By reading theory, organizing and realizing that many of the comrades that went before me were just as scared, but they did it anyway. I have nothing to lose but my chains and I won’t go out before beating some fuckers with them when they break.
Doesn’t it scare you that so many of our comrades in the past didn’t achieve their goals and that the bourgeoise has such deadly modern warfare weapons?
I’m not even worried about their weapons. I’m worried they’ve successfully convinced some of the smartest, most clever psychologists in the world that they would do much better at using their knowledge of the human mind to exploit the proletariat than actually help individuals. I’m worried that they have enough “ownership” of resources that they’ll be able to convince and hire small armies to protect those resources for them in the coming climate apocalypse. I’m more worried about the surveillance state, The Fourteen Eyes, and “pre-crime” ideas flowing into snuffing out revolutionaries before they can become revolutionary.
The weapons have never made a difference, almost all throughout history the bourgeois has had access to better, more complicated weaponry than the average citizen. The things that make a difference are the psychologists producing more effective propaganda than ever, the continued growth of important resources in fewer hands, and a surveillance state aimed at preventing revolutionary thought from happening at all. Weapons don’t kill ideas, propaganda, surveillance and control of resources do.
So, I know this is going to sound very LARPy on an internet board, but I don’t care about dying for a socialist cause all that much. At least it would’ve been worth it. I don’t want to, but the more I study theory and (socialist) history, the more I realize it is very much an option.
I don’t expect anyone to feel this way. It’s just that I have made peace with this thought. I would have at least stood for something in my life.
That is fair, but what is the point of dying if we don’t at least destabilize the capitalists for good? So many socialist heroes have given up their life for the cause for the capitalists to come back, smear their memory full of garbage and brainwash a big chunk of the population to become class traitors. The capitalists surveil us non-stop, they can shut down our means of communication to prevent us from organizing and can use the police and military forces to squash us, while poisoning the populous brain against us with propaganda. How do we combat that? Is it not just about dying for the cause, but that just dying for the cause doesn’t seem like enough. And I, on my newbie Communist brain, cannot come up with any ways of defeating capital 😭
And I, on my newbie Communist brain, cannot come up with any ways of defeating capital 😭
The great thing about communism is that you don’t have to come up with a plan on your own. There are many comrades in this world, wanting the same as you do. Even the great revolutionary thinkers did not do it on their own. Lenin did not start the revolution, the collective effort of the Bolshevik Party did. Mao did not start the revolution, the collective effort of the Chinese Party did, Che did not… etc.
Reading theory, organizing in a party (if possible) and talking to your relatives/friends/coworkers about your ideas can raise class consciousness around you. Combatting the propaganda, though difficult, is not impossible. Ask many comrades on this site how they ended up being a communist and the majority of them would say they started of as a centrist, or a socdem or something like that. I’ve even seen stories of supposed right wingers who turned around once they realized that being right wing will never improve the life of the people. The state and the capitalists have far more resources than we do but through the collective effort of the working class, their bullshit can be debunked. They have tried time and time again to stop socialism from gaining traction and while some of the movements were (violently) crushed, some of them succeeded and are still with us today. If we keep living in fear because of the monumental task that we are facing, they win.
Thanks for your encouraging words, comrade 😊
And I, on my newbie Communist brain, cannot come up with any ways of defeating capital 😭
I’m not an accelerationist, because that’s asking for bad outcomes, but capitalism eventually always undermines itself. That’s one of our few ways to wriggle out from under it’s thumb. It’s about striking when the iron is hot. We’re nearly there, a lot of people are pissed off with the status quo, and they’re looking for someone to save them from it, but most of them are too uneducated to know who to trust when media is full of lies.
Some of it comes down to theory and communicating that theory, some of it comes down to human psychology and how to open minds to that theory.
Thanks for this perspective, comrade. I hope that you are right 🤔
for the capitalists to come back, smear their memory full of garbage and brainwash a big chunk of the population to become class traitors.
The alternative is letting the bastards get away with it.
Now I’m not suggesting you do anything that will get you killed! I don’t even like those organisations that try to get their members arrested at protests out of principal. Fuck that. Stay safe and practice good op sec.
These capitalists and bootlickers will kill people for feeding the poor, sure, but only the most vocal and visible comrades. There’s a distinction between that likelihood and the notion of ‘going out guns blazing’, which is not generally a requirement.
Of course, a lot depends on your identity, location, and the direction of the class struggle. A communist in Ukraine or South Korea, for example, risks a lot more than a white communist union organiser in Paris or Melbourne. But these factors just determine the actions you’re personally willing to take.
Have you been following the effectiveness of such weapons against old soviet technology, and newer Russian versions, in Ukraine?
Materialistically, the US never succeeded in their stated war goals. Vietnam, North Korea, Cambodia, Iraq, Afghanistan. And those are all much smaller than the US.
