Can Every Problem with the Modern Day Left be Boiled Down to Larping?

I feel the central issue with modern day radical politics is the fact that many activists are performing for a crowd or living out a fantasy rather then trying to bring about real systemic change. On here we continuously wonder why leftists seem to be obsessed with using the most ineffective and divisive tactics/rhetoric possible. I believe its because many aren't actually concerned with success and just view activism as a game/performance, which is to say as a live action role play. Some examples:

identity politics → It seems obvious to us that focusing on identity based issues just divides workers and prevents them from rallying around a common cause. Idpol leftists don't care about the revolution or socialism they would rather virtue signal and circlejerk about their unique identity.

Tankies→ Imo it self-evident that the left should disassociate themselves from and condemn the xxth century socialist experiments. As Zizek says the twentieth century is over its time to move on. We should learn from the past and acknowledge the mainstream historical narrative lacks nuance, but we need to come to terms with the fact that people think the USSR was a totalitarian hellscape and we are not going to be able to change this. Using soviet symbolism and roleplaying as comissars wins no one over but its edgy and lets people take comfort in historical accomplishments.*

anarkiddies → Here I want to make clear that I'm not talking about anarchism as an ideology or all anarchists. Rather I am criticizing the current practices of many anarchist groups. Many very clearly are not working towards a revolution but just enjoying a phase that they have a very weak commitment to. They do not aim to serve the community, build mass support, or construct alternative institutions. If anarchists were by some miracle able to overthrow the government things would just get worse because most haven't worked toward creating any feasible alternative. I genuinely believe many anarchists maybe even the majority do not actually want the government overthrown because they are aware that they haven't bothered to create any kind of alternative organization to replace it. (system of mutual aid, syndicates, workers councils, peoples militias etc.)

antifa → Perhaps the most egrerious exampe of lifestylism. Can be done right when dealing with actual fascists attempting to organize as in Greece. Unfortunately in the US "anti-fascist action" primarily consists of targeting wrongthinking academics, right-wing media personalities, and trump supporters. This is completely pathetic and most anti-fa are just sheep attacking media approved targets. Obviously completely pointless and counterproductive but it feels good to "bash le fash" and "resist" without actually endangering yourself or doing any hard work.

If people were truly committed to building socialism they wouldn't do any of this shit because it is obvious how counterproductive it is. What do you think Holla Forums am I right about LARPing and lack of commitment being the main thing guiding people to these behaviors or am I underestimating how stupid and delusional they are?

*Note: This is written with North America and Western Europe in mind. Comrades in Russia and the Third World should obviously play up the soviet legacy as this will actually be an effective strategy in these places.

Not LARPing per se, but definitely the failure to cast of the dead traditions which weigh on the brains of the living, as well as the regressive effect of post-modernism.

We need to recover the coherence of the Old Left, and apply this coherence to the expanded concerns raised by the New Left. Without doing so, no revolutionary movement is possible.

LARPing and idpol are our problems

Antifa_irl

Calling everything larping and idpol are our problems.

Looking at the old left and comparing it to what we have now deeply depresses me. How can we maintain the coherence of the old left for the intersectional view of the new? Don't you think the coherence was undermined by the increased emphasis on other vectors of oppression then class?

coherence of the old left combined with the intersectional view of the new?*

I don't think that the coherence of the Old Left was undermined by an expanded understanding of social concerns. That was actually one of the more progressive elements of the New Left, I think. Addressing of social concerns is definitely possible within the context of a coherent revolutionary movement. Rather, I think that the incoherence of the contemporary left is largely the result of its failure of lifestylism, post-modernism, and identity politics ("identity politics" refering specifically to the new tendency that emerged in the 60s and 70s that rejected the universalism of early new left feminists and even the civil rights movement, and instead embraced the particularism of individual identity).

But understanding what is causing this incoherence within the New Left is only one part of resolving it. We need a coherent revolutionary program, and people willing to spread it. I believe that the ideas of Murray Bookchin are the best solution here, and I am hopeful that the Rojava Revolution acts as a clarion call in waking up a new coherent, revolutionary New Left.

