DC last night:
- https://twitter.com/loran076/status/1323907767887867904?s=19
- https://twitter.com/FranceNews24/status/1323917050369245185?s=19
- https://hexbear.net/post/47055
it's more likely in the next few days that the fash will take the streets, especially as trump announces how he will contest the election. after all, chaos is his best bet for getting the powers that be to allow him to retain power without a fight. so don't fucking tell people to stay home. it's absolutely critical that everyone pays attention to what's happening in their own backyards and steps up to engage in appropriate community defense.
the election is just a stage. stop confusing it with the conditions that compel people to act.
been slowly working my way through Revolutionary Suicide and it's good
Any Marxist going out in defense against fascism this month should make it crystal clear that they don't support Biden or Trump and should instead agitate by making demands in defense of democracy in a more abstract sense, and calling on voters to continue organizing for the shit they actually want (M4A, GND, accountability against police, etc.) after the election is decided.
I agree in principle but disagree on the specifics. this is a damn good time to agitate AGAINST the false democracy, to point out the ways in which it robs people of meaningful choice and agency in their own lives, and to advocate for a new system. this isn't the time for milquetoast socdemism.
My phrasing might have erred a bit too close to opportunism. Given that the US left is still extremely scattered and tiny relative to the working class as a whole (even if the left is growing more quickly now), we should strike a careful balance between crafting a message that will reach the DSA-adjacent progressive libs and anarchists and other newly radicalizing layers - who might still be terrified to death of Trump while only somewhat scared of business-as-usual neoliberals like Biden - while retaining a hard line against the two bourgie-funded parties, putting forth a clearly articulated alternative and a path to socialist revolution from existing conditions. This means condemning Trump's obvious contempt for democracy while reminding them of the Dem ratfuckery during the primaries, and arguing for the necessity to organize and build an independent workers' party - not just the smaller revolutionary party, but a mass party as well.
If that last part sounds like succdem shit, unfortunately it's still a necessary transitional step in between our current situation - one in which there's no real political representation for the working class at all - to one in which we eventually have a large enough revolutionary core within a larger grassroots independent left united front/mass movement to actually carry out the tasks of revolution. The tasks of the 1st and 2nd internationals were prerequisites for the tasks of the 3rd - and in terms of organization we're still arguably on square one here in the US.
yea, I mostly agree, I just want us to be careful about accidentally stumbling into tailism. the reformist platform will start to gain support over the next couple of years as covid accelerates the current crisis of capitalism and the ruling class begins to try and save itself. but that means our advocacy shouldn't stay limited to a fixed view of today but rather lay the seeds for tomorrow. we should be agitating people to ask why these overwhelmingly positive policies with bipartisan support haven't passed and use that as a launching pad to a line that analyzes the class war that has, up to this point, made such policies impossible. that way, when liberal politicians start to promise reform, we will be there and have credibility when we say no, transfer power to the masses.
I got you. The immediate tasks of coalition-building to build up the working-class forces capable of fighting for socialism carry with them the risks of going full opportunist like the 2nd international did, throwing the revolutionary baby out with the ultraleft bathwater. The most revolutionary elements and organizations of the coalition are necessarily going to have to attract as many higher-quality working-class and marginalized revolutionary fighters as they can from within the broader coalition, putting forth an unmistakably Marxist program which calls out the contradictions, including popular demands and phrasing them such that a) some version of the demand is theoretically immediately economically feasible, representing a winnable material gain for the workers but b) politically infeasible without sustained pressure from an organized mass movement at minimum, or in some cases without years of sustained organization for socialism.
For example, the demands for Medicare for All and to implement an NHS carry with them the implicit call to organize and work towards abolishing or at least greatly diminishing the private health insurance sector. The demand for an ecosocialist Green New Deal is an implicit call to place, at minimum, the energy, agriculture, manufacturing, and transportation sectors under the democratic control of the working class - it's a call for democratic central planning, a key feature of socialism (side note: Hawkins's version includes a budget which explicitly calls for funding the GND by slashing the military budget, making the program anti-imperialist). These implications are usually buried underneath the surface to more easily reach workers at a lower level of class consciousness, but anyone beginning to question reformism and to draw revolutionary conclusions, who begins talking with Marxist organizers, will through Marxist education and through the experience of organizing begin to uncover the contradictions.
