apropos to nothing posted:

from what ive heard youre not alone. UK comrades recently explained that almost every week theres a new exodus from labour due to starmers failed leadership and capitulation to the government. they also said though that people arent leaving cause theyre dejected, theyre leaving cause they want something better so thats a good sign imo

breadnsucc posted:

organizations suck because they always fall towards liberalism

lmao DSA spent the last four years promoting local candidates and none of them even made it past the primary (where i live)

WHAT A GREAT USE OF TIME AND MONEY

breadnsucc posted:

organizations suck because they always fall towards liberalism

Gaupo Guacho posted:

it was a randomly assigned Av………

an actual dog posted:

trolling c-spam by saying you should join a political organization

little munchkin posted:

your group seems cool but the nearest branch is two hours away from me


lol

breadnsucc posted:

dont be ignorant you can organize without organizing with an official organization and you guys know that is what i meant

breadnsucc posted:

dont be ignorant you can organize without organizing with an official organization and you guys know that is what i meant

GalacticAcid posted:

countering liberalism by refusing to act collectively, very interesting

Homeless Friend posted:

Homeless Friend posted:

Homeless Friend posted:

Homeless Friend posted:

Homeless Friend posted:

breadnsucc posted:

dont be ignorant you can organize without organizing with an official organization and you guys know that is what i meant

swimsuit posted:

does salt US have ties w salt australia

Homeless Friend posted:

swimsuit posted:

does salt US have ties w salt australia

breadnsucc posted:

since some people are still being willfully ignorant re official organizations and just organizing, have some fun with this, i could go through all the super liberal garbage like greenpeace or indivisible or our revolution or whatever but lets focus on the favorites, at least in my neck of the woods

join dsa guys we can sit around and talk about electoralism for four years and then accomplish (????) Has DSA accomplished anything? I don't know because it certainly doesn't here in the PNW.

join sra guys we cant talk about anything political at all because we're too scared to combine our politics and guns because opsec(?????)

join socialist alternative guys we will get an elected official and then completely stop doing anything else (?)

these are organizations that are effectively politically useless in part because they are 'official' and incorporated under the law as Organizations 501cfuckoffs or whatever. They have strangled themselves by becoming an 'official' thing in the eyes of the state, as far as I can tell these groups mostly serve to siphon what little dollars (and time) the working left has into pointless bureaucracy, at least in my ~20 years of being an activist. Maybe someone has some nice stories from other places where these orgs have actually loving done something. And honestly, I may just be loving bitter that where I live these orgs are useless and full of garbage liberals that gasp and run away at the sound of breaking glass.

The only official political organization that I can think of that has accomplished any good is probably the IWW which has fairly effectively been helping unionize some small businesses, and my understanding is that the IWW relies entirely on direct action rather than political action to effect change

By contrast, something like John Brown Gun Club is not an incorporated "official" thing, it does everything SRA does(but better and more) and it very much combines political ideology in its mission of demystifying guns to the unwashed masses, and then actually puts that knowledge to use

or

Food Not Bombs which has been more effectively mutual aiding plus spreading propaganda since like the 80s than loving any left political organization I've heard of in the past 30 years(I bring this up because 'mutual aid' has become a hot topic among a lot of these garbage political organizations and I've sat through many a zoom call where people are trying to organize how to food distribution, when other people have been doing it for decades and better, and I'm like, why not just volunteer with Food Not Bombs or Egyhop(A local org that is better than Food Not Bombs)? And I just get silence.

The most effective form of political organization as far as I can tell is small, local, autonomous, groups, untethered from such simple ideas as becoming "official" or even tying themselves to "official" political ideologies, ie socialism or communism or whatever the gently caress other political organizations are wasting their loving time on.

