Jacobin founding editor Bhaskar Sunkara On Trump

We need people to represent socialism as a clear Marxist ideology. Not just an anti-Trump brand, free college LMAO brand.

Baby steps obviously. But they didn't even mention Lenin once in a 20+ minute interview.

Implying there's a difference. Reminder that SocDems now originally claimed to pursue Socialism through democratic means and then totally sold out the moment they got into power because you can't use the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie to destroy the bourgeoisie. DemSocs are literally the same thing with a new name.

… Okay, realize your logic here…

Most people don't even understand socialism in America on the boob tube. Now you have a person who's a socialist who expresses that viewpoint.

But you think a corporate enterprise is going to have on someone that actually does more with socialism than social democracy when it's been suppressed for the last 50 years?

Come on dude… Work with me on this one. If they had Kshama on there, their audience might explode.

Agreed. DSA is the type of people to execute Bernie Sanders if it means that they get to keep power.

The baby steps are happening right now. You can't confront the average American with something like Lenin, when they are already fearful about Bernie Sanders.

Kshama is not even that radical. She sounds like a watered down Trotskyist.

The DSA are not a party though, they are a socialist organization. If you watched the interview you'd see his comment on that, he views capital as constraining and believes the response must be to restructure our democracy from the bottom up, give the power to the people in a grassroots form.

So when should we bring up Lenin? Before or after the corrupt "Socialist" parties begin stealing Tax dollars and hiding them in offshore bank accounts, like they do in Europe?

It's not even worth watching the whole thing, the guy is clueless.

You can't take a socdem at his word. He will betray the rest of us once they form their party and take power.
It's true that a new party is needed and they may succeed, but if a SocDem party succeeds, does that mean socialism as a whole success? Hell no.

She's just an example here. Do you see the point about actual socialists?

He doesn't want to form a party. Why do you call people socdems who have no interest in it?

pmt

literally wat?

Listen to the interview.

Since you won't watch it anyways: He said previous attempts to form parties have failed and he doesn't see the potential in that, so their approach will be to organize on a local level and put pressure on both Democratic and Republican politicians to increase democracy and worker's rights. You can say these actions result in social democracy, but the DSA itself is not interested in participating in parliamentary politics.

The point is that whichever strategy DSA choes o take, be that form their own SocDem party or support the Democrats, neither challenges the absolute power of the capitalist class.
DSA is just going to be another bourgeois tool, controlled opposition.

Tavis Smiley is a socialist…..Wtf are you talking about

Being a black liberal who criticizes Obama doesn't make you a socialist.

So what is your proposed plan of action then? Wait until the material conditions worsen until the workers magically pick up arms and overthrow the government? Every successful socialist or communist movement that I can think of had their origins in the organization of labor strikes, protests, local organization and so on.

Bhaskar Sunkara is the exception. Most DSA members are bourgeois young white men. The revolution won't come from recent college grads supping frapuccinos in the coastal cities while vaguely discussing socialist theory.

But this thread is about Bhaskar Sunkara, user.

Doubt

How about never because Lenin's greatest achievement was setting the conditions for a state capitalist dictatorship of the bureaucrat and Leninism is an antiquated precursor to Marxism–Leninism and other derivatives?

Lenin's only use is as a historical figure and occasional theoretician whose ideas and tactics are failures or are otherwise useless in contemporary society. At this point, Leninists, Marxist–Leninists, and their derivatives more closely resemble liberalism, reactionism, or literal fascism. If you adhere to those ideologies, then you're categorically not a radical leftist.

The revolution will not be televised
youtube.com/watch?v=QnJFhuOWgXg

They have articles that are pretty critical of Obama. This article talks about how his bailout and post-crisis policy were essentially controlled by monied interests.

jacobinmag.com/2017/02/capital-strike-regulations-lending-productivity-economy-banks-bailout/

Considering Zizek got an interview on Al Jazeera, and Bernie was on the Colbert show I don't think it's far-fetched to think that they won't interview legitimate socialists or regular idpolers. The only people I think these stations would never air are reactionaries.

You should get the Jacobin print issue because the entire theme is "Being anti-trump isn't enough"
I don't think mentioning Lenin would do anything for socialism in the US.

Trump won b/c of luck in terms of the electoral college, but Bhaskar well knows why Trump got mass support.

