Doesn’t it scare you that so many of our comrades in the past didn’t achieve their goals and that the bourgeoise has such deadly modern warfare weapons?
I’m not even worried about their weapons. I’m worried they’ve successfully convinced some of the smartest, most clever psychologists in the world that they would do much better at using their knowledge of the human mind to exploit the proletariat than actually help individuals. I’m worried that they have enough “ownership” of resources that they’ll be able to convince and hire small armies to protect those resources for them in the coming climate apocalypse. I’m more worried about the surveillance state, The Fourteen Eyes, and “pre-crime” ideas flowing into snuffing out revolutionaries before they can become revolutionary.
The weapons have never made a difference, almost all throughout history the bourgeois has had access to better, more complicated weaponry than the average citizen. The things that make a difference are the psychologists producing more effective propaganda than ever, the continued growth of important resources in fewer hands, and a surveillance state aimed at preventing revolutionary thought from happening at all. Weapons don’t kill ideas, propaganda, surveillance and control of resources do.
So, I know this is going to sound very LARPy on an internet board, but I don’t care about dying for a socialist cause all that much. At least it would’ve been worth it. I don’t want to, but the more I study theory and (socialist) history, the more I realize it is very much an option.
I don’t expect anyone to feel this way. It’s just that I have made peace with this thought. I would have at least stood for something in my life.
That is fair, but what is the point of dying if we don’t at least destabilize the capitalists for good? So many socialist heroes have given up their life for the cause for the capitalists to come back, smear their memory full of garbage and brainwash a big chunk of the population to become class traitors. The capitalists surveil us non-stop, they can shut down our means of communication to prevent us from organizing and can use the police and military forces to squash us, while poisoning the populous brain against us with propaganda. How do we combat that? Is it not just about dying for the cause, but that just dying for the cause doesn’t seem like enough. And I, on my newbie Communist brain, cannot come up with any ways of defeating capital 😭
And I, on my newbie Communist brain, cannot come up with any ways of defeating capital 😭
The great thing about communism is that you don’t have to come up with a plan on your own. There are many comrades in this world, wanting the same as you do. Even the great revolutionary thinkers did not do it on their own. Lenin did not start the revolution, the collective effort of the Bolshevik Party did. Mao did not start the revolution, the collective effort of the Chinese Party did, Che did not… etc.
Reading theory, organizing in a party (if possible) and talking to your relatives/friends/coworkers about your ideas can raise class consciousness around you. Combatting the propaganda, though difficult, is not impossible. Ask many comrades on this site how they ended up being a communist and the majority of them would say they started of as a centrist, or a socdem or something like that. I’ve even seen stories of supposed right wingers who turned around once they realized that being right wing will never improve the life of the people. The state and the capitalists have far more resources than we do but through the collective effort of the working class, their bullshit can be debunked. They have tried time and time again to stop socialism from gaining traction and while some of the movements were (violently) crushed, some of them succeeded and are still with us today. If we keep living in fear because of the monumental task that we are facing, they win.
And I, on my newbie Communist brain, cannot come up with any ways of defeating capital 😭
I’m not an accelerationist, because that’s asking for bad outcomes, but capitalism eventually always undermines itself. That’s one of our few ways to wriggle out from under it’s thumb. It’s about striking when the iron is hot. We’re nearly there, a lot of people are pissed off with the status quo, and they’re looking for someone to save them from it, but most of them are too uneducated to know who to trust when media is full of lies.
Some of it comes down to theory and communicating that theory, some of it comes down to human psychology and how to open minds to that theory.
for the capitalists to come back, smear their memory full of garbage and brainwash a big chunk of the population to become class traitors.
The alternative is letting the bastards get away with it.
Now I’m not suggesting you do anything that will get you killed! I don’t even like those organisations that try to get their members arrested at protests out of principal. Fuck that. Stay safe and practice good op sec.
These capitalists and bootlickers will kill people for feeding the poor, sure, but only the most vocal and visible comrades. There’s a distinction between that likelihood and the notion of ‘going out guns blazing’, which is not generally a requirement.
Of course, a lot depends on your identity, location, and the direction of the class struggle. A communist in Ukraine or South Korea, for example, risks a lot more than a white communist union organiser in Paris or Melbourne. But these factors just determine the actions you’re personally willing to take.
Have you been following the effectiveness of such weapons against old soviet technology, and newer Russian versions, in Ukraine?
Materialistically, the US never succeeded in their stated war goals. Vietnam, North Korea, Cambodia, Iraq, Afghanistan. And those are all much smaller than the US.
Their relatively effective weapons are money and propaganda, to seed dissent in countries leaning left and finance their local militaries to do the dirty work to their population, get them rich, and in control, an scoop out natural resources.
Apparently, that’s changing too. Because of the proletarian intellectual and material resistance. Our role to play is to study history, and counter propaganda around us.
