Is the West Experiencing a Left-Wing Drift? (the international left politics activism, news, and strategy thread)

xp gimme a day or so to look it up, I might as well start a thread

xp author was also on The Dig and very good on it

Which is likely why the White House would prefer to talk about Lenin.

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Monday, October 29, 2018 6:32 PM (forty-five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

can't believe they forgot that i would also prefer to talk about Lenin

How does one know what brands to trust on these? I have no room for any such thing in my apt anyway

The whole subject of how to strengthen one's position to endure economic hard times, or a natural disaster, or a full blown apocalypse, deserves its own thread. The idea that MREs are a universally apt answer to fit anyone's particular needs is extremely simplistic at best. Really, it comes down to sound risk assessment and assigning some part of your (usually tiny) surplus of resources (time and money) to whatever makes the most sense in your personal situation.

we do have 'rolling looming apocalypse'

xp you're misinterpreting, as usual, but we can discuss it in a different thread

brecht, who begs forgiveness for the antifascist's lack of civility

You, who shall resurface following the flood
In which we have perished,
Contemplate —
When you speak of our weaknesses,
Also the dark time
That you have escaped.

For we went forth, changing our country more frequently than our shoes
Through the class warfare, despairing
That there was only injustice and no outrage.

And yet we knew:
Even the hatred of squalor
Distorts one’s features.
Even anger against injustice
Makes the voice grow hoarse. We
Who wished to lay the foundation for gentleness
Could not ourselves be gentle.

But you, when at last the time comes
That man can aid his fellow man,
Should think upon us
With leniency.

ouch

Kim Stanley Robinson, sci-fi author of the well regarded Mars Trilogy & other things, at Commune:

One way of being anti-anti-utopian is to be utopian. It’s crucial to keep imagining that things could get better, and furthermore to imagine how they might get better. Here no doubt one has to avoid Berlant’s “cruel optimism,” which is perhaps thinking and saying that things will get better without doing the work of imagining how. In avoiding that, it may be best to recall the Romain Rolland quote so often attributed to Gramsci, “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.” Or maybe we should just give up entirely on optimism or pessimism—we have to do this work no matter how we feel about it. So by force of will or the sheer default of emergency we make ourselves have utopian thoughts and ideas. This is the necessary next step following the dystopian moment, without which dystopia is stuck at a level of political quietism that can make it just another tool of control and of things-as-they-are. The situation is bad, yes, okay, enough of that; we know that already. Dystopia has done its job, it’s old news now, perhaps it’s self-indulgence to stay stuck in that place any more. Next thought: utopia. Realistic or not, and perhaps especially if not.

https://communemag.com/dystopias-now/?fbclid=IwAR2733kCfV39NeLdaxUGDU8Ti7XL6lBmE1BJfudXfLRCkRZJ1xzm1hC4LB0

dude is a treasure

guns: shotgun for home defense, handgun for personal defense, .22 for game hunting if u are rural. ymmv, obviously. no, you won't fend of a militia, yes it's better than nothing.

― sleeve

this is where i get out. if it was just that i could fantasize that i have skills that would become useful in the absence of the social order, i might be on board with "prepping", i might be tempted. in a world that requires the willingness to enact armed violence for survival, i don't survive. i've been suicidal, off and on, for decades. i get a gun and i know who it's going to wind up being used on.

stockpile mres all you like, but the greater part of "prepping" is mental. realize that the world you are preparing for is a world where you have abandoned uncountable numbers of people, present company included, to die.

In 2k18 I do a lotta death meditation

Speaking of

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/02/opinion/socialist-left-guns-nra-trump.html

Curious how popular Mosin-Nagants are in the crowd.

Re: prepping:

Brad said they try to screen the people who are invited to their monthly range days, weeding out those who seem like “adventurers.” “We don’t want the John Wayne of the left showing up to our range,” he said. Indeed, the S.R.A. comes off more like a wholesome civic organization than a revolutionary underground. It recently became a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, and its members spend a lot of time on mutual aid projects like collecting funds and supplies for hurricane relief.

paging a HOOS for comment

The experience of Refoundation over the course of the year since its founding has taught us many hard lessons. On the basis of those lessons, we have decided to dissolve the caucus in order to seek out more effective means to build and transform DSA.

While Refoundation rapidly grew from around 40 to around 400 members, DSA has mushroomed to more than 50,000 members. The interest in socialism among young workers in this country is clear. The connection between this small caucus and the growing membership of the organization is considerably less clear. In fact, we feel as though we have cordoned ourselves off from the majority of new socialists by establishing an unnecessary demarcation by a somewhat spurious political distinction.

We believe that by first gathering people nationally under a banner of presupposed ideological unity, we have reproduced a number of the problems of the US left from the era immediately preceding the explosive growth of DSA, namely: sectarian isolation and an increasing difficulty in assessing the political terrain. Simply put, we have found ourselves in the opposite position we had intended. Our caucus has begun to feel like its own organization and in some cases it has behaved as such.

https://dsarefoundation.org/2018/11/11/dissolution/?fbclid=IwAR2h-ZK0CbJxPIOK9JCQeekSqQyxWch9AidkPFnmvhqN2i3HkbjqdkVxiHk

Shruggie tbh

Chris R, a decades-long DSAer and lesbian socialist, made a forceful case recently that this is absolutely the wrong moment for us to be forming ideological caucuses, when we have no meaningful power, and so quibbling over ideas about revolutionary programs amounts to the infamous cookshops. I'm inclined to take her wisdom seriously and am just kinda throwing up my hands at this.