I don't think this kind of new left has the teeth (both physically and ideologically) necessary to be properly radical, at least not in a way that could inspire others to join them while making others perhaps not see them as snowflakes but as proper activists.

Radical without power = tantrum.

Radical with power = dangerous.

Radical with power and organizational ideology = revolution.

We need to get these LARPers some guns and have somebody there reading Marx aloud to the crowd, or giving their own proper analysis/sermon of the current system's failings and what needs to be done to make the lives of everyone there better.

Pic Related - S.T.A.L.K.E.R. fans know how to LARP proper.

I think you make a lot of good points. It is true that white workers in the past were willing to support quite progressive anti-racist and feminist policies. They just need to be paired with a larger movement that also addresses their material concerns.

being on a *chan is our problem

I definitely think this is in general what makes the SJW movement look so pathetic. All these empty threats, grand gestures, and passion over the most trivial things.

I actually do think this exists to an extent in the US. As senseless as some of this rioting is some of the people involved are clearly genuinely committed or at least filled with rage. As misguided as the anti-milo riots were people there were trying to kill trump supporters like hitting them in the head with shovels and shit. Also people risking arrest and throwing bricks at cops on the inauguration are clearly not just larping.

This is the most difficult step but can you imagine if all these angry hordes of anti-fa and anarchists were actually trained to smash and kill on command for an organized party leadership. They would be a force to be reckoned with. I just don't know how to get to the last step in such an atomized culture with idpol, individualism, neoliberal ideology making everyone think they need to have their say and get their own way on everything. Frankly I would happily be a mindless attack dog for a party with good leadership a coherent ideology and radical outlook.

Every problem with leftism can be boiled down to the lack of a strong working class organization.

This. Weed out the actual organisations of its liberal elements, and we should grow back again.

The reemergence of "the People," in contrast to the steady decline of "the Proletariat," verifies the ascendancy of community over factory, of town and neighborhood over assembly line. The hand fits the glove perfectly—and clenched, it makes the real fist of our time that can advance by restoration, progress by conserving the radicality of the past, change by the catalytic act of preserving the very institutions Caesarism seeks to fragment and corporatism seeks to obliterate. Such tension—once it fully emerges between the locality and the centralized State, the citizen and power broker, the body politic and bureaucracy, democracy and totalitarianism—can never remain strictly defensive. - Bookchin

Mass populism is the way forward, not a strictly working class approach. (Witness the rise of populist parties on both the left and right across the globe.) Material concerns are important, surely, but there are other cultural and ecological concerns that are necessary for an effective revolutionary movement today.

To add to your last point, I think one of the most pressing barriers to creating a movement such as we have described is the capacity for surveillance and interference from the existing system.

Think about how far the capacity of the state has come when we consider the precursor to the FBI, the Pinkerton National Detective Agency was founded in the 1850s and was massively successful at infiltrating and busting unions over 100 years ago. Look at how successful the CIA is at overthrowing fledgling or non-cooperative governments (at least when they're not Cuba). Porky knows that an organized and radical labor force is perhaps the greatest threat to his property, and he's been hiring thugs to keep it from happening as long as there's been people to exploit. This is my fear. That the institutional knowledge, funding, skills, tools, manpower, and procedures will be too much for a Western revolution to occur until things have collapsed so far that there's little means of production left to save from the capitalists.

Yeah that's a fair point. This is one reason why I'm loving the trump presidency. The more infighting among the elite and the more conflict between the executive and the intelligence agencies the better for us.

Curious Holla Forumslack here, and I think I must be missing something. Most of what you're saying boils down to the same things we're saying. We both hate the ruling elite with their heels to our throats, we (seem to) both want our ABC's scattered to the winds, and (again, seem to) blame modern "liberals" for most of the problems in western society. Both sides talk at length about the people, doing right by them before greedy opportunists, etc. Is the main difference, then, one of packaging? The language and terminology we use in describing "the enemy"?

