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the huge procedural traffic jam yesterday was a roundabout way to reduce Pass the Hat’s odds of passing by shuffling amendment order around so i’m not sure Build is properly to blame here
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Aug 3, 2019 14:57
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the DSA did not endorse joe biden and in my experience those who have tried to mobilize people to campaign for him anyway are in a minority and have faced pretty sharp internal criticism. maybe that's just true in my specific organizing bubble but we were quite clear in the last convention that no one but bernie even stood a chance of getting our national endorsement, no matter how the dem primary went
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Nov 21, 2020 22:39
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Taintrunner posted:Thank you for confirming that you don't actually need universal healthcare, and that the DSA is the youth recruitment arm of the Democrat Party. It's not like we ever wanted to fight for the needs of working people, or anything. it's telling that the ftv people treat "organizing" like a dirty word. i'm sure they mean well but they just aren't materialists
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Jan 4, 2021 09:10
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Goast posted:disingenuous garbage lmao no, this is a constant refrain. we don't need organizing, we need accountability. the "institutional left" has failed and betrayed us. it's like when anarchists whine that disciplined socialist parties only serve to stifle the spontaneous self-activity of the working class, but anarchists at least THINK they're advancing the cause of revolution
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Jan 5, 2021 19:23
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Goast posted:lol at the absolute nonsense you have to come up with to justify not doing a m4a vote now regardless of the outcome like we all loving said we should for years i'm merely gesturing at the absolute nonsense i heard from the movement leaders themselves at their "town hall", in articles they wrote about their strategy, etc. it's liberal hearts-and-minds bullshit
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Jan 5, 2021 19:33
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bringing m4a to a floor vote has very little effect on its own and might actually allow hostile democrats to obscure their positions rather than force them to reveal their positions. also, dsa's influence over "its" electeds is fairly slim - the NYC DSA's help to her campaign was substantial, but not as substantial as that of the justice democrats or whatever. insofar as those candidates' leverage is limited it's not necessarily true that spending that leverage on a losing floor vote is better in the long run than spending it on committee appointments or something like the paygo thing, even though a floor vote would probably be nice to have if it were "free"
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Jan 7, 2021 00:37
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generally i would rate publicity stunts and public gestures as "fine" but low priority when there's something material that could instead be won using the same resources. it actually is organizing, not "accountability" or "comms" or whatever, that allows the working class to exert force on the state
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Jan 7, 2021 00:40
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Goast posted:sorry cant do it not enough political capital in the tank rn do the work and check again in 2022 well, yes, as they literally have spent their leverage ("political capital", whatever you like to call it) on a different set of parliamentarian maneuvers. they obviously didn't have the numbers or the clout to exempt m4a from paygo AND exempt climate legislation from paygo AND get put on whatever committee that was, i forget, AND force a public vote on m4a, so they picked and chose. you might as well ask why they didn't just use their political capital to pass m4a immediately personally i think it was a good move because any information or changes in public perception stemming from a floor vote would be redundant with what we've already seen re: $2,000 dollar relief checks and, hell, the democratic primary and general election, which had not been resolved at the time that asking for a floor vote was written into dsa m4a campaign strategy. but even THESE concerns are distractions from the real problem, which is that the antics of those clowns in congress are downstream, not upstream, from the development and consolidation of proletarian power Ferrinus has issued a correction as of 03:05 on Jan 7, 2021 |
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Jan 7, 2021 03:00
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apropos to nothing posted:... the vote would show just how many in both parties are opposed to one of the most popular policy ideas out there right now. ... if it failed, it would be clarifying for millions of people ... i've isolated the elements in your post specific to causing a floor vote on medicare for all to be publically held i don't actually agree that it would be particularly clarifying. maybe it would have been in 2019 but we're not at the tail end of a democratic primary in which medicare for all was a hot button issue and in which the one guy brave enough NOT to lie and say he's for it but instead tell us to go gently caress ourselves every time we mentioned it won decisively. i don't think this is a matter of the masses being stupid, some kind of tragic "alas, if only they knew..." situation. i think they correctly perceived it was not really on the table, such that they were largely for it for the same reason and with the same force that they were largely for world peace or against racism. in a vacuum, i think holding a floor vote and thus adding a bit extra evidence of who's for and who's against would be better than doing nothing. but it's not better than every other option. like i said, i watched the FTV town hall and in the first place found it incredibly disingenuous, basically using the same strategy over and over again. oh, rashida tlaib says she's for m4a... but doesn't want to force the vote! (tearfully) were you lying to me that time, rashida??? that DOES sound like a hideous betrayal... if you assume that holding a floor vote is the best if not the only way to get m4a passed. if not, you're just blowing smoke up my rear end. so sure, aoc et al should fight whole heartedly for the issues they were elected on and in a way that mobilizes the maximum number of people behind those issues. but the people who specifically claim that FTV is the way to do that are a bunch of liberal podcasters, so why would i take their direction?
