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namesake posted:I'm glad XR groups are moving onto smaller, more targeted property damaging stunts because it means proper eco terrorism is coming and that's something I can get behind. but also bad news, it'll be fascists attacking minorities with a bit of greenwashing
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May 4, 2021 18:49
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MikeCrotch posted:The problem with abandoning the Labour party is that we also have over a century of history of extra parliamentary leftists failing to achieve much something i've been mulling over, might be nonsense: seems like one of the fundamental problems with a parliamentary approach is that our system's developed quite a repertoire of defences against it; as it has against lots of other approaches, admittedly, but with the added problem that it's really really difficult to not be fighting on a terrain of the opponent's choice at a time that opponent chooses when you're acting at the speed, and within the limitations, of the state bureaucracy and parliamentary system do i have any idea how to solve this, or anything at all? no. would i like fries with that? yes please
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May 4, 2021 18:51
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Labours big problem short term is that they've got no money and so are clearly making promises to big money donors that will mean they can't make any changes the public really wants Also they don't want to push too hard on the specifics because they have their own skeletons in the closet (Liverpool/David Evans) and clearly will be up to exactly the same procurement shenanigans the Tories do
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May 4, 2021 18:52
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90s Cringe Rock posted:good news! yeah, anders breivik cited eco concerns in his manifesto. It's the same as all concerns bout overpopulation. Oh look an eco centered view where the problem just so happens to be focused towards foreign people instead of, say, the incredible levels of overconsumption at home
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May 4, 2021 18:55
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While it doesn't have quite the same dramatic irony as deploying a taser on your race relations advisor, this seems like a pretty terrible incident, especially in the wake of the Policing bill protest and George Floyd... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-shropshire-56979521
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May 4, 2021 18:56
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Heavy_D posted:While it doesn't have quite the same dramatic irony as deploying a taser on your race relations advisor, this seems like a pretty terrible incident, especially in the wake of the Policing bill protest and George Floyd... 35% unemployment in young black people plus the mainstreaming of Black Lives Matter and the increasing politicisation of football means that if this dude gets acquitted, the country is going to burn.
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May 4, 2021 18:59
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Good news everybody, https://twitter.com/siennamarla/status/1389639674264793088?s=20
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May 4, 2021 19:03
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90s Cringe Rock posted:good news! Nah it won't because mainstream government policy is doing that anyway, they won't bother pretending it's for a green agenda. Fascism is completely onboard with neoliberalism and environmental depletion this time around. It'll be the juicy targets like poorly secured construction equipment which is demolishing a wetlands to add parking for a freeport which starts getting blown up and I'm fully in support of that. CGI Stardust posted:i'd argue that the Labour Party existed during that century, functioning as a general left-absorber and buffer against what wasn't absorbed; hard for a movement to get anything done when a fair chunk of interested and/or energetic people are getting sucked into the Institutions and "reformed" (often under the incredibly funny belief that they could be the ones doing the reforming to said Institutions), or the party is enthusiastically going along with things the extraparliamentary left opposes Realise that no matter how many laws are passed, it is a separate matter enforcing those laws and legitimate power structures exist outside of a purely legal framework.
