Given it’s an article strictly for IWD and appealing to the broader audience that would read such a piece only because the liberals like taking a socialist holiday and molding it for their own uses, it’s not going to focus on what the US is doing in the realm of imperialism, but a call-to-arms to rally around. The working class’ political development in the US is severely underdeveloped; bring up revolution and overthrowing the capitalist state in every article won’t achieve the goal of radicalization. But getting people on-board with ideas that have broader appeal such as student loan forgiveness and paid sick leave is a great entry to where further radicalization is possible.
It’s something that can definitely be felt.
The Internet’s early naive idealism was quickly overrun once capitalism caught up and figured out how to use it for it’s own nefarious purposes. It’s become corporate walled-gardens and filled with paper-thin communities, making it harder to find rich conversations and interesting topics for people to join in on together.
For all the issues places like the fediverse can have, it’s nice that there are still attempts being made to make the web feel more genuine.
It also remains fairly popular with FOSS projects, although it’s been split up with Discord as it’s touched in the article, but also with Matrix which should be the path to take if not IRC.
The only thing I’m missing is a really good Matrix terminal client; gomuks
isn’t there yet and weechat-matrix
is unmaintained to focus on weechat-matrix-rs
which hasn’t really gotten off the ground, unfortunately. Because if I could use Matrix perfectly in weechat… that’s a game changer.
Don’t forget about IRC Highway as an option as well
Wow, radicle has a lot more progress on it compared to when I last saw it like 2 years ago! I’ll have to check it out.
I’ve also recently discovered stagit and I think it’s even lighter than cgit. It’s pretty much just static pages that have to be regenerated with every new commit, but it’s super easy to set up.
I hope more young people begin to realize it. Unfortunately I see a lot unwilling to or that just don’t care. It makes me sad at what the internet could be but I can understand why the youth would see it this way. Ruling class hegemony has done an exceptional job at funneling people towards closed platforms with monetary ideals under the guise of being user-friendly/modern/fun.
I understand the issues people bring up on initial download/install user-friendliness. Debian has needed a site upgrade for ages now, and that doesn’t mean JS-ridden or anything. Just an easy-to-read and more up-to-date with what makes a clean, simple site. There’s a lot more to find on the Debian site so it’s wouldn’t be 1:1, but the site for Void Linux is clear on distro info and how/what to download.
That’s all Debian needed, a good site that points unfamiliar users (something like if you’ve never installed Linux) to the non-free firmware installer. For everyone else, the default ISO will work or they’ll know to get the non-free. Bundling in the proprietary by default just flies in the face of everything Debian’s stood for since its inception.
I’d suggest looking at this text as it’ll be out soon: Socialist Reconstruction: A Better Future for the United States
I posted this article in another thread, but in short (as I’m on mobile) it’s related to one of the biggest contradictions of capitalism: the crisis of overproduction.
Hmm, sounds like a little something called the overproduction crisis
It’s also incredibly common in Latin America and not just among the wealthiest echelon. And it’s nearly always lighter Latinos employing darker-skinned.
There’s the classic attempt at justifying it as well, that maids are “part of the family”, with a lot of them (in the wealthier houses) living either full-time or part-time in the house they clean.
I’m not even sure how much can be done. Western corporations might pitch a fit but I don’t think Linus would ever consider something that negatively impacts Linux. And given the pivot in the last few years towards the hawkish attitude the US now has towards China has not done anything to impact Linux, I think it would be safe.
Plus even though the FOSSbro libertarians are a scourge upon, well, FOSS, I’ve seen more majorities from that segment that would agree (for different reasons) with us that Linux shouldn’t be touched to negatively impact $US_ENEMY
.
Thank you GPL for existing
I think this has been a major hurdle that Matrix still hasn’t passed yet.
Despite it being a federated protocol, the initial, still “default”, and most feature-complete server is synapse
. It’s however very heavy and honestly kind of a hassle to set up when it should be easy to spin up.
conduit
is doing a great job at being very resource-light and easy to deploy, and it’s something that the Matrix ecosystem sorely needs. When p2p Matrix is a thing that’ll be entirely different, but until then I have high hopes for conduit
(dendrite
looks promising but from my tests has had weird spikes in resource usage and other issues, despite being older than conduit
.)
Rust is tricky, and I’m also nowhere near proficient. I’ve only more recently started getting my head around borrowing without the compiler yelling at me every time, and lifetimes are still scary and I can’t do anything with them!
I looked into it mostly because the language seemed interesting and the syntax, while fairly different, looked similar to Python in ways that made sense to me (especially compared to something like Go which I honestly hate looking at). Mixing a fast compiled language with Python also looked a good mix, and the ease of making Python modules in Rust with pyo3
pushed me over.