You are really fucking idiotic and misrepresenting Jacobin and especially Bhaskar. They are fine with a left-populist like Bernie occupying the Dem party and winning in order to "occupy power" and prevent it from getting into the hands of neolibs/the fascist right. They do not think at all that is the end of things. Obviously supplementing that there needs to be an independent working-class formation that has been building power throughout this process and can actually force demands a president couldn't. If you read what Jacobin actually publishes, you would see they acknowledge social democracy is favorable to capitalism, but is never good enough.

Social Democracy’s Breaking Point: We need a politics that acknowledges that the social-democratic class compromise is unsustainable.
jacobinmag.com/2016/06/social-democracy-polanyi-great-transformation-welfare-state/

Waiting in the Wings:
Sweden’s radical left was never able to build the strength necessary to go beyond — or even fully preserve — the welfare state.
jacobinmag.com/2016/03/sweden-socialism-welfare-state-trade-union/

An Anticapitalism That Can Win: We should engage with and update the revolutionary Marxist tradition — not reject it.
jacobinmag.com/2016/01/olin-wright-real-utopias-socialism-capitalism-gramsci-lenin-luxemburg/

Also: jacobinmag.com/?s=social democracy

How do you propose we do that. A revolutionary party/formation could only ever be conceivable once we revive the Left and empower/organize worker's to confront capitalist power. This is the role DSA plays.

This is Phil Greaves level hysteria. I haven't seen a single Jacobin article praising Obama in the two or so years I've been subscribed.

See: jacobinmag.com/?s=obama
Not a single favorable Obama article.

This. I don't have the link but there is a Zizek panel where someone asks him basically why he participates in and allows himself to be tokenized or put on display by bourgeois outlets and he goes on a pretty impassioned bit about how "Capitalists will sell us the rope we will hang them with and so on" and that just because a socialist is on a bourgeois outlet doesn't mean they are less radical. Zizek suggests that sometimes the bourgeois media makes mistakes, and hosting socialists is one of them. Because what they are in fact doing unintentionally is helping their own demise. Not that Zizek is articulate, but he says it better than me so hopefully some user can find the webm.

Zizek has also been on this same show it was pretty good

I actually know bhaskar, unlike you neets. He's an avowed Kautskyist, the worst kind of socdem

tankies.exe

kek

You're quoting Jacobin, a revisionist socdem propaganda rag. There is nothing of value to be found in there.
Bernie Sanders millennials can be used to enrich the ranks of actual communist organizations. There is no logical reason to expand the SocDems instead.

youtube.com/watch?v=mGC3uJadXh0

Webm? I'm not going to fagbook.

The question is, how can you get millennials to join a Bordiga reading club early on so that socdem cretinism does not waste their energy?

Stop derailing this into idpol. Do you even fucking know what "bourgeois" means? Professionals aren't bourgeois, they're proletarians. Yeah, they're classcucked, but that doesn't change their objective relation to the means of production.

Not even joking, they seem closer to Rosa Luxemberg ideologically than they do to mainstream socdems. They really are kind of trapped in the middle with people like Kautsky, but if only we could get a few of /ourguys/ in there, Jacobin could be dragged into full-on libertarian Marxism.

Of course, the FBI would probably freak out and go full COINTELPRO on them if that happened.

You faggots think that ever mentioning race or gender as issues even secondary to class (as they ultimately are) is divisive, but then go full Trot and get hung up on ideological purity as soon as socialism starts gaining some ground.

Be practical you retards, just because this isnt your ideal configuration of ideals and aesthetics doesnt mean it shouldnt be supported, albiet critically.

Also Sunkara is honestly pretty good all around and Jacobin publishes some great stuff in a stylish way, tho they also do publish some genuinely liberal garbage.

Consider that most people have been duped by the normie definitions of class, and thus have no real idea of what a bourg is.
Owner of the means of production.
That's it.

To be fair a lot of Marxists and anarchists have joined DSA en masse in the hopes of converting normies and gaining organizing experience. They do Marxist reading groups and focus on local issues. I don't think joining and working in the organization is a bad thing, but it should be discarded once it has outlived its usefulness.

Alright, so let's pretend that I am a reasonable well educated leftist. I am into Bordiga and reject the Zizek/Kautsky nonsense.
What do I do after years of interacting in DSA with a bunch of SocDems and they chose to endorse Chelsea Clinton or Elizabeth Warren?

