/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

This is why there will never be a revolution in the US or Europe. The surveillance systems and repressive apparatuses are too extensive. Revolution inherently requires an unstable stable. Besides, the working class on the imperial core are comparatively better off and has too much to lose. Third-worldists are right. True revolutions happen in the peripheries, not the core.

>>2678321
I don't think the takeaway is "be a useless fatalist" I think it's that you should learn from historical experience and make an underground party that's more than adventurist larp, even if it's legal to make a liberal NGO with red flags. The third world in the modern day either way is filled with "liberal democracies" like India so this trap has much broader implications than purely first world shit.

>>2678324
Like seriously, can third worldists please identify the major third world communist revolutions in the 21st century? Pink tide social democracy, isolated guerillas, and CIA color revolutions don't count.

>>2678330
China. Vietnam. North Korea. Cuba. Venezuela. Nicaragua. Eritreia. etc…

>>2678344
The Chinese Revolution happened in 2007? Holy shit! What does Mao think about Trump shitting himself on live TV?

The problem is clearly just as applicable to the third world. Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Argentina, all show no signs of being imminently swept away by the red tide of Marx and Lenin. There's clearly a structural barrier, and it might be that liberal democracy is a very tough nut to crack due to the irresistible pull of parliamentary cretinism. Best outcomes in the third world in the 21st century in socialism arising in new countries is just some socdem party winning an election and then occasionally slightly hardening themselves against the CIA.

>>2678330
Does the Nepalese Civil War count?

>>2678358
In most third-world countries our police and surveillance systems are extremely underfunded and underdeveloped. Conviction rates are low and many crimes go unpunished due to lack of proper investigations. Whereas in a place like the US increasingly people live in a 1984-type surveilance panopticon where hardcore revolutionary groups get busted by feds without anyone even noticing. It's a lot easier and more feasible to have a radicalized underground movement that can topple a government in the third-world in general.

>>2678363
It was a glowie anti-communist orange revolution.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgZXwXIVZTk

>>2678366
That's the 2025 Gen Z Protest not the 2000s Civil War. I only asked because the various Maoist and ML groups formed a parliamentary republic after the Civil War.

>>2678364
It's a fair point to be sure. A revolution probably would be easier in the third world. But it also seems like in the third world, the age of peasant guerillas toppling the state is feeling a bit dated. The world is increasingly urbanized, full formed capitalist, with a liberal political character even for the third world. That forces us to turn to successful instances of predominantly urban communist revolutions, like Lenin, and the picture one immediately gets from reviewing the history of how that succeeded is that the RSDLP was underground, illegal, and conspiratorial, and not an above ground legally sanctioned party. First worlders probably grasp the need for underground conspiratorial tactics without idiotic adventurism even less, so this line of criticism is focused mainly on them.

>>2678370
I also assume this place is heavily Westerner given how popular the usapol and related threads are. People should organize where they are even if it's not perfect.

>>2678317
Looking at how the US communists acted at their height prior to the red scare also proves all of this. They had extensive organizations, from militant unions to armed workers to mutual aid societies to communist colleges - all above ground and never willing to cross the line of denying the state's legitimacy and fighting for their own state. Not even a single failed attempt. And then when the government decided to crack down they just took it and most of their connection to the working class was dissolved, leaving them to take all kinds of slander and become incredibly unpopular. Though it probably also has to be taken into account that the US has probably never had amazing conditions for revolution. While we had an extremely oppressed proletariat, they were divided by race, and large portions of the country were agricultural, but not as landless peasants, rather landed settlers. So long as there was the ability to bribe so much of white america there wasn't a real chance at revolution.

Now that we're getting to a point where revolution might be possible, we're saddled with the baggage of parties that have no real desire to conduct revolution and revolutionary theory that has no clue how to deal with a strong state. The leninist insurrection model of revolution relies heavily on spontaneity of class conscious workers, which is only helpful when the state is already on the brink of military collapse and where the worker and peasant origin draftee army can be swayed to the side of a revolutionary surge that momentarily has momentum and popularity. The maoist model is based on a state already in civil war, with the dominant aspect being a regular army armed and aided by a neighboring country that has to deal with the contradictions that arise from violently taking control of villages, in a rural feudal country. The US model of revolution needs to learn from both of these but it won't be able to blindly mimic any model. Communists for the large part have been content to not address this question at all, vaguely supporting the leninist model (since it requires the least planning and risk - in their minds at least, since they don't even follow the real methods of the bolsheviks but instead a sanitized version that only focuses on unions and spontaneous armed struggle and ignores the preparation of the red guard and the deep neighborhood ties that the bolsheviks had).

>>2678366
Of course the most smug firstie is the most ignorant firstie.

