askchapo

Not really.

It radicalizes people but without giving them the tools to understand and resolve the contradictions of capitalism, which is why you see so much pessimism among the online left, or worse, misplaced and blind optimism.

It prioritizes attachment to aesthetics over giving political education to the masses who needed them, which is why you see so many people from the online left regurgitating words they’ve heard of but only a shallow grasp, if not a distorted understanding, of the core principles of Marxism.

For example, I cannot tell you how many times I’ve heard people say “revolutionary defeatism” only to find out that they apply it to the current events in the most shallow manner possible. They don’t understand why Lenin deemed it necessary in 1915, not understanding the context of World War I and its particular role in resolving the contradictions during Lenin’s time. If you do not have a clear understanding of why and how something actually works, then it becomes difficult to apply it to a scenario that is very different from when it was initially conceptualized/applied.

Don’t get me wrong, propaganda and agitation are important to the communist movement, but they operate alongside and as part of a robust political education program delivered to the masses.

This is evident in the current state of the Western left today, which is reduced to memes like “Communism will win!” but they don’t have any strategy to achieve that. You have an entire generation of young leftists that are radicalized from online memes, but they never learned the proper tools and knowledge to form their analyses and formulate a path forward.