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?
Lots of typical US individualism and non-answers in this thread. Freedom Road Socialist Organisation and Party for Social Liberation both are principled ML organisations. The former has a competent agitation platform on Fight Back News and the latter organised lots of protests with their A.N.S.W.E.R. coalition recently and is an actual party. Yes both have their problems.
But both have contact and join forms on their websites, and communist organisations are always starved of active members so any help will be appreciated and they’ll probably know how you could do something in your area. Try to contact/join both, that way if either takes too long you guarantee a higher chance of response. Read both their programmes. And don’t be sectarian.
If you’re feeling spicy there could also be an SRA chapter near you. Besides that if you ever go to any protest or action, try to ask around which organisations people are part of and hang out with the most dedicated ones. Even if they’re in something like the DSA, you don’t need to join them to work with them. And again, communists orgs are always starved of good members who want to do something.
Honestly any local org would be a good place to start. Even better if they have a social event where you can meet folks first. And it’s totally fine if you don’t want to continue with an org for any reason. Just find another that’s a better fit.
But if you’re looking for left or socialist orgs specifically, folks have already mentioned a bunch of good options: FRSO, PSL, IWW, etc. I know the IWW has regular organizer trainings, and I found that really helpful for getting exposed to and practice with organizing techniques.
Learn about the community around you. Ask innocent questions to your bosses, family, friends, neighbors and gauge their reactions. Some of these can be “Hey, what do you think about the shootings in the city on X street?” to “You ever go hunting?”. The first question can profile those around you on their opinions/feelings towards other members of your community, for example if they say racist shit you know what kind of person you have around you and who you can rely on for that if shit hits the fan. The second question tells you either or not they own guns, have experience, etc. Those kinds of questions help you understand the actual situation you’re in.
Next, you ask yourself two questions. What is around you? This tells you your options and either or not you have the ability to choose. DSA, IWW, etc are all socdem or soft-socialist orgs but they often have more radical parts if they are in areas without dedicated ML parties. You can network, learn, volunteer in those. Otherwise, if you have a communist org near you, you can likely contact them and ask about recruiting and they’ll lead you down the path you need to go. Next, you ask yourself if you want direct action or if you want to commit yourself to something more dedicated. A lot of organizations like FNB for example have the ability for you to learn more about the people around you and once again, network. Don’t stop learning, probing and profiling people either. Personally, I think you should always be learning about the people around you.
Other than that a lot of it really does depend on what your local scene is like. It’s truly different in every city.
Party for Socialism and Liberation is a Marxist Leninist party in almost all 50 states! Please check them out.
Technically Marcyist, no? Did they pivot to ML? I know they have tons of MLs, but I was under the impression that their party line is Marcyist (though that may have morphed due to the overwhelming number of MLs in the party).
They are an ML party, although they do descend from the WWP, which was not ML, the PSL is ML. Brian Becker, one of the founding members, did an amazing series on Lenin you should check out if you are interested in seeing how leadership views Lenin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksimAtKX9jo
they self describe as a Leninist party. the leadership also describes the party as ML. only online do I hear anything about Marcy/Marcyism.
Ah, gotcha. Thanks, comrade!
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
who organised those protest you went to? consider joining those groups.
Let me be very clear and to the point.
The United States of America is a lost cause. The only cure to its blight is to destroy it.
We are in the early stages of a new holocaust. WW3 is coming within a decade. We are at the stage now where we need to be getting as many at risk people out of the US as possible. POC, Queer people, etc. Need to flee. All leftist orgs should be organizing to help them get somewhere safe.
Be very careful what you say and to who. Dont make yourself a target. Have good opsec. Publically be a MAGA lover and privately undermine them. The people who hid jews in their homes, the people who ran the underground railroad. If your not fleeing thats who you need to be.
Stay in shape and learn to shoot too. If they do find you out and come for you and its too late to escape take a few fascists out before they get you. and if your still kicking when a coalition probably led by China lands troops on American soil sometime in the 2030s im sure they wont mind the help.
America will lose the war. But it won this fight already. Dont die fighting a lost battle. Bide your time and help win the war.
and if your still kicking when a coalition probably led by China lands troops on American soil sometime in the 2030s im sure they wont mind the help.
