Tfw you realise 95% of leftists you see or meet are just people either LARPing or having a radical phase in their youth...

I can't stand the lack of seriousness of the Left anymore, including you faggot's. Is this how you slowly become a bitter jaded misanthrope like Phil Greaves? It can't be a good path.

History is a thing, you know. There's no way we are going back to late 20th century liberal normality. We are facing massive social and economic change, this demands radical solutions, either from the left or right

Put your money where your rant is. Join Action Front.

I came to this place about a year ago now as a plucky young summerfag. Since then I've had the pure shit beaten out of me in debate and done the same to others. I've learned what it means to truly be a Marxist and the grim task and hard work it entails to defend our vision.
I sit here now, typing in the dark, a jaded cynical blister of that former young man and Holla Forums has held my hand the entire way.
But I still believe it is all worth it. The world is shaking at it's foundations once again, and that is the calling sign for us to act. For me to surrender to my cynicism, would be for me to betray that proud young revolutionary.
With this I can say that the humor on this board is not because we are idiots or immature, it's because we are all crying out in pain as we witness the snuff film for the human race that is late capitalism. Without these bants I think our board population will decrease on account of suicides.

You can't stand it? We had to sit by and watch as neoliberal media degraded our convictions into empty pop culture symbolism for rebellious kids.

An entire generation got fucked over, they aren't going to forget.

Ignore the merchants of memery, OP. They're lashing out because they don't have a way forward and they don't care to figure one out - preferring to retreat into millenarianist fantasies about how communism will win 'some day~'.There is a definite strain of innovative, forward-looking Marxism on this board though, centred around the cybernetics thread. I wouldn't bother posting complete sentences and coherent arguments if it was just LARPing or le ebin maymay faggotry here.

Oh, you wish.

All these people your age, slightly younger or older that you see talking about Socialism on Twitter because of Sanders, or because they met some BLM radical, or because they want to live in Sweden, will eventually roll their eyes at the idea of Socialism, cringe at their "youthful naivety", and probably look at those of us who will remain commited as the manchildren who didn't move on.

This is an old story. Capitalism isn't fucking people over for the first time, you know.

This is because people are not exposed to any leftist theory in the US. Everything is framed in a neoliberal perspective or obfuscated in postmodern word salad.

The pitiful state of the left has convinced me that no positive change can be achieved by participating in "leftism". Leave that shit for the purple-haired teenagers.

If you want to achieve anything you have to first gain power, and that involves playing the capitalist game.

thats a one way ticket to getting a marriage and settling down and forgetting about it.

What needs to happen is we start new organisations. Fresh ones

I doubt things will go that way for me. Admittedly I might not end up putting all my money into anti-capitalist causes, but I'm certainly not going to settle down and live a normal life. At the very least I need to create an ethical and mutually agreeable solution to the problem of pedophilia before I can retire.

Yeah, that's why there were so many western radicals and labor movements back during the early 20th century. Western imperialism is turning inward and gutting the very welfare states they exploited the third world to maintain. It's quite funny actually.

I've been a communist for about a decade. If it were a phase I'd have grown out of it a while ago. I don't think we live in an era where most people briefly LARP and move on with their lives. We are getting to the point where exposure to these ideas is enough to radicalize people due to the clear answer it gives for their eroding living standards.

Unfortunately I don't think it's that simple. There are a lot of well funded, government endorsed groups who offer alternative explanations for people's suffering. Those alternative explanations appeal more to the basic tribal instincts of humans, so they win out.

"new organizations" is said by everyone. there's a million leftist orgs already. i see zero value in adding another one to the list tbh. that other person is right. opting out of the system is a misnomer. there is no 'dropping out' of a global system of exploitation. this is something the hippies got wrong, too, and its why they all because the ones 'getting a marriage and settling down' … and they were the once that were by far the most dogmatic about 'dropping out' of society.. and look where they went with that! they became the corporate bosses we have now.. !

lol you realize, though, that the poster above you is right? I mean, how long can people insist that inequality is small potatoes when, soon its between starving and not starving? sure, some will cave to racism and caveman level tribal instincts, but i think there will also be a significant portion of people that will see that the problem is hoarding of wealth and the distribution of resources..

None of that changes the fact that Marx is right and humanity is so dumb it deserves to die.

