>>2421427no, this is actually a really crucial insight
>>2421418>Nobody operates with measurable goals, nobody adjusts the strategies that clearly haven't worked.>For all their nonsense, cliches and flaws, I believe every communist should be forced to learn modern business management theories and techniques. Left-org management is so dismal that it could only be improved, even if ultimately any communist movement will need to go beyond them.you are absolutely, 100% correct OP and ive seen this work very well in practice. i have advocated for this here in threads about organizing, about why THIS is the reason when you have a small group inexperienced in organizing, you start with manageable projects like community gardens, food/clothes dstribution, etc. people say snide shit like oh THATS your revolutionary activity heh heh? will often even say its a LARP, somehow, and then will feel really confident about how the important think is needing a good party line and ideological unity etc, etc.
the best cadre training in an org i ever took part of had us read business management strategy, with a critical eye but trying to understand the basic problems it was addressing and which solutions were genuinely applicable to organizing. this was not just speculating because we worked on community gardens and in tenants organizing and could TEST and become familiar through participation, and it turns out a lot of those organizational strategies absolutely are applicable and are addressing important points, even if you need to pull them out of the insufferable managerialese style of presentation.
im talking about the US context where there is at best very few even local socialist organizations (or locals of a larger org, there are a few DSA & CPUSA locals that have done this in SPITE of their national leadership and org culture) that has a base of good active cadre actively participating in measurable, scaleable projects.
if you think it is petty, useless hobbyism to get 10 american communists with minimal organizing experience (i.e. vast, vast majority of american "leftists") to organize a community garden, in my opinion and experience that is a huge tell that you have not been involved in any kind of goal-oriented org if you have even organized at all. it is HARD to get people to keep showing up at all, its hard to allocate tasks in an efficient and consistent way, it is hard to not have the work fall on a few more motivated and eager people who will inevitably burn out in 6 months to 2 years, etc etc. people need practical training in how to do the most basic organizational tasks. managing those tasks, delegating work, keeping meetings on track, holding people accountable in a productive way that doesnt make them up and quit, maintaining momentum when you get it, etc. if you havent done these, yes that means you as well will not be able to do them without actual practice. its not the hardest thing in the world but it requires commitment and humility to be consistently willing to spend the time and energy building those foundations. those foundations are the basic infrastructure of an organization, which will inevitably be trial and error done by people who are themselves learning how to do it and will have their own struggles and conflicts of interests.
making it work in spite of those challenges is extremely productive and excellent training. and the good news is that this form of cadre training and building up of org infrastructure IS ALSO getting you into contact with the community in your base area. call it mutual aid or call it volunteering, it doesnt matter, its fine if its volunteering because the primary strategic objective for the organization at this time is to have projects that serve as training and team-building for your membership. the major secondary gain is that by doing so you will develop contacts and sympathies within the communities youre working in. once you have a stronger, more experienced membership, the priority can shift to the point where the primary strategic objective is to develop projects for the explicit end of creating strong links to the community, and training cadre becomes a simultaneous activity in which they can be put on projects with more experienced members that can teach and mentor them. this should always be done simultaneous to a relatively barebones level of political education regarding marxism and class struggle, but its important that its always understood that the best teacher of marxism and class struggle will be the practical application of those lessons through integration into the base community through these projects
this is not a secret recipe for immediate success, it is hard and takes a lot of work and ive seen it threaten to fall apart and eventually atrophy. ive also seen it make massive progress and build a strong foundation, measuring success by amount of successful projects that became self-sustaining. every other organization ive been involved in has measured success by the metric of number of members and fundraising, even when those members and funds never went to doing anything useful. you can do infinitely more with a core group of 15-20 people adopting the strategy im talking about here than you can with 100 people who are only trying to recruit and fundraise for its own sake. another good side of that is that when the group of 100 people splits or atrophies, usually nobody has learned much of anything besides the ~5% of members who did the majority of the coordination due to poor management practices, and more often than not they burn out and what they learn is that this is not a good use of their time. even if and/or when your 15-20 person group using abovd strategy falls apart or atrophies, the silver lining is that those people now have serious practical experience with organizing