bump_fn posted:

actually its really cool to alienate all new people

Venom Snake posted:

Is there a school of socialism thats fine going for democratic reform but wouldn't be upset if the revolution happened tomorrow as well cause it would mean I wouldn't need to go to work

Venom Snake posted:

I mean iv always been sympathetic to leftist stuff but I'm also 21 and what I knew about socialism was "the USSR had cool military stuff oh and economic reform is cool to I guess" up until a few months ago when my life got a very rude awakening

Business Gorillas posted:

i'm glad that nobody in this thread is in leadership because the goon caucus would destroy the DSA in 3 weeks

R. Mute posted:

i just like being mean to venom snake

anyway, vs,

the main question isn't really between reformism and the revolution, but more about what the ultimate goal is. if you just want free healthcare and education, well, then you can still do that (kinda) within capitalism if you were so inclined - and that'd be social democracy, western europe style. you don't want to be this type, tbf. you can, and should, take a step further and want the end of the capitalist system, which mainly involves the abolition of the private ownership of the means of production. there's a ton of different ideologies that each have their own way of taking that step and on where to go once that step has been taken and it's worth getting a general feel for where you're at on that question. but don't get lost in trying to figure out if you're a maoist third worldist or a luxemburgist or whatever. theory's nice and all that, but you gotta focus on the now.

bump_fn posted:

did the tea party have this dumb poo poo infighting

Howard Zinn posted:

With the Establishment's inability either to solve severe economic problems at home or to manufacture abroad a safety valve for domestic discontent, Americans might be ready to demand not just more tinkering, more reform laws, another reshuffling of the same deck, another New Deal, but radical change. Let us be Utopian for a moment so that when we get realistic again it is not that "realism" so useful to the Establishment in its discouragement of action, that "realism" anchored to a certain kind of history empty of surprise. Let us imagine what radical change would require of us all.

The society's levers of powers would have to be taken away from those whose drives have led to the present state-the giant corporations, the military, and their politician collaborators. We would need-by a coordinated effort of local groups all over the country-to reconstruct the economy for both efficiency and justice, producing in a cooperative way what people need most. We would start on our neighborhoods, our cities, our workplaces. Work of some kind would be needed by everyone, including people now kept out of the work force-children, old people, "handicapped" people. Society could use the enormous energy now idle, the skills and talents now unused. Everyone could share the routine but necessary jobs for a few hours a day, and leave most of the time free for enjoyment, creativity, labors of love, and yet produce enough for an equal and ample distribution of goods. Certain basic things would be abundant enough to be taken out of the money system and be available-free-to everyone: food, housing, health care, education, transportation.

The great problem would be to work out a way of accomplishing this without a centralized bureaucracy, using not the incentives of prison and punishment, but those incentives of cooperation which spring from natural human desires, which in the past have been used by the state in times of war, but also by social movements that gave hints of how people might behave in different conditions. Decisions would be made by small groups of people in their workplaces, their neighborhoods-a network of cooperatives, in communication with one another, a neighborly socialism avoiding the class hierarchies of capitalism and the harsh dictatorships that have taken the name "socialist."

People in time, in friendly communities, might create a new, diversified, nonviolent culture, in which all forms of personal and group expression would be possible. Men and women, black and white, old and young, could then cherish their differences as positive attributes, not as reasons for domination. New values of cooperation and freedom might then show up in the relations of people, the upbringing of children.

To do all that, in the complex conditions of control in the United States, would require combining the energy of all previous movements in American history-of labor insurgents, black rebels, Native Americans, women, young people-along with the new energy of an angry middle class. People would need to begin to transform their immediate environments-the workplace, the family, the school, the community-by a series of struggles against absentee authority, to give control of these places to the people who live and work there.

These struggles would involve all the tactics used at various times in the past by people's movements: demonstrations, marches, civil disobedience; strikes and boycotts and general strikes; direct action to redistribute wealth, to reconstruct institutions, to revamp relationships; creating-in music, literature, drama, all the arts, and all the areas of work and play in everyday life-a new culture of sharing, of respect, a new joy in the collaboration of people to help themselves and one another.

There would be many defeats. But when such a movement took hold in hundreds of thousands of places all over the country it would be impossible to suppress, because the very guards the system depends on to crush such a movement would be among the rebels. It would be a new kind of revolution, the only kind that could happen, I believe, in a country like the United States. It would take enormous energy, sacrifice, commitment, patience. But because it would be a process over time, starting without delay, there would be the immediate satisfactions that people have always found in the affectionate ties of groups striving together for a common goal.

