I'm fucking tired of thinking and talking about capitalism every fucking day and I greatly regret becoming involved in...

This. I'm fairly certain I would have killed myself ages ago if I couldn't spend my evenings getting high, playing video games, and watching sports.

Just take a measured approach, engage in activism when it's most important or gratifying but make time for relaxation and self actualisation too.

That's why going through a "come on, debate me" libertarian phase as a teen is important. You learn to enjoy fighting instead of being worn down by it.

What if the enjoy fighting part is quite literal?

Become a fighter

same

Like if you stop thinking about it capitalism will go away

grow up and stop being a baby

Go back to theory.

This

you are yet to name one

...

I feel you OP. I miss when I was interested in politics and it felt challenging. Now I always have the same response to any policy… It's a bandaid to a broken system, its pros and cons are irrelevant when the system will go on being broken. Its incredibly depressing being a leftist.

You should just kill yourself, it's the only thing you could contribute to the cause anyway.

Nice try Holla Forums

...

Obviously you aren't using radical enough means. Its time to drop the newspapers Trotsky and gather your little activist crew into a real revolutionary force. You know what I'd give to have a social group that gave a shit? I'd kill to be where you are man

we have a spare armchair comrade

See, the thing about suicide manifestos is that they're (obviously) irrevocably linked to an act of suicide. Suicide is something that crazy people do. It logically follows that anything written by the suicide is not worth taking seriously, as it is the deranged ramblings of a crazy person. While people may pay attention to a manifesto delivered in such a way, they won't heed it.

I know that feeling, OP. I had been going through the motions as an activist for years before I was lucky enough to get the time to step back and consider the big picture. Other posters' suggestions about taking a break or whatever are fine, but if you're anything like me destroying capitalism is your white whale, and all that other frivolous bullshit won't hold your attention for long. Once you've realised how much shit capitalism fucks up, no other challenge holds a candle to Full Communism.

Having gone through the process myself, I now realise that the creeping sense of exhaustion usually referred to as 'burnout' was actually a subconscious realisation that I was going about things the wrong way and wasting my time and energy as a result.

If you have the time, go back and have a think about what you're trying to accomplish with your activism, what your end goal is. Crucially, figure out if you yourself have a clear idea of what the achievement of this end goal would look like. Feel free to brush up on or ask for any readings that you think might help you understand.

Next, ask yourself how you think your activity is supposed to achieve those goals. Try to answer it in a stepwise sort of way, eg "step 1: going to protests will raise awareness, step 2: more people will join us, …, step N: we'll strangle the last banker with the entrails of the last politician". You don't have to be specific with the steps, but try to figure out at least an order-of-magnitude timescale for the process you're envisioning.

Hopefully, asking these kinds of questions of yourself will help you understand the parts of your activity that you had merely 'gone along with' before seriously considering their utility. It could be something relatively minor that's bugging you. It could be that you have serious qualms about the effectiveness of the entire model of activism you had been pursuing up until now.

I personally realised that the vague pronouncements about 'the workers figuring it out during the revolution' by everyone around me on the Left weren't satisfying me in the slightest. I realised that the reason why all the activism I'd ever participated in was a muddled, short-lived mess was because nobody involved had a clue what they were trying to accomplish beyond vaguely 'opposing' what currently exists, and trying to recruit others to agree with that 'opposition'.

I'm not saying this will work for you, but I relieved my burnout by starting to read more deeply on economics and cybernetics. I reasoned that if we want to see communism actually take hold, we need to figure out how it's actually going to run so that we have a concrete alternative to pose, and so that workers in struggle have something to implement without relying on 'experts' who inevitably take power for themselves.

...

Sorry to tell you this, but it probably was.

libcom.org/library/activism-amadeo-bordiga

If you want to get into some "useful" activism, read up on communization. The only way to bring about communism is to produce it, meaning to set up communist spaces and replacing "spreading class consciousness" with "preparing the proletariat intellectually for the revolution".

Not the person you responded to but holy fuck this feel right here.

WHITE WHALE
HOLY GRAIL
SPLIT YOUR LUNGS WITH BLOOD AND THUNDER

10/10 post tbh

Sounds great what could possibly go wrong?