Their relatively effective weapons are money and propaganda, to seed dissent in countries leaning left and finance their local militaries to do the dirty work to their population, get them rich, and in control, an scoop out natural resources.
Apparently, that’s changing too. Because of the proletarian intellectual and material resistance. Our role to play is to study history, and counter propaganda around us.
People want to be convinced, out of the interwebz. Nobody is happy with the right wing or liberal narrative. Our materialistic approach is tangible, sensible. We need to master it, learn to make parallels to what people around us like, and guide them through the noise of propaganda. In person. There’s no point of knowing all we know and being stuck at home, talking to no one.
Go outside and talk to people. :)
A bit. But not really. We are part of the collective, the mass of the world’s workers. Our fate and that of the working class is the same. Whatever happens, either my comrades will stand with me and I with them or we’re all fucked, anyway.
There’s no greater human force than unified thought and action. Once you see yourself as part of the collective, there is a lot less room for fear. Either we all get free or we’ll all be killed and whittled down individually in one way or another, anyway. There’s no option where the bad things don’t happen. Only some control over which ones and how we respond.
For the fear that remains, I try not to think about it. Whatever happens to me, they will never stop history. Marxism takes away much of the fear. It’s no coincidence that the bourgeoisie don’t want you to read Marx and don’t want a united working class.
I was more scared before, when I thought changing the world meant sticking my neck out on its own. When I thought I’d have to be the main character if I wanted to change the world. Now I trust the working class will do it whether I like it or not. The only choice is to work with it or get in it’s way—and that one’s easy.
As for those who came before. They were titans. They didn’t so much fail as they failed to achieve everything all in one go.
Our earliest comrades basically had to start from scratch. Few examples, no theory, insufficient lessons to learn from. Still, their mistakes we’re not in vain. They achieved so much.
They stopped the Nazis, ended colonialism, brought about the concepts of: the welfare state, paid time off, redundancy pay, weekends, limited working hours, universal suffrage, universal healthcare, universal education, universal housing, universal jobs, universal dignity. Before the unions, socialists, communists organised to fight back against the ruling class, these things didn’t exist. That’s a legacy to be proud of and we join the legacy by joining them.
However bleak the world is, however unevenly spread are the fruits, the world still reaps the benefits of what previous comrades fought for. It’s not done until it’s done and unfortunately it can’t all be won in a lifetime. Luckiky, this all started a few lifetimes ago so we might be able to win what’s left to be won within ours.
On the one hand if we must try and fail so the next generation will succeed, then that’s our lot. At the same time, with climate change and China’s rise, we (a) don’t have the option of failing and (b) are already winning. The communist states, being dictatorships of the proletariat, are us and we are them. The fight is half won already.
So many of our comrades in the past did though. Who would have thought in 1917 that we’d have the USSR or today’s AES states?
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Yeah Russia’s decision to intervene in Ukraine was an historic moment for US and Europe. It’s shifting the balance of powers rapidly.
I read you comment at start of the day and it gave me hope and good mood. Thank you Comrade!
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There are a few things to consider:
The average lifespan of an empire is 250 years
That the situation has always been desperate and hopeless, perhaps moreso in periods of history than it is today. We can look to the battle of Stalingrad or the Long March or the period around the October Revolution as examples of just how desperate things have been and how we have been able to prevail against all odds. Heck, Lenin didn’t expect to see the revolution in his lifetime and then in a few short years he ended up leading it.
I’m not going to go into depth on this because I don’t have the focus rn but ultimately this is a question of having a world to win and daring to invent the future. We have two propositions:
- We are in a hopeless situation with no potential for achieving revolution
- We are in a situation which has potential for achieving a revolution
The importance of revolutionary optimism cannot be overstated. (There are some good video essays out there on this topic.)
Ultimately, the choice is between an attitude of defeatism or revolutionary optimism. If we choose defeatism then we foreclose on the potential for revolution because, if an opportunity for revolution exists, we will not be in a position to seize it.
If we choose revolutionary optimism, on the other hand, we have the ability to seize the opportunity.
We cannot allow ourselves to foreclose on the opportunity for revolution because we will only ever know if something is possible by striving for it and, in achieving it, proving that it is in fact possible retrospectively.
I found a Google AMP link in your comment! I’ve removed Google’s spyware for you! :3
Thank you, robot.
Fucked up? Yes. Powerful? Not really.
While the state have a significant military and economic force, there are intensifying contradictions between the working class and the bourge. We just have to promote class consciousness and redirect that outrage towards revolution.
Tissue-paper tigers.
I’m not too concerned about the West as they are already crumbling and it is inevitable that they will fall.
What I am worried about, though, is the climate crisis that they are largely responsible for.
Same me
The west is like 20% of the world. Fuck it. Focus on the east and south.
But South America was utterly fucked by the west, wasn’t it?