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Jan 7, 2021 05:50
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comedyblissoption posted:Ferrinus, in theory if aoc et al were committed vanguards of the revolution or w/e, what should they be doing in parliament well i'd like to see more strident opposition to police brutality and foreign intervention but they're mostly too cowed or ideologically ensnared to even say that eg israel is bad
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Jan 7, 2021 16:26
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MSDOS KAPITAL posted:I mean my beef is voting for Nancy Pelosi to be speaker in the first place, not that they did it "for free." She is not a popular politician, and withholding that vote would get the attention of people who are otherwise not engaged in politics to a large degree and (perhaps correctly) perceive that a lot of the "left" at least among the electeds, are full of poo poo. And those electeds would accomplish this by not being full of poo poo, for a change. It could also act as a wedge to peel off people who currently like both AOC and Nancy Pelosi (these people are dumb as poo poo but also involved in Democratic politics more than people who dislike both). i don't really know much about the fine details of the legislature, but my loose understanding is that if the squad withheld their votes entirely either pelosi might have lost (but some republican might have won) or pelosi might have just gone and twisted some other arms and won anyway, but won in a way that gave some other non-squad politicians favors and leverage to trade down the line. obviously this is why the gaggle of dsa-friendly politicians chose to vote for her in exchange for small concessions somewhere rather than make a principled refusal to legitimize her - it just wouldn't work out for them, those politicians, in the short or maybe even medium run in the long run, i do want to see the democratic party fail and for there to be clear, public breaks between socialist and liberal candidates. in order for our candidates to be able to basically go scorched earth on the rest of the legislature, though, we need to be giving them serious backing, in the sense that their electoral victories are so much our doing that they'll be able to retain their positions even if the establishment completely encircles and abandons them and, conversely, that they can't possibly hope to win without us. we don't have the power that allows us to support but also control them right now, so we can't make them kamikaze themselves into the dem establishment for the point of public spectacle, and also there'd be no point in us asking them to do that or tricking them into doing that because we don't have the power to back them up or make any hay out of their clash with establishment dems (make any MORE hay, anyway; there've clearly been multiple recent incidents in which The Squad has broken with the rest of the party, like by endorsing sanders or fighting for 2,000 checks, and we've done what we can with our messaging but it's come to little) in short i don't think having the squad draw swords on the rest of the dems here and now would draw attention we don't already have or meaningfully build our power. when they CAN do that, and profit by doing that, it'll because we've built up so much power that it'd be stupid for them not to. putting the focus on micromanaging the actions of politicians in the legislature rather than building the movement in the streets and neighborhoods is not materialist, and the fact that the FTV people in particular are focusing the bulk of their ire on the DSA and DSA electeds and speaking purely in terms of comms, consciouisness-raising, "revealing themselves", etc shows they are not seriously thinking about what it takes to win
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Jan 12, 2021 00:53
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going full lenin means making a sober assessment of your practical circumstances and responding appropriately. there's no one size fits all option which you can guarantee is the right move regardless of context because it's The Most Revolutionary
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Jan 12, 2021 02:19
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comedyblissoption posted:is access to healthcare a sober assessment of practical circumstances you're pulling the same switcheroo that FTV's leading lights did repeatedly in their town hall and on their other media, which is pretending that their specific idea is the same thing as access to healthcare. but, since we know it'll fail, and since we've already seen the issue of general healthcare AND the issue of short-term pandemic aid brought up, debated, and voted on in the public sphere with disappointing results, it's actually not the same as healthcare and not even likely to get us any closer to healthcare so what are you doing? did you think i wouldn't notice?