OPPORTUNIST

It took me a while to fully grapple with accusations like that from leftcoms, as I have a great deal of respect for their theoretical acumen.

In grappling with the question of 'What am I actually fighting for?', one of my first stops was Dauve and communisation theory. However, while I found the criticisms levelled at other tendencies to be cutting, I found that communisation theorists left a lot to be desired when it came to their alternative course of action.

Dauve waxes poetic about all of the wonderful features of communism - he obviously has an idea of what the end result of communisation would look like. However, he falters and slips into what can best be described as mysticism as soon as he is required to propose concrete courses of action - any talk of establishing communised spaces is, as far as I'm concerned, just utopianism that attempts to avoid the charge by couching its prescriptions in vague and mystical language.

In contrast to the fundamentally enervating recommendations of the communisation theorists, my intention is to help create the tools with which workers can remake society.

No matter how much you autistically screech about opportunism, the fact remains that a society co-ordinating complex production globally without money, markets, or classes must have some method of deciding where to put what materials to best fulfill human needs.

Further, it is also clear that not one of the many working class rebellions over the past 200 years have managed to summon such a method from thin air while being brutally repressed by the forces of reaction. It is perhaps unrealistic to expect them to do so.

I've concluded that I can usefully spend my time helping to develop the framework for organising production and distribution without money, classes, etc. I want to actively avoid utopianism - I've said it before in the cybernetics thread, my intention isn't to provide a blueprint for a future society, but to help forge the tools needed to build it.

Embrace nihilism and Join the post-left

People believe such convenient dogshit.

tfw leftcoms shit on communalists and ansyns for doing exactly that

...

Dumb frogposter.

tbh nihilistic hedonism just makes me suicidal.
I'll just sit in a corner, read spinoza and do math for the rest of my life.

AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH
BLOW IT UP, BLOW THE WHOLE SYSTEM UP

that was the funniest thing that happened in the whole series

im you user but on the right

im so tired of talking about communism, it feels like i care more about hating you guys than anything else and it's shitty

How do you think people cope? Why do you think everyone isn't rioting constantly? They have menial pleasures to distract them from their stress. They can get consumed in alternate realities which distract. The stress is always felt, but it is tolerable enough.

Weebshit NEETs are a pretty good example of this. They hate their lives, sure, they want gf and "normalcy", but they don't want to be parted from their anime and games because it is the only thing keeping them from killing themselves or going on a shooting spree. They are at the margins of society, but still they refuse to revolt because they can hide in the comfort of hedonistic consumption and escape in media. Though more recently a portion of them have gotten caught up in reactionary internet grandstanding for something like a nanny state that will allow them to continue to be NEETs, but also assign them a gf. The ultimate fantasy of continuing to be antisocial but getting the experience of being social.

so stop

you're right

I probably will

today was refreshing and that dread headed girl getting fucking destroyed was eye opening

i wish you guys weren't so violent either

read mark fisher

or dont, you'll feel worse but in a good way

a good half of the people in here dont even like antifa tbh.

Nice.
I'm currently in the process of setting up a workroom in my house so I can finally get started on the fuckhuge backlog of models I have.

The problem is you're white.

If you're white there is nothing you can do for the cause that isn't straight up illegal because your very life relies on exploitation.

Just give up communism or build up a cadre that's willing to bomb politicians.

thats good to hear

it seems like today in berkley was the rights version of antifa
it wasn't about free speech and it was more about just being angry shit heads

sometimes i also read commies on twitter and they joke about how many people communism killed and wishing nukes would hit and it seems like they couldnt give a fuck about being ethical

Welcome to the realization that actual change doesn't happen by brawling in the street and those who LARP as such are retarded and do nothing but add to the shittiness.