Improbable fantasy.
The only way China would physically invade the US mainland and push inland is if the US had already used a large chunk of its nuclear arsenal successfully or not on China because invading in that way is a sure fire way to get the US to hit China with its nukes in a furious rage.
I personally doubt China’s near future ability to mitigate US ICBM’s to even 98% efficiency (and the US has so many if they use even half their stores that’s ~40 warheads that still get through and destroy the largest Chinese industrial cities and their people).
I don’t think nukes will be held back as a last resort in the coming wars. I think they’ll be used quite liberally. So they wont really be a deterrent to invasion at that point. Also China is a lot better off in that regard then you might think. Actual ICBMs arent as big of a threat as the nuclear armed sub fleet the US has, and the Chinese have shown they have a very effective method of tracking these subs recently. Also as i said i think it’ll be a coalition. Im talking basically the entire world united against America by that point. This will probably be mid to late 2030s after the US has killed tens of millions and made an enemy of just about everyone. I even think Europe will eventually realize the US is their enemy and turn on it. It’ll need to screw them over a few more times first tho.
I actually think we will see the first nuke deployed soon. Within 2-3 years. Potentially in Yemen, or Gaza. My best guess is a US nuke given to the Saudis will be used in Yemen. Everyone will be outraged, say its a war crime, then nothing will happen to the Saudis, or US. Then it’ll happen again a year or 2 later. Until it just becomes normalized to drop them. I think they’ll be used quite a bit in the arctic. It would be a great way to break up ice so you can move navies through an otherwise impassable area.
WW3 is coming, and it wont end until 1 side is entirely defeated. Lots of people are going to die. I wouldnt be surprised if a couple billion did. It wont be pretty, but America being invaded and occupied is inevitable imo. Just like with the Nazis.
I certainly hope we don’t see liberal use of nuclear weapons. I’d rather my Chinese comrades not die and if I’m being honest I’d prefer not to die too.
I don’t think nukes will be held back as a last resort in the coming wars.
China has a no first use policy. China is run by a communist party (a moral party against mass death). They know the US is deranged and dangerous. The US might use nuclear weapons but only if they have confidence they’re going to get the drop on China and suffer in the words of Buck Turgidson “limited and therefore acceptable losses compared to them therefore we win”.
Actual ICBMs arent as big of a threat
They are an enormous threat. Interception is difficult and frankly Russia is ahead of China on this. The US has 4000 warheads, penetration rate of as I mentioned even 2-3% of those getting past interceptors would be enough to kill more than a hundred million Chinese people, would be enough to cripple Chinese industry, would be enough to plunge China into misery and devastation and knock them out as a world power for years if not a decade or more. (As would successful nuclear strikes on major US cities knock them out of consideration for a similar period though the US has the advantage of having its armies divided across the world in various bases as well as vassals they can call upon to rebuild some sort of Euro-American empire project)
Nuclear war is not something you just brush off.
as the nuclear armed sub fleet the US has, and the Chinese have shown they have a very effective method of tracking these subs recently.
One speculative paper that is not guaranteed to actually work as well in practice and which would require an extensive sensor net over the SCS to make work which China flatly does not presently have. Besides the fact, they could launch from off the east coast of Korea, off the coast of Russia, off the coast of Japan.
And if the US does a nuclear strike it will be a surprise attack, the US will not telegraph to China that they’re going to nuke them, China will not have time to sink these subs. And guess what seeking out and trying to sink nuclear missile subs is a threat to nuclear deterrence and if China did that first the US might very well react with nuclear retaliatory strikes (or strikes of conventional nature aimed at taking out Chinese nuclear capabilities at which point the PLA has to assume it’s part of a full scale attack and launch accordingly which will prompt full American launch response) and the CPC military commission planners know this. Thus it would be pointless unless China was doing a first strike trying to decapitate US capabilities which I doubt they’d do.
The bottom line as I see it is this:
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If the US gets some sort of ability to suppress Chinese nuclear retaliation they’ll use their own nuclear weapons to destroy China, occupy and enslave or at least suppress and encircle and starve her remaining people. If this happens China won’t be invading the US, others might, of which Chinese irregular (not PLA) forces might make up some part but not a bulk of which given the big ocean they’d need to cross.