People want to be convinced, out of the interwebz. Nobody is happy with the right wing or liberal narrative. Our materialistic approach is tangible, sensible. We need to master it, learn to make parallels to what people around us like, and guide them through the noise of propaganda. In person. There’s no point of knowing all we know and being stuck at home, talking to no one.
A bit. But not really. We are part of the collective, the mass of the world’s workers. Our fate and that of the working class is the same. Whatever happens, either my comrades will stand with me and I with them or we’re all fucked, anyway.
There’s no greater human force than unified thought and action. Once you see yourself as part of the collective, there is a lot less room for fear. Either we all get free or we’ll all be killed and whittled down individually in one way or another, anyway. There’s no option where the bad things don’t happen. Only some control over which ones and how we respond.
For the fear that remains, I try not to think about it. Whatever happens to me, they will never stop history. Marxism takes away much of the fear. It’s no coincidence that the bourgeoisie don’t want you to read Marx and don’t want a united working class.
I was more scared before, when I thought changing the world meant sticking my neck out on its own. When I thought I’d have to be the main character if I wanted to change the world. Now I trust the working class will do it whether I like it or not. The only choice is to work with it or get in it’s way—and that one’s easy.
As for those who came before. They were titans. They didn’t so much fail as they failed to achieve everything all in one go.
Our earliest comrades basically had to start from scratch. Few examples, no theory, insufficient lessons to learn from. Still, their mistakes we’re not in vain. They achieved so much.
They stopped the Nazis, ended colonialism, brought about the concepts of: the welfare state, paid time off, redundancy pay, weekends, limited working hours, universal suffrage, universal healthcare, universal education, universal housing, universal jobs, universal dignity. Before the unions, socialists, communists organised to fight back against the ruling class, these things didn’t exist. That’s a legacy to be proud of and we join the legacy by joining them.
However bleak the world is, however unevenly spread are the fruits, the world still reaps the benefits of what previous comrades fought for. It’s not done until it’s done and unfortunately it can’t all be won in a lifetime. Luckiky, this all started a few lifetimes ago so we might be able to win what’s left to be won within ours.
On the one hand if we must try and fail so the next generation will succeed, then that’s our lot. At the same time, with climate change and China’s rise, we (a) don’t have the option of failing and (b) are already winning. The communist states, being dictatorships of the proletariat, are us and we are them. The fight is half won already.
Doesn’t it scare you that so many of our comrades in the past didn’t achieve their goals and that the bourgeoise has such deadly modern warfare weapons?
I’m not even worried about their weapons. I’m worried they’ve successfully convinced some of the smartest, most clever psychologists in the world that they would do much better at using their knowledge of the human mind to exploit the proletariat than actually help individuals. I’m worried that they have enough “ownership” of resources that they’ll be able to convince and hire small armies to protect those resources for them in the coming climate apocalypse. I’m more worried about the surveillance state, The Fourteen Eyes, and “pre-crime” ideas flowing into snuffing out revolutionaries before they can become revolutionary.
The weapons have never made a difference, almost all throughout history the bourgeois has had access to better, more complicated weaponry than the average citizen. The things that make a difference are the psychologists producing more effective propaganda than ever, the continued growth of important resources in fewer hands, and a surveillance state aimed at preventing revolutionary thought from happening at all. Weapons don’t kill ideas, propaganda, surveillance and control of resources do.
So, I know this is going to sound very LARPy on an internet board, but I don’t care about dying for a socialist cause all that much. At least it would’ve been worth it. I don’t want to, but the more I study theory and (socialist) history, the more I realize it is very much an option.
I don’t expect anyone to feel this way. It’s just that I have made peace with this thought. I would have at least stood for something in my life.
That is fair, but what is the point of dying if we don’t at least destabilize the capitalists for good? So many socialist heroes have given up their life for the cause for the capitalists to come back, smear their memory full of garbage and brainwash a big chunk of the population to become class traitors. The capitalists surveil us non-stop, they can shut down our means of communication to prevent us from organizing and can use the police and military forces to squash us, while poisoning the populous brain against us with propaganda. How do we combat that? Is it not just about dying for the cause, but that just dying for the cause doesn’t seem like enough. And I, on my newbie Communist brain, cannot come up with any ways of defeating capital 😭
The great thing about communism is that you don’t have to come up with a plan on your own. There are many comrades in this world, wanting the same as you do. Even the great revolutionary thinkers did not do it on their own. Lenin did not start the revolution, the collective effort of the Bolshevik Party did. Mao did not start the revolution, the collective effort of the Chinese Party did, Che did not… etc.