I’d definitely recommend the exercises though as on my first book read, I thought I understood but quickly found out I didn’t. I’ve read the book like 3 times and done rustlings twice, and it wasn’t until the last time where I felt comfortable though to write something in Rust. Now to keep pushing I’m rewriting core parts of the software I began writing for work in Rust as a lot of the code is old from when I was first learning Python; it helped me grasp that language much more in depth, so I hope it does the same for Rust.
You definitely should read the rust book prior to doing them, as it hinges on that knowledge or at least programming experience. But the exercises are great, and it does a good job of giving you hands-on experience of messing up and having to fix things by reading the compiler hints.
As a non-professional with only Python experience, the book is great but rustlings moved me to the point to where I felt more comfortable actually navigating Rust code.
Conjecture on the future is not a Marxist way of thinking. There’s a reason Marx & Engels didn’t come up with fabulous ideas of what communism would be. Dialectical materialism looks at the ebb and flow of history and its effects. Just as Marx didn’t expand on what the future could hold in store in riveting detail, the same is for the PSL. The focus is on the current oppression of the masses and the means of achieving working class unity to strike down our oppressors.
Nowhere does the PSL abscribe to the utopian ideal of “now that we won the revolution, socialism is enacted”. The party is premised on the actuality of socialist revolution in the US and the program hits the high points of what will be important to tackle in the next step, not that revolution will create some socialist utopia and capitalism is forever abolished. There is plenty of detailed analyses straight from the education organ of the party that further breaks down Marxist theory in the frame of a Leninist party organizing in the imperial core.
The program isn’t vague, it’s not up to a Marxist party to dictate what an oppressed nations reparations will be, nor how a post-revolution society will look like. It is not a material analysis, and dictating exact descriptions of how a socialist US will be is utopian, just as Marx and Lenin never gave concrete details that “socialism means X and therefore Y”. There is also no existing example of what reparations would look like, it would have to be discussed at that point between the party and the oppressed nations themselves speaking for themselves. Enabling “what ifs” and conjecture is immaterial analysis and does nothing but give armchair “communists” talking points to bicker over.
There are infinite explanations of what could happen, how things can be implemented, and what to avoid. Organizing is difficult, made even more so with now powerful bourgeois hegemony is in the imperial core. Learning how to organize, how to talk to the masses, how to radicalize our fellow workers, is of vital importance to build our power.
In my years of organizing, not once has someone asked for detailed implementation instructions for how a socialist government will work in detail. We are not at the point of detailing policy, we’re at the point of reaching out to the masses and radicalizing. The why and how of bourgeois class oppression is what we need to focus on and it’s what the people need to realize and how to fight back.
In-depth analysis and discussion on policies and the future socialist government is meant for in-party discussion. If you’re outreaching in your community and someone wants to know details on the future, it’d be up to you as a dedicated communist and knowledgeable party member to answer based off discussion and organizing within the party. But our job is to radicalize and get people to realize that capitalism is the disease and socialism is the future!
The PSL does far more than simply be “anti-war” or “anti-capitalist”. Being a Marxist-Leninist requires a dialectical lens and a knowledge of your audience, in this case the reactionary imperial core. The party pushes for nothing less than the socialist transformation of society.
If you can, please read through the PSL’s program. All of the points you brought up are satisfactorily answered in that document in a way that aligns with a non-utopian Marxist view of the main points to be addressed following a socialist revolution in the US.
1: land reform
Snippet from the subheading "Liberation: Overcoming racism, exploitation, national oppression and all forms of bigotry:
The new government will seek to codify the goals of eradicating racism, national oppression and all forms of exploitation and bigotry. The following issues will be addressed by the new government.
With the goal of the unity of the multinational U.S. working class on the basis of class solidarity, the new government will work to eliminate white supremacy, racism and privilege as an immediate task, recognizing that this goal will not be achieved automatically or by decree. It will be prohibited to advocate any form of racism, xenophobia, national hatred or discrimination based on ability.
The socialist government will recognize the inviolable right of all oppressed nations to self-determination with regard to their means of gaining and maintaining their liberation. In the United States, this includes the right of self-determination for African American, Native, Puerto Rican and other Latino national minorities, the Hawai’ian nation, Asian, Pacific Islander, Arab and other oppressed peoples that have experienced oppression as a whole people under capitalism.
The socialist government will institute a program of reparations for the African American community to address the centuries of unpaid slave labor and super-exploitation.
The existing colonial relationships of the United States will be dissolved. Independence will be immediately granted to Puerto Rico with full reparations for colonial exploitation, and the right of free travel between the U.S. and Puerto Rico. Samoa, Guam, the Virgin Islands and Mariana Islands will be free to exercise their right to self-determination, up to and including independence, with reparations and the right to free travel between the former colonies and the U.S. mainland. Restitution, including the return of land stolen, will be provided for Native Nations. Further, the socialist government will reaffirm the right of Native Nations to self-determination, up to and including independence.