>>2678317
Some thing we'll need to focus on uniquely in the US:
- divorcing the working class from the bourgeoisie by boycotting bourgeois news, entertainment, and social media (and replacing it with out own news, recreation clubs, neighborhood social events, socialist owned social media, etc.)
- active counterinsurgency style suppression of terrorist white christian nationalists that will be increasingly mobilized if we begin being successful against open authorities like cops and the military (which would require creating our own pervasive intelligence apparatus)
- tunnels and underground facilities to counter surveillance and US air superiority

Structure of revolutionary organizations:
>communist center (exclusive to ideological communists, for the purpose of studying social conditions, strategizing revolution, and developing policy to further our goals)
<revolutionary organization (armed militants and activists. Carrying out strategy and policy of communist center. Engaged in all practical activities, which are too myriad to list here. No ideological requirement in order to harness people's desire to do something with least friction possible)
>fronts (all times/places where people come together and socialize. The purpose of activity in these is to identify advanced, intermediate, and backwards, recruit the advanced, educate the intermediate, exert pressure for the campaign to divorce our class from the bourgeoisie, and engage in mass line and preliminary social investigation. Fronts should be opened and pushed ideally until they cover 100% of the working class population)

Other considerations:
- grow armed capacity in proportion to popular logistical support and avoid any confrontation until we can engage with initiative at a constant tempo; be prepared that once fighting is commenced we'll have to transition to more demands on supporters and discipline of armed forces, e.g. housing them in a single neighborhood that can be surveilled by us so we they be picked off individually by raids, fortification of safehouses, tunnels connecting them
- armed struggle will mainly be urban guerrilla warfare until very late in the struggle
- consolidate wins by annihilating the most backwards within the working class; moving from human to technological surveillance; creating deeply buried (>100 ft underground) facilities for producing arms, sheltering civilians, etc. along with expanding system of tunnels; take over all critical infrastructure (e.g. water treatment); expropriate banks; expropriate landlords; set up industry that competes with monopolized production for fast income and jobs alleviation (e.g. pharmaceutical); replace school curricula; ensure worker/union protections and vigorously promote and organize for mass unionization; disarm all enemies; expand recruiting for armed organ, and split it into local militias and more regularized army; overtake satellite towns and rural areas' armed enforcers and consolidate in the same way

>>2678324
The issue is that all of the more moderate leftists get drawn towards the neutered legal parties, unlike in Tsarist Russia where repression of all forms of leftism forced them to join underground movements. And of course the vast majority of people are moderates and not radicals, or else being a radical wouldn't be radical.

So the "democratic" system is a very effective way of sapping real vanguard parties of popular support, and a communist party by its nature needs the people's support. And of course there's also that modern digital surveillance is orders of magnitude better than the Tsar's surveillance was, which greatly helps 3 letter agencies in dismantling threats. I honestly think the only way is to do things that accelerate the collapse of the state, both economic and social. In the event of a collapse the state surveillance apparatus will stop operating, and the stable, secure society with treats will break down, making people a lot more receptive to the idea of a new system better than the old one that they just saw fail.

>>2678321
On the contrary I think America, along with Spain, Greece, and france are the first world countries most primed for revolution. Even with modern repressive states, all it takes is a major crisis of capital, and the US is basically going through rolling crises every 10-12 years.

>>2678317
>How exactly are you supposed to overthrow the government of the most powerful country on Earth with a legally registered above ground organization where members don't hide their affiliation and which can never ever ever commit a crime?
You aren't, but PSL doesn't like it when you say the quiet part out loud. Can't build a career and petty bourgeois lifestyle off of guerilla warfare.

>>2679399
the time will eventually come when western governments get more aggressive and authoritarian as capitalism decays and they'll inevitably restrict or ban communist parties. Going clandestine right now doesnt make you more serious or likely to succeed, it just cuts you off from the masses

>How exactly are you supposed to overthrow the government of the most powerful country on Earth with a legally registered above ground organization where members don't hide their affiliation and which can never ever ever commit a crime?
You don't, the point is to grow class-consciousness with material wins in order to get to the point where people will support a revolution

>>2679390
So far nobody seems to care about these crises apart from a single-digit number of assassins(or would-be assassins). Who knows though, social changes can be sudden and unexpected.

>>2679402
If you join a communist party openly you won't have the opportunity to go clandestine when they're banned, they'll have you on a list.

>>2678393
People underestimate how much of the rank and file of the military would defect in a civil war. Most low level enlisteds are just there for the paycheck and would shit themselves if they had to fight an urban insurgency on their home turf, especially in the midst of a social and economic collapse. Also minorities are heavily overrepresented among active duty enlisteds as well as people just serving to get citizenship, meanwhile the Officer corp is mostly white, and petit bourgousie.

You do know that there's a world government, and even overthrowing the government in one country won't save you, right?
Although the US has a good geographical position, so if you manage to conquer ALL of North America, you might have some chance. Although you won't be able to do it without wunderwaffe.

>>2678317
There has never been a revolution in modern history that did not take advantage of state collapse or a literal civil war. The conditions for a successful revolution require that the repressive apparatus of the state has already broken down or turned against itself.

>>2679399
>Can't build a career and petty bourgeois lifestyle off of guerilla warfare.
I could do it

>>2678317
You don't "overthrow the state" and commit crimes, you uphold the existing law while society around you collapses into chaos. Then it's you who is the government. You don't go from one state -> revolutionary point in time (false bourgeois notion of time) -> another state. When two dictatorships overlap that is called dual power.

