I mean, the capitalists has a left, moderate, and a right, the middle class has a left, moderate and a right, the revolutionary left has a left, moderate, and a right. The conditions that determine these definitions vary from place to place and time to time.

Like I agree with the post, in one very narrow interpretation, but instead of insisting that one extremely broad abstraction is the "best one," which is a tendency we inherited from bourgeois hegemony and a misconception about how ideas spread, we should be helping each other to determine our own local conditions, how to be concrete and scientific about those determinations, and sharing those local conditions to develop regional -> national -> international perspectives. Only a mass party of and for the workers organized on the basis of objective human need and interest is capable of such coordination.

For example, many areas have organically progressive petty capitalist elements. During a period of mass struggle, like a general strike, the role of organizers is not to allow or even force those individual capitalists to side with the capitalists, but work with them to divide them from the right and moderate capitalists so they side with the workers. Is this deeply contradictory! Yes! But real conditions, especially revolutionary ones, are inherently contradictory.

I think its true that capitalism is right wing, that is, against progress. But is that actionable information? If applied crudely to actual struggle, it will create more confusion for people, than just like, getting people to talk to and work with each other and understand the objective conditions, so they can be changed and struggled with directly. Its too easy to intellectually transform capitalism = right wing into right wing = bad, and therefore individual capitalists = bad; which just leads to campism and sectarianism.

At this point, a left wing revolution will not destroy capitalism, it will transfer power from the minority capitalists to mass workers; and from there, continue to struggle on the basis of class toward another revolution that eliminates capitalism. Each revolution will be more humane than the one that came before, each counter revolution less severe. Getting engagement and agreement with a social media post or meme is completely different, and much much simpler, than getting engagement and agreement among the masses to initiate and defend a new phase of social order.

Post-structuralism is moderate left wing/left neoliberalism, period.

If you are pro-post-structuralism, you are academic new-left post-Marxist left neoliberal moderate.

There is some shared reality. Over emphasis of the subjective elements of social reality is inherent in mind body dualism of the hegemonic order that no one can understand as the contradictions of class antagonisms escalate around us

/hj I'm being cheeky

This country isn’t going to change without a revolution, and that isn’t going to happen without a disciplined cadre of professional revolutionaries to guide the proletariat to victory.

Yes but also the revolution must be a revolution of the masses, which is why the question of leadership does not resolve itself before the questions of the organizing the mass party, and the problem of consciousness of the working class. Like it isn't some little sect that leads the revolution! That's been tried and tried, and the effect is sectarian alienation from the workers movement. You say we need a revolution, reference Lenin and Marxism, but then dispense with every single principle of dialectical materialism, which is the Marxist theory of change. You're just proving my point.

The mass party struggles internally and externally to develop the vanguard and the party in preparation for revolution. Even then, the vanguard is not able to choose the time of revolution, objective historical circumstances determine it, and whether or not the workers seize power or the bourgeois, or petty bourgeois or whatever, is based on the former, pre revolutionary period. Did the party work within the class to empower the workers, to instill revolutionary consciousness, to learn to collectivize our efforts and prepare us for revolution? Did the party organize authentic centers of worker power such as the unions, and organize worker councils to reform them and unseat bureaucrats and bring them under democratic worker control? Has the party won legitimacy among the institutions that hold sway in the consciousness of working class? The vanguard is necessary to organize the mass party, the vanguard is not the party itself. The vanguard is composed of elected delegates, not self-appointed revolutionaries who never participate in revolution.

The DSA I know is composed of people like one of my comrades, who is Lebanese, and whenever he goes home to Lebanon he packs 3 bags: one small bag for his clothes and personal belongings, and two massive wardrobe suitcases full of medicine and supplies, which he smuggles into Gaza, he has done this for years. He's been arrested by Israeli police, and been through hell for it, but keeps doing it. When Oct 7 broke out, DSA had been having debates for years struggling internally against nascent Zionism and reformism. If we hadn't been having those debates, the left would not have been in a position to win them. New formations emerged, like Springs of Revolution, made up of people who stayed in DSA through the difficult process,many of whom trace their organizing roots to the Arab Spring, and their own experiences as growing up and living in Palestine. It was exceedingly difficult to get there and hang in through all the nasty debates and political maneuvering of the rightist or reformist tendencies, but now they are leaders in the highest bodies and committees in DSA, including our International Committee which orients us toward these struggles. But even now there is a long way to go, as you point out. But it was a process, and the process is working.

