• ihaveibs [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    42·
    2 months ago

    I’m beginning to think the media blitz for Kamala has nothing to do with her or the Dems winning the presidency and just more of what they genuinely do best: completely destroying any semblance of a leftist movement

  • nat_turner_overdrive [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    40·
    2 months ago

    I’ve never been to a DSA meeting but I am increasingly interested in spending the hour to get into town to go to one, just to observe the libs in their natural habitat

    • SSJMarx@lemm.eeEnglish
      34·
      2 months ago

      I used to do work with my former local chapter (stopped because I moved to a place without anyone). The DSA has a couple of Marxist caucuses that are cool but they’re desperately outnumbered, only reason I’d recommend it now is if you don’t have a PSL or FRSO in your locale.

      • porcupineEnglish
        30·
        2 months ago

        I occasionally hear about local chapters like this, and I have to wonder what the benefit is of an ML local paying dues to an explicitly anticommunist org that can expel members for being openly ML. The local obviously isn’t changing DSA, and DSA would never willingly help the local.

          • porcupineEnglish
            2·
            2 months ago

            But there’s potential utility in having a more radical caucus within a less radical organization. Used correctly it can act as the teeth or spearhead that utilizes the size of the org to achieve more radical ends than the org itself cares about.

            I think this can be true, but it’s predicated on a radical caucus successfully using the resources of the broader org to deliver measurable material results that are greater than those that could be delivered on their own with the same time, effort, and resources. If they can’t show that, then they’re not using the org, the org is using them. DSA’s rule against democratic centralism was explicitly made to prevent that from happening.

            At the national level, I can’t point to anything of significance that “radical caucuses” have achieved within national DSA apart from influencing certain Democrat primary endorsements in 2016 and 2020. Those endorsed Democrats have broadly continued to betray the people of Palestine, for the same reasons DSA has, at the first sign of conflict with the broader liberal democratic system they’re nominally trying to “move left”.

            I guess I could see a local tactical argument for forming or co-opting a DSA local if national is handing you more money from all the liberal paper DSA members than your local org is putting into it, but the nature of DSA will still preclude you from putting that money toward revolutionary ends. Best case scenario you can shift the balance of that money more towards local charity and less toward Democrats, but it’s still not necessarily clear to me that would be more effective than just directly donating or volunteering at a liberal charity org. Neither is going to build revolutionary power, but at least the latter directly results in some material improvement in individual human lives.

          • porcupineEnglish
            3·
            2 months ago

            It’s not a matter of characterization that DSA’s founders were explicitly anticommunist, and that the bylaws still have practicing democratic centralism as an expellable offense.

            • ThereRisesARedStar [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
              1·
              2 months ago

              Oh, yeah, I agree it was founded as explicitly anticommunist. Those folks are in northstar, a tiny caucus that people don’t take seriously. You’re allowed to practice demcent, you’re just not allow to explicitly say you’re demcent. You can even explicitly say “We are doing this thing (demcent)” so long as you don’t use the magic words “democratic centralist”

        • Diuretic_Materialism [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          51·
          2 months ago

          If the MLs tried to form their own group it’d just be another random book club communist party of 20 nebbish weirdos who get fucked with by the FBI constantly till some LaRouche-esk dude takes over.

          • porcupineEnglish
            5·
            2 months ago

            maybe, but the alternative suggests that paying dues to a liberal anticommunist org protects them from federal attention. as an organization dedicated to collectively advancing proletarian class politics, ineffectiveness is the only surefire protection from federal attention.

            • Diuretic_Materialism [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
              2·
              2 months ago

              but the alternative suggests that paying dues to a liberal anticommunist org protects them from federal attention

              I mean I think that’s the basic idea, by squatting in a liberal group the Feds don’t pay them as much attention and they can do organizing in the background. Idk how effective it is though.

              I mean really there can’t be a communist movement in the imperial core so all this is moot.

  • thelastaxolotl [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    35·
    2 months ago

    Firstly, it is not true that fascism is only the fighting organisation of the bourgeoisie. Fascism is not only a military-technical category. Fascism is the bourgeoisie’s fighting organisation that relies on the active support of Social-Democracy. Social-Democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism. There is no ground for assuming that the fighting organisation of the bourgeoisie can achieve decisive successes in battles, or in governing the country, without the active support of Social-Democracy. There is just as little ground for thinking that Social-Democracy can achieve decisive successes in battles, or in governing the country, without the active support of the fighting organisation of the bourgeoisie. These organisations do not negate, but supplement each other.

    stalin-pipe J. V. Stalin, Concerning the International Situation