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Jan 12, 2021 02:46
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comedyblissoption posted:'access to healthcare' is a rhetorical shift in recent remarks by aoc and sanders, dsa backed candidates, which is relevant since you were commenting on the parliamentary tactics of politicians i don't know offhand of sanders surrogates who have stopped saying that healthcare is a right and started saying instead that access to healthcare is a right, but i don't follow electoral politics that closely. if people ARE doing it though, it's not because of their personal evil or because of our failure to execute the One Weird Trick of yelling at politicians loudly and meanly enough
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Jan 12, 2021 02:53
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yeah for all her foibles i like aoc more than dislike her but the fact of the matter is that the NYC DSA comes in like, fourth, of the various political groups that actually got her into power and so any attempt on her part to advance our political program is going to flow completely out of her personal preferences. i'd still put her in the "wins" column but she's more an indication of the general populace's increasing acceptance of lefty ideas than of the DSA's leverage
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Jan 12, 2021 03:12
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IS the dsa softening m4a rhetoric even now? i guess each chapter is different but insofar as i've seen debates about the moderation of language it's been about like, police abolition, not backing off from the demand for single payer health care
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Jan 12, 2021 03:36
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MSDOS KAPITAL posted:I'm thinking of that press release that mischaracterized the procedure to putting M4A to a vote (essentially giving Pelosi a pass) and the general response to FTA which, even if you disagree with the tactics being proposed, painting people in favor as enemies or grifters or whatever is actively harmful. So gently caress them for that. Also just kind of annoyed at my chapter for poo poo like, again, calling out people for proposing language to harden GND stuff a bit, because the folks doing the proposing didn't attend all the meetings (the person doing the calling out, and who presumably did attend all the meetings, is also the person who spearheaded the loving Jon Ossoff stuff for my chapter, so I can hardly fault someone for failing to participate in a group led by them ffs). okay see you're ALSO blending the specific parliamentary tactic of forcing a floor vote with the actual material result of establishing single payer health care. the press release in no way softened the DSA's now-boilerplate rhetoric that health care is a human right, we must pass m4a and assure that all health care is free at point of service and covers all possible treatments including abortion and gender-affirming surgery and so forth. this is widespread DSA dogma and not even the most conservative biden-canvassing north star psychos say different. and you know what? the FTV people ARE dilettante grifters, and, insofar as they literally say that organizing itself is wrong or that the "institutional left" is some sort of corrupt, gatekeeping elite, they ARE functionally enemies of the actual movement for socialism. fortunately they're losing steam and relevance at breakneck speed: undergoing their own sectarian splits, plaintively calling for a general strike, etc
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Jan 12, 2021 05:14
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Larry Parrish posted:to be fair the institutional left to what tiny extent it exists is pretty suck. north star and the other olds can gently caress off if you ask me. north star can taste my shoe, but what i understood FTV to mean by "the institutional left" was like, the dsa as a whole and other established socialist orgs, almost none of which gave a poo poo about their cute idea BUT almost all of which constituted market share that FTV might have perceived themselves as competing for Ferrinus has issued a correction as of 05:26 on Jan 12, 2021 |
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Jan 12, 2021 05:22
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MSDOS KAPITAL posted:Uh, no I'm not blending those two things. I'm not even a FTV person: per above I think they just shouldn't have voted for Pelosi to be Speaker, period. even if that dsa press release was wrong with regards to pelosi's various procedural powers, it in no way constituted a softening of M4A rhetoric. the DSA is staunchly behind universal health care and almost 100% united behind the specific demand to achieve that in the USA by granting universal access to the existing "medicare" program. if there's official DSA communications or even high profile figures backing off the demand for universal health care (with specific provisos like how it can't be predicated on citizenship status or restricted to "necessary" procedures) that is news to me
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Jan 12, 2021 05:25