Also, curious to hear from some of you what the aftermath looks like for an individual? Obviously, paradise for most of Holla Forums looks like a homestead with a loving family. Is that basically where you lot see this going?

polite sage for off-topic.

We get rid of intersectional idpol. Class struggle is the only struggle against oppression that matters, since it's the only one that can change the underlying material conditions that lay at the foundation of social structures.

No, the main difference is what stands behind these observations.

Communists identify the material reality as the root causes of the suffering in capitalist society and seek to restructure society as to make the acquisition of capital obsolete/irrational.

Fascists identify some form of ideological corruption as the root cause, this takes different forms depending on the sort of fascist you're talking to (most famously it is the parasitic Jew, who acts as the source of all misery), since fascism is not a coherent ideology based on theory, but a conservative revolution to the status quo.

Nice low key anti-communist virtue signaling. Fucking liberals.

We have the same enemy, we just engage different facets of it in different ways.

But in doing so, you identify ideologies that don't conform to your methods as being corrupt, as well(Fascism, capitalism, etc.) to varying degrees of accuracy. Again, when you boil down the language and set aside the knee-jerk anger, we seem to be identifying the same problems.

I'm not trying to be confrontational, this is a learning excursion. But branding fascism as "incoherent" with communism's focus on "material reality" is intellectually dishonest. There's truth in both positions. Though it isn't actually core to fascism, the "parasitic Jew" boogeyman for example. There's mounds of evidence to support a healthy distrust of a people ideologically bound together by a book that teaches greed and exploitation. The same can be said of the "capitalism" boogeyman, which has proven time and time again to exploit the people to sate a small group of nepotists.

I'm unfamiliar with your board, but so far we seem to agree more than we disagree tbh The most obvious exception being nature vs. nurture, I doubt we'll ever find common ground there.

do you agree when I say that the jewish worker is our friend and the jewish bourgeouisie must be killed?

One of the biggest differences is, I think, a perceived lack of social acceptance for outsiders or 'degenerates', which quickly devolves to a label that can be easily applied to anyone who is sufficiently different of mind, body, ideology or whatever else is convenient at the time.

And to be fair, there's definitely tankies on this board that believe the same - something to the effect that outsiders undermine the hegemony and therefor harmony of a group.

I think that this lack of acceptance for outsiders is seen by lefties as threatening and counterproductive to developing new or better ideas. It is also a bit grotesque to behold in its purest form, and if you're not quite sure what I'm talking about, take a swing by /r/the_donald. Places where no ideological dissent is allowed -tend- to be right-leaning, at least from what I've experienced.

>Obviously, paradise for most of Holla Forums looks like a homestead with a loving family. Is that basically where you lot see this going?

That's pretty much where my wife and I want to end up.

My vision for society is one where everyone is provided with their basic material needs. I think people should have a right to work so employment would be provided to all. No welfare for able bodied people but everyone who was willing to work could have a good life. With increased automation I think most people could work around 16 hours a week. I'm okay with some inequality but would cap salaries at five times the minimum wage.

I agree with fascists in the sense that I think we need more spirituality and ritual in society to build community and solidarity. More funding for the arts and statues, more public squares and parks, massive public works projects in the greco-roman style like those pursued by the Nazis and Soviets, more holidays and festivals to create social solidarity.

Your life under socialism would be a nice homestead working 16 hours a week with no worries about losing your job or home. It would be easier to find a nice girl and form a meaningful relationship with her without the social alienation and consumerist fun caused by capitalism. There would be an option for state run daycare and generous child subsidies so you could easily have a large family if that's what you desire. There would also be less crime due to material abundance. I'd also slow down immigration to stop social solidarity from being under cut.

My issue with the Holla Forums mindset is dividing workers up based on race. When talks about the intelligence agencies and elite undermining social movements one thing he is talking about is using idpol to divide and conquer. Traditionally this has consisted of dividing workers by giving white workers some extra table scraps, but recently the elite has increasingly stirred up minority hatred against whites, and women's hatred towards men. The thing is white nationalism, extremist feminism, radical islam or black supremacism its all idpol, and its all a distraction to keep people at each others throats while the true villains laugh all the way to the bank. If you are willing to unite with workers of all races to build a better world and my vision of society is one you find attractive come join us on the left side.

btw im a market socialist so many on this board would disagree with me.