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May 4, 2021 19:51
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Re. The Labour party, if the left didn't organise within the party we wouldn't have the NHS as it exists today - that was mostly down to Nye Bevan and the left agitating for a more socialist system, otherwise we'd have likely ended up with something more similar to what most European countries have. Same with the current climate bill in the US, it's unlikely to be as "generous" (meagre as it is) without left wing democrats agitating If you think it's not worth bothering with parliamentary politics then you need to have a framework for how you can make societal change outside of the state, with the knowledge that leftists have been having this argument for literally over a century without coming to a conclusion
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May 4, 2021 20:12
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the conclusion was forming a vanguard party and not kowtowing to liberals
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May 4, 2021 20:36
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i’ve been a voter for a couple decades and i think this is the first year when i’ll start to be one of those people who draws a dick and balls instead
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May 4, 2021 20:57
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Yeah reformist and revolutionary socialism are both about seizing state power, reformism is the delusion that the ruling class will peacefully hand that power over because they lost a contest lol As a more practical example ACORN is a tenants and community union which takes on case work to protest and cause disruption to letting agents and landlords who are not treating their tenants properly and also aims to cause wider changes in society like campaigning to get public transport back under some level of local authority control (as a crude proxy for democratic control) and held hustings for various candidates in the upcoming elections. There are internal discussions which ask questions like 'What do we want to happen?' and 'What forces and actions can we organise to get them?' and we then do them. That is a means of creating and holding power completely within the organisation, and it can perpetuate itself from its own membership rather than pleading with forces inherently hostile to it to let it keep going. Trade unions used to ask the same sort of questions but a total failure of resistance against legal restrictions, crap leadership unable to think around the restrictions and an organisational bondage with the reformist socialist mindset and Labour Party means nationally they now exist to fail to organise strikes properly and locally occasionally defend a member from being sacked. There's so much confusion about feeling like things must be done the 'right' way rather than just getting the things done, which is absolutely a losing mindset in politics. The right way is any way which achieves your immediate goals with an eye towards moving towards your ideological frameworks end goal and the wrong way is any way which fails or gets soundly beaten.
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May 4, 2021 21:03
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Raskolnikov38 posted:the conclusion was forming a vanguard party and not kowtowing to liberals good news, there are 17 Vanguard Parties
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May 4, 2021 21:26
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Friendly post to remind you that Universal Credit is loving evil and designed to let people suffer and starve: the cruelty is the point of it IDS should be loving locked up.
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May 4, 2021 21:36
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Continuity RCP posted:good news, there are 17 Vanguard Parties i almost feel bad for our enemies
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May 4, 2021 21:39
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It's not even like the auth left guys get results, marxist leninist parties in first world nations have been at least as much a failure as reformist parties and largely only seem to appeal to arcane theory wonks, weird iconoclasts and MI5 operatives. I don't have a clue what the answer is but the question to me seems to be is there any way a left movement can organise and take power inside the heart of the beast?
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May 4, 2021 21:39
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vanguard parties in mostly stable, rich countries are not going to get anywhere because they need their cadres to be willing to sacrifice everything they have to the party. if you don't have much of anything, that's not a completely terrible proposition; if you do, you need basically cult-like indoctrination methods to stay coherent and then you inevitably end up with well-publicised abuses of power reformism is likewise not an easy path, but it's less obviously absurd than vanguardism under these circumstances. some kind of mass politics is necessary; things can change quickly, and if you're the only one willing and able to credibly promise bread and peace you can use your existing small mass party to leverage a catastrophe into a revolutionary situation. such a party is likely to also be co-opted, but i would note that corbyn is the first actual socialist to get anywhere near power in the entire west since at least mitterand (depending on whether you see him as an actual socialist...)
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May 4, 2021 22:26
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calling people like the corbynites "incompetent" grinds my gears a lot because it's not taking the ideology as it is seriously at all, it's a sort of dogmatic contempt of failure without a willingness to examine it in its specifics and that's a very easy way to end up either in vacuous blairism or in nihilistic totalitarianism, and both of those are traps. examine the corbynite project, find the failure points and strengths and bring it onwards. throwing up one's hands and saying that this is too hard, time to go Green (lol) is just giving up
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May 4, 2021 22:30
