If you’re not ready to die for your ideology then may be its not really your ideology after all, and you’ve simply been tempted by the utopian fantasies of a bunch of dreamers?
First, there are people who are out there fighting who are risking their livelihood or even lives. Second, this is sort of a bizarre litmus test for ideological commitment outside of context and sounds more like a cult than something based around effectiveness; although there are situations when being willing to sacrifice everything makes sense, it’s not something you do for dear leader (which again, sounds like a cult), it’s something you do for the people as a whole and an organized and righteous cause of liberation. It’s also not something you seek out like a badge of honor, but rather something that historically, the people have no choice on at times in order to achieve liberation.
The spirit of the quote needs to be understood in the context of communism being first and foremost a movement for the people’s collective self determination and liberation and with a great love for the people. Not in a vague populist sense of “whatever the people want, we’ll do it” (which depending on context, could just reinforce existing systems of oppression) but in terms of liberating from imperialism, from the capitalist class, and as part of that process, uplifting people and helping them get their needs met in a more consistent and systemic way. Part of this has to do with bridging the gap between splits that occur in class and caste of “intellectual” and “worker”, educating the working class in general where necessary or specifically in terms of communist principles, such that the difference between the two becomes less pronounced. You might be surprised just how much material there is already existing on theory and practice. I emphasize this because when I speak of educating, I’m not talking about giving someone an elevator pitch on something pie in the sky and hoping they go for it, I’m talking about a lot of historical context and detail you can get into, as well as learning to use dialectical and historical materialism for analysis (which can involve extensive detail analysis by situation).
I’m not sure where you get the idea that this process would have no hierarchy or structure to the organizing involved. But it is also easier said than done. In the US, for example, there is a certain amount of what I’d call ideological splintering, where people have some vague agreement and overlap on philosophies such as “being nice to other people”, but in the actual details, you could have distinctive variation based on what podcast or streamer someone listens to. There are also unique challenges geographically, with the layout of things, the way suburban implementation has made people more isolated and cagey. None of this is to say these challenges can’t be overcome, but that it’s helpful to examine the specifics of the situation and figure out how to go from there. We can’t superimpose vague answers alone or do structureless experimentation alone, and get where we need to be. The combination of theory and practice is important here.
First, there are people who are out there fighting who are risking their livelihood or even lives. Second, this is sort of a bizarre litmus test for ideological commitment outside of context and sounds more like a cult than something based around effectiveness; although there are situations when being willing to sacrifice everything makes sense, it’s not something you do for dear leader (which again, sounds like a cult), it’s something you do for the people as a whole and an organized and righteous cause of liberation. It’s also not something you seek out like a badge of honor, but rather something that historically, the people have no choice on at times in order to achieve liberation.
The spirit of the quote needs to be understood in the context of communism being first and foremost a movement for the people’s collective self determination and liberation and with a great love for the people. Not in a vague populist sense of “whatever the people want, we’ll do it” (which depending on context, could just reinforce existing systems of oppression) but in terms of liberating from imperialism, from the capitalist class, and as part of that process, uplifting people and helping them get their needs met in a more consistent and systemic way. Part of this has to do with bridging the gap between splits that occur in class and caste of “intellectual” and “worker”, educating the working class in general where necessary or specifically in terms of communist principles, such that the difference between the two becomes less pronounced. You might be surprised just how much material there is already existing on theory and practice. I emphasize this because when I speak of educating, I’m not talking about giving someone an elevator pitch on something pie in the sky and hoping they go for it, I’m talking about a lot of historical context and detail you can get into, as well as learning to use dialectical and historical materialism for analysis (which can involve extensive detail analysis by situation).
I’m not sure where you get the idea that this process would have no hierarchy or structure to the organizing involved. But it is also easier said than done. In the US, for example, there is a certain amount of what I’d call ideological splintering, where people have some vague agreement and overlap on philosophies such as “being nice to other people”, but in the actual details, you could have distinctive variation based on what podcast or streamer someone listens to. There are also unique challenges geographically, with the layout of things, the way suburban implementation has made people more isolated and cagey. None of this is to say these challenges can’t be overcome, but that it’s helpful to examine the specifics of the situation and figure out how to go from there. We can’t superimpose vague answers alone or do structureless experimentation alone, and get where we need to be. The combination of theory and practice is important here.
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