Why is this popular policy that many of us want and need, theoretically winnable even under some form of capitalism, not policy? Because the ruling parties answer to the capitalists and the policy hurts the capitalists' profits. How do we achieve this policy? By fighting and organizing the masses for socialism, attracting the workers' attention though a campaign for the best feasible version of this policy as a transitional step.
Around the time of Occupy, the popular demand for the $15 minimum wage was eventually won in some parts of the country, in the process increasing the organizational capacity, confidence, and expectations of the workers and socialists who organized the Fight for 15 campaign, such that they were better prepared to fight for the next campaign and less willing to settle for scraps. Kshama and SAlt have consistently erred too close to opportunism since the 2016 Bernie campaign, but their partial victory from the minimum wage fight (especially in Seattle) is evidence that this sort of approach can work so long as the hard line against Dem-entryism and other forms of tailism and opportunism is maintained.
beyond the possibility of opportunism and tailism in our own ranks, as you've already addressed, I'm not sure we're doing ourselves favors by hewing too closely to the reformist branding. their M4A platform includes no NHS - though such has been the project of social democrats around the world a full century ago - their GND amounts, in an economic sense, to little more than an infrastructure and jobs program, with no transfer of power to the working class or democratic central planning, etc..
a "yes, and..." approach works better here: yes, M4A is a necessary first step but it only remedies one small aspect of the greater problem with private healthcare - privatized care means profiting on death and human misery; yes, the GND, especially paired with deep cuts to the military budget, is a good first step, but it's the bare minimum as climate change is intrinsically one of capitalism's externalities and the only way to truly head off the coming crisis is by transferring control of key industries to the democratic control of its workers and a return to true public ownership.
the public, by and large, already supports these policies. our focus should be on the faults of capitalism unveiled by the as-yet unsuccessful campaigns to reform its worst ills. in Gramscian terms, just because we haven't been overtly successful in the war of maneuver over the past few years doesn't mean we can't treat it like a victory in the war of position - after all, as you noted, our capacity has grown at least in part due to the organizing required to sustain these fights - and advance our demands to better reflect the new world of accelerating decay we find ourselves in.
(that is, with evictions up, food security down, and no support coming from the state for, at a minimum, months, in the midst of an explicitly abolitionist rebellion, perhaps we should adjust our immediate demands to speak directly to the crisis people find themselves in - I've got some ideas here and I'll share them in a separate post when I get a little time to breath, given the immediate situation on the ground that must be dealt with. there's a discussion I'd really like to have about the proletarianization of the petit-bourgeoisie and the weird potential for shared purposes we find ourselves with due to the stark and blatant nature of the crisis that disappearing class finds themselves in.)
Not sure there are any disagreements from me on this point. I previously mentioned fighting for the "best feasible version" of a given demand in my previous comment, which should certainly involve some form the "yes, and" approach to formulating demands.
Rather than simply calling for M4A, we should call for, at minimum, M4A and an NHS and to place hospitals and pharma companies under public and democratic working-class ownership. Rather than just calling for a GND with a just transition, we should call for an ecosocialist GND with a just transition and to fund it through taxing the rich, shifting money away from the military, and expropriating the GHG-emitting sectors and giving them to the workers to plan a serious climate response. Rather than simply calling for increasing testing/tracing and social distancing like some of the libs are doing, we cut through the false dilemma between public health and immediate economic needs by calling for socially-supported social distancing - not just stimulus checks/temporary UBI, but rent and mortgage freezes for nonessential workers, and dramatic increases in pay (hazard pay!) and increased workplace safety for the essential workers - nothing less than a living wage for those who have to work and a living income for those who can't, calling on the essential workers to use their collective leverage to strike to make the capitalists pay for it all.
We can reach people at their current level of consciousness by using the vulgar/popular/minimalist demands as a starting point, rephrasing them and fleshing them out in this fashion to point people away from reformism and toward the difficult but necessary work of organizing with the goal of socialist revolution in mind.
I'm all ears with respect to the ideas you had in mind, once you have a chance to post again.
if there are fascists trying to start shit in your town, you're going to stay home because someone might think you're dying for biden? what a bad fucking take.
Imma let libs take the lead on this one. I sure as shit ain't gettin my head blown off by a chud just for Biden to cave like every lib before him.
Right on! Too often have Communists been dying on the front lines to save the cowardly libs from their own folly. It's high time to fight smart, let the libs be the cannon fodder this time!