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V. Illych L. posted:calling people like the corbynites "incompetent" grinds my gears a lot because it's not taking the ideology as it is seriously at all, it's a sort of dogmatic contempt of failure without a willingness to examine it in its specifics and that's a very easy way to end up either in vacuous blairism or in nihilistic totalitarianism, and both of those are traps. examine the corbynite project, find the failure points and strengths and bring it onwards. throwing up one's hands and saying that this is too hard, time to go Green (lol) is just giving up Okay maybe I'm being a bit too harsh on the Labour left membership but the really critical thing to observe and reflect on is that Corbyn is a relic from a form of the Labour Party which no longer exists and his taking of the leadership was a fluke which everyone is now aware of. This means that what exists of the left in Labour has spent decades out of influence without rebuilding power and the way in which Corbyn got in will consciously never be repeated. A desire to continue the endeavour in Labour seems to be driven by a vain hope of lightning striking twice or, on a more theory driven basis, around Labours historic role as the party of organised labour and the formal links to the unions suggesting that the Labour Party inherently carries a link to the class and so will always be the best spot to relate to the struggle. I am completely unconvinced that either of these things are worth centring a strategy around, because the unions are institutionally so bad at their role in society right now and the success of the SNP and potentially even Plaid and the NIP show that the masses can be enthused about a lot of different political projects outside of Westminster meaning any historic link is either no longer true or can be replicated by a sufficiently well directed group. Another extremely major reason for the failures of Corbynism was the lack of anything going on outside of Corbynism that played to the lefts strengths - a loving terrorist incident was one of the high points of the 2017 election campaign in terms of the Labour Party being able to relate to the working class attitude to imperialism and war and while there were some important strikes that the front bench managed to go out and support there were no working class campaigns that they could join and boost while also improving their own standing. The terrain was awful for the parliamentary left but it is just as bad now, if not worse, and another attempt as a Labour faction or a new party will face the same problem trying to grasp public attention. I think the UK left faces a series of incredibly difficult options about what and how to build but really don't think there's any argument to say Labour is a better avenue than a new party or flat out trying to defy the authority of the British state entirely.
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May 4, 2021 23:04
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the conventional wisdom itt is that corbyn lost because he was insufficiently vigorous about confronting and sweeping out internal wreckers and saboteurs. for the record, i don't think that's wrong even if i do think it's an incomplete explanation. but the response to that should be a vigorous analysis of what "corbynism" actually is, where it excelled and where it failed. for instance, looking at the aforementioned wreckers, perhaps you could argue a weakness of the movement was a lack of infrastructure to replace such people, or a lack of funding such that they had to be relied on, or a structural flaw in taking over an existing party with hostile embedded structural forces without a plan to purge those forces. this is a long discussion and requires a lot of information, but that's the sort of analysis i think VIL is proposing, which i agree is necessary.
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May 4, 2021 23:16
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corbyn is an interesting case because it gives lots of evidence to the idea that the liberal establishment is the total and utter enemy of any meaningful reform. this is an idea that isn't very pleasant to think about though, because the consequences are that the liberal institutions leftists are trying to influence in a rational manner are not rational.
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May 4, 2021 23:28
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Yes someone could really make a great deal of study out of it which might expose a number of things but is that better than NOT embarking on a campaign to try and get a bunch of people who are in paid party or elected and pretty unremovable positions removed and simply... starting something else? It won't change the overall political situation nationally but there's absolutely no strategic benefit to fighting the Labour right on their hometurf when they control all the important levers and risk getting suspended for challenging them when you can just... not. There's no way to easily sideline them but entering a party which will actively stop you from organising against them is just giving ammunition to the enemy. bedpan posted:corbyn is an interesting case because it gives lots of evidence to the idea that the liberal establishment is the total and utter enemy of any meaningful reform. this is an idea that isn't very pleasant to think about though, because the consequences are that the liberal institutions leftists are trying to influence in a rational manner are not rational. That's very easy to think about if you're a Maxist though?
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May 4, 2021 23:28
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namesake posted:Yes someone could really make a great deal of study out of it which might expose a number of things but is that better than NOT embarking on a campaign to try and get a bunch of people who are in paid party or elected and pretty unremovable positions removed and simply... starting something else? It won't change the overall political situation nationally but there's absolutely no strategic benefit to fighting the Labour right on their hometurf when they control all the important levers and risk getting suspended for challenging them when you can just... not. something I would ask of the people who are trying to reform an organization like labor or the dems is that when the reform attempts are rejected, will they continue to donate money and time and vote for the candidates? if the reformers are unwilling to punish the party on election day, they won't be taken seriously by anyone
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May 4, 2021 23:32
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bedpan posted:something I would ask of the people who are trying to reform an organization like labor or the dems is that when the reform attempts are rejected, will they continue to donate money and time and vote for the candidates? if the reformers are unwilling to punish the party on election day, they won't be taken seriously by anyone Yeah that's a critical bit really. I went out canvassing for Labour in between 2017 and 2019 despite not being a member because I saw the value in helping them and naturally dropped them the second that stopped being true. Momentum Bristol are doing really well at that - after the elected officials rigged a bunch of CLP elections and suspended a bunch of Labour members they emailed their Momentum members and organised a canvassing strike to not campaign for any Labour figure which isn't calling for the members to be reinstated and the fraudulent elections to be done properly which means they aren't doing poo poo for the city or metro mayor elections nor most councillors. That's the sort of co-ordinated resistance that should be happening but since it's bottom up from the people in Bristol rather than having any support nationally or from the SCG that's basically proving my point about how worthless the organisational Labour left are and why the good lefties should just leave and do other things.