...

wooah, hold up. these faggots aren't at the 'margins of society.'

that's the third world, jamal in the ghetto, jed in the trailer park, etc.

these anime fucks aren't oppressed, they are down on their luck, sure, but oppression is a real bulllshit term to use. most of their shit can be fixed with a shower and a change of attitude. they literally just need to stop bitching

REED

POODEGA

WILL LITERALLY SOLVE ALL YOUR PROBLEMS

They're mentally ill, if that isn't a group of people pushed to the margins of society I don't what is.
Christ you're stupid

What the fuck are you talking about?

the whole thing about helping others w/o helping yourself i kind of agree with. there's a certain personality type that is absolutely schitzo in thinking they can just be a perpetual activist while letting their own personal life go to hell. i have met people like this and they are pure cancer

t. FBI

no u.

on the contrary i'd say that's pretty dumb if you think every last one of them is mentally ill. where is the proof? This is you just making some bullshit estimation if anything. Pure conjecture.

look at any of the videos – lots of these people aren't mentally ill. they're perfectly functional human beings that just believe really fucked up bullshit and convince themselves its true. calling me dumb doesn't change that. what's realllly dumb is how people like you on this board make excuses for their bullshit all the time. that's like saying "oh hahaha the nazis just had mental issues haha its ok haha no big deal guys" as if they are a harmless threat or were capable of being 'fixed' with the right kind of 'care' and dialogue.

What you're attempting to do is just remove all responsibility from these right wingers for their actions. As long as you play up the 'mentally ill' meme it means nobody has to hold them accountable for their actions, which is just super liberal BS at that point. If it makes you so buttmad that someone tells them to fuck off with this "muh white g*nocide" bullshit then maybe you should just go to fucking Holla Forums

go for a stroll in your local Forest

I'm not fucking talking about right wingers and fascists, I thought you were talking about autistic NEETs that live with their parents and watch anime, that's who I was talking about.

Communication is 50 percent the listeners responsibility and 50 percent the speakers, so I apologize for my half of miscommunication.

But i'm not white

unironcally kys my man

Like others have said: find some hobbies. Studying the effects of economics on society made me a leftist and a cynical asshole and has made my view on the future pretty hopeless, and it's a constant gnawing feeling.

What has helped me is trying out things I've always wanted to try. Now I've gotten into plants and aquaristics and woodworking. It's a great relief. When you get into creative work worries seem to be pushed to the back of your mind. Now I have plans to expand these hobbies when I have a suitable home and space. I also feel inspired to try new things, like practical shooting, hunting, metalworking, masonry, dioramas, brewing and winemaking, beekeeping. The list can go on, and I can't wait to try some of this stuff out.

I still occasionally visit and hang out at the local chapter of our Communist Party, engage in discussions, and think about red theory and activism, but I don't let myself be bogged down by it to the same extent. You don't need to get all the way out, you just need some distance, time to catch your breath, distract yourself from the shitty world around you.

Autistic neet anime fans are the mist oppressed group in society.

Just quit and take the /varg/pill

That's not what I said.
Just that their problems aren't solvable by "taking a shower and changing their attitudes"

I wasn't making fun of you, i was making a serious statement.

go beyond
youtube.com/watch?v=cM1wIIoWis8

Besides that, something else happened to me. Now I can't stop thinking about what the political stance of other people I know are and it's driving me insane. Several years ago I wouldn't have given a fuck and now it's effectively depressing me.

I have a girlfriend that is not very political and friends that aren't that political too, so I do keep my "work life" (my unpaid "work" as a left activist) and my personal life separate in that respect

Holy shit are you kidding? I have found that's the single most useful thing I've learned from my time as a political activist.

Years of selling trot papers on the street has taught me how to figure out someone's entire political outlook indirectly in the space of a short conversation. It's one of the most useful social skills I have.

I find it's a hell of a lot easier to get on a person's good side and get what you want out of them if you understand their politics, since people's politics are informed by their basic values. If you know their politics, it's very easy to pretend to share their basic values and get them on side.

I can understand how you might end up worrying about the politics of others, though. If you listen to your activist friends you might feel the need to be the classic 'tribune of the people', fighting oppression whenever it rears its ugly head. You end up worrying about everyone's political stances because knowing they're opposed to you means you have to fight them. You'll quickly run into a wall with that approach, though.

People don't like being challenged, they like being complimented. You change way more minds by demonstrating that you share a person's values then showing them how their values were actually yours all along.