SomeLinenAndShirts [comrade/them]

I don't know what you think I'm doing here, but it's not whatever is being projected onto me? Since my second response to you, I've tried to engage in good faith with you, but at this point I'm really not sure what productive conversation we can continue having. From my second response, where I started off by saying "Okay then lets talk about it comrade", I was apologizing, through literal "action" (for what action posting on a forum really matters) that I was wrong to not engage in this with more nuance. And from that response forward, I guess maybe you smelled blood in the water out of the vulnerability being displayed in saying "I was wrong, lets have the discussion", and took that as your cue that you could embark on the crusade of self-righteousness?

As for this contrivance of a post: I'm not going to even try to engage with it. In as plain of English as I can muster up, you're just wrong, you are failing to apply the dialectics to the present day, and so you're just wrong. You will probably continue to always be wrong. That's all I can say. Other than that, hope you don't make it into any form of leadership or garner a platform large enough to influence socialist thought because you don't even have a grip on what the terms you're throwing around even mean. I'm honestly more depressed now than I was hours ago, because I'm thinking "this westerner can't get their terms straight, let alone apply them to the situation with any kind of intellectual rigor and honesty". Any time I have a point to make, you're just whining about toxicity to distract from the fact that you don't have a response. Whether this is intentional and conscious, or unconscious and unintentional, is besides the point, because the effect is the same; the situation is untenable.

Anyways, I sure am glad that you got the chance to wax poetic and drop this steaming shit of a take on the threshold, to then go running off with your fingers in your ears. That's some real, principled, and mature shit coming from such an experienced and wise socialist, or leftist organizer.

[Paraphrased] "You are the doing the fed posting"

I think that me deciding to engage in this actual discussion with you should be proof enough, but also if you just look through my history, you'll see a post where I flat out apologize to another person for being wrong about something. Not to mention, this is not a congress of international working people, this is "hexbear.net" a "kinda leftists website". Apologies for not engaging in the most principled possible debate imaginable off to start, but here we are, and that at least should give some credibility, considering I'm being at least somewhat consistent at this point. Also, spare me your tone-policing, I get that you think its relevant to bring this up because you're perhaps thinking "oh a fed would absolutely come in here and be an antagonistic as possible", but I've taken a decidedly different approach since then, so you can go ahead and stop now.

"The SA boycott movement in the imperial core didn’t pick up steam until the 70s and 80s"

During the development and deployment of Neoliberalism, the policies and erosion's to the working class haven't had the time to fully develop. Even still, I allude to this fact you are bringing up, when I say "40 years of austerity and destruction". There can be absolutely no doubt, that the state of international socialism is at a lower point now than it was in the 70's and 80's. Here also, I'm not really sure what the point is of sneaking in the point about western powers rejecting BDS policies, but how this is coming off to me is to give you some kind of logos to say "the western powers were against it so it must've been actually good", but we've already said that this wasn't overall an anti-capitalist movement, it overall was a movement to garner freedom for native South Africans. I think it's important to note that, the reason it probably was successful at all is because it wasn't explicitly anti-capitalist, but here's the thing, I don't actually know the exact historical nuances of South Africa during the anti-apartheid movement, and unless you're willing to start sharing some sources, I don't think you do either.

"To equate the two’s historic and material conditions

 Would be misrepresenting me and anyone else here."

You're the one that brings up the SA BDS movement, reflexively. Note that you don't go on to say what this misrepresentation is exactly.

"You could ask OP and contribute to a productive discussion of that question instead of calling them a fed and generally being the truly endearing combination of insulting and generally incorrect in your comments."

This is just tone-policing. You're right though, I could've just decided to have a giant big brain discussion on someone's post that was literally "haha they like free markets, lets let em have it and do a praxis", but let's be honest, I'm doing this now and you're taking the ethos too far. Also if I'm "incorrect" in general, there hasn't really been much in the way of you showing me where I'm incorrect? There has been 3 posts, 1 of me trying to do a "le epic dunk" on the OP, 1 of me trying to do a lesser "le epic dunk" on you, and then the one you are replying to presently.

"Boycotts with tabling are useful for building support for and membership of socialist orgs, by the way. You should try it sometime, since your dismissiveness makes it clear you haven’t."