Reading theory, organizing in a party (if possible) and talking to your relatives/friends/coworkers about your ideas can raise class consciousness around you. Combatting the propaganda, though difficult, is not impossible. Ask many comrades on this site how they ended up being a communist and the majority of them would say they started of as a centrist, or a socdem or something like that. I’ve even seen stories of supposed right wingers who turned around once they realized that being right wing will never improve the life of the people. The state and the capitalists have far more resources than we do but through the collective effort of the working class, their bullshit can be debunked. They have tried time and time again to stop socialism from gaining traction and while some of the movements were (violently) crushed, some of them succeeded and are still with us today. If we keep living in fear because of the monumental task that we are facing, they win.
Thanks for your encouraging words, comrade 😊
I’m not an accelerationist, because that’s asking for bad outcomes, but capitalism eventually always undermines itself. That’s one of our few ways to wriggle out from under it’s thumb. It’s about striking when the iron is hot. We’re nearly there, a lot of people are pissed off with the status quo, and they’re looking for someone to save them from it, but most of them are too uneducated to know who to trust when media is full of lies.
Some of it comes down to theory and communicating that theory, some of it comes down to human psychology and how to open minds to that theory.
Thanks for this perspective, comrade. I hope that you are right 🤔
The alternative is letting the bastards get away with it.
Now I’m not suggesting you do anything that will get you killed! I don’t even like those organisations that try to get their members arrested at protests out of principal. Fuck that. Stay safe and practice good op sec.
These capitalists and bootlickers will kill people for feeding the poor, sure, but only the most vocal and visible comrades. There’s a distinction between that likelihood and the notion of ‘going out guns blazing’, which is not generally a requirement.
Of course, a lot depends on your identity, location, and the direction of the class struggle. A communist in Ukraine or South Korea, for example, risks a lot more than a white communist union organiser in Paris or Melbourne. But these factors just determine the actions you’re personally willing to take.
Have you been following the effectiveness of such weapons against old soviet technology, and newer Russian versions, in Ukraine?
Materialistically, the US never succeeded in their stated war goals. Vietnam, North Korea, Cambodia, Iraq, Afghanistan. And those are all much smaller than the US.
Their relatively effective weapons are money and propaganda, to seed dissent in countries leaning left and finance their local militaries to do the dirty work to their population, get them rich, and in control, an scoop out natural resources.
Apparently, that’s changing too. Because of the proletarian intellectual and material resistance. Our role to play is to study history, and counter propaganda around us.
People want to be convinced, out of the interwebz. Nobody is happy with the right wing or liberal narrative. Our materialistic approach is tangible, sensible. We need to master it, learn to make parallels to what people around us like, and guide them through the noise of propaganda. In person. There’s no point of knowing all we know and being stuck at home, talking to no one.
Go outside and talk to people. :)
A bit. But not really. We are part of the collective, the mass of the world’s workers. Our fate and that of the working class is the same. Whatever happens, either my comrades will stand with me and I with them or we’re all fucked, anyway.
There’s no greater human force than unified thought and action. Once you see yourself as part of the collective, there is a lot less room for fear. Either we all get free or we’ll all be killed and whittled down individually in one way or another, anyway. There’s no option where the bad things don’t happen. Only some control over which ones and how we respond.
For the fear that remains, I try not to think about it. Whatever happens to me, they will never stop history. Marxism takes away much of the fear. It’s no coincidence that the bourgeoisie don’t want you to read Marx and don’t want a united working class.
I was more scared before, when I thought changing the world meant sticking my neck out on its own. When I thought I’d have to be the main character if I wanted to change the world. Now I trust the working class will do it whether I like it or not. The only choice is to work with it or get in it’s way—and that one’s easy.
As for those who came before. They were titans. They didn’t so much fail as they failed to achieve everything all in one go.
Our earliest comrades basically had to start from scratch. Few examples, no theory, insufficient lessons to learn from. Still, their mistakes we’re not in vain. They achieved so much.
They stopped the Nazis, ended colonialism, brought about the concepts of: the welfare state, paid time off, redundancy pay, weekends, limited working hours, universal suffrage, universal healthcare, universal education, universal housing, universal jobs, universal dignity. Before the unions, socialists, communists organised to fight back against the ruling class, these things didn’t exist. That’s a legacy to be proud of and we join the legacy by joining them.
However bleak the world is, however unevenly spread are the fruits, the world still reaps the benefits of what previous comrades fought for. It’s not done until it’s done and unfortunately it can’t all be won in a lifetime. Luckiky, this all started a few lifetimes ago so we might be able to win what’s left to be won within ours.
On the one hand if we must try and fail so the next generation will succeed, then that’s our lot. At the same time, with climate change and China’s rise, we (a) don’t have the option of failing and (b) are already winning. The communist states, being dictatorships of the proletariat, are us and we are them. The fight is half won already.
So many of our comrades in the past did though. Who would have thought in 1917 that we’d have the USSR or today’s AES states?