Some Holla Forumslack, different device, but to expand on that thought - Historically speaking, outsiders to a culture don't share the same respect as the people who grew up in, and built it. I know that doesn't really need to be said, but a fear of losing or watering down that culture is a big reason I(and some others) would prefer if they built prosperous nations on their own lands.
Which will never work under the current system, since our "elite" obsess over destroying other people instead of raising their own up.
That, alongside the fact that the "elite" are currently bringing in outsider consumers by the millions to keep the sputtering capitalist machine working, is another huge reason for the recent surge in racialist ideology, even if I'd otherwise not have any problem with those people.

I hope you and your wife make it there someday


That sounds nice, but I couldn't imagine working only 16 hours a week. I work 60 now, and keeping busy suits me, I'd definitely go insane with the time. That said, it's a personal choice, and I know where you're coming from.
Nothing to disagree with in the second paragraph.
That all sounds really nice, again. And for the most part(Sans state-run child care), most of us fantasize about this stuff already. I hesitate though(In part because you sound like a car salesman), because that's not how socialism has worked in the past. [insert socialism has never been tried meme here], but those failed states -were- calling it socialism, which puts a lot of people off trying it again.
On worker division, I think I summarized my thoughts decently above.

I didn't really expect discussion tbh, or to agree as much. You rope dodgers are alright, keep it up lads.

While the beautiful thing is you could work as much as you want. We'd also try to instill values in people so when they saw someone like you working hard they'd recognize that as a contribution to the community worthy of respect. If you like to work under capitalism imagine the type of satisfaction you'd gain from working with the knowledge that you are serving and protecting your people, community, and family rather then just making your boss rich.

Yeah I totally understand the hesitancy towards socialism based on historical experience. I find it really frustrating when other leftists call people brainwashed or whatever for having understandable misgivings about whether we're going to end up in a dictatorship like the USSR. I'm not going to tell you what to think or start screeching ackshually not real socialism, but let me give you some information about the historical attempts at socialism to ponder:
-Pretty much every single attempt at socialism which wasn't destroyed by outside forces was conducted according to the soviet model. This model calls for the creation of a vanguard party which historically has just become a new ruling class. The idea of the vanguard is by no mean an integral part of socialism and seems to have been a mistake.
-Marx predicted socialism would be achievable only in core capitalist countries initially and would require a world revolution to survive over the long term.
-After the failure of the revolution in Germany and the rise of fascism much of the bolshevik leadership felt building socialism in underdeveloped Russia while isolated would be impossible.
-The original authoritarian governmental model in the USSR was implemented to win the civil war (which im sure you can understand the necessity for) and wasn't meant to be permanent. Unfortunately Lenin died unexpectedly of a stroke and Stalin took over and buried the idea of reforming it.
-Russia immediately upon entering its civil war was invaded by Britain, France, the USA, Japan and numerous other countries. After the Bolsheviks one they spen their entire existence was surrounded and undermined by an alliance of the most powerful and rich states in the world.
-The Worlds porkies also worked to undermine the USSR. George Soros famously lavished billons of dollars on dissident groups in the USSR, Poland, Hungry and other eastern bloc countries.

Yeah I totally get where your coming from especially in light of the migrant crisis and trouble with integration in Europe. I and most people on Holla Forums aren't naive liberals who think all muslim's are downtrodden noble savages we are realistic about the problem of integration and the effect of mass immigration on the working classes wages and quality of life. All I can really say on this front is the current migrant crisis and the ones inevitably coming in the future are a result of capitalism and imperialism. I know Holla Forumsacks are also against the neocon foreign policy that caused this whole mess but you should know that as long as global capitalism and US hegemony rely on MENA oil sold in petrodollars the destabilization of the region wont end. Imperialism is a natural extension of capitalism and to eradicate one you need to eradicate the other.