I didn't know it was a competition for who has the most credentials here, but yeah, I'm involved in socialist organizing, in my local area, there's not a ton of stuff going on so, I guess sorry for not living wherever you live. My dismissiveness is towards the idea of doing this BDS for Texas, and I'm outlining my reasons why, not that Boycotts and Tabling don't work, because it clearly worked, for anti-apartheid movements in South Africa, which I've already said is a good thing.

"You’re telling yourself stories until you feel comfortable insulting others and are acting like a wrecker. And again, your logic on the impact of boycotts is literally a bullshit centuries-old line from The Economist that has been used to oppose all consumption-based tactics for organizing against oppression, including slavery and child labor."

You keep equating "Boycotts" and "BDS" as though these are the exact same things. They are not. One is far more punitive than the other, and I don't know how you can even sit here and act principled while you're doing it. Not to mention, "The Economist" line on this presupposes an actual organized movement with actual support networks and power, because they are fighting in the interest of the bourgeoisie. My "line" on this is literally saying "this cannot work because there are no conditions present now or in the foreseeable future for this to be something that can possibly happen". We aren't advocating for BDS in the periphery of the empire, we are talking about advocating for BDS in the literal belly of a decaying empire*.

"This discourse is absurd, OP is just talking about having a BDS for Texas. You are free to try and help define it if you think there are (still unspecified) material conditions that necessitate a particular approach to achieve goals you think are important."

I'm replying to the whole snippet here: simply put, we are currently talking about it, so I don't know why you're still going on about this? I literally am engaging in this discussion now, so let's move on from whining about it. Also, why is your reply littered with little "gotchas" like "... there are (still unspecified) material conditions..."? I mean this is pure projection, where on one had you want me to engage in a thorough and peaceable discourse, while on the other hand you do not yourself engage in a thorough and peaceful discourse, you could instead literally just say "Can you please enumerate what material conditions that you believe are lacking" but you're choosing not to, and feel free to just say it plainly why you are choosing not to do this.

In any case, the material conditions I believe are lacking, while not explicitly enumerated are implied in this portion of my "ridiculous and imaginary discourse" where I ask if you believe there "... is an army of fellow comrades with sufficiently developed mutual aid networks capable of securing material needs to be secretly transported into Texas to help the comrades there build grow their membership and education programs?".

Either way, it's telling, and convenient for your response, that you've chosen to not engage with this to simply write it off as some "absurd" self imagined fight, when I'm legitimately asking you to answer for what you think a BDS on Texas is going to accomplish. A very notable thing you decided to not give an answer to was: Texas is a settler colonial region of America, it is a racist region of America, and it is a sexist region of America. But find for me a region in North America where that is not the case? If you cannot find a place where that is not the case, then, Texas is not any different the the rest of the United States. As well as this, this is approaching "orange man bad" levels of liberalism, since, the only reasons left to you or anyone who's pro-BDS for texas at this point is: "Do BDS because we don't like the GOP" and "Do BDS because I think it will help build socialism there". Point #1 is liberalism. Point #2 is not capable of being manifested at all currently, no matter how much you want it to be the case, because the support networks for socialism in the US is at absolute infancy levels. Socialist orgs cannot attend to the needs of their local communities, let alone Texan comrades, who, in this imaginary world where a BDS is done, will need as much resources as possible, since the "state" will in all likelihood seize as much of it as they can.

In any case, if you do answer these questions later, because of a misunderstanding of what the intent was there, consider all of these "conveniences" and "telling" parts of your response to be forgiven, since, I understand that when you're trying to win the epic debate (and not discuss amongst comrades) sometimes things are misunderstood.

"Ask yourself how you got from BDS to martyrdom."

I get there from the present conditions to say, isolating Texas does not give you anything but potentially harmed comrades.

"Okay, I agree, but this is not different from early anti-apartheid organization and there’s no reason stated for why this is a no-go for BDS."

More reactionaries organized to do violence against leftists and minorities is very different from early anti-apartheid organization for a number of reasons. I shouldn't have to explain why, since anti-apartheid organizing wasn't explicitly anti-capitalist.