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If the US doesn’t get a suppression ability but China does, then the US won’t use nukes, won’t egg China to use nukes and will use other methods such as encirclement, sanctions, blockade in all but name via command of financial institutions instead all while crying and pissing themselves that China is going to kill them all tomorrow.
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If neither the US nor China gets a reliable method to suppress the other’s nuclear response then China will not launch first. The US may be deranged enough to launch on China in a sneak attack but if they do China’s response will remove the US from the picture, there won’t be much left to invade, dying, starving, miserable people in a wasteland is what the US will be and there will be little point invading it, if something is going to be invaded in that situation it will be Europe with America’s left-over military assets trying to regain world hegemony. But in this final picture importantly China will not be playing a big role because hundreds of millions of Chinese will be dead, the Chinese nation like the American one will be smashed and spend decades recovering during which stronger powers like Russia and India will try and invade and carve off resources or impose neo-colonial arrangements on the Chinese people.
2 is a likely win condition for China and for communism. 3 is a potential win condition IF the US doesn’t go nuclear. If it does, socialism loses, the US loses, but capitalism in the aftermath of all the devastation has a good chance of continuing and winning to reign in barbarity over a climate change devastated world.
I actually think we will see the first nuke deployed soon. Within 2-3 years. Potentially in Yemen, or Gaza.
The zionists are deranged but not enough to want a nuclear weapon going off in their backyard and what they see as their property. Their present methods of genocide are more than enough and the US is giving them adequate cover. They’ll probably succeed in bullying Egypt or someone to take enough Gazans that they can do what they want. Fact is nuking Muslims off the face of the earth like that will still up a lot of Muslim rage and anger compared to just killing them with normal bombs and starvation as they’ve been doing and will solidify resistance and hatred of the zionist entity even among Europeans who will be unable to paint such an act of naked massacre by a strong power as somehow acceptable. It would make them a pariah state and undo so much hasbara propaganda. Nuking Yemen would be a terror tactic and probably a pointless one given how the country’s armed forces are structured, it’s not like they can nuke a city and take out a bunch of weapons plants there given how Ansar Allah operates. If they’re going to use terror tactics on Yemen that amount to war crimes chemical and biological weapons seem a more practical idea and give the US more complete plausible deniability compared to a nuke.
Actual ICBMs arent as big of a threat
Where is this suddenly coming from? I think this is the second time this month I’ve seen someone arguing that nukes aren’t actually that bad. I thought most people agreed that nuclear weapons are devastating things that should be avoided at all cost. I really hope this is not becoming a common sentiment for some reason.
This kind of rhetoric keeps me awake at night. Nuclear weapons are one of if not the most horrific tools of warfare the human race as ever constructed.
People say socialism or barbarism, but nuclear weapons ensure it’s socialism or extinction.
I think since we are far removed from the use of nuclear weapons people have begun considering them simply another geopolitical factor. A thought expirement or an abstract notion.
No they are not. They are real, and they are devastating. Any person who suggests that a nuclear strike anywhere on the world is not a serious step to the eradication of mankind should be maniacally shouted down.
I mean this. If you hear anyone speak of using these weapons in a light manner, you should immediately lambast them as an idiot and a monster. The mention of this subject should serve as a trigger to halt the conversation from moving past that point.
Too many people are forgetting he horrors that these weapons will bring upon the earth, and we approach a critical mass of westerners especially who I genuinely believe would end our existence in a Nuclear Holocaust becuase this view is becoming even slightly more socially acceptable.
Nuclear science is a fascinating thing which can achieve dramatic results wherever it is employed. However in warfare, that means the anhilation of our species.
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Let’s be realistic, in a world of nuclear deterrence world powers aren’t landing troops on each other’s shores. But I think you’re right about this not being a safe place if you’re not a well off, white man or woman. There is a danger of an invasion but it’s not from the Chinese, it’s from American right wing extremists. A populist right is on the rise and it’s far more powerful than any genuine movement on the left in the US. Trump is just the beginning.