Personally, I just remind myself the West is a fraction - not even half - of the world’s population, and that even within the Imperial Core people are recognizing we need to change. I look towards BRICS with hope, and like to think it will force the West to finally change its ways. Sure, there’s a lot of what ifs with that, but it helps.
Rome once seemed invincible too and yet look what now remains.
The challenges are great. The blood spilled will be enormous in the thrashing dying of the beast. But it will fall. Look at how Russia stands against them and realize it is the blossoming of hope. That eyes of billions look at Russia and see in their stand hope for their own shackles to Europe and their American masters. Their order is weaker now than it has been at any time since they ascended at the end of the second world war. It is crumbling. And while it is not a foregone conclusion they’ve made serious blunders and we are now deep in the game.
Let fear be for the enemy. Don’t let the confident demeanor fool you. The arch imperialists and bourgeoisie of the west are terrified and it gets worse every day. It expresses itself in petty outbursts. Some of their actions are slow because of control and plotting yes, others however are now slow because of uncertainty, their hands faltering above the chess-board, trembling because they’re no longer certain their old move-set will work this time and it’s all they have.
The Roman Empire legit lasted longer than the U.S. currently has.
We are seeing the world change faster and faster than our ancestors.
Depending on where you live; people who seriously called themselves Romans lasted to until the 1960’s
A lot of us are radicalized first by learning about the present injustices of capitalism/colonialism, then learning about the past roots and trajectories of these injustices. But the possibility of a radical future comes from recognizing that the struggle to elucidate and narrate History is an ongoing dialectic. Our inability to know the whole, “objective” width or breadth of History is daunting but also the root of radical possibilities; for if even Humanity’s past is not set in stone, then surely it can reject the Historical finale that the bourgeoisie have written for us, and write a better one.
tl;dr: positivism + causalism = determinism, and determinism --> either accelerationism or defeatism.
(positivism = the belief that a complete, objective understanding of all social facts is possible; causalism = the belief that the past causes the future).
Oh, I forgot to mention something in my previous comment so please excuse the double-tap.
There’s absolutely no reason why you have to focus your learning on the ongoing dark history of the US. It’s still going to be there waiting for you whenever you’re ready to come back to it.
If you feel like you’re getting doompilled by staring long into that particular abyss then it is no longer serving you or the greater struggle. So abandon it, at least temporarily.
There are a ton of inspiring things from the past and the present moment that you can focus on so seek out those things and give yourself permission to put investigation into the stuff that brings you down on hold. Also, when you return to this stuff, remember that you need to be doing this with a sense of purpose. Mindless consumption of the doom doesn’t work towards anything but if you are learning about this stuff to develop your thoughts about how to intervene in it and defend the revolution (e.g. learning about Salvador Allende’s presidency and the coup in order to take lessons to heart which will inform your politics and how you would guard against subversions and coups) then it gives much more meaning to the difficult subject matter and it makes it less likely to sap your revolutionary spirit.
You might want to consider reducing your intake or disconnecting entirely from the news cycle as well. Of all the things I am exposed to, I find this brings me down like nothing else.
Try to find time for developing your aspirations and hopes as well as for your own leisure. I’m not of the opinion that self-care is a revolutionary act but it sure as hell is a radical act and it’s of critical importance because you’re not going to be of much use to communism, your community, your circle of loved ones, or yourself if you end up in a pit of endless despair.
You are far too important for that.
Hey we 3rd worldies are powerful too .
In which ways? Right now France is about to go to war with Niger
Things have been quiet on Niger for some time now. I wonder how it’s going over there.
France doesn’t have the balls… If they do even Burkina Faso and Mali will kick their ass. Q
It passes and you’ll be a better person for it after. For me the tough part is leaving behind friends who want to wallow in their hate that status quo propaganda gives them.
Let me tell my story: I came from quite right wing family and environment. But their arguments are insult for a healthy mind. So is the neoliberal ideology, but I ashamedly admit, I was infected by it for some time. A year ago, I read socdem and anarchist things. I was badly in depressed mood, overworked and phantasing about suicide. I was a typical doomer, maybe some anarkiddy. But I was disgusted with neoliberals in supposedly left media, so I came to Lemmygrad. And I think ML gave me strength. It gave me moral objectives. It gave me purpose. It gave me confidence and faith. It gave me noble aspirations. Cheer up! Eat well. Sleep well. Excercise - go to gym and try martial arts. Read a lot. It sounds banal, but this phisical condition has tremendous effect on your mood. Think that there are whole countries which are communistic and more will come. Not long ago, when I felt bad, I posted a similar thoughts on Lemmygrad and comrades cheered me up. You are not alone! It was harder to unionize century ago, with no internet, but people managed it.
When I feel depressed, I like to listen and read the lirics of Budionny March: https://youtu.be/G4kvVbEEtMY?si=ee7A3qnLq0nVhwO1
Do not bow your head but look forward!
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