"Does a potential BDS Texas movement not have calls for material gains, policies to alleviate oppression, try to build socialism? "

Sure it does, but the issues are not local to Texas, these are issues present everywhere in America, and so you cannot segment off a portion of the country off arbitrarily. I really need you to explain how you think that BDS for this arbitrary region of the United States is going to accomplish these things, from within a region of 47 other states which are all, also, guilty of the same things? You are the one imagining an America which has the potential to sanction off 1 segment of its country. Either it must sanction the entire United States, or, it must come from within the United States, and I need whatever you're on to think that there won't be states which ally themselves with Texas to help out their reactionary buddies.

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Now, what goal would a BDS re:Texas hope to accomplish?

There are no calls for material gains for the working class, sure there is racism, sexism, and settler-colonialism there, but that is not much more pronounced there compared to other, say, Southern States, or even really any states. The calls here are on the basis of ideological difference between liberals and populist reactionaries.

Perhaps you think that BDS re:Texas will provide a way to build anti-capitalism in the state of Texas. Surely, with along side a BDS movement there is an army of fellow comrades with sufficiently developed mutual aid networks capable of securing material needs to be secretly transported into Texas to help the comrades there build grow their membership and education programs? No? There isn’t? The support would be seized immediately?

Then what? You hope to see the comrades there build relationships with the bourgeois? Is that what is needed in the present moment in North America’s historical development? At the behest of not being “sectarian” I won’t go into my opinions on why this strategy is a losing one, but that is not the point. The point is, at present, the development of the reactionary efforts has taken on a more populist flavor than ever in the United States. These reactionaries are actively recruiting disaffected members to do terrorism and target minorities and comrades in this state (see El Paso) and as their populism grows, so too will their aid networks, so too will their businesses which will remain free to move into Texas and aid their fellow reactionaries there, while targeting comrades.

The socialist program in America is not sufficiently developed, especially not in the South, and I won’t hear liberals advocate for the turning into martyrs of our comrades, to have to answer to these agitated-reactionaries, as their lives degrade through a BDS, while not being able to provide them the means of doing so, during a period of time where the preservation of, and development of a socialist program there is of paramount importance.

Yeah, okay comrade, let's talk about it.

Firstly, since we're talking about the SA boycott movement, I'm sure you know that it built international support which could be funneled to the South Africans. I'm sure the temptation is great to make the obvious parallels to the United States, what with it being a settler colonial nation, however, the goal of the movement needs to be kept in mind here. This was not a movement to end capitalism, and, just as you might be tempted to draw parallels with the United States in their historical position, I might draw a parallel between the more Mensheviks leaning Workers Soviets and the avant-garde of the Kadets during the provincial government period following Tsar Nicolas's abdication, and say that the ANC-SACP coalition shows that: Here was a development for the working class in so far as it was able to secure freedom for the native South Africans, but in liberal sense of the word freedom. And of course, we can all agree that this development is a good thing, but incomplete.

Not to mention the other fact: 1960's did not see the rise of Neoliberalism. A movement that has completely eroded whatever aid existed following the anti-communist movements in the United States. To equate the two's historic and material conditions neglects the previous 40 years of austerity and destruction of any class based solidarity. In other words, to bring up the SA BDS movement, its to try to make an equivalence which itself is not grounded in the material or historical realities. The self-reflection is absolutely lacking from you here comrade.

Now, what goal would a BDS re:Texas hope to accomplish?

There are no calls for material gains for the working class, sure there is racism, sexism, and settler-colonialism there, but that is not much more pronounced there compared to other, say, Southern States, or even really any states. The calls here are on the basis of ideological difference between liberals and populist reactionaries.

Perhaps you think that BDS re:Texas will provide a way to build anti-capitalism in the state of Texas. Surely, with along side a BDS movement there is an army of fellow comrades with sufficiently developed mutual aid networks capable of securing material needs to be secretly transported into Texas to help the comrades there build grow their membership and education programs? No? There isn't? The support would be seized immediately?

Then what? You hope to see the comrades there build relationships with the bourgeois? Is that what is needed in the present moment in North America's historical development? At the behest of not being "sectarian" I won't go into my opinions on why this strategy is a losing one, but that is not the point. The point is, at present, the development of the reactionary efforts has taken on a more populist flavor than ever in the United States, which is entirely unlike the reactionary forces in SA. These reactionaries are actively recruiting disaffected members to do terrorism and target minorities and comrades in this state (see El Paso) and as their populism grows, so too will their aid networks, so too will their businesses which will remain free to move into Texas and aid their fellow reactionaries there, while targeting comrades.