Those who are in the US could just give up and move away, which is totally understandable, but don’t pretend that pressuring the head of capitalistic imperialism in the world directly has no effect. US citizens arguably have the most potential to change the direction of world events, but they’re also the most subdued and comatose of all populations. But those of us that aren’t in a capitalistic stupor could organize and push the country in a better direction, but we will definitely be punished for it.
If OP chooses to stay, it’s going to be a fight. Not against China but against the powers of domination and exploitation that already exist here.
Uh… i think you misunderstood. I wasnt saying it would be a fight against China. I was saying it would be a fight against the US. I’m on Chinas side in this scenario.
我爱中国哈哈哈哈哈哈
heck no, i’m not leaving
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Helping people is great but directly tying that in with your communism is a good way to ruin both. The goal of revolutionary communists is to raise class consciousness and overthrow the bourgeoise. (the completion of which is the ultimate form of “helping people”) This requires secrecy because the capitalist do not want to be overthrown. Mutual aid can be a means to our end but must always be seen as that. Join existing non revolutionary orgs to help people and agitate within those orgs.
I've been reading some of Mao's work about guerilla tactics and its been comingling with Lenin's What is to be Done and this rant has been brewing in my brain. It is by no means complete or definitive
I don’t think any first world communist organization is worth joining. “The gendarmes” have a infiltrators in every public communist org. They are a trap. Secrecy is one of the most important aspects of a revolutionary org as laid out by Lenin in What is to be Done.
Agitation should be the primary focus of communists in the first world. If you want to help people go work at a non communist mutual aid org and agitate among the other workers. Read lots of theory and history so that when someone asks you “where did you learn about all that” you can give them a book recommendation. The goal of communists is not to “help people” it is to raise class consciousness in order to bring about the revolution.
First world communists need to stop looking to join an organization and start building their own from scratch. McCarthyism was a declaration of war and the communists need to start acting like it and not grouping together where we can be easily targeted. We need to stop building a party and start building a guerrilla style web of agitators educators and propogandists.
If you are successful in agitation it should naturally evolve into revolutionary cell of your own. Don’t trust individuals who seek you out trying to join the revolution. If someone has read theory and wants to “organize” tell them to go start their own cell. Feds read theory. Only trust ignorant people to join your cell. If you watch someone be radicalized you know they are not a mole. Keep your cell small enough that you can manage it yourself like 10 people.
Cells should have innocuous unassuming names (like randomized reddit usernames) that can be used as identifiers for the group but not to identify what the group is and does.
As members of your cell get better educated they can go off and agitate on their own and they should never to introduce you to their recruits or to the other members of your cell. We need to keep things compartmentalized.
Come up with a code phrase that your cell can use to tell each other if you have been compromised. When your cell has been compromised cut face to face contact completely. (The Russian gendarmes used to let the most active revolutionaries escape a raid and keep tabs on them to line up the next bust. On one occasion they allowed a high level political assassination go unmolested in order to build trust for their operatives inside the org.) An online space like lemmygrad is a great way to keep in contact after cutting ties without risking security. Just never let on that you know each other IRL.
If you are always working on the ground floor radicalizing people and always cutting contact at the first sign of trouble you will raise class consciousness while avoiding becoming a lure for the feds.
If you are contacted by a member of another group, exchange names of the groups and some sort of contact information. Tell them to tighten up their OPsec because the feds are out there. Warn against individuals who are part of multiple orgs/cells as they both inflate the perceived number of total revolutionaries and they are also a security risk.
On initial contact tell the other how many other cells you have made face to face contact with and roughly how many revolutionaries you have 2nd hand contact with. (like if you know a guy in a group of ten people and you know another guy in a group of 5 and there are 4 in your group, you know of 3 cells and 20 revolutionaries.) Keep a running tally of names of groups you have met and how many people they have and how many revolutionaries they have 2nd hand contact with. Never share any more detailed than the number of groups and the number of members of all the groups you know of. (these numbers are like how some viruses release a signal protein so that they know when they have enough numbers to switch out of their dormant phase.)
Your group should always tell eachother when they meet ofther groups and develop a script for how to deal with contacts. “I am aware of your group. It is nice to know we have allies out there. We need to keep each other safe by keeping our distance.” Do not merge groups. We need more cells not bigger ones a smaller cell is more secure.
