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rhizzone's pretty good to lurk on if you can eventually decipher the decade old in jokes and don't mind reading a forum that updates at the speed of a newspaper.
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Sep 29, 2018 18:15
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the internet is extremely useful for organizing but expecting that a person you talk to over steam chat is as likely to get involved or show up to a meeting or action or whatever as someone who you actually have an in person conversation with is naive im sorry. showing up at peoples work and neighborhoods and establishing an actual presence there and making real connections with people is way more valuable and has much better long term prospects than sending everyone at the company or the neighborhood youre trying to organize an email asking them to like your FB page for updates
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Sep 29, 2018 18:15
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i honestly don't think anyone under 50 reads newspapers dog
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Sep 29, 2018 18:18
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they do and they pay us for them. if selling newspapers wasnt effective in my experience I wouldnt do it and I would tell all of you not to do it either. in my experience its very effective and high schooland college students are excited to read socialist ideas right now.
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Sep 29, 2018 18:25
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apropos to nothing posted:they do and they pay us for them. if selling newspapers wasnt effective in my experience I wouldnt do it and I would tell all of you not to do it either. in my experience its very effective and high schooland college students are excited to read socialist ideas right now.
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Sep 29, 2018 18:27
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"ah, a young person on the street is trying to sell me something," i think, walking from my permatemp job to the nearby mcdonald's so i can quickly wolf down a burger for the ten minutes of peace i get in a day, "i should definitely use this time to engage with this college student wearing 87 pins and maybe get an idea of what they think about politics."
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Sep 29, 2018 18:28
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Impermanent posted:"ah, a young person on the street is trying to sell me something," i think, walking from my permatemp job to the nearby mcdonald's so i can quickly wolf down a burger for the ten minutes of peace i get in a day, "i should definitely use this time to engage with this college student wearing 87 pins and maybe get an idea of what they think about politics." lmao im old as poo poo buddy
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Sep 29, 2018 18:33
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I kind of enjoyed selling newspapers when I lived in the US and was active in the ISO. granted, it wasn't just papers, we also always had a stock of Haymarket books and fliers for various political actions taking place in the near future and other things (I liked to make buttons at the time), but I think there is a certain kind of political training you get out of actually trying to pitch someone on buying a political newspaper. it gets to a certain core truth about being an advocate of a political cause: you are fundamentally trying to sell people on an idea. you have to be able to communicate in ways that appeal to them. this is not something people are born being able to do, and it comes to some people more easily than others. I have never seen a better way to train this capacity than being a salesman. it was often the case that even when I tried to pitch someone on buying a paper, even if they didn't take one it led to some kind of a political conversation taking place in which I would have the opportunity to share a political perspective maybe the other person had never heard before. would it radicalize them? probably not in itself, but I like to think that maybe it fertilized the ground for that person to question some of the political assumptions that society conditions us to have.
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Sep 29, 2018 18:35
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Mr. Lobe posted:I kind of enjoyed selling newspapers when I lived in the US and was active in the ISO. granted, it wasn't just papers, we also always had a stock of Haymarket books and fliers for various political actions taking place in the near future and other things (I liked to make buttons at the time), but I think there is a certain kind of political training you get out of actually trying to pitch someone on buying a political newspaper. it gets to a certain core truth about being an advocate of a political cause: you are fundamentally trying to sell people on an idea. you have to be able to communicate in ways that appeal to them. this is not something people are born being able to do, and it comes to some people more easily than others. I have never seen a better way to train this capacity than being a salesman. exactly. if you cant convince someone to give you a dollar to support your political project, what makes you think youre going to convince them to put their job in jeopardy by organizing with you or storm the battlements during The Revolution?
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Sep 29, 2018 18:39
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You'd get more engagement passing out cool flyers that direct people to an online publication and then charging them for "premium" content than expecting them to buy a newspaper every time they see you. It's better to be where people are, and these days people are always online at least once a day. They're not always going to be on your street corner.
