askchapo

to paraphrase myself in a past comment and altered to fit the circumstances

Socialists see that socialism can win and are making it happen, as anyone who has been involved in socialist organizing in the last 10 years has been able to plainly see socialism exponentially grow more than it has the 35 years before it.

The CHUDS and liberals being ideologically incapable of objectivity regarding themselves, their history, or their current circumstances and the conditions of the coming reality [such as with climate crises events, such as with the mechanisms of multipolarization, such as with the nature of US society, and its history and colonial relations, and the real character and interests of the bourgeoisie, etc.] means they necessarily have and will continue to have bad analyses, bad theories, and so bad practice, and be comparatively woefully unprepared to manage the emergent circumstances and contradictions in society and between each other; and be, as we have seen of them in many cases, unable to remain sufficiently disciplined, organized, and focused to stay ahead in the struggle as ruptures and crises continue to throw more and more of the hitherto apathetic masses into politics while the pressures of the coming future massively complexify circumstances. Whereas the socialists, led by the most principled, incisive, and decisive Marxists, firmly rooted in Leninist organizational principles with scientifically sound adaptations to our respective material conditions

and so having the objective ability to organizationally outperform the other socialists in pure mechanical terms, engage with material reality as it is; not as it was or as we wish it would be or as it might be someday in the future, but as it currently is in living reality in its unfolding and in all its constituent forces, accurately discerned through the methodological framework of historical materialism and dialectical materialism which has and has proven in history to have unmatched predictive power when thoroughly grasped and applied correctly.

And it is in this, with an eye to where the masses of people are and are oriented in their class representations in their various movements and circumstances, and where the revolutionary masses are, and where current material conditions find and changing material conditions will alter the positions and interests, and mobilize in different ways, the masses of people; and through discerning how that can be best maneuvered-in to agitate, educate, and break-through into new fronts the ruptured contradictions between the people and the enemy bringing more of the masses of working people to our side

with and as a part of whom, by being the leading tip of an organized spear, us Marxists among and as part of these conscious masses (whose consciousness is our responsibility to develop) can meet the challenges head on and stay ahead of and strike truer than those who remain bewildered, panicked, idealist and delusional, misdirected or directionless, or capitulated to despair.

I mean just think about the large reactionary bourgeois and petty bourgeois populations, upon which fascism relies; which are rooted in no-small-part in suburbs. Suburbs are themselves objectively (and by design) atomized and alienated and inherently cut-off detachments of society, separated from each other and from access to necessities. They're a terrible organizational and logistical core body for that section of bourgeois and petty bourgeois to stage and organize anything meaningful in resistance to those outside them, while making a good proportion of who makes up that section of society. Mao is a big help here, but we're not nearly there (quite now). There are so many real actual things to consider in a dialectical sense for the benefit of real planning, which blatantly serve to contradict the realistic building of these 'doomed futures,' which don't exist because futures don't arise out of peoples ideas, they arise out of how class struggle is waged in changing material conditions and arrangement of forces and relations.

From the perspective of an illiterate peasant in western and central Eurasia, the times from 1914-1923 probably seemed like the end of the world. But the communists weren't moping 'it's hopeless' or speculating on dreams of 'what the future of the return of super-Tsarism will look like' (CONCEDING DEFEAT WITHOUT STATEMENT, which is objectively counter-revolutionary and outright reactionary)

They didn't embrace despair and reinforce the hopelessness of the backwards masses, they acted as the most advanced segment of the working class, motivated them, pitied and counseled those who were afraid of repression, and instead inspired and led them into acting in material reality, shaking them from their hopeless dreams into the material tasks before them. They engaged with material reality as it was, and from this struggle secured and built all that came after. It was not without death and suffering, just as there is today, and in every great time of change in history regardless, and including in pre-history and the time of life on this planet in general, where there have many times, and always been, great times of great change. Life went on and changed with it. We take the material conditions of our time and engage with their changing as they come, just as all life does when it comes into being and while it goes through its span.

And it is not just the people mobilized right now to consider

every "fairweather" sympathetic-to-communism 'leftist' whose agreeance we win who, even if not organizing or currently directly engaged, will be much more likely to tacitly or openly support us and to join these mass movements which are being and have been being built every day by dedicated revolutionaries as they grow, when crises throw more and more of the hitherto apathetic masses into politics (as has been historically and was described by Lenin as symptomatic of every revolution and which we have seen portents of in recent uprisings the past years)

every one of those "fairweather" leftists is worth more to the cause of socialism than 100 vulgar "materialist" defeatist Marxists who convince themselves and try to convince others of defeat because of 'X Y Z possibility in the future.' Who will be less likely to join mass movements now as well as when they grow, because they've convinced themselves (and even worse, possibly others), just as they often do now, that "it's not enough, too late, too small, it's barbarism" or whatever self-defeating dream at odds with reality; convincing themselves the only options are retiring, accepting a fate, fleeing, etc. Which amounts to opportunist capitulation before the battle has even been pitched and encouraging others to do the same, if not in word in effect. This has been true in what I've seen of others' attitudes and potential in my own organizing experience among socialists and non-socialists alike, as well looking objectively in a mass-politics sense, is and will necessarily be true. I would take a hundred eager yet naive or as-yet-uneducated 'leftists' before any well-read Marxist making defeatist capitulationist statements and arguments and speaking in ultra-style 'discouragements-as-virtue'. Socialism is growing exponentially, and will continue to and become stronger; especially if directionless defeatism is not spread through the ranks of who're supposed to be the working class' most advanced contingent.

In the abstract one can think of such a phase. In practice, however, he who denies the sharp tasks of to-day in the name of dreams about soft [or otherwise] tasks of the future becomes an opportunist. Theoretically it means to fail to base oneself on the developments now going on in real life, to detach oneself from them in the name of dreams.

in assessing a given situation, a Marxist must proceed not from what is possible, but from what is real.
(...)
they are surrendering power to the bourgeoisie—a fact which does not in the least contravene the theory of Marxism, for we have always known and repeatedly pointed out that the bourgeoisie maintains itself in power not only by force but,also by virtue of the lack of class-consciousness and organisation, the routinism and downtrodden state of the masses.

In view of this present-day reality, it is simply ridiculous to turn one’s back on the fact and talk about “possibilities”.

The flight of some people from the underground could have been the result of their fatigue and dispiritedness. Such individuals may only be pitied; they should be helped because their dispiritedness will pass and there will again appear an urge to get away from philistinism, away from the liberals and the liberal-labour policy, to the working-class underground. But when the fatigued and dispirited use journalism as their platform and announce that their flight is not a manifestation of fatigue, or weakness, or intellectual woolliness, but that it is to their credit, and then put the blame on the “ineffective,” “worthless,” “moribund,” etc., underground, these runaways then become disgusting renegades, apostates. These runaways then become the worst advisers for the working-class movement and therefore its dangerous enemies.