All this takes us far from American history, into the realm of imagination. But not totally removed from history. There are at least glimpses in the past of such a possibility. In the sixties and seventies, for the first time, the Establishment failed to produce national unity and patriotic fervor in a war. There was a flood of cultural changes such as the country had never seen-in sex, family, personal relations-exactly those situations most difficult to control from the ordinary centers of power. And never before was there such a general withdrawal of confidence from so many elements of the political and economic system. In every period of history, people have found ways to help one another-even in the midst of a culture of competition and violence-if only for brief periods, to find joy in work, struggle, companionship, nature.

The prospect is for times of turmoil, struggle, but also inspiration. There is a chance that such a movement could succeed in doing what the system itself has never done-bring about great change with little violence. This is possible because the more of the 99 percent that begin to see themselves as sharing needs, the more the guards and the prisoners see their common interest, the more the Establishment becomes isolated, ineffectual. The elite's weapons, money, control of information would be useless in the face of a determined population. The servants of the system would refuse to work to continue the old, deadly order, and would begin using their time, their space-the very things given them by the system to keep them quiet-to dismantle that system while creating a new one.

The prisoners of the system will continue to rebel, as before, in ways that cannot be foreseen, at times that cannot be predicted. The new fact of our era is the chance that they may be joined by the guards. We readers and writers of books have been, for the most part, among the guards. If we understand that, and act on it, not only will life be more satisfying, right off, but our grandchildren, or our great grandchildren, might possibly see a different and marvelous world.

ChickenOfTomorrow posted:

hi

just reminding u that cops are bad

platzapS posted:

I wanna welcome Berniecrats/social democrats to DSA. This article started to make me think social democracy is not workable long-term, though. If you don't destroy the capitalist class they will fight you forever.

Business Gorillas posted:

*looks at how every leftist group in the past 50 years was COINTELPRO'd into irrelevance*

Venom Snake posted:

18 year old venom snake: you can tell when the workers own the means of production because they make really ground ground effect vehicles for deliver nuclear payloads over large but flat bodies of water

R. Guyovich posted:

the ghost of lenin descends to tell you bourgeois democracy is no way to destroy the capitalist class

ChickenOfTomorrow posted:

https://twitter.com/RIPMarkusJ/status/895463916117020673

bump_fn posted:

did the tea party have this dumb poo poo infighting

platzapS posted:

I'm agreeing with you!

Agnosticnixie posted:

Yes, this is very clever and hasn't been discussed for the past 10 pages even from an libcom perspective.

The vast majority of crime is either victimless or against property; "there will still be some sort of enforcement or mediation therefore checkmate abolitionist" is an uninteresting response that is built on trying to pretend the postrevolutionary world should look like capitalism except nicer, including in its structures.

Yinlock posted:

i'm not trying to pretend anything, i'm saying that "abolish the police" sounds loving insane if you don't back it up with anything

Business Gorillas posted:

*looks at how every leftist group in the past 50 years has self-segregated into irrelevance*

have we considered... purging our membership of people that aren't committed enough to class warfare?

Minty posted:

good thing, when it came up, Praxis had a huge list of concrete suggestions to back it up with I'm sure you've read

Yinlock posted:

"if you just read the website"

Minty posted:

"if you just read the proposal you were voting on"

Minty posted:

you are seeing a now adopted DSA goal which was voted on at the convention, based on material published for the convention, and refusing to get past your knee jerk reaction to it to understand what it says

quote:

Additionally, we must connect to anti-racist groups both internally and beyond DSA to explore nationally-backed local campaigns for:

Unarmed mediation and intervention training for street harassment, partner violence, gang violence, and mental health crises — potentially modeled after groups like Cure Violence and Ceasefire

Decriminalization of most nonviolent crime. It is often petty offenses, such as traffic violations or other low risk infractions that pull poor people into the orbit of the prison system. Criminalizing these types of petty offenses is also a significant source of revenue for some cities, particularly those with strong Black populations such as Ferguson. Decriminalization is the only surefire way to stop this exploitation and racism.

Restorative justice models rather than prison sentences

Community patrol and copwatch trainings

Yinlock posted:

because on it's surface it's very misleading, like


these are all extremely good, but don't really come to mind anywhere when you say "abolish the police"

Raskolnikov38 posted:

think of it as abolishing the police as they currently exist

Raskolnikov38 posted:

Minty posted:

well, poo poo, "abolish capitalism" is very misleading if all you advocate for are labor rights

short term goals service the larger goal, and the ultimate goal keeps you from losing your way to pragmatism