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Sep 29, 2018 18:42
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Have we tried twitch streaming to educate the masses on socialism?
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Sep 29, 2018 18:45
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Venom Snake posted:Have we tried twitch streaming to educate the masses on socialism? we need a cute lady with no socks on playing fortyinight though. we don't have those
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Sep 29, 2018 18:46
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Pener Kropoopkin posted:You'd get more engagement passing out cool flyers that direct people to an online publication and then charging them for "premium" content than expecting them to buy a newspaper every time they see you. It's better to be where people are, and these days people are always online at least once a day. They're not always going to be on your street corner. I mean, they can get the contents for the paper for free by going to the website. and the link to the paper was generally on the fliers we had for the stuff we did. regardless, and maybe I'm just old fashioned here, I find there is a kind of anachronistic appeal about something like a socialist newspaper. like, before I lived in a big city, the idea of such a thing existing in the US was just completely outside the realm of my imagination. I'm sure that appeal isn't universal, and that's where the fliers and the other materials we had on hand at tabling was more useful (the buttons were pretty popular). and anyways, if someone actually pays money for something like a paper, they're probably more likely to engage with the material than if they're just given a link.
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Sep 29, 2018 18:48
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Pener Kropoopkin posted:You'd get more engagement passing out cool flyers that direct people to an online publication and then charging them for "premium" content than expecting them to buy a newspaper every time they see you. It's better to be where people are, and these days people are always online at least once a day. They're not always going to be on your street corner. ahh sorry, the table is just too small we dont have room for flyers for upcoming events and labor actions or pamphlets or pins or anything like that, only the newspapers.
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Sep 29, 2018 18:51
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apropos to nothing posted:ahh sorry, the table is just too small we dont have room for flyers for upcoming events and labor actions or pamphlets or pins or anything like that, only the newspapers. Sarcasm isn't going to make you anymore in-touch or appealing. Have you ever considered that the people willing to buy your newspapers are weirdos, or buying it to make fun of you?
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Sep 29, 2018 18:57
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if the internet has taught me anything, it's that it isn't that far of an arc to go from ironic mockery to sincere appreciation. and if all that's happening is that we're radicalizing the weirdos, well, someone has to radicalize the weirdos, right?
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Sep 29, 2018 19:03
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The national character of the Georgians is usually represented as trusting, impressionable, quick-tempered, while at the same time devoid of energy and initiative. Above all, Reclus noted their gaiety, sociability and forthrightness. Stalin's character has few of these characters, which, indeed, are the most immediately noticeable in personal intercourse with Georgians. Georgian émigres in Paris assured Souvarine, the author of Stalin's French biography, that Joseph Djugashvili's mother was not a Georgian but an Osetin and that there is an admixture of Mongolian blood in his veins. But a certain Iremashvili, whom we shall have the occasion to meet again in the future, asserts that Stalin's mother was a pure-blooded Georgian, whereas his father was an Osetin, "a coarse, uncouth person, like all the Osetins, who live in the high Caucasian mountains." It is difficult, if not impossible, to verify these assertions. However, they are scarcely necessary for the purpose of explaining Stalin's moral stature. In the countries of the Mediterranean Sea, in the Balkans, in Italy, in Spain, in addition to the so-called Southern type, which is characterized by a combination of lazy shiftlessness and explosive irascibility, one meets cold nature, in whom phlegm is combined with stubbornness and slyness. The first type prevails; the second augments it as an exception. It would seem as if each national group is doled out its due share of basic character elements, yet these are less happily distributed under the southern than under the northern sun.
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Sep 29, 2018 19:08
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My main issue with the Trot group I'm most familiar with is that after a few months it just seemed like the organization only really existed to perpetuate itself, with its main focus being to publish and sell their poorly written newspaper and to get people to come to their reading groups. I think there were lots of practical organizational lessons you could learn from them but after a while the org started to feel a bit like a benign cult, with a handful of people at the top drawing full salaries from the dues paying membership and very little work seeming to happen other than constant recruitment drives to bring in more people to write and sell the newspaper. Obviously there's merit to building a cohesive organization with focused goals and a committed membership but having a bunch of university students larping about 1917 and hawking poorly written magazines just didn't seem like a viable path toward revolution.
