Mind you, I’m biased since I’m not from the US, I’m Balkan. So a quick heads up there. Plus I’m a hardline commie so yeah. Just did some research on this because It caught my eye.
I haven’t really noticed this here or at Lemmygrad. But a lot of online “leftist” spaces, especially on Reddit, are over hyping this shit too much lmao.
Zohran so far:
- denounces Hamas
- denounces Venezuela and Cuba as dictatorships
- intends to keep zionist Jennifer Tisch as police commissioner
- hired Obama staffers
- ‘don’t sell out bro!’
This circlejerk about a social democrat getting elected is doing my head in, people are acting like the October revolution happened.
Just don’t act surprised when magically not much actual change happens in New York. Also don’t give me “Oh but the pipeline!!!1!”. Yeah If the pipeline actually worked, Bernie and AOC supporters would have been actual marxists by now (Also as a Serb, fuck Bernie, Parenti was right about your dumbass).
I have a pet peeve with American “anti-capitalists” in general. Where they constantly just whine how everything is expensive, no public transport and no free healthcare. Yet they’d probably be fine with the world suffering as long as they got those three things + whatever treats they want.
Don’t forget to join a good org nearby you, read and organize folks!
I think the difference with Engels is that he advocated for communist electoralism and not hiding or shirking from true communist beliefs. Not triangulating your way into a more lib position just for power.
We cannot ignore modern conditions, we live under degraded conditions that prevent the organic emergence of communist electoralism
Our goal has never been to turn the democrats into a worker’s party through some socdem alchemy, the goal was always, whether some of us were conscious of it or not, to rupture the Democratic Party wide open and destabilize the two-party system
We weren’t supposed to be the Democrat version of the Tea Party, we’re supposed to be the socialist version of the early Republican Party when it burst out of the Whig party, using the modern breakdown of liberal institutions as the fuel for that rupture, mirroring the national breakdown that led to the demise of the Whigs
The proof of this potential for a party rupture exists right in front of our eyes; the popularity of Zohran-type candidates versus the universal disgust a supermajority of Americans hold the DNC, DESPITE both of them being “Democrats”
That’s our ticket to third party emergence and THEEEEN WE CAN START the building of communist electoralism
Modern conditions aren’t spontaneously creating communists. Existing leftists are creating new leftists through education, and opportunities to educate are created by events. The conditions just make people more susceptible to the education, they do not perform the education.
I didn’t say conditions are spontaneously creating communists, where are you getting that reading? My comment is about how a rupture can occur within the current two-party system and how that can lead to a viable third party that existing leftists may use as an opportunity to educate (I’m using your words for the highlighted bit, because in the event of realignment after a rupture, I’d hope leftists would do more than educate, they’d organize)
Apologies then, it came across to me as suggesting that things like Bernie weren’t really responsible for the growth of the left, but instead simply the conditions. What I worry about is that people think the conditions are all there is to it. The conditions are creating the events, and the events are where the left grows. Bernie’s near miss was a result of conditions. Zohran’s win is a result of the conditions. The communist’s job is to seize the moment and use it correctly. A lot of people seem to one to dismiss the moment rather than seize it though.
It’s cool, I understand your point and I agree honestly
Then citing Engels in this way is silly, isn’t it?
No you’ve made one of the classic blunders - when I quote theory to support my argument I am a dialectician who is applying prior experimentation to my own unique material conditions, when you quote theory to support your argument you are a dogmatist book worshipper
No, because those are general observations that can and have been replicated under multiple different sets of conditions, modern or otherwise
They are general observations that apply to the US right now but also the US has special degraded conditions so they don’t apply? Friend, you are blatantly contradicting yourself.
NO, the general observations apply, your misreading and anti-electoral interpretation of the quote does not
Degarded conditions in the US does not allow for the independent emergence of viable workers parties, but the benefits outlined by Engels can be replicated by socialists attempting to rupture the two-party system
I have no idea what you are saying in this comment.
Rupturing the two party system is not the same thing as an independent viable workers party emerging from scratch, because historically the only way viable third parties emerge in the US is through INTER-PARTY ruptures
INDEPENDENT party challenges because of degraded US conditions don’t work, BUT the benefits outlined in the Engel’s quote above can be replicated within the two-party framework, it simply requires the extra step of an interparty rupture within that two-party to bear fruit
AN EXTRA STEP, that’s it, not a contradiction
This doesn’t really mean anything to me.
I mean, duh. There are many parties that are not even electoral and they call themselves workers’ parties.
So you mean exclusively bourgeois electoral parties?
Regarding history, there have been many attempts to do this, including when the left was much stronger and better organized, and they failed. The last time a party was displaced was over 150 years ago and prior to the labor movement being any real force in the US. How are we supposed to approach history, exactly?
I don’t know what that means. I don’t know what “INDEPENDENT party challenges” are or how it works in this sentence or really even the rest of it.
Why? It was talking about a Marxist party with a different orientation in a time before telecommunications and when bourgeois electoralism was just being birthed in Europe. Engels wasn’t talking about a situation like the NYDSA at all. It is an insult to the historical movements in question to compare NYDSA to the SPD at the time.
That is absolutely insufficient to make the situation remotely like what Engels describes.
I think you’re getting confused about which comment chain you’re in