I should probably clarify that I’m an active member of an organization that requires at least 95% agreement on most important issues in order to function at all. One that has comrades all over the world, including in countries with Communist Party presence. My correctness on the PRC issue makes the difference between me indirectly financially supporting a necessary workers’ movement in China not led by the Communist Party, or unwittingly doing the CIA’s work for them.
If you having a stance on China is absolutely necessary for your organization to function, I'm not talking to you and I never was. An organization existing that requires everyone in charge to have a stance on China doesn't invalidate what I said though. It doesn't mean that everyone on a shitposting website needs to have the correct opinion or that having an opinion while on the website matters.
I have a responsibility to be as educated as possible, take an educated position
I'm not suggesting people online not be educated.
If my org is incorrect and unwilling to change their mind when the issue becomes too important too ignore, I have no choice but to form a faction and spend less time on other necessary work, to prevent them from making the wrong choice later in a life-or-death scenario, or otherwise to consolidate the faction and split if the disagreement is irreconcilable.
Is this org chapo.chat? If not, then this isn't relevant.
Perhaps you meant to limit the context to online left discourse but again, a single organization’s inability to settle these issues internally has real-life consequences
We're not an organization. And my context was limited. You're reading this too generally.
Raising the banner of your organization also requires persuasively and correctly arguing for explaining their position when talking to other leftists
Wasn't talking about having an argument in general or trying to recruit others to your cause. This wasn't an argument against persuasive arguments.
It’s not just a matter of whose opinion is right online.
But that's exactly what I'm talking about. It is just a matter of being right online in the context I'm talking about. You're the one trying to say that being right on chapo.chat is tied to being a member of life saving organization where the difference in opinion can kill millions or something. I'm not making that argument, you are.
The DSA continues to be a clusterfuck in part because it’s a big tent that gets bogged down by debate between caucuses of different tendencies with mutually exclusive positions on make-or-break issues like Dem-entryism.
That's an entirely separate issue like all the other rebuttals but in that specific case it sounds like there's not enough goal-oriented planning. If your build an org around a nebulous ideology that could be 500 different things and not built around achieving a goal, it will get bogged down in unproductive debate. People with different ideologies can work to accomplish a single goal. Like if we had to build a house and we started an org called "the build a house org" then we'd attract people who are interested in building a house. We still would debate over the best way to build a house, what materials to use, where to put it, who does what, etc. But there's a goal and there's people who want to accomplish it. But if you just call it the "put wood together org" then there's no clear goal. People are going to ask why you're building a house, why not build a piece of furniture instead? A problem worth discussing but nothing to do with what I said so far.
If I may extend the analogy. We have no wood. We have no hammers. We have no nails. We have no plot of land on which to build. We have a stack of old blueprints of other houses built a long time ago. There are several "put wood together" orgs around, and one or two that's like "use hammers to drive nails org." We're on a website tangentially related to a podcast about some dinguses who think we should build a house sometime soon. Some of our members are fiercely arguing over what wood to use for floor joists. A worthy discussion should we have any wood at all or even our own plans to build a house. But we don't. Then those members declare they could never build a house with one another. That if the other were allowed on the construction project, it would destroy the housing project all together. But if they would just shut up and stop worrying about this inconsequential detail and help us find some wood and hammers and nails or maybe draw up some plans, then we could get to the debate about what wood makes good joists (pine imo).
Rest assured that my org is not chapo.chat, which I acknowledge is not an "org" at all but a public forum for different tendencies to put their ideas forward and discuss news and theory while attempting to avoid sectarian flame wars.
My org's current approach acknowledges we're in the "put wood together" stage and most of our current praxis is wood-gathering and doing united-front work/critical support when possible, but we follow one of the blueprints very closely to guide our wood-gathering effort, and emphasize teaching the blueprint in internal education and attempting to win people within that broader united front that can agree on the "build a house" part over to our specific blueprint. My understanding is this is typical for a single-tendency org that hasn't gone off their rocker and fallen into the "everything is a nail" trap, though some may go further and promote popular-frontism, which my org doesn't (else we'd take the DSA more seriously).
Regarding my comment about the DSA, the qualifier "in part" deserves more emphasis. It wasn't my intention to imply that was the only reason. Their big-tent "let's stop at gathering wood, at most" org clearly has other problems, some of which you've listed.
I should probably have been more explicit about this: right now, in a western context where the old left is only beginning to recover from its old wounds, for the purpose of united-front organizing, a lot of these irreconcilable issues aren't important enough to be life-and-death in our local context. If this weren't true, chapo chat would probably settle towards a single tendency and alienate everyone else. However, as the left continues to grow, precision becomes increasingly important. Being 95% correct is good enough right now. But it might be make-or-break at some point in the future when the organized left is developed enough to be approaching the capacity to build towards dual power, when the stakes dramatically increase and the responsibilities of the working-class leadership grow as they prepare to take on the capacities of a state. At that point, perhaps mere decades from now, continuing to be 95% correct could become more dangerous than being only 50% correct. Reaching this crucial point has historically happened faster outside of the west than inside it.
You’re the one trying to say that being right on chapo.chat is tied to being a member of life saving organization where the difference in opinion can kill millions or something. I’m not making that argument, you are.
This is not the case I was trying to make at all. I was explaining why I specifically have to consider my organization when expressing my position online, because part of my membership involves persuading people to my position.