Lenin, when discussing participation in bourgeois elections is explicit, that as long as there is some concrete democratic basis for representing the workers and peasants in elections, that the revolutionary party should participate in them. This was not true after 1905, and Lenin advised against elections for the Duma, since Tsar Nick would just disband parliament if it didn't serve him. but it was true in later periods, like the lead up to 1917 (which Lenin wasn't even in the country for). His work, Left Wing Communism is primarily a criticism of ultralefts advocating for no participation in labor unions and elections. Granted, that was written after 1917, so those conditions don't map cleanly onto our own. But my point is that getting there was a decades long process that involved coordination among many different sections of the working class. The proletarian revolution is a mass revolution, and vice versa; not something a small group of intellectuals handles on their own. I hope that isn't the argument you are making, because if so, you should engage in more practical work and study, which we all should be doing together anyway.

Your description of DSA as an electoral-only organization, is maybe a description of the most right flank of the org. This is what I'm talking about, that you are describing DSA as one thing, when actually it is many tendencies struggling with objective conditions, unevenly distributed over wildly varying cities and regions. In order for you to be correct, DSA has to be this one thing, but what you describe is a minority tendency. Quoting half baked Marxism to justify an objectively incorrect assessments, and then using the horrors in Palestine as a rhetorical flourish, is not Marxism, it isn't Leninism, it isn't scientific, and frankly its exploiting the horrors to justify your half baked politics. Every American sectarian org is splintering, while DSA is growing and gaining mass legitimacy. Its a mess, its a tenuous and difficult prospect, but it is the best thing going in the deeply alienated and reactionary USA. We are digesting 100 years of problems of socialism, and the process isn't pretty. But it is progressing.

DSA IS inherently, if not consistently, democratic and proletarian in nature. Are we annoyingly petty bourgeois in some ways? Yes but those are sites of active struggle within the org, and the reformist and opportunist tendencies are losing ground. The circumstances in NYC DSA are unique and have to be taken together, and apart, from the national org. Frankly I think it is worth celebrating these victories, but these victories are not victories in and of themselves for most of the org, only the right-most sliver, who loses ground nationally and becomes more sectarian as these struggles play out. Its deeply contradictory, but Marxism is in part an analysis of contradiction, and practical activity on the basis of a mass party; not a striving for ideological purity. Insistence on a maximum program is just the other side of social democracy, it isn't revolutionary Marxism.

I'm sorry comrade, but the more you elaborate, the more it is clear that you don't have a Marxist theory of change, you have an idealist theory of revolution.

Look, you are rightly upset about the horrors that exist in the world. You are rightly upset about your criticisms of Mamdani. You are rightly skeptical of DSA. But none of that transforms the org into something that it just isn't. You've moved the goal posts from a criticism of DSA on the basis of our founder, whose influence has been rendered irrelevant and wrong; to a criticism of Mamdani. In order to be coherent you should try to be consistent.

What I mean by you're thinking too abstractly and idealistically, is the actual work that the members engage in, and what those members have brought back to their chapters, committees, and in some cases leadership positions, is what defines the nature of DSA. And the reality of what that work is and how it has developed, does not align with your criticisms of it.

If you joined DSA, you would fit in with a large and growing body of members. Like clearly we weren't always anti Zionist, clearly we still have a ways to go, but it has changed and is continuing to change. What is your theory of change? It seems like you don't have one, you have a sectarian idea of political absolutism and I'm sure you could find some left opportunist sect that would tell you everything you want to hear as long as your dues meet the expectation.

DSA isn't one thing, it hasn't been for a long time. We have ultra sectarians in DSA! We also have reformists, and moderate tendencies, and how those dynamics develop never ceases to yield frustration, or inspire awe. But your criticisms do not make DSA something that it isn't. You don't understand the org, you don't want to understand the org, and that's your prerogative. But if you don't understand how these horrors divide us, if you're not willing to make any compromises with reality, then I don't know what to tell you.