LittleBlackCloud posted:

I would appreciate impressions of the difference between an ML and a Trot party in 2020. Are there any decent orgs that are more agnostic (or syncretic) to these lines?

breadnsucc posted:

these are organizations that are effectively politically useless in part because they are 'official' and incorporated under the law as Organizations 501cfuckoffs or whatever. They have strangled themselves by becoming an 'official' thing in the eyes of the state, as far as I can tell these groups mostly serve to siphon what little dollars (and time) the working left has into pointless bureaucracy, at least in my ~20 years of being an activist. Maybe someone has some nice stories from other places where these orgs have actually loving done something. And honestly, I may just be loving bitter that where I live these orgs are useless and full of garbage liberals that gasp and run away at the sound of breaking glass.

apropos to nothing posted:

you should look into the political program of an organization and decide whether you agree with it or not. that is way more useful in actually determining if you should join than any historical differences. typically if im talking to someone and they want to get into trotskyists vs anarchists vs ML vs whatever discussion i treat that as a huge red flag (in a bad way) that they arent really serious about being politically active. not saying thats you but in general i have found that to be the case most times.

LittleBlackCloud posted:

I'm not wanting to get into that discussion tbh. I guess I really have to drill down, but so many of these orgs seem to have very similar platforms. I like that SAlt has an associated international. I guess since you're in SAlt, what's the position on "actually existing socialism"? What were the disagreements you mentioned ( I think ) with the PSL?

Joe Belusi posted:

Firstly, starting with the mother of all of American Leftism, the Socialist Party of America is the root of most of these groups through it expelling its members sympathetic to eitherTrotsky or Stalin, which was in its history the utmost majority of its members purged from the top. This had the effect of getting rid of most labor leaders and the lower strata of the working class. The SPA stagnated for decades until breaking apart into what became the right (DSA) and Left (SPUSA, arguably the Green Party, LUP, and PFP) of self-identified socialists against revolution.

CPUSA, in being a party adhering to Soviet line, was cursed in both getting unhelpful orders from the Comintern that damaged party support and being target #1 of the alphabet security agencies. Poor decisions like abandoning the national question, purges of Orthodox MLs, and alienation of immigrants and minorities in being the Democratic Party’s b!tch caused major splits that gave us both the New Communist Movement Inspired by Mao Tsedung thought and the anti revisionism of Hoxha (PLP, Black Panthers & Co., FRSO, SDS in its later years before becoming insurrectionary fools, and the Avakian cult) and our Trot parties.

So the SWP broke apart into the husk very similar to CPUSA actually; a lack of change for the times, ideological rigidness, reactionary festations, failure to remain relevant, etc. although it had the opposite problem with CPUSA in that it failed to make alliances with the more moderate socialist and social democrats in the worst of times. This gave birth to all our trot parties one way or another. More interestingly is the zealousness of converts against what was being perceived as the shortcomings of thinking that we’ve never past the 1930’s. Coupled with the revolutions in Vietnam and Latin America, along with the SWP being against the invasions in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, the now ML Sam Marcy and his posse broke apart from them to form the next big thing—the Workers World Party.

Now the WWP is interesting for modernizing the left here in ways that match up to the influence of the NCM and new left. A commitment to stringent anti-imperialism against capitalism, Warsaw Pact simping, and being fully on board with advancing the rights of people that weren’t heterosexual, American-integrated white workers. The WWP is in no doubt a major reason for the militancy that led to great strides in rights for LGBTQ+ folks like me. It also grew rapidly in the age of Vietnam, like the peaceniks. Unlike the peaceniks, the complete and abject rumpification happened after the crazy counterculture was done. Idiotic attempts of turning to industry, where all party members must work at the same place, recreated the cultish and suffocated atmosphere in the SWP. Along with a couple mistakes, it was no wonder when Marcy died, there was a split. The most relevant one made the PSL, and the rest has thrown the WWP in the dustbin of history.

So those peaceniks, kinda inspired by Trotsky and social democracy, but hip with being about peace and the environment to appease to the pet issues of middle class college kids, was encapsulated in the work of Murray Bookchin. In the latter end of the 20th century; a coalition of environmentalists, hippies, rigid radical liberals, and peaceniks formed the Green Party. After another split between environmental fundamentalists, we have our modern party that is now going through some shedding to inevitably create more minor joke parties.

