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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
Transcript
The “For the better”, also known as Anakin and Padme 4-Panel and Clueless Padme meme. The first panel shows a guy saying “You should vote dem and push them to be better.” The second panel shows another person saying “So you’re going to push them to be better after you vote?”. The third panel shows the first person saying nothing and staring. The last one shows the second person with a concerned look on her face saying “you’re going to push them to be better after you vote?”.
The vast majority of liberals and the bulk of the Democratic (and much of the Republican) rank-and-file are the same working class schlubs you’ll find at any DSA meeting. They’re all still proles, subject to the same degradation of the industrial process as any proper socialist. Their understanding of the world differs, but their material conditions are much the same. Forming a mass line necessarily minds finding common causes that liberals and leftists can unify under, whether it is an anti-war movement or environmental activism or a civil rights crusade.
Organizations of every stripe can and do fail. Fascism, as a tendency, is an eternal existential threat. This isn’t an excuse to distance yourself from your friends, your family, and your neighbors on ideological grounds.
Vanguards are a great way of mobilizing a small number of committed activists to radical action. But the point of the vanguard is to lead the body public, not to fight the body public.
Ignorance is no excuse in the court of law. It should be no different for ideological matters. Liberals choose to become class traitors or were already class enemies by being born not into the working class. They should suffer the consequences of that choice.
Also we’re not just talking about individual people but a political party. It doesn’t matter who the voters are, the party leadership is class enemies, they aren’t working class, the party itself is designed as capitalist party. No compromise should ever be made with those. As quoted before we have nothing in common with the cause of the class enemy. Ever.
I think you’re misunderstanding the purpose of a mass line or rather what purpose it serves for us. A mass line that is not lead by Marxists will ultimately benefit those who are not Marxists the most. That is a bad deal for us. Mass lines only work with a communist party in power already.
Take a look into recent history with the Occupy Wallstreet protests for example. They all amounted to nothing and fizzled out because they were “liberalised”.
Lastly the vanguard doesn’t fight the public body. It’s not what I propose either. The public body is not liberals. Those are a parasite inside the public body that needs to be removed. You’re following the enemy’s logic by equating liberalism with the people.
I wish someone would tell the SEC.
Which is, again, the purpose of a Vanguard movement.
At the same time, vanguards need to accrue power and public exposure over time. It doesn’t happen overnight.
You will inevitably have to deal with people who enjoy more authority, access more resources, and command a larger audience than you, who aren’t Maoists.
How do you deal with them? Throw hands? Pretend they don’t exist?
You do not acquire power by handing it over to liberals. That quite in the contrary depowers us more.
As I said we need our own mass parties that are lead by us, not liberal parties or movements.
Take a look at other countries. In the UK Corbyn is currently forming his own party and drawing in great numbers after he was slandered out of Labour leadership.
In Germany Sarah Wagenknecht, long term former leader of the communist platform within the left party, is forming her own populist mass party.
In France the new popular front has been formed under left and not liberal leadership and won the elections.
Joining fold with the democrats is not building your own mass line. It makes you a collaborator in building a mass line for liberals.
Also dealing with class enemies is only something that can be truly done once you’ve consolidated power. Then it doesn’t matter how many of them there are as long as you have the means to hold onto power and decimate them. Every revolution needs its revolutionary terror to take care of counter-revolutionaries.
The goal is not to take part and win in bourgeois elections. That is systematically impossible actually. Taking part in those elections only servers as a platform to reach more people. You don’t need an actual majority for a successful revolution or coup. The Bolsheviks did not have the majority if you look at the first Russian elections after the overthrow of the Tsar, yet they still won the civil war.
Leftists don’t have power to hand. You make it sound like leftist leaders are already in power.
We never will have power if we hand it to liberals at the first chance.
Building and leading a mass movement is power.