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Larry Parrish posted:i didn't say they were right, but you know, just that specific statement was technically correct. but they clearly don't even know what that dumb phrase even means, so whatever if you take "institutional left" to mean specifically those leftists friendly to or actually in institutions, i guess? but the funny thing is that they're sort of even wrong there, because surely m4a is one of the few good things that north star actually IS in favor of, while they're angrily throwing their hats down and stomping them at the thought of that solidarity with cuba resolution passing at last convention
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Jan 12, 2021 05:33
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yes, in my experience the organized left is nearly unanimously uninterested or against (while legislators are LITERALLY unanimously against for more straightforward and sometimes malign reasons). like the reason dore and gray and so on went off on the dsa so much is that their big idea went ignored BY most of the dsa. apparently SAlt likes it, but that doesn't surprise me because treating rhetoric as though it has physical force is a trot staple
Ferrinus has issued a correction as of 06:27 on Jan 12, 2021 |
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Jan 12, 2021 06:24
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most people like to vary their diction in the course of speech and writing in order to keep things fresh for both themselves and their listeners. i'm sure aoc has said the phrase "access to healthcare" at some point you might have said "right to healthcare" and for sure the word "access" has been used as code for "gently caress you" across the board, but i have seen no evidence that ocasio-cortez, tlaib, etc have actually backed down on their support for m4a as a policy. like, literally, if we had medicare for all, we would all have access to health care. we don't all have access to health care now because we can't afford it. i don't have "access" to a private jet. there is not a good reason to believe that any of the high-profile politicians who endorsed bernie are secretly anti-m4a. aoc is clearly not a marxist and probably doesn't support a wide variety of things that i personally feel are more important (though in many cases less achievable) than m4a would be, but if you believe that she and her ilk are actually your enemy on something as milquetoast as single payer healthcare (as opposed to, like, ending imperialism) then you have psyched yourself out somehow
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Jan 12, 2021 07:11
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sounds like she doesn't expect medicare for all to pass under a biden presidency, even with the majority that wins in georgia deliver. frankly i agree
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Jan 12, 2021 07:33
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someone correct me if i'm wrong on this one because i don't know much about parliamentary procedure, but the implication of the dsa statement seems to be that m4a isn't even going to get put on a house calendar until it passes through various committees, and therefore it won't even be on the list of bills that pelosi can call a vote for by sheer fiat, whether or not pelosi even would do that were it put in front of her note that this has nothing to do with whether the dsa actually supports m4a as a policy. you have been tricked into believing that the stunt is the same as the actual objective
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Jan 12, 2021 07:44
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comedyblissoption posted:and yes im well aware i might look like a deranged person cherry picking this type of stuff out, but aoc used to be sensitive to the phrase "access to healthcare" she is speaking extemporaneously in some kind of social media livestream in the video that you are contrasting with a carefully composed and formatted tweet. that said, like i said, her extemporaneous speech is probably correct: expanding "access" to healthcare could be the best we can hope for from the democratic majority secured in the georgia races MSDOS KAPITAL posted:you are, as far as I know, wrong am i? do bills get to leap onto the house calendar before passing through one or more committees? this doesn't seem to be the case quote:The reaction to the proposed stunt as well as a couple other things I've mentioned, I think indicate that they are softening on the position. only if the stunt is the same as the objective, which it isn't!!! they got you!!!! this is the exact same trick as "oh, you want to defund the police? i guess you don't care about children's safety"
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Jan 12, 2021 08:20
