this post was submitted on 07 May 2024
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chapotraphouse
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What these people have done is brave, but if you are going to do adventurism, you might as well have fried some bacon as well, to really prove to me that you are serious. These people are just as afraid of confrontation with the larger problem as the current Communist parties are. They think property damage to completely unrelated parties is enough to bring about divestment, when any university that 'stands firm against chaos' has the potential to receive millions of dollars in endowments (bribes) from the powers that be.
I am going to use this little sideline action here to finally say what I say about ALL student protestors or any kind of action like this. What they are doing is commendable, brave, and I would never tell them not to do it. But it will not change things.
The only thing that has even an iota of possibly changing things is long-term organized labor coupled with the threat of revolutionary violence and the will to follow through with that threat. It has to be both! The reason why you have to have both is because those that control labor control the wealth of the nation, and can prevent the state from just immediately rebuilding their losses. If you cannot do that, you will always, inevitably, lose. Fidel won not because of his revolutionary violence, but because everyone in the region he was in was willing to use their labor to support him and his movement, the same goes for the Viet Min and any other revolutionary organization that has ever been successful..
I think burning cop cars isn't bad, and it can actually be helpful if it's timed to impede an encampment raid or something. You're right that student protests can't win alone. The power of the proletariat ultimately comes from our low-level control over the means of production, and students don't have that yet. So short-term I think our task is to link the student protests with organized labor. Campus unions (faculty/staff/student workers) have already been waking up: CUNY did a wildcat sick-out on May Day, University of California employees have a strike vote next week. Some of the more militant general unions are stirring; some UAW members are pushing Fain to rescind his Biden endorsement and SBWU (maybe just the IL ones?) released a statement in support of the encampments.
Note that, for instance, UAW actually has a bunch of grad workers. Imagine if UAW 4811, the one at UC, authorizes a strike, and UAW members in other industries are so fired up that they call (illegal) solidarity strikes.
You can criticize these people all you want, but when our Communist leaders are traveling the US and Europe in the middle of a crisis while praising Kissinger on his death bed, I'd say I'll give these guys a tap on the back, they cleared a very low bar.
Nobody has cleared any bars yet imo. Nobody is actually doing what is required of the moment and we are all shitting the bed. The hope is that we can take these moments, learn from them, and not give in to reactionary sectarian stab in the back nonsense when we inevitably fail.
You think the "fuck the communist pieces of shit" part is directed at the CPC?
Lol
Lmao even