this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2024
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It's not cherry picking. Parenti is describing politics moving in a liberative direction. Your meme is describing politics moving in a oppressive direction. When politics moves in an oppressive direction "public debate" stops mattering at a point. Your meme is arguing for life near 1910, not near 1935. Public debate only matters if you can move politics into a liberative direction, AND you maintain that underlying political power that has been effectively destroyed by the Democratic party jettisoning unions and union membership dying in the late 20th.
Nobody is going to sit thru a Parenti lecture unless they think you can change their material conditions.
If you're arguing about the Wagner Act's impact you're about a time past literal height of achievement for ideological militaristic labor organizatoin (IWW) in this country. By the time of Wagner act the US IWW was dismantled into AFL style corporate unionism. Sure they could do strikes, which was the polite thing compared to literally class warfare of the IWW.
You're advocating to use tactics derived from a strategic position you are not in. We are not in 1910 or in 1935 regarding union power and action.
We are in a time where we have:
Nobody wants "public debate". They're burned out on "public debate". People just want change, but they're also unwilling to risk the minor comforts they have to get it. If you're using Parenti as a model, we're at the start of the story except instead of getting kicked out of town for public speeches, nobody is listening.
Public debate is the labor leftist version of the electoral leftist pipe dream of 3 years ago of "force the vote" on M4A.
Parenti is describing what effective political action and organizing look like. I'm going to repeat this again, since you continue to ignore my point, public debate serves as a way to educate people. Education does not happen magically out of the blue.
You know how sometimes it feels like you're talking to a wall online? Yeah in 2024, "public debate" is talking to a wall. You have to meet people where they're at and move them, not force feed them Parenti lectures.
I didn't argue against the idea that public debate serves as a way to educate people. I have said the plain truth that it is ineffective in today's society. In 2024 there's hundreds of thousands of ways to educate yourself for free, you need to answer the question of why people don't use them. Not argue about how technically public debate is educational.
Public debate is as effective as sending people marxists.org, youtube parenti library links or yelling at them to read theory over twitter.
You've written walls of text in this thread, yet it's not clear what it is you're actually proposing. How exactly are you planning to reach people if not by talking with them?
In the modern era the problem isn't "reaching people". It's getting them to show up. It's the same problem of electoral politics dude.
If I am a McDonalds worker you have to convince me that it's worth my time to go to your little meetings, time that I could be using to watch Mr Beast give someone a million dollars in return for the same kind of light torture I experience at my job.
Talking to leftists is the same as talking to Democrats sometimes. You just have to be "the smartest" while willfully not understanding that to a real life worker your hands look as empty as the lib next to you.
You're not competing with 20th century poverty, you're competing with 21st century dopamine rat poverty and the left as a whole hasn't evolved to handle that.
Getting them to show up for what specifically?
Again, people need to understand what it is that's being proposed and why it's in their interest to participate. If you can't even articulate that here, whom are you going to convince exactly. And yes, you are very much dealing with real genuine poverty and overwork in 21st century. Millions of people are struggling to make ends meet, working multiple jobs, and being stuck in debt.
In that order, as it's more difficult to actually win gains through "polite" society shit like voting and negotiations, you have to do things that require more sacrifice. And in fact the terrain isn't an even gradient because union meetings and card signing has a lot more risk, than being represented by an existing unionized shop and showing up on the right side of a contract vote.
If you are in any way thinking that the conditions in the 21st century US are equivalent rather that merely rhyme with the conditions in the 19th and 20th in Russia as much as you can take "What is to be Done?" off the shelf and use it as a playbook then there's really no point in this discussion.
The reality of history is that labor consciousness developed through completely two different antithetical processes across the Atlantic. The creation of the IWW literally is the refutation of the core thesis of "What is to be Done?" that class consciousness cannot spontaneously emerge out of labor action with bosses. Lenin was right for his time in Russia, he is not universal. His further global success is based on the export of support and material from the USSR to movements, and that tactic effectively failed in China which lead to the Sino Soviet Split.