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MSDOS KAPITAL posted:The Speaker sends bills to committee at his or her sole discretion. Presumably they can bypass committees as well, although I'm sure decorum dictates that this is never actually done. Regardless, the statement "Speaker Pelosi alone can't deliver us a floor vote" is flatly untrue. If she supported, or was pressured to support, a floor vote, then a floor vote would happen, either at her sole discretion per the rules of the House, or by pushing it through committee to the floor. alright you've gotten me to actually do some research on this. here's the first thing i dug up: https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RS22299.pdf it appears to me that m4a, which is already in several committees (and thus not subject to "Rule XIV") would need to be subject to "truncating committee action", which requires unanimous consent, which obviously does not exist for medicare for all. in order to use her fiat power to bring m4a to a floor vote, pelosi would first need to exercise her fiat power to change several existing rules or precedents that the house runs by. so actually what's being asked for is a series of parliamentary procedures which changes if and how bills move through committees generally, in order to THEN rescue one particular bill from the three or four committees it's currently enmeshed in, so that it can be voted on? providing all the "no" votes the additional cover of "well it hasn't been through X committee so i can't trust that it's sound on X logistical issue, as much as i dearly love the idea and wish the american people had healthcare"? that tweet from gray you posted was definitely wrong or at least inapplicable to the DSA statement, because moving a bill from committee -> calendar is different from moving a bill from calendar->floor vote. the dsa statement is about escaping committee, the gray tweet is about escaping the calendar. there's no "flatly untrue" here; they are actually consistent with each other, because each describes a separate half of the problem quote:I'm not sure why you keep harping on this point: I'm ambivalent to the strategy of forcing a vote and I recognize that it's not going to result in M4A getting passed and perhaps not even appreciably further the cause of M4A in general. But again, I don't have the ire for those proposing these tactics and I totally don't understand the people who do: frankly I find it loving weird. I do think that if you shield politicians from criticism when they are flatly saying "now's not the time", to the point of offering specious (see above - again, one way or another you're wrong) justifications of their behavior, when that criticism is coming from people who support precisely the policy you claim to also support, then your actions and your potential motives should be closely scrutinized. And that's what I've been doing. And so in that light the other stuff I've mentioned, takes on added meaning and significance. Like I'd be annoyed at DSA for lending support to Ossoff anyway, but at the same time as all this as well? Yeah that's a poo poo sandwich. okay so now instead of softening its rhetoric on medicare for all, dsa is merely "shielding politicians from criticism" on medicare for all. but, shielding politicians from criticism is actually legitimate when the criticism is stupid, like if there were a "kill the vote" movement demanding that aoc personally assassinate nancy pelosi. to deflect a criticism only constitutes backsliding from support of m4a if the criticism legitimately pertains to achieving m4a, which it does not in this case. you have, once again, confused the publicity stunt with the actual objective, assuming that anyone who doesn't like the first must not like the second. completely separately, i don't really know what the georgia DSA is doing. presumably they supported ossof and whoever else because they wanted to achieve a democratic majority in the senate in the face of the democratic win in the presidential election. personally i would never campaign for the democrats because i hate them, but i would think that you and your ilk actually approve of this strategy because it denies the democrats (some of) their usual excuses for not passing good legislation, exposing them, as it were apropos to nothing posted:I think that’s a funny characterization since the reason we in SA support the force the vote idea is because it’s precisely the kind of tactics that we used to get real change accomplished like 15 an hour passed in Seattle and other cities, to defund the police, and to win the tax Amazon bill. we don’t support it because it’s empty rhetoric that sounds nice we support it because it’s precisely the kind of methods that we’ve used to win victories time and time again, and many of those victories were during times when socialist ideas were not as popular as they are today. see, this is what i'm talking about. are there any pertinent differences between passing a 15 dollar minimum wage in seattle and destroying the health insurance industry from washington dc? have extremely public battles involving either or both of these issues already happened with varying results? no, it must be the rhetoric and party affiliation that made the difference
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Jan 12, 2021 18:59