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Sep 29, 2018 19:08
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Pener Kropoopkin posted:Sarcasm isn't going to make you anymore in-touch or appealing. Have you ever considered that the people willing to buy your newspapers are weirdos, or buying it to make fun of you? completely unlike the folks who you would meet on the internet right?
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Sep 29, 2018 19:09
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the woman who spent 20 minutes talking to me about organizing to fight racism and gender oppression and gave me $10 was doing it for a laugh, vs the posters on the joke debate sub-forum on something awful who are very serious about revolutionary politics
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Sep 29, 2018 19:13
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Pener Kropoopkin posted:Sarcasm isn't going to make you anymore in-touch or appealing. Have you ever considered that the people willing to buy your newspapers are weirdos, or buying it to make fun of you? Buying newspapers to own the libs
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Sep 29, 2018 19:15
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Helsing posted:My main issue with the Trot group I'm most familiar with is that after a few months it just seemed like the organization only really existed to perpetuate itself, with its main focus being to publish and sell their poorly written newspaper and to get people to come to their reading groups. I think there were lots of practical organizational lessons you could learn from them but after a while the org started to feel a bit like a benign cult, with a handful of people at the top drawing full salaries from the dues paying membership and very little work seeming to happen other than constant recruitment drives to bring in more people to write and sell the newspaper. I can only speak to my personal experience, but I felt like when I was in the ISO I did a lot of organizing over specific actions taking place where I lived, or worked to make coalitions happen for protests or solidarity actions with strikes or things like that. I'm sure different organizations (or hell, probably different branches of the ISO) are more or less successful at actually striking a good balance between organization building and engaging with existing struggles. and if there are no struggles to engage with, it's very difficult for a socialist organization to be anything more than a reading group. see: the past 5 decades of US history before 2016
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Sep 29, 2018 19:15
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like, at the end of the day, it's material conditions that are going to do the heavy lifting when it comes to building movements. the best we can hope for is to train ourselves to be able to act on that initiative when the time comes, and to try to fan the sparks of that struggle now as best we can in the hopes that something bigger will come of them.
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Sep 29, 2018 19:18
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Mr. Lobe posted:I can only speak to my personal experience, but I felt like when I was in the ISO I did a lot of organizing over specific actions taking place where I lived, or worked to make coalitions happen for protests or solidarity actions with strikes or things like that. I'm sure different organizations (or hell, probably different branches of the ISO) are more or less successful at actually striking a good balance between organization building and engaging with existing struggles. and if there are no struggles to engage with, it's very difficult for a socialist organization to be anything more than a reading group. see: the past 5 decades of US history before 2016 The org I'm thinking of did these kinds of things but they mostly just amounted to a dozen or so university aged people with a banner, a table and some magazines showing up at any protest or strike or other event of note and trying to sell copies of their paper. In theory they were showing solidarity and demonstrating their willingness to come out and fight the bosses but in practice I think they were just marginalizing themselves because it was just a bunch of 20 something guys talking with utter seriousness about the dictatorship of the proles. People often resented them because they felt like instead of expressing real solidarity these people were just opportunistically trying to grab publicity for themselves whenever possible so instead of building trust they just alienated most people. They were growing year over year so obviously they had some success but it never felt like that success was building toward anything other than selling more papers and tabling on more university campuses.