Now, we have differences in strategy and orientation in the US, which have equal adherence based on isolation and our unique history, of the following cleavages; Marxism vs revisionism (SocDems), revolution vs reformism, Electoralism vs Abstentionism, Sectarianism vs cooperation, the vanguard party versus the decentralized mass party. The most major parties that currently matter, in my opinion; are the Green Party, PSL, FRSO, SAlt, arguably CPUSA (if you don’t think they’re Feds), and arguably the PFP. The remainder have stagnated beyond relief into microsects (Socialist Action, SWP, RCP, SEP, controversially most Black Panther cosplayers excluding the BRLP and NABPP) or have aligned themselves into electoral and activist alliances and poles completely (I theorize with SPUSA and the smaller trots submitting significantly to the Green Party as a reformist electoral league, with SAlt sometimes participating when they feel like it —the APL, WWP, and oddly CPUSA to the NAAPR actively led by the FRSO as the Marxist-Leninist league mainly active in activism and committed to revolution—LUP and PFP now in the Marxist electoral lane with PSL). So that is six-ish major actors organized around 4 aligning poles; that isn’t too hard to understand now, is it?

Add in the Antifa movement and insurrectionary anarchists(CrimethInc), along with mutual aid groups and unions like Food Not Bombs, [blank] collective, and the IWW and you have the whole American left . The point I’m trying to make is that the American Left is not that divided, and that the current amount of parties only seems that way as excessive if you ignore that half of them are basically insolvent and broke apart due to long-standing issues that are irreparable for organizations advocating real structural change, no matter if they are decentralized mass movements or Vanguard parties ordering all Cadres to obey by Democratic Centralism. So please, give the left a break.

Same thing is visible with all the ego-driven liberal and moderate parties, such as the massive mess left by the Reform Party or the numerous Nazi and Archconservative parties locked out of power. We can’t all have nice, rich backers like the propertarians do—and even then you can look at the splits and purges of vulgar libertarians, AnCaps, paleocons, Freemen on the land fools, and crypto-Republicans for them. Anything not D or R, that isn’t threading that much to Capital  resembles the fringe in totality.

Joe Belusi posted:

Oh yeah, also apart of the Left are weird Kautskyites that straddle the border of Left Communism and social democracy. These groups include the DSA arguably, the LUP, and the PFP. Basically pacifist Marxists to the Left of social democracy.

PSOL posted:

Workers’ Liberty endorses Hawkins

Not only is this group irrelevant to not have a Wikipedia page, but it’s also irrelevant to not be in the Online Leftverse. It’s a Trot org that only exists around its equally irrelevant organ. So that’s maybe a few more votes for Hawkins.

Still, I’d like to bump this thread just cause. It seems that, aside from the small SEP party and the internationally oriented LeftVoice publication, Trotskyist organizations generally support Howie Hawkins. Democratic Socialists and Social Democrats, individuals or organized groups,  are mostly with the Democratic Party aside from some DSA chapters and parties split between Hawkins and La Riva. MLs are an interesting case, as they either are probably abstaining or supporting Biden with the sole exception of the PSL. This can be wholly blamed on the lack of connections the party has to the various other organizations on the Left, excluding the PFP and the LUP, along with what I believe to be unwarranted fear by more revolutionary organizations that another Trump term could see them be dismantled by the authorities compared to a Biden presidency.

Even with continued growth of the party, ultimately it is wise to have allies then go alone. The PSL needs to start courting the other Marxist Leninist parties in a way to garner support for such ventures as running in elections or activism in the street, something that goes beyond having individual chapters do their own thing.

Third Party posted:

CPUSA has been totally dead as an independent political party since Gus Hall died. After that, liberal Democrats took over. Nowadays, the "Communist" Party is nothing more than a fake satellite organization of the Democratic Party machine that orders its tiny number of followers to obediently vote for the Democrats in every election. Its previous leader, Sam Webb, a few years ago even came out of the closet and admitted that he was nothing more than a shameless Democrat. On the US left right now, only two parties matter in terms of third party electoral activity: the Green Party and the Party for Socialism and Liberation.

swimsuit posted:

are you suggesting that the cspam gaming thread isnt political organising

jarofpiss posted:

if anyone wants to build existing socialism in conan exiles i'll buy the server