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MSDOS KAPITAL posted:I don't have anything to add on this but I'm marveling at the, in one breath, comparing FTV to a campaign asking AOC to assassinate Nancy Pelosi and then, in the very next breath, complaining about comparisons between FTV in Washington DC and $15 min wage in Seattle. hmm, you seem to have chosen not to answer me and instead feign some combination of ignorance and illiteracy regarding my use of extreme examples to illustrate a logical point. for the sake of the audience i'm going to pretend you're being serious: while nancy pelosi is the enemy of socialism, an attempt by aoc to kill her would not advance the cause of passing a medicare for all bill. thus, objecting to the call to give aoc a gun is not the same as backsliding on support for m4a, prioritizing "shielding politicians from criticism" over passing m4a, etc. all of what you're saying only makes sense if spending existing leverage on forcing a vote would actually bring m4a closer to fruition. but if it wouldn't - and, incidentally, it wouldn't - you're just blowing smoke up my rear end and attempting to confuse a publicity stunt with an actual organizing objective. see, look at this guy: bedpan posted:prior to just a few weeks back, I did not expect that some of medicare for all's most implacable foes would be the DSA and similar organizations and groups. it is now a lot more apparent why electoralism is a quicksand pit and that the DSA and others as a sinks for money and time same poo poo! they got him too! he thinks that being an implacable foe of FTV is the same as being an implacable foe of medicare for all, because he has completely identified a do-nothing parliamentary maneuver with single payer health care itself! they got him! tragic! this is why i actually think the FTV movement is actively detrimental to left organizing and not just the usual kind of do-nothing liberalism HiHo ChiRho posted:Or it could just use existing house suspension rules it could... but that says that the speaker can motion for a suspension of the rules, which then requires a 2/3rds majority of members present to actually vote for and confirm the suspension of the rules. will 2/3rds of members present vote to bring m4a to a floor vote despite the fact that it's still technically bogged down in three or four different committees? ah, but by voting not to let it skip out of committees, perhaps they will be revealing themselves. at last we'll know where raul m. grijalva stands on exempting m4a from the ways and means committee!!
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Jan 12, 2021 20:28
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apropos to nothing posted:there are differences, but im describing methods and tactics which can be applied, with some modifications, in a variety of circumstances. i have applied them with success in various circumstances. its not just about rhetoric or party affiliation, these are concrete methods. like if you "force the vote" and thats all you do just call a vote and it fails and thats that, then yeah thats a terrible method. thats not what i described, i outlined a way to use a vote on the issue as a way to mobilize and activate more people around the issue. right, yes, with some modification, in a variety of (but not literally all) circumstances. as i've said repeatedly, we (or at least broader progressive coalitions we have endorsed and donated labor to) have effectively "forced" "votes" on medicare for all and a number of other worker-friendly social democratic policies over the course of the last year, including most recently on $2000 relief checks. i don't believe this was a waste of time - like i'm glad dsa endorsed bernie and think it's good we shipped out to canvass for him in primary states etc - but a floor vote on an m4a bill, as a specific strategy for us to burn organizing time on and for our electeds to burn leverage on - would be weaker than and largely redundant with these previous efforts. but of course if your chief priority is taking every opportunity to signal antagonism with mainstream democrats this wouldn't matter to you Ferrinus has issued a correction as of 20:36 on Jan 12, 2021 |
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Jan 12, 2021 20:34
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bedpan posted:not quite, I see that the DSA is a foe of medicare for all not because of opposition to force the vote or anything like that really. DSA is against medicare for all as they will be ultimately against any attempt whatsoever to push policy other than through the traditional, ineffectual liberal channels and if and only if they are permitted by higher ups. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6P40_kd-mS8
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Jan 12, 2021 20:36
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MSDOS KAPITAL posted:I mean the entire argument is over forcing Pelosi to use those powers, or withhold the vote for Speaker. What the gently caress are you talking about what have you brought up? by my count, besides opposition to FTV itself, it's been the official DSA statement about procedural reasons that FTV is inoperative, georgia DSA's campaign for george ossoff, and uhh aoc using the word "access"? maybe that was a different poster? what am i forgetting? feel free to link me to your relevant posts if you don't want to write them again
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Jan 12, 2021 20:40
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I mean I've brought up more than just the FTV stuff as evidence that they are backsliding and you've ignored all of it, so turnabout is fair play I guess.
