this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2024
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Those who are forget the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it and it seems like there's a lot of repating of history from failing to learn going on. If you have the means, leave the sinking ship that is delusional that it is perfectly fine. There is not going to be a great socialist revolution here. Only decay.
Sorry comrade but, regardless of how justified it feels to engage in this, this is defeatism and naked opportunism the likes of which would make Kautsky blush. And this isn't directed specifically at you, but at these notions and consciousnesses of everyone in these threads today who are holding and furthering this (what is it about today?).
Revolution does not "happen" it is built. People are building it every day, even in the imperial core. The PSL has seen its numbers grow. The CPUSA had grown so much to the point of exceeding its capability to internally manage the contradictions between much of its rank-and-file and national's fed-ass-opportunism-and-revisonism and recently had a split, or more accurately a national top down purge of huge sections and entire branches of committed communists around the country, over these branches issuing petitions against electoralism-for-genociders and over the colonial question and black nationalism. These communists, if truly committed and surrounded by others to motivate them, and critically NOT HEARING FROM THEIR COMRADES "It's hopeless, it's pointless, there will be no revolution, let's all flee or die," pulling them into the same defeatist mire and having them retire to individualist opportunism as well; they've been many of them leaving to start their own local groups to hopefully build into wider networks, or being onboarded into the PSLs et al. who are themselves on the streets every day, protesting, agitating and educating, petitioning and door-knocking, and helping organizing communities and workplaces.
People are and have for years been out there every day building revolutionary movements and class consciousness, alongside groups and organizations of varying political bents and tactical and strategic angles attacking the core contradictions of the colonial regime and its empire. There are BOOMER Ex-BPP members who are still in the struggle every day; I've participated in events and actions hosted by them and sister organizations. There are ex-BPP and BLA members still languishing in prison who engage in agitating and organizing and publishing whatever notes they can get out and have faced years or even decades in solitary confinement for it. There are more communists who've been doing active agitation and education and engaging in the struggle to organize actions against capitalism, imperialism, neo-colonialism, prisons and cops, and organizing for revolution than your corporate media will ever let you see or comprehend
demonstrated in the fact that even in the context of 3rd party electoralism they deliberately only mention Stein, West, and RFK Jr. glaringly leaving out PSL (~I wonder why~). They will never give us the full truth. Most haven't even touched Uhuru being repressed by COINTELPRO because then they'd have to talk about Uhuru, their politics, and then the countless black nationalist and communist organizations who've been rallying in solidarity for them. The media landscape is not reality; it is what the ruling class wishes us to see as reality so we fall into positions that make their lives easier for them to continue in the way of things, rather than harder or even impossible.
People had already been so fed up that even Bernie's milquetoast liberal-imperialist ass having mud slung at him and obstructed by the DNC in 2016 made a lot of communists. And even he was already a compromise candidate for a lot of people who supported him. I guarantee you events in France made even more radicalized individuals and communists, especially if the communist organizations involved in the coalition work were reading their Lenin and agitating that this shit would happen. People have been and are primed for it and have only become more so. The George Floyd uprising was an unprecedented national (and international) event; which was so dire for the ruling class they had to pull prison guards from federal prisons to deal with the DC protests. Those prisons, where individuals sit and have sat who in literal terms "have nothing to lose but their chains," in all the relevant implications for those who have read their own history of struggle, and the theory which inspired it and has continued to be inspired by it (and yes, there's work being done and to be done in prisons on many fronts; some orgs listed on AbolitionNotes. From IWOC, CURB, IDOCWatch, ALC, JLS & others I won't name here).
These levels of mass sustained protests against imperialism and Zionism, and for the decolonization of Palestine and an end to arms-dealer profiteering in universities would never have happened like this ten years ago; and organizations like PSL are on the ground in these protests where individuals are coming out against the genocide and US-financed atrocity-carnival in the Levant
helping these protestors develop an understanding of the wider systems behind the genocide and onboard them into, if not the organization, into revolutionary theory and analysis to elevate their class consciousness and develop their sympathies and awarenesses of the common allies against our common enemies, who reign over the capitalist death machine of murder and exploitation.
Covid vaccines being gated behind insurance, on top of life saving medications like China's diabetes treatment being blockaded by capitalist pharma is making communists and nascents. The failures and disgraces behind the suffering of the Carolina floods are making communists and nascents. A few years ago a highrise condo in Florida COLLAPSED, killing many and orphaning children; the investigators said they couldn't even pinpoint the point of failure because so much was unmaintained; and when new regulations were pushed to force renovation of residences, the "association"(cartel) of landlords complained it was too expensive and government overreach was hurting business. These are all not just hopeless events of forever-inevitability, they are the results of capitalist contradiction reaching rupture points and are WHAT MAKE COMMUNISTS. The Floridian communists' job then, is to, while the least advanced segments of the working class affected as victims are falling into despair and hopelessness, to instead act as the most advanced segment to motivate them and organize them against this SOCIAL MURDER and pooling support, pressing for damages and criminal convictions of those responsible
obstructing and pressuring politicians and judges to force them to show in full view of the victims of capitalism that they side with the open-fang capitalists not just passively but actively;
and the pigs work for them
and seeing this being the undeniable case, they will understand why this happens and What Is To Be Done to stop it, by educating the people in understanding the underlying systemic reasons; such as how commodified land exchange-value and rent exchange-value incentivize disinvestment, and the states' role, through bureaucratic disenfranchisement and a monopoly on violence, in defending and upholding private property and profits at the expense of the propertyless workers.
Everyone living in the west here, looking around seeing things go to shit and feeling the despair and rage YOU ARE NOT UNIQUE
so is everyone else having the same thoughts and feelings and all they need is connection into a wider movement, of which there are, and will continue to be. What we need is continual development of class consciousness pulling people out of this kind of dead-end counter-revolutionary defeatism and despair which does more to undermine the building of the revolution and sap energy for mass movement than anything the reactionaries could do. Join whatever orgs you can; in the US the PSL, join the IWW, or join FRSO or even a trot org I don't care. The more communists in active organization, the more people seeing shit constantly collapsing and getting worse around them who can look out the window and see us on the streets, or seeing us agitate in forums, seeing us getting news interviews and disrupting bourgeois meetings/conferences, can have their consciousness elevated and their rage tied to understanding and action; and the more this happens and the more omnipresent it continues to become, the more others will see there is movement toward something better and join. There are countless working, and countless waiting. Gen Z and upcoming Gen Alpha(?) have never known a future that they might have, not even known the future that GenX and Millenials have watched be torn away from them for the benefit of capital. The new generations have only ever seen the end of the world coming. They are necessarily radical. What they need is revolutionary perspective and inspiration to win the world they deserve; and we don't everyone continuing the GenX trend of letting the world continue to be destroyed and moping about it. What the younger generations need from each other and older generations is active, present, thoughtful, educated, dedicated revolutionaries to bring them into the growing communist movement so there can be the effective and energetic vanguard that there needs to be.