I've been lurking for quite some time and it seems here is the place to be somewhere I can get a 50/50 share of opinions and facts. Holla Forums is just so fucking one sided it's embarrassing to even think about the idea that I remember what some of those ostriches post should be said, spread, and portioned as felt necessary at that time.
I try to still practice what i know more than what I believe on anonymous image boards.

okay, user
you do you
i'll do me

NEWFAG LEAVE

For some reason the Internet became a lot more serious but also a lot more retarded. Weird shit.

yeh the greatest communication tool ever is riddled with reactionary thought no threat tho

Maybe in past generations. I don't know how it worked in other countries, but here in Burgerland young radicals sold out and "settled down" because they got a comfortable corporate job and a house in the suburbs, married and popped out 2.5 kids.

This isn't going to happen so much anymore because none of this shit is available. Most of the cozy office jobs are gone (and, contrary to the belief of the average STEMlord, most STEM jobs are also on the way out as well), houses aren't affordable for most people, many people even find marriage too burdensome economically.

Neoliberalism has destroyed the institutions meant to stomp out radicalism. As our economic situation goes into further decline, people are going to radicalize at an ever increasing scale, with the old filter completely gone.

"Growing out of" is a myth that only serves porky

You know this place is satire…r-right?

This is what pisses me off the most. Those liberals wrapped in red flags, purely concerned with aesthetic, who never bother to learn the most basic foundational concepts of Marxism. Who take their idea of things for the things themselves, and when they do evolve beyond their frankly stupid positions, align all of communism with their own faulty, undisciplined ideas. Like the Frankfurt School in the wake of the Moscow Trials, but worse.
Go see how many people who claim to have had "a communist phase" can even define historical materialism or identify a contradiction of capitalism. It's absolutely ludicrous, like fake soldiers wearing nikes in uniform totally oblivious to how transparent their act is

It's always people who never even crossed the "developmental milestone" of understanding Marx in the first place

You've all got to stop being mad at people, and meeting with those who share your convictions in the real world.

Someone in this thread mentioned that the possibility of "opting out"is gone but I don't buy it.

People rightfully disdain the creation of new organizations but don't realize the real task is creating new institutions. Read the history of the NHS, I think it's instructive.

I don't think this is true. The whole meme of socialism as something you grow out of results from the Boomer experience with leftist politics. The Boomers came of age rebellious and at time when """Socialist """ revolutions were happening all over the world. They got swept up in the left but most sold out as they aged because they were living in the Keynesian West during the golden age of capitalism.

Millenials interest in socialist isn't something inspired by romantic revolutions abroad it reflects the fact that we are the first downwardly mobile generation in recent history. Unless the economy undergoes a massive improvement its unlikely that we'll just "grow out of it" like our parents did.

Global capitalism is a global system with global contradictions. Its daily pressures point towards its expansion into and assertion over all it doesn't currently dominate.
The condition for establishing socialism anywhere is establishing socialism everywhere

Hitler was the last real socialist.

Very well put. Too add to this as Marx wrote "All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind." All the old ideologies which justify class colabarition are being destroyed by neo-liberalism; from nationalism to religion unprofitable spooks are under constant attack. The capitalist system destroys them to increase its profits, but without them it is increasingly vulnerable.

Why did you kill Gregor?

Your power will be wasted. Capital corrupts and corrodes all.

You're right that there's no positive change in the left - but your idea doesn't go far enough: There's no positive change at all. We're all dead.

Nah.
We are already alienated. We have already reached the bottom. There is only up from here. … or staying at the bottom. It's easier.

We should oppose all "radicalism" on the left. We are a "revolutionary" movement, sure, we want to change society from bottom-up. But this shouldn't be seen as something "radical", but necessary, rational and modest. Making communism and the communist project a "radical" one only deters our real base while attracting these LARPers.

Try being a bitter jaded accelerationist instead.

>yfw "radical" comes for the latin radix, for "root"
The "3bohemian4u" types really do shoot us in the foot though.

Why do you guys always mention boomers when we make that point? This isn't something exclusive to the boomers, and it isn't something exclusive to the US. I'm in Brazil and I hear "oh I was socialist at your age too…" all the time, and this is an old phenomenon, Orwell addresses it in the Road to Wigan Pier.

This is how things are, people are more open to new ideas when they're young, they have free time, they don't have mouths to feed, they're constantly interacting with new people and they're looking for ways to stand out (which explains why their engagement is often shallow), and grow conservative and parochial when they have families, less time to read and more or less the same social circle for decades. It has nothing to do with this one particular generation in this particular country.

Someone here once made a point that the establishment shoots itself on the foot by only recruiting conservative, orthodox, by-the-book types to administer its system, and anti-establishment groups shoot themselves on the foot by only recruiting weirdos, outcasts and heterodox people. