Living in the States has me genuinely frightened. I’m not so naive as to suppose it’s not always been rough, but it’s clear we’ve entered a qualitatively different era. The moderate wing of fascism has died, and barbarism is all that remains.
I want to fight back in a substantive way, even if it’s small. I want to participate in institutions which protect the vulnerable, myself included. I don’t want to lock my doors and peek out the windows, but I know better than to engage in adventurist, individual “resistance.” I also don’t want to be in a social club where we sit and congratulate each other on having the right opinions. I’m past wanting to be on the “right side of history,” where I content myself with personally disagreeing with the nightmare we live in. Something needs to be done; the window for taking action is swinging shut.
I have almost no experience in organizing. I’ve attended a handful of protests which mostly felt like a venting of frustrations for everyone there. I’ve associated with a few comrades who had good intentions, but never accomplished much. That’s about it.
How do I actually go about being a part of something effective?
Where did I say this?
Again where did I say this? Its like you read one sentence decided to inject the worst possible meaning into it when the explanation was right there.
As individuals, 1st world communists need to be loud and proud but as organizations, we need to only exist in secret. A 1st world communist org that is open about what it is, is either co-opted by the feds or is going to get shut down regardless of whether it is a book club, a political party or a mutual aid focused org. McCarthyism never ended they just ran out of communists dumb enough to stick their necks out.
If as individuals we go and volunteer at an existing soup kitchen we can interact with non-marxists who are willing to work to help make things better and have the time to do so. At the worst we might get told not to come help the soup kitchen because our politics are too radical. but people are still gonna get fed even if we have to find a new place to sling soup.
If we organize a communist soup kitchen, the only people who will hear the message of marxism will be hungry people, too preoccupied getting dinner to think about overthrowing the bourgeoise and we will spend all our energry running a soup kitchen. If we are lucky we’ll get out there a second time only to get a cease and desist from local government delivered by pigs with tazers. If we are unlucky a black van will show up and take all the volunteers away.
The only way for a marxist org to actually operate a soup kitchen would be to… pretend the org is something it is not.
Your clarification does not meaningfully change anything about what I was addressing. In fact, it makes even less sense than the idea that communists should be secretive both as individuals and organizations. If you truly believe the state is going to put you in a black van for being a practicing communist, being “loud and proud” as an individual communist, but not as an organization means putting a target on your back and now, not only do you not have anyone to back you up if things go south, you will just be (according to the black van narrative) disappeared quietly and without a fuss since nobody even knows what you’re doing. What you’re describing sounds like adventurism. The concept of some groups and their operations being guerilla in some historical contexts does make sense. The concept of communist efforts as a whole solely being guerilla, but not even fully, because they’re actually calling attention to the fact that they’re communist while pretending not to be in orgs, is contradictory nonsense.
In any case, a premise like “Helping people is great but directly tying that in with your communism is a good way to ruin both.” is a terribly misleading way of talking about things. If you use a premise that is bad, you can’t depend on a lengthy explanation to supposedly fix it. You need to go back and do a premise that is better.
Again you didn’t read what I wrote. I never said “dont ortganize.”
I am done talking with you. Your arguing against things I didn’t even come close to saying. If you want to argue in bad faith there’s a whole fediverse out there full of libs and chuds.
You literally said:
Which is an incredibly misleading way to put things. This doesn’t need to be about you or I as ego, but about the points of view. And trying to make it about ego does no one any favors.
Yes I said that and then I went on to explain what I meant by this but you decided I was saying a bunch of other stuff.
You didn’t raise objections to anything I said. You keep batting at your own misrepresentation of what I could be meaning ignoring the fact that there is an explanation of what I mean right there.
I already went over that in another post, the one where I said: “Your clarification does not meaningfully change anything about what I was addressing.”
Then instead of going through and telling me which parts are supposedly still a “misrepresentation”, you told me this:
I’m still not sure what is supposedly a misrepresentation. As it is, I never said that you said not to organize (that is a mouthful). I was addressing the idea of being openly communist as an individual, but not as an org. The idea of being secretly organizing with other communists was taken into account in my criticism of the point of view.
I even emphasized it as an attribute of what I was talking about here:
So how is this claiming that you said “don’t organize”?