Yes! Let fascists run rampant over the communities we claim to care about! Callous short sightedness is how you build broad, working class movements and fight fascism!
Yeah, let's get communists killed for nothing all over again. Drowning the fash in our own blood, eh comrade?
Minorities being shit on by fascists rolling through is an acceptable compromise to own the libs who voted for Biden.
You can't save everyone. You're not superman. Fight for the ones who it's possible to bring into the fold. Fight in those communities you can protect not as a lone hero, but where it's possible to build towards socialist solidarity. Those libs who are unwilling to radicalise left can fend for themselves, they're grown ass adults and it's not up to us to change their nappies.
protecting your community has nothing to do with biden... god damn, there's more to politics than the fucking election.
I'm not trying to die in the first week of the next four years of our lives. Call me up when Trump pulls a threepeat.
Minority being clubbed by fascists rolling through town after Trump delcares ballots illegitimate.
Chapos: Sorry sweaty, did you vote for Biden?
if blue fash and red fash want to fight it out on the streets then that's good for us. let them bleed
Instead you will get your head blown off to help trump consolidate power after the coup?
No one ever said we should abandon community defense. The point is that we aren't going to war for Joe Biden.
no one is suggesting going to war for joe biden... but there were fascists out last night and there likely will be again tonight, tomorrow night, etc., and antifascists should be prepared to fight them.
leave biden vs trump to the libs and chuds, there's a more important fight directly at hand.
Why put your body on the line for liberals? America is an evil empire, let it burn and protect yourself and your comrades, don't waste a breath on the liberals.
Honestly you don't have to stand outside to defend your neighborhood. Most likely if the fascists see just a bunch of houses, unless they know that a bunch of antifascists live there they're going to keep on rolling past elsewhere in their trucks while hooting and hollering. Now that doesn't mean I don't think you shouldn't have contact with a self defense group if they do stop at someone's house or neighborhood. But just standing around does little, at most it tells the fascists where to find you and where to find the confrontation they're craving.
America is not Germany of the 1930s. There is no large communist movement. There is no reason to step up and go to war with the fascists and let the feds pin all the blame on the left. Let the fascists do stupid shit to liberals and get a state response. Why the fuck should communists allow the media to both sides the blame? Let them do ignorant shit and get an FBI gunship up their ass. Why would I want to get between two enemies of mine about to fight and let them both turn to fight me instead? Tactically ridiculous.
Something you people don't understand. Fascism arises out of material conditions. A bunch of fucking yahoos running around with guns and explosives shooting is not going to result in hard fascism arriving. It's going to result in the FBI murking their ass with military hardware and these fascists having to resort to more subtle insurgent terroristic attacks or go home. Plain and simple for you: Trump is not favored overwhelmingly by the American national bourgeoisie. They see Biden as equally or more palatable as he is stable and probably not so bad at imperialism. Given this they are not going to support any kind of in the streets fascist coup nor will US government institutions. The US military is going to sit on the sidelines and the cops and FBI are going to grab anyone who steps out of line with a strong preference for grabbing any anti-capitalists they can get their hands on. So don't be there. Leave them to either have to blatantly ignore the fascists and further deepen anger of the Democratic base at the enforcer class (and bring them closer to our side) or to engage with them.
I honestly just don't think you guys have the numbers. I literally said it on my last post but fighting for pride gets you killed. Good when you have a million foot soldiers and life is throwaway. Not when every single person, every mind, every bit of energy is a precious resource.
Tactically it's a bad move. Organise and strike with overwhelming force at the heart of their groups then scatter before they can make sense of it. Their numbers count for nothing against organisation. Demoralise them, taunt them with fear and paranoia. Head on confrontation will only end with such a huge loss for the left. You'd be giving them justification for a slaughter and Liberals would just make you the scapegoat for their own political convenience.
you guys
that you think we're separate says everything...
fighting for pride
I've already responded with analysis of the situation elsewhere in this thread. I suggest reading that if you think this is about pride.
Organise and strike with overwhelming force at the heart of their groups
no shit. and sometimes they try things before you've successfully dismantled their groups. if you allow them to beat people with fists, they'll come back with guns next time. let me tell you which I'd rather deal with.
I'm not American. I appreciate the points you've made. It comes down to whether you think you're fighting as resistance or against an invasion. I think what many here are perceptive too, as bad as it is too admit, is that it's already to late to fight on certain terms. I honestly don't know the answer to that.
