hold an executive office like mayor or governor, but until then, there's really not much more we can expect.
Most anger people have towards these folks is that they aren't constantly just shitting on democrats, and I don't think it's necessary that such rhetoric comes directly from them. They regularly are having their staffers leak stories to their media allies that shit on democrats.
I view it as maybe more sympathetic to the radical wing.