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Sep 29, 2018 19:36
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apropos to nothing posted:they do and they pay us for them. Ancedotal but my friend actually got a trot newspaper foisted on him for free after he refused to pay for it. He didn't read it but couldn't refuse the poor iso guy
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Sep 29, 2018 20:45
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you kinda have to be an rear end not to buy a streetsheet if you can afford it
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Sep 29, 2018 21:15
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Helsing posted:The org I'm thinking of did these kinds of things but they mostly just amounted to a dozen or so university aged people with a banner, a table and some magazines showing up at any protest or strike or other event of note and trying to sell copies of their paper. In theory they were showing solidarity and demonstrating their willingness to come out and fight the bosses but in practice I think they were just marginalizing themselves because it was just a bunch of 20 something guys talking with utter seriousness about the dictatorship of the proles. People often resented them because they felt like instead of expressing real solidarity these people were just opportunistically trying to grab publicity for themselves whenever possible so instead of building trust they just alienated most people. thats unfortunate but this is also why just dismissing groups or orgs as maoists or trots or MLs or whatever is bad to do. theres huge differences between different organizations that are on paper under the same label. like FRSO and red guards are both self-proclaimed maoists, but youd be hard pressed to find many similarities between the two in how they organize and behave. mind if I ask what org it was that you were affiliated with? no worries if youd rather not say
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Sep 29, 2018 21:27
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So vanguardism is bad. Organizing to the left of DSA is bad. Saying the DSA should be more left wing is bad. I don't exactly understand how we're going to get full communism going by this thread's standards. Because it seems like the only permissible action is to wait for a freak occurrence of circumstance, take our 50k DSA members the majority of whom just subscribe to it along with Netflix and their favorite YouTube patreons, coast on it for a while, and hope they don't all get disenchanted when it turns out you can't end capitalism or even get decent welfare by having a dozen endorsed House members and 20 state politicians get elected. I'm sorry but I don't think this is a good plan boyos
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Sep 29, 2018 22:10
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Graphic posted:So vanguardism is bad. Organizing to the left of DSA is bad. Saying the DSA should be more left wing is bad. i feel like i'm taking crazy pills, no one is saying this but you keep bringing it up. are you a cop?
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Sep 29, 2018 22:13
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Karl Barks posted:i feel like i'm taking crazy pills, no one is saying this but you keep bringing it up. are you a cop? i feel like i'm taking crazy pills, that's been the last 24 hours in this thread. yes i'm a cop
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Sep 29, 2018 22:25
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Graphic posted:i feel like i'm taking crazy pills, that's been the last 24 hours in this thread. yes i'm a cop You have to tell us if you... Oh my apologies officer, force of habit
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Sep 29, 2018 22:31
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Going to be busy for a while guys, watching my favorite youtube patreons
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Sep 29, 2018 22:40
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But has your chapter considered the newspaper?!? Seriously though how is it that trots are so well known for the 50 cent newspaper and I've never met a newspaper hawking trot in real life (or even a self described trot at all) and yet I've met about 10 maoists who tell you they're a revisionist about 5 seconds into the conversation
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Sep 29, 2018 22:42
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Maybe anecdotes aren't a good measure of outreach.
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Sep 29, 2018 22:44
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https://twitter.com/JuCheGuevara/status/1046116711727026176
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Sep 30, 2018 00:36
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*MTWs throw their hat on the ground and start stomping on it*
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Sep 30, 2018 00:41
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https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/sep/12b.htm this is a good one
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Sep 30, 2018 00:56
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basically, when poo poo starts to get real, reformists will rise, and they will attract a large amount of energy to their movement, because not everyone goes "i don't have enough money to to pay my bills, I need to kill the wealthy", our job is to see that they get there 
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Sep 30, 2018 01:56
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ShriekingMarxist posted:basically, when poo poo starts to get real, reformists will rise, and they will attract a large amount of energy to their movement, because not everyone goes "i don't have enough money to to pay my bills, I need to kill the wealthy", our job is to see that they get there Yeah this
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Sep 30, 2018 02:39
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ShriekingMarxist posted:basically, when poo poo starts to get real, reformists will rise, and they will attract a large amount of energy to their movement, because not everyone goes "i don't have enough money to to pay my bills, I need to kill the wealthy", our job is to see that they get there So what you're saying is - we should rob banks and take everyone's money. Then they'll have no choice but to be communists!
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Sep 30, 2018 03:55
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