I’ve been a communist for a while and I have a number of questions that I’m hoping will get answered by what few remaining non-shit posters are on this board.
1) organizing. What does that even mean? And what does it look like? From what I can tell, organizing in America seems to be a bunch of people showing up to protest with groups like the PSL standing alongside it. But what goes beyond such protests? Why are there never long term plans or concrete demands? All that came of the BLM protests was that a democrat got elected but nothing more. But aside from people joining PSL, DSA, etc. where are the so called institutions of duel power being erected? How would they be erected? What would they be, do, and look like? And what other duel power institutions should we be working to build beyond unions and these socialist parties? Why is there seemingly no game plan for accomplishing any short term goals? How does one even start one of these institutions? To my knowledge, orgs like the PSL are never even involved with trade unions or tenants unions, they just canvas and show up to protests. Unionization rates in America are at a historic low, and given right to work legislation in many states, makes unionizing so much harder. How to we work around such laws?
I work at a gas station for example, what would a gas station union even look like?
2) How do we get people to care enough to commit literally anything to the cause? In my experience, organizing a get-together of just 3 or 4 friends can be incredibly difficult itself. And it doesn’t help that Americans are some of the least rebellious people in the world. You could easily explain the interworkings of our genocidal system to most and they would likely just shrug you off. We have more access to information than ever, on some level, most people know the system is fucked up, but nobody cares enough to do anything about it. So long as they have their Nikes sneakers, their beer, candy, ford escort, smart phones, video games. and Walmart, they don’t care. So long as it doesn’t effect them personally, they don’t care.
From my perspective, most of the people who involve themselves in socialist organizations and take particular interest in this topic due so more as a form of a hobby, or as a means of escape from their every day responsibilities, than they do out of genuine material necessity.
The Russian peasants and workers of the early 20th century endured legitimate turmoil, destitution, and the horrors of war, and yet despite lacking access to even a fraction of the information about the world as we do, they were ready to take up arms and fight for the revolution by the millions. We don’t see anything resembling even a small percentage of this type of militancy amongst Americans, even by the far right, who loves to larp as minute-men. People from these socialist orgs aren’t even willing to tread the legal boundary with their actions out of fear of the police state. From blocking highways and buildings, to staying past curfew, to resisting arrest, or acts of sabotage. The most we can seem to expect from them is to show up to a protest, chant slogans, and hold up signs.
3) How the fuck do we work around our countries incredibly spread out, wasteful, and atomizing infrastructure. Most Americans live in suburbs where they need to hop in a car and drive an average of 15 minutes just to go to the bathroom. Ive made efforts to talk to my neighbors before and nobody seems to know one another, everyone seems to fear, distrust, and hate each other. They have little to no interest in community organizing, they aren’t willing to spare resources towards some sort of communal utilities or social trust fund, and many don’t even answer the door when you knock.
It doesn’t help that our society revolves around cars. Which are wasteful, dehumanizing, dangerous, loud, and bad for the environment, and the worst part is that you basically need one to get around because many of our cities are unwalkable.
How would we go about taking the necessary steps advocating for a more pro social infrastructure that brings people together rather than atomizing them apart? How do we work around the stroad and suburb dichotomy? By which people are ultra spread out and atomized? How are we going to bring people together and make them want to care or work towards this goal?
4) Expropriation. What would that even look like within the context of an interconnected global economy built upon chains of exploitation. If Americans seized the means of production, the banks, and large swaths of the economy, would we also continue ruthlessly exploiting the third world because that’s how we get much of our abundance of cheap goods? Would we also convert the countries we import cheap goods from socialist? It’s such a monumental task I can’t even begin to fathom where we start?
Not trying to be a doomer here. I want to get involved and I want to do something. I just don’t know where to begin or where to look to do the right thing. I’ve been involved in socialist orgs in the past. But again, they’re usually loosely organized, are book clubs, or all they do is show up to protests. What more can I do as an American to aid the cause?
>>2370890The U$ is a Prison house of Nations, which treats the Black/New Afrikan, Hispanic/Chicano/Mestizo, and First Nations/Native American populations like they are not U$ citizens (Trump ending birthright citizenship will probably transform this from a De facto to a De jure reality by officially stripping citizenship from most of these populations), with them essentially acting as a permanent domestic underclass with essentially Zero rights that are exploited for cheap labor and disproportionately suffer from Mass incarceration and police brutality, with their neighborhoods essentially under De facto occupation by militarized police, as New Afrika, Aztlan, and the First Nations, are Internal Colonies/Oppressed Nations inside of the U$, and their National Liberation should be the number one goal of U$ Communists as stipulated by Lenin’s principle of Self-Determination for all Oppressed Nations in their own SSR, which will happen once the inevitable World War III between the U$ and PRC escalates into a Global Nuclear War that will destroy the entire Global Capitalist-Imperialist System, thus allowing for a World Maoist PPW (Maoist PPW is already viable in the Material Conditions of the Periphery/Semi-Periphery, with Maoist PPWs currently ongoing in India, the Philippines, Turkey, and Peru, while Maoist PPW will not be viable in the Material Conditions of the Imperial Core until Liberal Bourgeois Democracy is permanently suspended and/or World War III breaks out, with these two events probably being related and happening around the same time) to create a Global USSR (all of the SSRs and SFSRs of the future Global USSR are pictured in the map I posted, with the former U$ Balkanized into a New African SSR that includes the Black/New Afrikan majority counties of the Black Belt, a Hispano-American SFSR that includes the Hispanic/Chicano/Mestizo majority counties in the U$ Southwest, along with the rest of the Spanish-speaking Multiracial regions of the Americas, while the White Settler majority regions in the rest of the former U$ becomes part of the Anglo-American SFSR, which also includes the English-speaking provinces of Canada, as Quebec will become its own SSR, with all the Native American reservations becoming ASSRs) to Place the Workers and Oppressed Nations of the World on the Shining Path to Communism, ✊😜🇨🇳🇰🇵🇨🇺🇵🇸🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️🚀☢️!
>>2370890OP, first you need to realize that not all self-described leftist/socialist/communists have the same end goal.
For example, some groups/parties just want a social democracy like Sweden. Others want a planned economy/state capitalism like 1950s Soviet Union. Others just want to replicate Chinese economy. And you also have people like me, known as "leftcoms" or "ultras", who want a stateless, moneyless, classless society worldwide.
So the first question you have to ask yourself is what do you actually want?