The socialist program in America is not sufficiently developed, especially not in the South, and I won't hear liberals advocate for the turning into martyrs of our comrades, to have to answer to these agitated-reactionaries, as their lives degrade through a BDS, while not being able to provide them the means of doing so, during a period of time where the preservation of, and development of a socialist program there is of paramount importance. You are advocating for the smothering in the cradle of the growth of socialism in Texas. Hence, why I term you, liberal.

damn i guess there arent 2 other fucking words there like "divest" and "sanction". convenient for a liberal to just shoehorn the discussion away from whats being implied to obfuscate the meaning of some other liberals point.

edit to rail against this liberal harder: "wow wouldn't it be fucking PRAXIS if we used bourgeois state violence against an entire group of people based off some fucking imaginary lines????????"

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I'm probably just blowing hot air here, but, I've been thinking a lot about something:

For the situation in the US currently (and perhaps the entire world, considering how tied up the US is in every other economies affairs), if we don't start working our absolute hardest right now to establish supplies, do mutual aid, and start building a connection to the working class, then, when the capitalist system goes through its next, probably catastrophic, bust cycle, we will see the greatest opportunity to build dual power fly directly past us, and into the laps of the fascists.

This political situation is already resting on the tip of a knife, and if we cannot make the necessary connection to the working class, during a time when they are dispossessed, then I'm scared that will be the nail in the coffin for the communist movement in the West. The thing is, it will require all of us to work as diligently as we possibly can and give as much as we each can towards helping the exact people that we gripe about daily on here, and connect with them and then re-direct their agitation and re-educate them out of reaction. I won't say "you're a liberal" if you can't help a chud out to help build this, since I know it's not the safest for every one of our comrades, but, if you are able to operate in relative safety around chuds, then, this work has to be done. Otherwise we lose. And of course aid, agitation, and education applies to every working class person regardless of political affiliation, outside of like, outright reactionary fascists who are beyond the brink of saving who probably have the material capability to survive a bust cycle anyways.

I've been thinking about this a lot recently and, honestly, if we want to actually develop some kind of dual power, the work needs to be done now to start establishing supplies and connections to working class people. If we aren't all working as much as we possibly can to do this, in this moment, then, when this whole thing bottoms out, the opportunity to win over the working class and build dual power will fly right by us, and fascism and reaction will only grow further. And the situation is already balanced at the tip of a knife anyways.

zoomer checking in to ask "wtf is 9/11?" is it some kind of inside joke? :lenin-laugh:

I wasn't trying to debate or really even fight. It isn't really my intention when communicating to ever debate (they're useless) but to contribute to the discussion we were having. I know this is long since dead but at the end of the day, I have to have some honor about this and admit to my mistakes.

Like I said, I wanted to first apologize to you, sincerely. I think that among the confusion about what it was you were saying, and what exactly your viewpoints were, I unnecessarily railed against your post, when really my issues are my own, aimed at "internet discussion" culture being really low tier forms of discussion usually.

What follows is basically a huge effort post, but I'm hoping you do actually take the time to read it, judge its merit and hopefully at least clarify what I was trying to do, and feel free to respond back if you feel like having a conversation about it.

I wanted to offer up clarifications about what I wrote, because you communicated that you weren't really able to understand what I was doing. Like I said, the point, for me, is never to just sit there and shit on someone for no reason. And I tried to be as favorable in my interpretation of what you were saying as possible, but I think that still in the end the ideas on what these 'limits' are supposed to represent is still not ultimately understood, from which I think you're drawing some really damaging conclusions to the collective understanding on what is going on here.