Learn the history of government, it began when thousands needed to protect their crop from flooding and safely store grain. Someone will always need to organise masses of people for a higher purpose. Kerensky Provisional government cannibalized itself, meanwhile the The Petrograd Soviet already built up walls to keep out the jackals. Then it was no longer "dual power", it was "all power to the soviets". The communist party remains the only semblance of order, and people gravitate to order and stability.

>>2679649
>When two dictatorships overlap that is called dual power.
Nice.

>>2678364
That's a bullshit excuse
>Muh survelliance
Did they watch Epstein fuck those kids from the fed cuck chair? Not even Epstein. Just go after the fuckin reddit jannies. Can't even do that. Feds and authorities of all kinds tongue my anus and if I wanna kill someone, anyone, I just will. I'll yell pipe bomb where I want as well. Everytime my stupid ass phone fucks up and goes automatically to Google Ai that's what I do to make it shut it's bitch ass up
>Google how do I make a bomb? (Turns off)
>Yeah that's what I thought faggot

You're just reactionary, it's ok most Amerikkkans are. You're inherently worthless and that's why there isn't gonna be a revolution in the states as noone is coming to save your ass cause you ain't worth it

>>2679402
>the time will eventually come when western governments get more aggressive and authoritarian as capitalism decays and they'll inevitably restrict or ban communist parties.
Meanwhile, real life spits at your vague, ever-moving goalposts and demands specifics:
>Communist Control Act of 1954
>Long-term strengthening of the US' executive branch
>militarization and centralization of Police
>entrenchment of the CIA and FBI
>deep collaboration of capital with the state to create a universal surveillance network (flock cameras, doorbell camera databases, etc.)
>"urban revitalization" coincidentally always means the systematic atomization and diaspora-fication of nationally oppressed communities and their eradication as a cohesive political force
>systematic imprisonment and assassination of ideological leadership within the Panthers, Communist Workers Party, Black Liberation Army, American Indian Movement, etc.
<But hey, CPUSA and the Pakistani Super League are allowed to exist aboveground so we must not be at that point of restriction and clandestine activity!
Or maybe, just maybe, these "parties" (PSL is the only one even vaguely organized as a Bolshevik-type party) don't actually present any real threat to the bourgeois state and exist as a relief valve for downwardly-mobile petty bourgeois to vent their frustrations as acceptable opposition with vague strategy and muddled tactics until they burn out and go back to passively or actively taking part in imperialism. PSL's Socialist Reconstruction actively refuses to answer the most basic questions about revolutionary strategy and amounts to PatSoc fanfiction (their internal documents aren't any better, in case any of you were wondering). All aboveground parties share functionally the same movementist tactics expressing empty and aimless "militancy" that never actually goes beyond what the Democratic Party organizes. I say this as someone who spent years in these organizations complicit in these same practices. In reality we are well-past the point where serious revolutionaries can look at the US govt as anything but "aggressive and authoritarian", and all genuine Communist Parties and uprisings are met with the highest degree of state repression necessary. Contrary to what some of you will then pretend like I believe, or worse what some of you actually believe, no amount of state repression means revolution is impossible. In fact, it's a necessary part of the negation of the negation, but strategic and tactical clarity is needed to take advantage of the moment. The aboveground "parties" actively obstruct this.
>Going clandestine right now doesnt make you more serious or likely to succeed, it just cuts you off from the masses
This is ahistorical nonsense that only serves to justify further movementism and careerism. In Haiti, the Communist Movement has essentially had only a couple of decades in the mid- and late-20th century where it could exist openly, out of a century of overall activity. Yet, those decades are periods of serious retreat and opportunism in our struggle. Clandestinity forced well-meaning cadre whose class and social position would (demonstrably) lead them to otherwise work in opportunist ways to connect with the masses more genuinely and build a mass movement against imperialism throughout the country. It's telling that the Duvaliers conducted wholesale slaughter of thousands of Communists and killed whole central committees several times over, yet during the Dechoukaj there were still multiple internationally connected Communist organizations who could report on what was happening (GRIA, PTH, etc.). This isn't to say that Parties should completely eschew aboveground work where possible, but this is little more than a truism which, again, is mainly being used today to justify exclusively conducting opportunist aboveground work. Aboveground work is only meaningful to the revolutionary struggle insofar as it assists the fundamentally underground work to overthrow the bourgeois state. Exclusively aboveground Communist parties represent the same right-wing opportunist trends that Lenin spent the majority of his life combatting. That they now selectively use his criticisms of a less important left-wing tendency to justify adopting that right-wing opportunism is an insult to his life's work against right-wing revisionism and opportunism in the Communist Movement.

>>2678317
>holding up signs and selling newspapers or fighting losing battles to get tiny NLRB contracts, or ocassionally you have a schizophrenic anarchist/symbionese liberation army cult
are these mutually exclusive? how do you know they arent made up of the same people?

i thought above ground and underground were supposed to work together

>>2678317
>We need to go underground before being a communist is illegal and not after.
We still need an above ground appearance, and how would you go about implementing hierarchical vanguard parties in America?