Of course clearly I can't do a very good job of this individually, because I'm stuck at home and can't talk to people who aren't already politically educated and in the same position I am but in a different organization/tendency. Chapo chat isn't and shouldn't be my primary audience (especially because it's an anonymous site, and I don't use my real name on social media) but posting while involuntarily glued to the armchair was I habit I've fallen into for lack of any physical social interaction with even my own comrades, with whom I used to go out and join for protests, rallies, etc. on a regular basis before covid forced me to move.
Your reminder is a useful one; there are serious limitations to posting in online left spaces that I need to overcome through other uses of my time.
If you having a stance on China is absolutely necessary for your organization to function, I'm not talking to you and I never was. An organization existing that requires everyone in charge to have a stance on China doesn't invalidate what I said though. It doesn't mean that everyone on a shitposting website needs to have the correct opinion or that having an opinion while on the website matters.
I'm not suggesting people online not be educated.
Is this org chapo.chat? If not, then this isn't relevant.
We're not an organization. And my context was limited. You're reading this too generally.
Wasn't talking about having an argument in general or trying to recruit others to your cause. This wasn't an argument against persuasive arguments.
But that's exactly what I'm talking about. It is just a matter of being right online in the context I'm talking about. You're the one trying to say that being right on chapo.chat is tied to being a member of life saving organization where the difference in opinion can kill millions or something. I'm not making that argument, you are.
That's an entirely separate issue like all the other rebuttals but in that specific case it sounds like there's not enough goal-oriented planning. If your build an org around a nebulous ideology that could be 500 different things and not built around achieving a goal, it will get bogged down in unproductive debate. People with different ideologies can work to accomplish a single goal. Like if we had to build a house and we started an org called "the build a house org" then we'd attract people who are interested in building a house. We still would debate over the best way to build a house, what materials to use, where to put it, who does what, etc. But there's a goal and there's people who want to accomplish it. But if you just call it the "put wood together org" then there's no clear goal. People are going to ask why you're building a house, why not build a piece of furniture instead? A problem worth discussing but nothing to do with what I said so far.
If I may extend the analogy. We have no wood. We have no hammers. We have no nails. We have no plot of land on which to build. We have a stack of old blueprints of other houses built a long time ago. There are several "put wood together" orgs around, and one or two that's like "use hammers to drive nails org." We're on a website tangentially related to a podcast about some dinguses who think we should build a house sometime soon. Some of our members are fiercely arguing over what wood to use for floor joists. A worthy discussion should we have any wood at all or even our own plans to build a house. But we don't. Then those members declare they could never build a house with one another. That if the other were allowed on the construction project, it would destroy the housing project all together. But if they would just shut up and stop worrying about this inconsequential detail and help us find some wood and hammers and nails or maybe draw up some plans, then we could get to the debate about what wood makes good joists (pine imo).
Rest assured that my org is not chapo.chat, which I acknowledge is not an "org" at all but a public forum for different tendencies to put their ideas forward and discuss news and theory while attempting to avoid sectarian flame wars.
My org's current approach acknowledges we're in the "put wood together" stage and most of our current praxis is wood-gathering and doing united-front work/critical support when possible, but we follow one of the blueprints very closely to guide our wood-gathering effort, and emphasize teaching the blueprint in internal education and attempting to win people within that broader united front that can agree on the "build a house" part over to our specific blueprint. My understanding is this is typical for a single-tendency org that hasn't gone off their rocker and fallen into the "everything is a nail" trap, though some may go further and promote popular-frontism, which my org doesn't (else we'd take the DSA more seriously).
Regarding my comment about the DSA, the qualifier "in part" deserves more emphasis. It wasn't my intention to imply that was the only reason. Their big-tent "let's stop at gathering wood, at most" org clearly has other problems, some of which you've listed.
I should probably have been more explicit about this: right now, in a western context where the old left is only beginning to recover from its old wounds, for the purpose of united-front organizing, a lot of these irreconcilable issues aren't important enough to be life-and-death in our local context. If this weren't true, chapo chat would probably settle towards a single tendency and alienate everyone else. However, as the left continues to grow, precision becomes increasingly important. Being 95% correct is good enough right now. But it might be make-or-break at some point in the future when the organized left is developed enough to be approaching the capacity to build towards dual power, when the stakes dramatically increase and the responsibilities of the working-class leadership grow as they prepare to take on the capacities of a state. At that point, perhaps mere decades from now, continuing to be 95% correct could become more dangerous than being only 50% correct. Reaching this crucial point has historically happened faster outside of the west than inside it.
This is not the case I was trying to make at all. I was explaining why I specifically have to consider my organization when expressing my position online, because part of my membership involves persuading people to my position.
Of course clearly I can't do a very good job of this individually, because I'm stuck at home and can't talk to people who aren't already politically educated and in the same position I am but in a different organization/tendency. Chapo chat isn't and shouldn't be my primary audience (especially because it's an anonymous site, and I don't use my real name on social media) but posting while involuntarily glued to the armchair was I habit I've fallen into for lack of any physical social interaction with even my own comrades, with whom I used to go out and join for protests, rallies, etc. on a regular basis before covid forced me to move.
Your reminder is a useful one; there are serious limitations to posting in online left spaces that I need to overcome through other uses of my time.