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bedpan posted:#1 their own history doesn't really make sense, since if you look at the dsa's history you'll see that the dsa is becoming more radical with time rather than less. that graph is sloping in the opposite direction that you claim
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Jan 12, 2021 20:41
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bedpan posted:yes, accelerationism is a radical position you're obviously not taking this seriously, but i am so i'm going to give you a sincere answer: there is not really a notable accelerationist current in the dsa and the socdem/explicit reformist currents are mostly comprised of oldheads who've been here since the 70s and are getting increasingly outnumbered and outmaneuvered by communists. m4a is actually a generic and even conservative position in the dsa - everyone agrees with it and takes it for granted that we'll be campaigning for it, and the actual struggles revolve around such topics as prison abolition and solidarity with victims of us imperialism
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Jan 12, 2021 20:47
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Doctor Jeep posted:In analytic geometry, an asymptote (/ˈæsɪmptoʊt/) of a curve is a line such that the distance between the curve and the line approaches zero as one or both of the x or y coordinates tends to infinity. i'm not sure what you imagine "crossing it" means. 50% + 1 majority of self-described revolutionary socialists? actually overthrowing the US government? in either case it's important not to confuse the dsa with the conditions the dsa is organizing will, and especially important not to confuse either of those things with a legitimate reason not to organize
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Jan 12, 2021 21:03
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apropos to nothing posted:my chief priority is to win universal healthcare and more broadly socialism. im a nurse, i care about my coworkers and my patients who are dying, who are leaving the profession, who are struggling. yeah gently caress the democrats but they arent my priority, that is. im sick of this poo poo where anyone who disagrees with someone is an op, a cia agent, a filthy trot, etc. there is a specific issue that is being discussed, you have an opinion about it and I have a different one and thats ok. its a discussion about the effectiveness of a tactic. make the case for your argument and accept that the people around you are arguing for their position in good faith as well and maybe it can be possible to have a clarifying discussion on it, you may even be able to win people who disagree with you over in time, but not with the kind of bad-jacketing that so many people seem to want to engage in. first off, you actually are a filthy trot. second off, i am not actually bad-jacketing you here; i'm just observing that trots tend to place a premium on Principled Opposition, antagonist rhetoric, etc and therefore it makes sense to me that FTV would appeal to them. i don't think FTV is a good strategy for the same reason that i don't think signaling hostility to the democrats at each and every turn in general is a good strategy. i'm not going to pretend i don't sympathize - i certainly wish that bernie had been MORE openly hostile to biden over the course of the primary, for instance, mostly for propaganda and mobilization reasons (though i doubt it would have changed the outcome). i also don't think that you don't "really" want m4a. i just think the strategy is bad similarly i'm sure that dore and gray and so on also "really" want m4a. in practice however they wrecker opportunists because they have identified the dsa as among their chief enemies and have attempted to mobilize people against organizing in general and the dsa in specific. i think their positions in media basically prevent them from developing and acting on an actually materialist analysis or even a semblance of same
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Jan 12, 2021 21:10
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Doctor Jeep posted:actually confronting the dmeocratic party well, good news, we've been doing that the whole time, probably most visibly in the recent dem primary but also much more immediately in such things as city council races apropos to nothing posted:idgaf about jimmy dore, i barely know who he is and have never listened to him or his show. sounds like hes an rear end in a top hat, and he prolly is. gently caress him. if hes casting the dsa as an enemy then that sounds bad and i dont agree. but i do agree that AOC and other socialists should be putting forward things like m4a when they can, even if it appears theres no chance they will pass now, whoever says it. you win people to socialism by demonstrating to them what you stand for and that youre willing to fight for it. as usual i agree with most if not all of the general principles you're outlining here. the democrats are obviously the enemies of socialism and need to be cast from power. the problem is that we don't have the power to cast them from power, and making a show first and foremost about how much we disagree with them and refuse to work from them will actually hamper our building of power (at worst; at best