I'm just imagining how the resistance would have gone in WW2 if chapos were in charge of the communist parties of Europe.
Not our fight. We'll just hunker down and wait for the fascism to pass.
maybe we should do a Clara Zetkin "Fighting Fascism" reading group or something. people seem to not even be aware of the actual threat in the next few weeks, how to analyze it, and how to fight it.
may i ask what you see the upcoming threats to be in the next few weeks? maybe it's too complex to get into, but i'm curious on what you have to say!
so trump is going to just barely lose the election and take it to the courts (that he's rigged) to fight the case for his coup. this part is interesting in that it's a another several steps towards war, especially in that it forces the urban/haute bourgeoisie to make a choice - step in and stop the coup using the institutions that will respond to them or allow trump's coup to happen, knowing that the person they'd very much prefer, biden, clearly won the election. there's a huge pressure against action - it's very clear to most observers that if they choose to try and stop the coup, they stand a very high risk of precipitating a war. (they might be forced to this war by further action by the national bourgeoisie, but that's a separate matter.)
so wanting stability and the chance to continue profiting on the covid crisis, they prefer biden. but that preference is easily abandoned if the risk of war looks too severe. enter our fascist paramilitary friends, funded and trained by the national bourgeoisie. the more noise they make, threatening a hard reprisal to any response to the coup, the less likely such a response becomes.
so make no mistake, they will be out all over major cities in the coming weeks as the soap opera plays out on TV.
our problem is that shows of force by fascists must, under all conditions be sufficiently opposed. their source of ideological influence is primarily aesthetic - if they look powerful, they garner support from their cowardly, but sympathetic would-be followers (i.e. fascists, but those who are cowed into staying home). the more support they garner, the more they escalate the amount of force they're willing to bring to bear.
so, expect increased fascist activity in the next several weeks. and expect it to get worse if the response is sloppy or inadequate. we're not very far off from pograms in this country.
leftists are already at risk and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. we do ourselves no favors by allowing fascist paramilitaries to gain propaganda victories by murdering people as a direct threat to the whole nation. it's not the trumpist coup itself that matters here - the idea that we can allow groups that wish to exterminate us gain any foothold of influence or power only makes sense if you (falsely) believe that you can escape their next escalation in violence.
antifascist victories involve turning out the whole community against the fascist threat. we don't want another battle for Charlottesville - compare that to its anniversary rally in DC where the libs absolutely showed up and the whole city shut the rally down. this idea that we can separate liberals and leftists is idealism and the product of severe atomization.
forget what people believe. it's your damn community. no one is coming to protect it for you. any neighbor who will help you with mutual defense is a comrade whether you or they know it yet or not, whether they're anarchist, communist, lib, or recovering chud. mutual aid and defense do not respect lines drawn by cultivated identities.
you should be focused on organizing so that libs put their lives on the line
there are two kinds of organizing - building capacity and acute crisis management. I'm talking about the latter as for a short while, we don't have time for the former.
They are not going to come out for you when you get your comrades murdered. They’ll call you violent rioter socialists.
this is ignorant of the history of antifascist organizing in this country over the last twenty years. people do absolutely turn out in sufficient numbers to shut down fascist actions.
it's advocating that everyone stay home that I'm objecting to - that accomplishes nothing but diminishing the strength of any response to fascist activity.
Please downvote away, I deserve it.
But I do wonder how many accounts here are various opposition actors, both official and unofficial, who make these points disingenuously.
I cant believe the number would be zero.
they're who reported it initially when I learned about this early this morning.
jfc Bidens "reaching over the aisle" shit is sickening. Ya lets help out fascists and pieces of shit instead of trying to make the country more progressive. Worked great 2008-2016...
None of my working class shit head friends nor any of the suburban wine moms are going to riot to install Biden. It will be as feckless and useless as all of the BLM protests have been. Great optics, exhilarating even, but ultimately impotent at creating revolutionary potential. Dont riot for Biden.
forget people rioting to install biden. I'm talking about fascists threatening a harder coup to make the pill of a softer coup go down more smoothly.
it's not the coup itself that matters. it's the power these paramilitaries build by getting to demonstrate force with insufficient opposition.
You fight them by writing letters and making phone calls so you don’t have to fight them with fists. You fight them with fists so you don’t have to fight them with knives. You fight them with knives so you don’t have to fight them with guns. You fight them with guns so you don’t have to fight them with tanks.
Mark Bray