Your failure to actually describe realistically the terrain of the labor movement in the US in the 21st century is literally the first hurdle. We don't have theorists in the US capable of this anymore. We don't produce that as a society. Russia had a grand tradition of intelligensia where there were hundreds of people like Lenin writing.
And how are you going to convince them to show up to that union meeting exactly. Perhaps you might even have to talk to them, to have a conversation where you convince them that showing up for a union meeting is in fact in their interest. That's what debate, discussion, and education means.
Weird straw man since nowhere did I say that. What I said is that there is real poverty in the US, and people are struggling to make ends meet. Nowhere did I suggest there's going to be some sort of a proletarian revolution in the US as there was in Russia at the start of the 20th century.
Also, there are plenty of highly intelligent and articulate people in US who explain the problems in clear terms. Russia doesn't have some unique tradition of grand political theorists. The problem in US is that most people don't think they need to be educated, and want quick and easy solutions to difficult problems.
I'm going to stop here because it's clear that we're not getting anywhere convincing each other of anything. I've said all needed to say here.
At this point you might as well do a joke of Jordan Peterson style reasoning where you wriet debate = discussion = education. You keep using these terms interchangeably and they seem to mean whatever the hell you want them to mean in the context. Sometimes they mean that someone knows theory, sometimes they mean that someone has talked to someone else about how the boss is annohying, sometimes they mean you're planning a violent wildcat labor action.
My point is "real poverty" means different things across time dude. How do you not understand this? The aspects of "real poverty" in the 21st century quite literally invalidate 20th century communist thinking and strategy. The whole point is that when you're cornered you rely entirely on quoting and throwing theory at people without explaining how that theory practically applies to the modern day.
Name one. Literally name one.
Hmm....... It's almost like uhh they'd rather watch Mr Beast on YouTube which is quite literally my point.
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It's like you're unable to comprehend the concept of degrees. All of these things work together in practice. People who know theory help educate others, and people talk to each other at the level they are able. Trying to see this as black and white is absurd.
Another weird straw man. What theory means practically in modern day has been explained by me and many other people on this very site. I even explained that in this very thread earlier, and you promptly ignored that.
Michael Parenti, Richard Wolff, Chris Smalls, Michael Hudson, Claudia De la Cruz, just off top of my head
And my point is that these people don't matter. They're not the demographic that's going to drive any change.
If you're looking for a Lenin, Parenti is your closest but he's dead. Smalls is a good union organizer but has really just organized a single Amazon warehouse and fell off.
De La Cruz got less than half the votes Debs got in his weakest run, when the population of the US was minuscule compared to now. De La Cruz wasn't even on the ballot in her home state. You might as well say Bernie Sanders if you're gonna say De La Cruz because their theories of change are literally the same and are proven failures.
Wolff and Hudson have one foot in the grave as 80 year old men they're not leading anything.
Capital is running up the board as the Globetrotters and you're fielding a team that's playing worse than the Washington Generals.
Oh boy, "lets ignore the lumpen proletariat" is literally the most Democratic Party brained take a socialist can make. Weren't you just singing Chairman Fred's praises 5 seconds ago, and now this???
In practice our society is amazing at making lumpenproles, the vast majority of people are lumpenproles by the Marxist definition (not the Engles or Leninist one where he gives them the old Kulak treatment).
And in your opinion the demographic that is going to drive change are unpopular people who are subjects of news discussed on this site and this site only.
This shit is silly dude, there's no clear theory of change here, not even an analysis on a theory of change. Just bromides.
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here to be honest. You claimed that the US has no intellectuals and no people who have deep political understanding. I listed a bunch just off top of my head, now you're moving your goal posts.
PSL as a party isn't focused on electoralism. It's a worker movement, and De la Cruz is an excellent leader for this movement. If you still think that elections in a rigged system matter then you are in dire need of reading theory you deride here.
No, and if you actually bothered reading what I wrote then you'd know that the demographic I identified are people feeling the exploitation. People like Chris Smalls who are starting to organize on the ground. The fact that you think bread and circuses is somehow a unique phenomenon in the US that's never happened in history is absolutely incredible.
Good luck with your magical unions organically forming out of thin air bud. I'm sure it'll happen any day now.