fair-weather leftists want to huff the copium and think that socialism is more likely than barbarism in the worsening conditions because that’s less scary

Honest opinion- the west is going to head straight to barbarism, and the best we can hope for in the short term is civil war or a coup from the non-suicidal (not wanting to engage in MAD or destroy the world economy if they can’t enslave it) elements of the western regimes and capital. But look outside the west and you’ll see so, so many reasons to be optimistic- socialism is genuinely more likely than barbarism, when you consider that for 90% of humanity, the west offers nothing (oversimplification, but it covers the gist of it) but terrorism, destabilization, and exploitation, and meanwhile the other side (that of “the rest” defending themselves from the west) is building a framework for peace, prosperity, and co-operation and the sovereignty and self-determination of nations.

The path to socialism will still be a long, complicated road ahead, even after imperialism is gone. But the self-policing nature of world capital (as another way to describe imperialism) is going to come to an end one way or another, and from there nations around the world will be more empowered to chart their own course as they see fit- and in a world where the Chinese model of development and the BRICS/BRI/SCO/etc models of win-win cooperation and mutual prosperity have shown the world the beginnings of the true potential of humanity- I think it will be a very bright future ahead (provided the west doesn’t end humanity or even the biosphere altogether).

fair-weather leftists want to huff the copium and think that socialism is more likely than barbarism in the worsening conditions because that’s less scary.

or they see it and are making it happen, as anyone who has been involved in socialist organizing in the last 10 years has been able to plainly see socialism exponentially grow more than it has the 35 years before it.

The chuds and liberals not understanding the coming reality means they necessarily have and will continue to have bad analyses, bad theories, and so bad practice, and be woefully unprepared to manage the emergent realities and circumstances and contradictions in society and between each other; and be unable to remain sufficiently disciplined, organized, and focused to stay ahead in the struggle as ruptures and crises throw more and more of the hitherto apathetic masses into politics while the pressures of the coming future massively complexify circumstances. Whereas the socialists, led by the most principled, incisive, and decisive Marxists, firmly rooted in Leninist organizational principles with scientifically sound adaptations to our respective material conditions and so having the objective ability to organizationally outperform the other socialists in pure mechanical terms per head and per action, engage with material reality as it is; not as it was or we wish it would be or as it might be someday in the future, but as it currently is in living reality in its unfolding in all its constituent forces, through the methodological framework of historical materialism and dialectical materialism which has and has proven in history to have unmatched predictive power when thoroughly grasped and applied correctly.

And it is in this with an eye to where the masses of people are and are oriented in their class representations in their various movements and circumstances, and where the revolutionary masses are and where current material conditions find; and changing material conditions will alter; the positions and interests and mobilize in different ways the masses of people, and discerning how that can be best maneuvered in to agitate, educate, and break-through into new fronts the ruptured contradictions between the people and the enemy bringing more of the masses of people to our side — with and as a part of whom, by being the leading tip of an organized spear, us Marxists among these conscious masses can meet the challenges head on and stay ahead of and strike truer than those who remain bewildered, panicked, idealist and delusional, misdirected or directionless, or capitulated to despair.

From the perspective of an illiterate peasant, the times from 1914-1923 probably seemed like the end of the world too, and it was not without much death and suffering, just as in every great time of change in history and in pre-history and the time of life on this planet in general, where there have many times and always been great times of great change. Life went on and life changed. We take the material conditions of our time and their changing as they come, just as all life does when it comes into being and while it goes through its span.

And I will add, every “fairweather” sympathetic-to-communism ‘leftist’ who, even if not organizing them from the start, will be much more likely to tacitly or openly support us and to join these mass movements, which are being and have been being built every day by dedicated revolutionaries, when crises throw more and more of the hitherto apathetic masses into politics (as has been historically and was described by Lenin as symptomatic of every revolution and which we have seen portents of in recent uprisings the past years) — every one of those “fairweather” leftists is worth more to the cause of socialism than 100 vulgar “materialist” defeatist Marxists who convince themselves of defeat and try to convince others of defeat because of ‘X Y Z possibility in the future,’ and who will be less likely to join mass movements as they grow as they have convinced themselves (and even worse, possibly others), just as they do now, that “it’s not enough, too late, too small” or whatever else self-defeating dream, which amounts to opportunist capitulation before a battle has even been pitched. This has been subjectively true in what I’ve seen of others’ attitudes and potential in my own organizing experience, as well looking objectively in a materialist sense, is and will necessarily be true.