In the report itself they describe it more like "'x event' has 'y amounts' of risk associated with it" which should clue you in to the complicated nature of talking about this with any degree of certainty. To enumerate, on pg.15 of that report, they list various degrees of risk associated with generally catastrophic ecological events at +2C, and later on +4C, to weigh them against each other. There is also general consensus (not linked, but sources are widely available on both these matters) that there are certain climate runoff effects associated with permafrost melting in Siberia (which is already occurring at current levels of warming), or, explicitly listed here, ocean acidification, which is categorized in that document as "high to very high risk" in certain areas. Your words I was responding to, were when you said "... 2C is just a somewhat random threshold. It’s not something academics came up with as an actual threshold..." come with the obvious presupposition that there is someone out there saying, to quote the journal you linked, that we “fall off a cliff” at 2°C". Which I am saying is completely incorrect, that no one person taken serious, nor is there any (that I can find) peer reviewed publication on the matter out there that has ever been saying that. So yes, we agree, but you have managed to mischaracterize aspects of it, and draw harmful conclusions from this, such as when you replied to another person saying "...we’re very far from agricultural collapse...", or that it was your guess that "...2C is just some somewhat arbitrary threshold to have as a target.", when the document I provided both highlight that crop yields are at "high risk... with some adaptability" at +2C warming, and that this "+2C warming guard-rail" is intended to highlight,not arbitrarily that significant deviation from +2C warming could and would have devastating impacts if it were, and as it is likely, to occur. So much so that the general consensus throughout the article, although not explicitly expressed, but implicitly expressed, is "either we keep warming to 2C or less, or if we go above it in any significant manner the next thing we should be planning for is what to do about 4C of warming", which I am saying is probably because they have in mind that the probabilistic likelihood that one or more of these climate feedback loops occur is high, considering the vast amount of literature on the effects of permafrost melt in releasing CO2 and methane into the atmosphere, or how the death of the ecology in the ocean by acidification leads to, at first, more CO2 being absorbed by the ocean, and then as things die, less being absorbed by the ocean, causing a sort of "sling shot effect", as what we are already emitting is being less absorbed by the oceans.

Yeah, it's a shit-posting website, but when you or I or anyone out there goes and states things with authority, people who are reading that will either say "yeah that person is bullshit" or "that makes sense to me", and when its on a topic with as much nuance, with these crazy probabilistic outcomes, which impacts us the most, which carries existential calamity as its conclusion, it is critically important that we approach that conversation with diligence, or we should just not be having the conversation at all, to save the reader the terror caused by badly concluded, often fantastical views on the issue. Which means, as clearly as possible, citing our sources, discussing those sources, and if possible analyzing them, in a clear and concise manner, and then delivering our conclusion on it, so that everyone can clearly see why and how you come to think the way you do, wrong or right. Which is what all of years 8/9/10/11/12 of school are for, and not to mention college, were primarily devoted to developing, and which is precisely the thing that it seems people quickly forget the minute the conversation takes place on the internet. My mistake is here too, so I'm not free from criticism.

This touches on what I think was a mischaracterization of my bringing up of bourgeois academics as somehow anti-intellectualism, when I used those same academics as the source for where I'm drawing conclusions, I just don't really understand how that makes much sense at all. It's just important to analyze your sources to be transparent to whoever is reading. The purpose is to show you and everyone else that I am analyzing these sources and not just baseless accepting what they are saying, or that it is still 100% relevant. And not to lecture you, when we attack sources, like the journal you provided, it's to point out "Hey this source is not characterizing something correctly, or is flawed in its understanding by bias or other credible factors" or "Hey the article you read I think was misunderstood by you and your conclusions aren't necessarily correct". The article did make some mistakes, of course, in liberal academic fashion, making that their first and most pompous point, that "the economist shouldn't have more credibility on this matter than I do" without giving any background to the fact that this person was a climate economist (which is just a fancy position for "someone trying to tell capitalists that they have a way to organize the production to not destroy the planet, that involves them staying in power") comes to mind first. But also that article sneaks the final, and most harmful idea in at the end, when stating "... if it is not met, we should do everything we can to meet a 2¼°C or 2.5°C goal...." which, takes no accountability of the published research on climate runoff events, and effectively just gives capitalists the out to say "Oops, well we passed 2.5C guess we'll have to settle for 3C" and incrementing onward, clearly just a dangerous idea in general.

The point, or "why" I wrote all this today and yesterday, is not to debate-bro you endlessly so you submit to my form of thinking, but to just show you "hey, the conclusions and characterizations you're drawing aren't what they are saying at all. Here's the document where ALL of this talk comes from, in the media and otherwise, that you weren't able to find (which is okay!), here's what they are saying." I don't expect everyone to know so much about everything. At the end of the day, I'm working class, you're probably working class and if not then great, you have much more time than I do to research this stuff and I hope that you'll learn more than I ever will about it. But what I wanted to do was to outline what I've just said above, and then to outline that "we really need to think about what we are saying, and if we are making claims, we need to show where we get our conclusions from, and analyze those sources too."