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May 4, 2021 23:40
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bedpan posted:something I would ask of the people who are trying to reform an organization like labor or the dems is that when the reform attempts are rejected, will they continue to donate money and time and vote for the candidates? if the reformers are unwilling to punish the party on election day, they won't be taken seriously by anyone we'll find out on Friday!
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May 4, 2021 23:41
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namesake posted:It'll be the juicy targets like poorly secured construction equipment which is demolishing a wetlands to add parking for a freeport which starts getting blown up and I'm fully in support of that. If it's about directly attacking capital property and not random civilians I foresee it being crushed with overwhelming force unheard of in the 20 years of the WoT
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May 4, 2021 23:43
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PoontifexMacksimus posted:If it's about directly attacking capital property and not random civilians I foresee it being crushed with overwhelming force unheard of in the 20 years of the WoT for example an outrageous bill being forced through parliament past a spineless opposition
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May 4, 2021 23:45
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gonadic io posted:for example an outrageous bill being forced through parliament past a spineless opposition Yeah the government might slightly be overreaching in its plan to criminalise the act of protest so I'm basically settled into the idea of picking up some scars and a record over the next few years no matter what.
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May 4, 2021 23:50
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Kier faces obliteration.
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May 4, 2021 23:55
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keith: automata
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May 4, 2021 23:57
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bedpan posted:something I would ask of the people who are trying to reform an organization like labor or the dems is that when the reform attempts are rejected, will they continue to donate money and time and vote for the candidates? if the reformers are unwilling to punish the party on election day, they won't be taken seriously by anyone There's merit of doing stuff like being in the party to try to select left wing council candidates then get them elected, even if you don't do poo poo for the national party. We also have to think about the fact that Keiths position is more precarious than given credit for - if he loses Hartlepool his entire raison d'etre is done and he's a dead man walking, especially as he has no power base within the PLP really. The question is then how willing are the Labour right to simply lose elections instead of giving the membership another shot at electing a leftist.
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May 5, 2021 00:25
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The labour right will choose losing elections, every single time, without a second's hesitation or a moment of doubt.
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May 5, 2021 00:32
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namesake posted:That's very easy to think about if you're a Maxist though? a whole bunch of people who at least claim to be legitimately into reform are also opponents of marxism and marxist theory and so can't see their real enemies or understand the motivations. this of course instantly dooms their efforts to be at best failures.
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May 5, 2021 00:33
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Facehammer posted:The labour right will choose losing elections, every single time, without a second's hesitation or a moment of doubt. Captive opposition cannot fail, only
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May 5, 2021 00:40
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bedpan posted:corbyn is an interesting case because it gives lots of evidence to the idea that the liberal establishment is the total and utter enemy of any meaningful reform. this is an idea that isn't very pleasant to think about though, because the consequences are that the liberal institutions leftists are trying to influence in a rational manner are not rational. This is reality almost everywhere.
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May 5, 2021 00:41
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MikeCrotch posted:The question is then how willing are the Labour right to simply lose elections instead of giving the membership another shot at electing a leftist. Do you think they would hesitate for a single second to take a dive every election from now until England sinks into the sea if it means never seeing another corbyn
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May 5, 2021 02:14
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May 5, 2021 02:17
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He's appreciating the posts
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May 5, 2021 02:21
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i say swears online posted:keith: automata become as melts
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May 5, 2021 02:30
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End of the unelectable
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May 5, 2021 03:13
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