Having a theory of change is not pragmatism, and DSA's theory of change is a site of struggle. So its different than pragmatism. Its always breathtaking how outsiders act like their single criticism is stating some final checkmate; when usually their criticism is alive and playing out inside the org, from a dozen different directions. Meanwhile you just sound like a crank. You aren't wrong! But your attitude and approach is out of sync with the practical process of change.

This is an active debate in DSA. DSA does not have any way of enforcing party discipline on our electeds. The nature of the NYC chapter, itself composed of many qualitatively differing large branches, is the largest, most active and electorally successful branch in the country, and differs qualitatively from the national org.

But it also has to be acknowledged that winning an executive office brings an immense amount of baggage and contradictions. Mamdani did not run as a pure propaganda candidate, and wants to actually govern. Which means he inherited a governance apparatus that has, for years, been ground zero for an immense amount of corruption and personal enrichment. DSA does not have control of the office of NYC mayor, and Mamdani's win has attracted tens of thousands of new members. He has vocally and practically opposed Zionism in many ways, and if the people who he appoints to this or that position do not, then unless they are members of DSA, we can't really do much about it, at this juncture.

The anti-zionism resolution passed but was still very controversial, I had to have many difficult conversations with members after convention explaining why we voted for it. I think you are correct to be critical, and there are parts of DSA that are working to improve our ability to enforce discipline on electeds. National DSA refused to endorse AOC, for example, and are vocal in opposition to her pragmatism toward support for Israel. The National leadership criticizes Mamdani when he makes critical mistakes like you are pointing out. But because you can only think about things abstractly, you can't understand what's actually going on, what forces are at work, and what is being done within the org, as well as Mamdani's own circle, to resolve the concrete contradictions.

This baby simple formula of Mamdani bad = DSA bad is pure ultraleft idealism. You're arm-chairing during the most dynamic moment in the socialist movement in 80+ years. You need to understand that to love DSA is an act of trying to understand it in order to change it; rather than putting it in a box and slapping a label on it like some idealist.

Seriously, if you guys don't start liking AI soon and letting corporations use it to replace intellectual and creative workers, then it will have no practical adoption except for mass surveillance, which means we won't be able to hide the fact that its something we developed just for mass surveillance

The Harrington tendency is dead in DSA, we literally passed an anti-zionist resolution at convention last year, members can be expelled for supporting Zionism.

I mean, its understandable. People were commenting about how much they love Dalí before I came in. As much as maybe I would like people to spend more time with other surrealists, Frida Kahlo, Max Ernst, Jean Míro, and the criminally underrated Honoré Sherrer; Dalí has had a lasting effect on people. I'd much rather have someone appreciate art or an artist I don't like for reasons they can't quite describe, than have them not appreciate art at all! It opens peoples minds more than an association with this or that ideology might close them, IMO!

People also don't want to face how separating the work from the worker is how we all get screwed over, its such a natural state of society that we have internalized it without realizing how anti-human it really is. And the hyper individualism that we are brought up in, people do this unconscious calculation of: if Dalí is a fascist, and I like Dalí, then I like a fascist, and i dont like fascists so DOWNVOTE!! -- when the actual social relations are much more complex than that. I'm kinda used to having controversial opinions, even among those who largely agree with me! I think maybe I get a charge out of it, so for that reason alone maybe is worth the down votes.

I guess I'd like it if people looked up non-fascist surrealists, to appreciate in addition to Dalí. But separating the art from the artist in surrealism is so contradictory. Its not like they just painted flowers or houses. They're like "this is what the inside of my mind is like" which is very compelling, and by definition, inseparable from the artist whose mind is being depicted in their own work

How dare you call me a racist? I'll have you know I have several friends who are cuban

Thats not butt play, its butt serious

5 ANARCHIST ZIIIIIINES

training

You know which police department was nationally regarded as the most well trained PD in the country re: deescalation prior to 2020? Minneapolis.

Lack of training isn't the issue.