In order to practice this more generally, people need to be taught.
Bingo, also my biggest weakness. It’s my fault for making my studies a tiny group chat-based internet egg hunt for too long to shut it out, I didn’t give explaining stuff enough deep thought & my poor skills make me turn to withering remarks, because I’m used to people I’ve talked to for years. I am awful at teaching people thinking skills. Reasonable at teaching them language skills, though. I can completely sympathize with people who believe they need to balance left unity online in order to ensure reform orgs can get traction, I was there a few years ago for heavens’ sake, but it’s actively shutting down substantive conversations. Not that I started one here, I just disagree with the “takes are harmful” principle. Skill issue.
people who believe they need to balance left unity online in order to ensure reform orgs can get traction, I was there a few years ago for heavens’ sake, but it’s actively shutting down substantive conversations. Not that I started one here, I just disagree with the “takes are harmful” principle. Skill issue.
When you put it that way, it seems more clear to me where you’re coming from. Luckily, the grad at least does not seem to go for the “left unity at the cost of principles” thing that baby leftists in the west have a tendency to latch onto. I even recall a thread by an admin heavily criticizing ossification of “left” parties in the west, how little many of them have accomplished throughout their existence, and how much and often they have become watered down to co-exist alongside the system.
I did not interpret it that way in this specific thread up until this point, but in retrospect, I can see how you could have seen that in the other person’s post and then seen it like I was affirming it as something people should be doing. Vague calls for left unity is a point I was once at (when I was far from ML in politics yet and new to “leftism”), but is not something I’m consciously for these days. I don’t believe a vanguard will be formed from voter “big tent” coalitions (though certain of reform coalitions may be able to help pipeline people to ML some of the time, such as how some in the US were drawn further left by Bernie’s campaign and then helped further along than that by actual communists). For revolutionary level change, there has to be a principled, disciplined, and organized party foundation that understands revolution isn’t “getting more votes than the dominant state project”; otherwise, we may as well be talking about the democratic party in the US for all the difference it makes.
Bingo, also my biggest weakness. It’s my fault for making my studies a tiny group chat-based internet egg hunt for too long to shut it out, I didn’t give explaining stuff enough deep thought & my poor skills make me turn to withering remarks, because I’m used to people I’ve talked to for years. I am awful at teaching people thinking skills. Reasonable at teaching them language skills, though. I can completely sympathize with people who believe they need to balance left unity online in order to ensure reform orgs can get traction, I was there a few years ago for heavens’ sake, but it’s actively shutting down substantive conversations. Not that I started one here, I just disagree with the “takes are harmful” principle. Skill issue.
When you put it that way, it seems more clear to me where you’re coming from. Luckily, the grad at least does not seem to go for the “left unity at the cost of principles” thing that baby leftists in the west have a tendency to latch onto. I even recall a thread by an admin heavily criticizing ossification of “left” parties in the west, how little many of them have accomplished throughout their existence, and how much and often they have become watered down to co-exist alongside the system.
I did not interpret it that way in this specific thread up until this point, but in retrospect, I can see how you could have seen that in the other person’s post and then seen it like I was affirming it as something people should be doing. Vague calls for left unity is a point I was once at (when I was far from ML in politics yet and new to “leftism”), but is not something I’m consciously for these days. I don’t believe a vanguard will be formed from voter “big tent” coalitions (though certain of reform coalitions may be able to help pipeline people to ML some of the time, such as how some in the US were drawn further left by Bernie’s campaign and then helped further along than that by actual communists). For revolutionary level change, there has to be a principled, disciplined, and organized party foundation that understands revolution isn’t “getting more votes than the dominant state project”; otherwise, we may as well be talking about the democratic party in the US for all the difference it makes.