it would be a waste of time - why not just ignore them in that case?) like, i also dream of an AOC who goes to congress and just tells pelosi to suck poo poo forever, but the reason the AOC we've got isn't doing that now isn't (just) because of her lack of marxist credentials. it's because the movement that put her there is not predominantly composed of people who want her to do that. so, while AOC and co visibly struggle against the dem establishment all the time, they simply do not have the backing required to engage in a principled refusal to engage. in fact i would call such a refusal to engage unprincipled, because it idealistically emphasizes the shaping of public perception over building trust with and responding to the collective efforts of her constituency. trading votes to exempt m4a from paygo is actually better, and gets us closer to m4a, than a public display of disunity with pelosi - even though such a public display would make for much better catnip for socialists watching from the sidelines, me included generally i identify this as a flaw in trotskyist thought. this is not to dismiss you for being a trotskyist, because it's not like being a trotskyist causes you to have certain ideas rather than your having certain ideas leads you to identify most closely with trotskyism and join trotskyist orgs. i just think those ideas are well-intentioned but make for bad follow-through achillesforever6 posted:I mean I agree that North Star are old heads; but there is also the NGO faction that composes of much younger leadership (aka the SMC leaders and Jacobin writers/editors that signed on to that stupid Biden support statement) There are definitely radical groups to counteract like Emerge, Communist Caucus and the various Red local caucuses. (hoping my local caucus can get up and running soon) yeah to expand a bit on what i was saying before, i would absolutely call m4a - or, to be more specific, a laser focus on m4a in which all forms of organizing, electoral or non-electoral, are ultimately ploys to trick people into turning out for m4a canvasses - as the most conservative strategy in the dsa. the m4a obsessives aren't fighting to defend m4a against conservative backsliders, they're fighting to prevent people from launching mutual aid campaigns or unsanctioned reading groups or whatever that might siphon resources from m4a work Ferrinus has issued a correction as of 22:51 on Jan 12, 2021 |
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Jan 12, 2021 22:47
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i don't think it's just dore's beef with aoc, i think it's a bid by a group of media personalities for increased leftist market share
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Jan 13, 2021 01:10
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MSDOS KAPITAL posted:okay well then gently caress it, I think that the reaction to it is a bid by the current market leaders in that space, to deny them that market share well, yes, of course. the thing is that only one of those sides is composed even mostly of socialists, let alone socialists with any kind of ongoing organizing commitments or experience. so the side that doesn't is bad and deserves to lose
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Jan 13, 2021 01:43
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MSDOS KAPITAL posted:a difference of opinion with you on tactics does not mean someone is not a socialist, and brie joy gray and cornel west are socialists, you loving prick i said "mostly". however, a difference of opinion on tactics MAY INDICATE that someone is not a socialist if those tactics are not rooted in materialism, for instance if they directly counterpose image management to organizing and claim that the former is what's more important. i'm speaking imprecisely, though. generally i'll freely give the "socialist" label to anyone who calls themselves one, but that's different from actually being a marxist and having any understanding of power Ferrinus has issued a correction as of 06:08 on Jan 13, 2021 |
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Jan 13, 2021 05:51
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mawarannahr posted:socialist alternative is small, but as a democratic centralist organization it probably numbers more in aggregate than however many people in DSA are strongly against FTV. are you only counting personalities? no, just people involved in leftist organizing. force the vote as a movement has already lost all relevance and undergone multiple sectarian splits on its slack. SAlt, which is much smaller than the DSA, has "endorsed" it, but are they doing anything to make it happen? it's already nothing more than an object lesson (which is a good thing)
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Jan 13, 2021 06:10
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i wonder if there are any salient differences between an impeachment vote and an m4a vote, perhaps having to do with the recent context, that might make aoc more willing to support one or the other. no, there can't be, we have simply been betrayed, as has mysteriously happened each and every time the left has won power of any sort
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Jan 14, 2021 19:42
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