Seems like a lot of wasted potential energy. There is no benefit to joining DSA for the future. There is no next step.

You can change your local chapter. DSA is not so big that a small core of committed radicals can't alter the discourse.
I am in the middle of trying to shift my local away from IDpol, and we are having some success keeping them focused on economic issues.

The leftist in my cities only care about trans black rights. We live in a 99% white area.

Eventually a split will be necessary, but that can only happen if you get involved and educate people. This is of course ignoring that DSA doesn't support the Clintons or Elizabeth Warren and try to focus on local issues.

Might seem that way, but everyone is pissed about the economy, and it's easy to push the discussion that way.
Left-wing populism is the only thing that can beat right-wing populism.

There's no such thing. People only mention this meme now because it's Wikipedia-tier, but before it was used by opportunistic philistines who had no understanding of how a vulgarist and even liberal "distinction" of "Authoritarian" and "Libertarian" is anathema to revolutionary Marxism.

Can you explain how "Authoritarian" and "Libertarian" is anathema to revolutionary Marxism?
I don't understand why Libertarian-Left/Marxism isn't a thing?

jacobin has been shit lately

This is why:
"This is most visible in Jacobin, the worst left-wing publication. With Jacobin, we always hear: Socialists should not concede this or that to rightists, socialists should put a socialist spin on X, we should fight for a socialist video games, we should encourage more socialist memes, we should encourage more socialist fascicsm, we should recognize the socialist path and prospects of Brexit, we should recognize the socialist potential in nationalism, we should do this or fucking that. It never ends.

It's so fucking meaningless to call yourself a socialist, we have fucking idiots who actually make 'left-wing' cases for Brexit and for the disintegration of the EU when it is patently, immediately obvious that THE ONLY CONTEXT OF ITS DISINTIGRATION IS THE VICTORY OF NEO-FASICSM WHEN YOU FUCKING THOUGHT IT SHOULD BE THIS WAY OR NOT, THIS IS HOW IT IS, IN THE IMMEDIATE SENSE, AND YOUR FUCKING DISAPPROVING VOICE LACKS THE IMMEDIATE POWER TO DO ANYTHING THE FUCK ABOUT IT IN A PERIOD OF EMERGENCY LIKE THIS. The context of the EU, to democratize and reform it is right now the only immediate medium of struggle that can lead to a political-class struggle and the discourse which comes with it in Europe. Actually fucking THINK about it, in your head, before you start throwing around words like 'reformism'. THINK CONCRETELY AND NOT AT THE EXPENSE OF CONCRETE CONDITIONS. Just fucking, for a moment, assess your own power, your own ability to right now have any power, asess what you are able to do EXACTLY, asses developments as they are unraveling, just THINK, stop being so FUCKING pretentious with all that bullshit. Just THINK concretely about what hte immediate political consequences of hte distintigration of the EU would be."

lol

Not that big of a deal. We suffer from eurocentrism. The most important political events and the future of socialism will take place in China and the rest of Asia.
Not in some inbred albino states .

Marxism requires a state to exist through the revolutionary period. Libertarianism leads to fuedalism and regression.
Libertarians are more likely to end up anarkiddies than marxists.

Just quit. The EU constitution is one of the few in the world that literally says it's social system is founded on capitalism. It's a collection of imperialist states that are trying to counter their decline in hegemony by integrating with each other and making themselves bigger.

Lenin said of plans for a United States of Europe in his time that under capitalism it was "impossible or reactionary."

You seem like a liberal tbh.

...

...

This is why we have to purge Leninists

Marx was in favor of free trade because it accelerated the antagonism of international capital, which is favorable as a force against the degenerative movements for nationalist and protectionist schemes under the reactionary banners. The strengthening of international capital has always been preferred by revolutionary Marxists as it is the most progressive and advanced form of capitalism which is again most favorable to the development of the revolutionary movement and for it to seize upon. Opposing this because "the EU is founded on capitalism" is literally one of the stupidest things that you can actually believe here without being a Holla Forumsyp.

Lenin was referring to USE within the context of revolutionary Social-Democracy and not bourgeois relations. Please stop posting before you say something as incredibly stupid and worthless again, there is nothing you can say here that is not total shit.