Helping people is great but directly tying that in with your communism is a good way to ruin both.
You can’t raise class consciousness effectively if you pretend communism doesn’t exist and act like you have no affiliation with it. Are there situations some of the time in history where some groups have to act in near total secrecy? Yes. Are there situations where you need to be wary about how obvious you are, especially if you’re in a more vulnerable situation / among a more reactionary group? Yes. But if you’re wanting to organize people, you won’t lead them by pretending you’re something you aren’t. Just as an example, the people who hang out on this forum, I think it’s safe to say many of them would not know it exists and would hardly know what communism is if everyone they had encountered who had communist views had pretended not to.
Tying together communism and helping people on an organized level is actually one of the most effective things that you can do. You help because you believe in helping, but you also tie it into what your aims are, or else people will just assume you’re being charitable because you feel like it and will fill in the blanks with their own narrative about how the world works. Some people awash in western Christian thinking might find it feels icky to combine the two, like you’re somehow undermining the act of kindness by relating it to communism. But the reality is, people seeing that a group consistently does good for them will make them believers far easier than trying to get them to read thick books. And for good reason. People tend to like those who help them get their needs met and do it consistently, without there being some kind of trick or catch to it that undermines them in the process. It’s a sensible reaction. And part of getting past the existing propaganda is showing people that there is an alternative that can not only get their needs met, but do it without all the class/racial/etc. divide and means tested BS.
pretend communism doesn’t exist and act like you have no affiliation with it.
Where did I say this?
But if you’re wanting to organize people, you won’t lead them by pretending you’re something you aren’t
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.
Its like you read one sentence decided to inject the worst possible meaning into it when the explanation was right there.
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:
Helping people is great but directly tying that in with your communism is a good way to ruin both.
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:
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.
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:
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.
So how is this claiming that you said “don’t organize”?
I don’t think any first world communist organization is worth joining. “The gendarmes” have a infiltrators in every public communist org. They are a trap. Secrecy is one of the most important aspects of a revolutionary org as laid out by Lenin in What is to be Done.
I’m not sure how you took away from Lenin’s WitbD that secrecy is so much more important than democratic centralism, organised action or the party publishing apparatus for agitation and propaganda (in their case, a newspaper). If anything what I took from the book about secrecy was more along the lines “sadly we can’t go too much in detail due to secrecy”. I also don’t remember it tying back much to guerilla warfare (specially since they were too far away from civil war at that point), though it’s been a while.
Of course do engage in opsec, but this seems like some anarchoid deviation from Marxism-Leninism. Specially considering the US is still too far away from a guerilla warfare situation. There is action that requires secrecy, but that wouldn’t be handled by people like OP with no previous experience organising. I’d be genuinely interested to hear where you got those ideas from in Lenin and Mao.
An online space like lemmygrad is a great way to keep in contact after cutting ties without risking security.
Please don’t use public and federated with cache forums as a place to connect with others if secrecy is that necessary. You might as well doxx yourself, the fediverse is an OSINT nightmare.
I also don’t remember it tying back much to guerilla warfare
This is the Mao influence in my rant. The WITBD influence is more the ideas of the tricks of the state to repress revolution, and the importance of agitation and propaganda in motivating the masses. The class consciousness of Russia was much higher when Lenin wrote what is to be done than it is in the first world now. Considering the blanket anti communist sentiment and the advanced state of the surveillance apparatus in the first world, Marxists need to adjust our tactics especially as repression is growing. Democratic centralism is an issue for when we are not 5% of the population.
Based off what we have seen in communist revolutions I think it would be short sighted for 1st world communists to not expect a protracted civil/guerrilla war in the process of revolution. I think that the spread of propaganda and agitation should be organized along the lines of a guerrilla force to facilitate our transition from intellectual insurgency to an armed one.
Please don’t use public and federated with cache forums as a place to connect with others
I didn’t mean to insinuate that people should organize or discuss openly their revolutionary actions and plans on here. You’d never DM an IRL comrade and say “wow that bust was crazy did you make it out? we are planning on regrouping at whataburger next tuesday”
I mean more so using social media as a signaling system. If you see a post from a username that you know IRL you know they are alive, you can use highly personalized language to communicate a message or use prearranged codes.
