The Official Socialism/Democratic Socialism/Communism/Marxism Thread

[Madvillain]

Support your local #Antifa

 

[Type Username Here]

You know a lot of people have hang-ups with the Party because the Party talks about a class struggle. And the people that have those hang-ups are opportunists, and cowards, and individualists and everything that's anything but revolutionary. And they use these things as an excuse to justify and to alibi and to bonify their lack of participation in the real revolutionary struggle. So they say, "Well, I can't dig the Panther Party because the Panthers they are engrossed with dealing with oppressor country radicals, or white people, or hunkies, or what have you. They said these are some of the excuses that I use to negate really why I am not in the struggle."

We got a lot of answers for those people. First of all, we say primarily that the priority of this struggle is class. That Marx, and Lenin, and Che Guevara end Mao Tse-Tung and anybody else that has ever said or knew or practiced anything about revolution, always said that revolution is a class struggle. It was one class--the oppressed--those other class--the oppressor. And it's got to be a universal fact. Those that don't admit to that are those that don't want to get involved in a revolution, because they know that as long as they're dealing with a race thing, they'll never be involved in a revolution. They can talk about numbers; they can hang you up in many, many ways, but as soon as you start talking about class, then you got to start talking about some guns. And that's what the Party had to do.

When the Party started to talk about class struggle, we found that we had to start talking about some guns. If we never negated the fact that there was racism in America, but we said that when you, the by-product, what comes off of racism, that capitalism comes first and next is racism. That when they brought slaves over here, it was to take money. So first the idea came that we want to make money, then the slaves came in order to make that money. That means that capitalism had to, through historical fact, racism had to come from capitalism. It had to be capitalism first and racism was a by-product of that.

Anybody that doesn’t admit that is showing through their non-admittance and their non-participation in the struggle that all they are, are people who fail to make a commitment; and the only thing that they have going for them is the education that they receive in these institutions—education enough to teach them some alibis and teach them that you’ve gotta be black, and you’ve gotta change you name. And that’s crazy.

Fred Hampton - It's A Class Struggle Goddammit!, November, 1969 | LFKS

 

[Type Username Here]

Support your local #Antifa

Better yet, stock up

Leftists and Liberals have been convincing our side to disarm themselves while some of fascist opposition has been stockpiling weapons. Can you imagine if the worst case scenario comes to fruition? Are you going to throw safety pins at these people? What a laughable strategy.

Marx:

To be able forcefully and threateningly to oppose this party, whose betrayal of the workers will begin with the very first hour of victory, the workers must be armed and organized. The whole proletariat must be armed at once with muskets, rifles, cannon and ammunition, and the revival of the old-style citizens’ militia, directed against the workers, must be opposed. Where the formation of this militia cannot be prevented, the workers must try to organize themselves independently as a proletarian guard, with elected leaders and with their own elected general staff; they must try to place themselves not under the orders of the state authority but of the revolutionary local councils set up by the workers. Where the workers are employed by the state, they must arm and organize themselves into special corps with elected leaders, or as a part of the proletarian guard. Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary. The destruction of the bourgeois democrats’ influence over the workers, and the enforcement of conditions which will compromise the rule of bourgeois democracy, which is for the moment inevitable, and make it as difficult as possible – these are the main points which the proletariat and therefore the League must keep in mind during and after the approaching uprising.

 

[Madvillain]

 

[Type Username Here]

Man, "they" really did a great job of cleaning up the Civil Rights Movement to make it palatable for the American populace.

A lot of the leaders and groups of that period were staunch Communists and Socialists

 

[Madvillain]

Anarchist group claims attack on Golden Dawn MP Germenis | Kathimerini

 

[JahFocus CS]

 

[J-Nice]

 

[JahFocus CS]

 

[JahFocus CS]

Building a Mass Socialist Party | Jacobin

Lots of stuff to consider in this article. Will come back to it later this week with some detailed thoughts.

 

[dirty_yo]

Building a Mass Socialist Party | Jacobin

Lots of stuff to consider in this article. Will come back to it later this week with some detailed thoughts.

lets be honest for a second. jacobin advocating against open borders so as to appeal to white voters is fukking trash. might be time to throw them in the bushes too

 

[dirty_yo]

@DEAD7 were you the anarchist that used to post on sohh? i was called euro dirt/dirty_yo, do you remember having the whole know the ledge goons come at us in a thread advocating libertarian socialism circa 08? times change

 

[JahFocus CS]

lets be honest for a second. jacobin advocating against open borders so as to appeal to white voters is fukking trash. might be time to throw them in the bushes too

I don't think it would just be cac voters mad about open borders, but I agree with your underlying point that it is a compromise on principles and class interests to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Realistically though, at this point, advocating an open border policy under current economic conditions is a hard sell.

 

[dirty_yo]

I don't think it would just be cac voters mad about open borders, but I agree with your underlying point that it is a compromise on principles and class interests to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Realistically though, at this point, advocating an open border policy under current economic conditions is a hard sell.

take this paragraph fam (found in the stress test section)

"The increase in the numbers that abstained from voting for Clinton (or Trump) far exceeded those who switched to Trump. This does not excuse the apparent toleration of Trump’s racism and sexism but it does mean that the appeal of Trump among white voters should not be exaggerated. Any attempt to fight the expected direction of the Trump presidency can’t start by blaming the white working class for Trump’s victory but must take the frustrations of the white working class seriously and win them to its side."

there is an inherent contradiction in this line of reasoning. if wwc support for trump was exaggerated, why do you need to build a strategy around appealing to the most reactionary + racist trump supporters? and EVEN if some trump supporters are redeemable, you don't do that by negotiating their racism. you do that by raising class consciousness through work place organising.

this article did not + is not going down well in radical circles at all

 

[JahFocus CS]

take this paragraph fam (found in the stress test section)

"The increase in the numbers that abstained from voting for Clinton (or Trump) far exceeded those who switched to Trump. This does not excuse the apparent toleration of Trump’s racism and sexism but it does mean that the appeal of Trump among white voters should not be exaggerated. Any attempt to fight the expected direction of the Trump presidency can’t start by blaming the white working class for Trump’s victory but must take the frustrations of the white working class seriously and win them to its side."

there is an inherent contradiction in this line of reasoning. if wwc support for trump was exaggerated, why do you need to build a strategy around appealing to the most reactionary + racist trump supporters? and EVEN if some trump supporters are redeemable, you don't do that by negotiating their racism. you do that by raising class consciousness through work place organising.

this article did not + is not going down well in radical circles at all

To me, that excerpt is saying that way more cac workers stayed home than switched to Trump. So it wasn't a groundswell of support from cacs who normally stayed home, actually coming out to vote for Trump.

What use is it to try to downplay and disregard concerns about shytty trade deals and deindustrialization? (I'm presuming this is what's meant in the article by "the frustrations of the white working class" -- maybe I'm wrong.)

I agree with your last paragraph.

I don't believe in writing off the white working class as eternally and hopelessly racist, but I also don't believe in subordinating our desires for freedom to them giving up on clinging to racism. If racism is what they want to line up behind, we need to give them that work as we defend ourselves. But we should, like the BPP did, always point out that they aren't free either and they need to turn their focus on those who are actually fukking up their lives even WHILE we militantly defend our communities.

It's either class war or a race war. I'd prefer a class war but if cacs insist on clinging to racism, then let's have the race war and separate from them completely.