So we have some of the most based takes on the web, and we probably would be a good proletarian vanguard in our nations.
But how are we going to make our ideas a reality? Like, for example, instead of saying how based the USSR was, we (somehow) bring it back? Or we bring socialism to a smaller nation, like in the Global South? Or we do much smaller things than a revolution, like agitating and organizing.
What are we gonna do besides saying based things on here?
Join a party that isn’t reformist, do community work to gain popular support, create dual power, try to get support from foreign AES if possible, teach the workers to oppose reformism and anarchism.
I think people have this notion that revolutions in history have been brought about by groups of people that shared the exact same ideology and magically agreed on everything.
This won’t, ever, be the case.
We advance our goals by using our voices to influence leftist movements from within, by being radical streams in the big umbrella of “leftism”.
I have been a member of the local socialist (socdem) party for a decade, and a local leader in the youth wing. 95% of the times i disagree with the party line. But being there gives me the chance to introduce new ideas, to at least start a debate. Our regional section is the only one that opposed exporting arms to Ukraine, and me and my small clique of radicals are the reason for it. Swiss tanks would be rolling around the Donbass if people like me and my comrades were stuck in our own small ideological sect with 14 members and 0.07% of the vote.
It’s not about gloriously leading the people in a long march towards our specific ideals. It’s about working in the background to slowly, piece by piece, build a consciousness of geopolitics and class warfare. It’s about saying that one sentence that will provoke someone to think differently for once.
It’s going to take many kinds of people to build the world we want to see. We all have strengths to offer, and new ones we can still develop. Acting locally, instead of being consumed by disconnected and terminally online “debates”. One of the biggest steps I took recently, in terms of positive impact on my own and others’ mental health, was divesting from tw!tter.
For me in my area it would definitely be about education. Many are so misinformed about communism, still completely tainted by Red Scare propaganda that it needs to be eradicated fury before any other changes can be made.
Hell, we have a “Victims of Communism” memorial and in my city there is a monument to actual Nazi collaborator Roman Shukhevych. I’d like to put something around monuments like this educating people on who these fuckers really were.
So really, in my opinion, it depends on where you live and how communism is treated there.
I would say that the lack of progress in educating the people in the imperial core is not due to “brainwashing” or any mind-control apparatus (see Roderic Day’s essay on “brainwashing”), but that the populace understand or implicitly acknowledge that they gain from the imperial setup of the world. By hating on other kinds of systems/nations you can feel better than the rest of the world (which the West is materially: better off).
Now if people in the West think they have nothing to gain from socialism because they at least don’t have to work in neo-colonial mines, then what hope is there for us to effect change in the imperial core countries? Well the contradictions of American hegemony are increasing and de-dollarization is around the corner. The rise of China and an alternative to the “rules-based order” of pillaging and looting of the overexploited countries by the IMF and the world’s bourgeoise is slowly coming to fruition. Since profit needs to keep coming and the exploitation will drop off in the third world, that exploitation needs to move somewhere else, and where it will move is most likely into the imperial periphery. The imperial periphery will now have a choice to break the bonds with the core so eventually the exploitation needs to ramp up in the imperial core: we get fascism. (Roderic Day argues that imperialism is fascism every day for the exploited countries which I agree with, so I’m using the term here as the phenomenon of the raw exploitation of capitalism replacing the liberal democracies in the core).
Most people will not accept fascism since it sucks for the majority, and that is where the communist parties have a role to play. When the material consequences of fascism arise people will look for answers to their material conditions worsening, and we need to be there to explain how they can get out of or avoid fascism by building socialism instead. Mobilizing the people and workers at this stage should be at lot easier since they have a lot to gain.
I don’t think it’s an either/or thing. Yes, many (not all) imperial core citizens benefit from the spoils of imperialism in some shape or form, but for the many that understand being anti-imperialist on an emotional level and aim to resist, they still have chauvanism that is reinforced by large-scale psychological manipulation and relentless capitalist propaganda. I guess we could all endlessly debate on which variable is the dominant influence at any given moment, but both definitely play a part and reinforce each other.
I mean many people here are part of communist parties. Everyone is working towards the common goal of communism in their own part of the world. I myself am active for the Belgium marxist party and we are seeing a big growth recently. We are now the biggest left wing party in the country. It will bring forth its own unique challengesm such as Belgium being the home of EU and NATO HQ as well as hosting a big far right reactionary force.
Recognize that the internet is good for theory, but not everyone will understand theory, and not everyone is on the internet, so it all comes down to putting theory into practice in your local municipality.
Like Marx said, “the philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it”.