Ya I didn't necessarily take it as a huge loss or anything, just wondering if you had any added intel

Bevan said "The language of priorities is the religion of Socialism … The argument is about power … because only by the possession of power can you get the priorities correct."

Arguing about priorities before attaining power is a mistake. Of course, saying 'don't worry, we can sort that out when we get power' sounds like an apology for despotism.

A principled retreat is better than a retreat from principles, I suppose.

the conversation in this thread about prepping was on my mind the other night when I got a flat tire at midnight. I pulled into a parking lot and decided to try to change it myself, even though I haven't changed a tire in probably 15 years. I actually got about halfway there, then a dude came over and tried to help me, and we got four of the lugs off (they were pretty stuck and we had to literally stand on the socket wrench to move them), and then realized a fifth one was the wrong lug and didn't fit my socket, so I had to call triple A anyway. I still feel like there was probably something good for me about just having the attitude of trying to be resourceful and do it myself, and then also being able to accept the help of a stranger with caution but not fear in the middle of the night.

As for help, anyone who plans on adopting a them-against-the-world posture in an extreme scenario is telling you what kind of person they are.

the kind who is probably going to die, tbh

double truth bombs

agreed

t/s do you go next door with the hot dish or shotgun

Earnestly looking forward to this evening's streamed Bhaskar Sunkara Vs John Peterson (IMT) debate.

More good-faith debates btwn left factions, fewer debates with fascists pls

what is IMT

international monetary thund

IMT = international marxist tendency

wonder what the differences are between bhaskar sunkara - associated with trotskyists, has supported entryist socdem electoralism (bernie sanders, podemos) and someone from the imt - trotskyist party, engages in entryist socdem electoralism?

i guess it's probably his - and vivek chibber's - belief that there will not be a revolution and that more gradual approaches have to be taken

idk what Sunkara's trot associations are exactly but AFAIK the IMT (at least in the US) desires the formation of a genuine workers' party and doesn't consider the Dems capable of meaningful reform (unlike the NDP or Labour parties which it considers structurally and historically distinct)

so yeah your previous post not offtm I think

he launched Catalyst with Robert Brenner (who is a trotskyist), and Vivek Chibber (a disciple of Brenner's). although Brenner has since been forced out - for political reasons according to Brenner

ah

anyway I'm suspicious of Sunkara mostly because Jacobin publishes a lot of garbage takes

69 years ago today the KGB put a pick axe in the back of Leon Trotsky's skull. One of the greatest figures in human history without a doubt.

— Bhaskar Sunkara (@sunraysunray) August 21, 2009

nice and all, but I don't think that doesn't mean there's significant ideological space btwn them (certainly enough for what I hope will be an interesting debate)

yeah i guess I'm being flip. and yes, it is more interesting to me than debate as a fight between opposites who are somehow supposed to convince or best each other (which obv won't happen)

I'm also curious because ppl I know think pretty highly of john peterson (of whose work I know nothing)

also, Jacobin's dumbness is fresh on my mind thanks to the architecture piece everyone was correctly dragging yesterday

oh I've just googled that lol

@mcmansionhell on twitter does a predictably good job of dragging it, but so did dozens of others

I read that Meagan Day Jacobin article, and I didn't see anything wrong with it. The @mcmansionhell tweets, and the article of hers that she referred to (in which she "warned the left" about the "patently reactionary" thing Day is supposedly doing in the Jacobin piece) left me none the wiser.

As far as I can tell, the idea is that any aesthetic criticism of any public housing is objectionable, even if you do it in an explicitly pro-public-housing context, because people who are against public housing sometimes do something kind of similar to completely different ends. But that would be silly, so I must be missing something.

There's definitely always been a faction of the left, in various guises, that believes it's outrageous to criticize our own shortfalls

JRN OTM

tbh I assumed the piece is a lot worse than it is based on whomst I saw make objections (people I generally trust) - in particular I don't detect Day inserting her own aesthetic preferences as much as ppl were complaining about, to the extent that I wonder if it underwent a post-publication edit. the more likely explanation is that aesthetic discussion of public housing just provoke automatic revulsion because it's typically a NIMBY line

I'll make it prettier than this... but more voters identified as liberal in 2018 than in any exit poll since they began back in 1976... Fewer identified as moderate than in any exit poll since they began back in 1976... pic.twitter.com/NULAKFYLZm

— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) November 16, 2018

which is why it's so incredibly tactically dumb for the left-left to demonize "liberals"--like, they're trying guys! Identifying as a "liberal" is a huge step to the left for a lot of people!

when i was a baby i used to call myself liberal even tho i was p much leftist i just thought liberal was the word

until like 2013 prob tbh