GO FASTER

It's just shitposting or tankies being like that, no worries.

countries can print money again and germany becomes assmad because they can't sell their products as well as before? i iunno, what else? everyone in the eu is always screeching about any proposal like this and say stuff like "just think what could happen!"; i've been thinking about that for years, how about you start telling me what you think would happen? It would be a first timer. So please do tell me what's gonna happen.

also
They were barely in the EU in the first place. The only tragedy here is the dumb way people voted. They don't understand what voting means.

I wonder what marx would think of the fact that literally none of the countries who made the revolution were capitalist countries.

He would probably say that the time wasn't ripe yet and he would be right

I'm uncomfortable with a bug person advocating on behalf

Probably, the point is that he's not exactly known for making accurate predictions.
Brilliant critic, shitty clairvoyant. Accelerationism is utter bull.

Starting to doubt that you have read Marx.

she's not thinking about anything. that book has nothing within it worthy of thinking about and I don't think her nervous system is developed enough to support higher order thinking in the first place. What a fucking pseud picture

No one would know what he'd say, but everything after 1923 and outside urban Russia (until the workers were decimated further to war and famine) were clearly bourgeois-romantic revolutions e.g. China, Africa. During 1916 to the 1920s, many European countries were on the verge of civil wars with Communists almost overthrowing the order.

quality shitpost. take notes, lads.

A critique is not a prediction.

Why don't you read Marx before you criticize him

The same reason they don't read Bordiga.

True statement.
Irrelevant to discussion.
Post examples, or you have never read Marx.

...

...

I never knew that painting was so triggering.
Will remember for later.

What's irrelevant to the discussion is your sperging. The original statement is that accelerationism is retarded, which it is.

no you

lol wut are you sperging about? all i said was that reading Marx or Marxist theory is as empty as reading a fucking cookbook which uses ingredients for recipes that don't exist on Earth. Its like trying to decipher a video game language or make contact with Klingons. Its fucking retarded and a waste of time. I'm not a polyp i despise racialism and nationalism along with capitalism

...

but user the girl in the painting is reading dostoevskij

FREEDOM
Pretty much all non-yankee facesitter groups are either half-lolberg or half-socialist anyway. Much easier to co-opt/push forwards than libtards who shirk at any sort of 'hard' action or otherwise 'upsetting the boat'

'All roads lead to Rome' isn't fully eurocentric. It was a common expression back then because it was a trading hub halfway between the wealthiest powers (while Romans squandered their wealth on basically going insane)
This is the mistake of eurocentrism, they were never the power above the web, they are the web
For instance their implosion cuts off trade between Africa and China.

i'd swap NS with liberals after last year tbf fam. They're fucking hopeless. How did liberals wind up being more nationalistic/ethnocentrist than the NS?
Whatever porky points to they'll hate without reason or cause. At least NS has a "jewdar" that works as a semi-porky-preventer
Meanwhile if picrelated says something retarded, you'll never unseat it from being the holy grail of truth to a liberal

Well she has crocodiles. I wouldn't wanna upset her either.

pls respond

Locals will do good work regardless of the national (which wouldn't endorse chelsea clinton ever). The only time where you will waste potential energy is if you join a mindless sect. DSA is no longer SocDem, too. It is at this point only a smear made by MLs and anarchists.

MLs and anarchists are at least literate.
You SocDems and Trotskyist cultists refuse to deal with the material realities of our present condition.

Buttmad cryptofascist detected. There is literally nothing in Marxism that necessitates the seizure and use of the state to achieve a communist society, nor the implementation of a "dictatorship of the proletariat", or any other such nonsense. That's the fantasies of Leninists and their successively degenerate kin. Authoritarianism and libertarianism are useful terms to describe and categorize ideologies and tendencies based on the relative amount of hierarchy, statism, and preponderance for manipulating and controlling the lives of the workers. In that respect, there arguably is only one true form of Marxism, which is either indifferent on matters of the state and such, or which is libertarian. After all, the authoritarianism of Marx can only really be found in his early years, whereas his more mature works are increasingly libertarian.

What do you think the term "libertarian" means and are you confusing it with "propertarian"?

And? Marx was wrong about the state, especially the modern state in advanced late capitalism. What, do you also believe in the Asiatic mode of production? How about that Marx and Engels were stagists? The state is both an extension of the power of the capitalists and an independent system which evolves alongside the economic system. To reduce the state to a mere extension of the economy is to ignore the very real and frequent instances when the state and the economy, or the political system and the economic system, conflict with each other.