2C warming "limit" comes from the "Report on the structured expert dialogue on the 2013–2015 review" FCCC/SB/2015/INF.1 published by the UN. You can just copy and paste that to get a pdf, since I'm not sure I can just post a link to a pdf here.

Furthermore from this same document (which is the one most commonly cited by the media and the one most people haven't read at all but is where all these ideas somewhat were coalesced). Pg 15 of this same report goes into detail about what is expected at +2C. You can read the full thing there, once again but the narrative put forward by the commission is that "... some unique [ecological] systems would be at high risk; the risks of combined ocean warming and acidification would become high, and, for some phenomena such as mass coral bleaching, very high; and crop production would be at high risk..." with still some potential for crop production to be adapted. Furthermore, scientists go on to express that the +2C "limit" should be considered a "guardrail ... that needs to be stringently defended, while less warming would be preferable"

Note that this is also 6-8 years old, but the consensus among academics present at this hearing is that "bad shit will happen, and we need to limit it to 2C or the risks for even worse shit go up significantly" (and that's my editorialization but is an idea echoed by these experts throughout this report). They were likely also bourgeois academics, considering that they are at the UN, of all places, giving testimony, so the actual information has probably 1.) developed to further understanding in 6-8 years and 2.) is probably actually worse than what the bourgeois academics are willing to let on, in their interest, to not look like "sensationalists" to be able to collect more funding for their respective universities.

Like I said, these limits aren't even described by the scientists themselves as this sort of magical thing. They admit that going a bit over is recoverable, and that staying below is preferred. It's this pervasive anti-intellectualism and further still complete obfuscation of the facts, downplaying of the impact is going to have on us, by the media and, not to be overly harsh, but people such as yourself who, you even admit don't know as much as you'd like, talk about this with an authority on the matter, thats going to continue to lead to the exact "well we went past that limit nothing else to do but die" mentality. I know the US education is abysmal, but I also know, having been a product of one of the shittier manifestations of it myself, that we all learn (or should have learned) how to talk about things that we aren't experts in, by citing experts and reports that are found, and then discussing their merits in our analysis. For what its worth, most of the socialist literature that we all claim to have read sometimes, all also do this same "quoting and discussing" method that I'm talking about. It's something we, as the collective "left" should all get back to doing, since we look all like dumbasses when we don't.

Your own source is just some journalistic rag (not to mention its listed as one of the first 3 articles if you google searched "2c climate change limit theory"), that doesn't even cite anyone even saying that the source of the theory of 2C is an economist. They just say it as though it were a fact and then go on to link the paper he wrote in 1975, as though the work of climate scientists in weighing the merit of that idea or the data that we have today in 2021 showing that 2C, as a concept, and as a pretty model-able idea, is completely negligible.

Predictive modeling is just predictive modeling, and science is just science. The expectation of people (of which I'm not going to presume where you fit on this) is that these academic pursuits are supposed to be infallible or that they are the hard authority on ANY matter is farcical. The truth is, they are working with the data as the receive it, and with knowledge that has been ascertained, and its a giant machine (academic work that is) that every now in then has some break through or idea that gets mainstream and popular amongst people and politicians.

So idk if I'm just riffing with you or not, but yeah it's always been "who the fuck knows", even the papers that you've seen cited in news articles like the one in this thread, they all work off the preconditioned assumption that they could be wrong, and everyone should know that. But 2C of warming is essentially, according to what we know right now, the point where it gets really fucked.

And yeah, I know academics are stuffy and arrogant a lot of the time, think they're really right and are willing to fight like hell to look at data and outright lie or obfuscate the truth. But at least on this, whether they're lying and it could be sooner, or later, it hardly fucking matters, because if we don't do anything at all, it's pretty much guaranteed, unless you (I'm using the general case of you) are a climate denier.

2 C is the amount of warming that scientists and economists have somewhat agreed is the "reasonable" amount of heating that will occur if we start changing things right now. Above that and we start getting really bad climate feedback loops that could theoretically push temperatures to +5 C