- capitalism
Declaring that capitalism cannot be abolished in the US is an outright misjudgment and disbelief in the oppressed peoples in this country. A Marxist-Leninist party is designed to lead the masses towards revolution, not fall in line or concede to the most backwards sections of society who believe capitalism can be “reformed”.
Snippet from the subheading “The right of revolution”:
The capitalist system has proven to be incapable of meeting the needs of the people — even in the richest capitalist country in history. Every year, millions more people are forced into abject poverty, many while working full time, and many are denied the right to a job.
Simply reforming the capitalist system is not enough.
For the capitalists, reforms are a threat to the status quo. Reforms for the working class mean something different. They ease the burdens of living under capitalism through the extension of civil rights or other beneficial social or economic policies.
While reforms must be fought for, and can be won, they are under constant attack by the ruling class. Capitalism itself cannot be reformed. Its supreme law and driving force is the maximization of profit. The only force capable of putting an end to this criminal system is the organized working class. Capitalism cannot be voted out of power—it will take a revolution.
The capitalist class will stop at nothing to prevent or overturn reforms by repressing, misdirecting or quelling any form of popular rebellion. Without a complete uprooting of the system that causes all the problems workers and oppressed peoples face, exploitation and oppression will still exist. The capitalist state will continue to rule.
Capitalism is a failed system that, in its insatiable appetite for ever greater profits, threatens global ecological destruction on an unprecedented scale, with workers and oppressed people bearing the disproportionate burden of the environmental disaster.
More than at any other time, it is the working class that holds the future for humanity. For the people and planet to live, capitalism must go.
The Party for Socialism and Liberation is dedicated to building a revolutionary workers’ party in the United States. A party that can unite the multinational U.S. working class is an essential and irreplaceable element in the struggle for socialism. The PSL participates in the labor, anti-war, anti-racist, immigrant rights, women’s, lesbian/gay/bi/transgender/queer, environmental, student and other movements. A revolutionary party can be built only by engaging in all issues affecting the working class.
For the working class, revolution is a necessity and a right. The most brutal aspects of capitalism will not go away unless there is a socialist revolution. Only a revolution can do away with the rule of the capitalists once and for all.
3: Right to work
Snippet from the subheading “Socialism: Addressing the interests of working and poor people”:
It will be a right of every person in the United States to have a job with guaranteed union representation and full social benefits provided by the socialist government, including a pension, health care, workers’ compensation, paid parental and family leave for up to two years, paid sick and disability leave, a minimum of one month’s paid vacation, and at least 12 paid holidays.
Poverty will be eradicated by providing a guaranteed living income for any worker who is not able to find or hold a job. Priority in addressing the legacy of capitalism will be granted to communities that have suffered disproportionately in the past.
4: Immigration
See the response to your point 1 and that subheading.
We definitely can’t expect everyone to run their own servers, but tech literacy definitely needs actual attention. So many millenials and zoomers, generationally expected to have a grasp on tech, don’t know what a filesystem hierarchy is and now to access saved files, don’t know the general idea of how files are transferred online, or have complete indifference to the corporate consolidation of tech.
Our lives are far too intertwined with technology to stay oblivious to its uses and its dangers.
and have moved to syncing important files across my devices with Syncthing instead.
Syncthing is criminally underutilized. It’s p2p, entirely self-reliant, and incredibly fast. But since it doesn’t upload to the cloud, it confuses people despite essentially being like Dropbox. And I don’t want to sound elitist as tech education (at least in the US) is absolutely miserable. Bourgeois hegemony has dictated that the only thing to learn is Microsoft Office and everything else is magic and left to tech nerds. I don’t know if it’s still the case now with Office as it was 20 years ago, they may have switched to teaching Google Docs, but the point still stands.
bspwm
When I first started using Linux full-time around 2015, I used Cinnamon on Mint. 2017 I made the switch to XFCE on Debian, and 2018 I started to look at tiling WMs once my usage mostly revolved around the terminal.
i3 honestly seemed too “basic” and I already had a bad impression of it after unsuccessfully trying it. Heard that bspwm was another popular one, so set that up on Debian and I’ve used it since, even now that I’m on Void
I’ll echo other comments in that the modern web is a mess and it’s hard to escape the bloat unless you’re using a text browser.
But what could help is Firefox with add-ons like uBlock Origin and Noscript. The former can massively lighten the load on ad-heavy sites, and Noscript will let you block the bloat of JavaScript while allowing specific bits if the site breaks with all of the blocks.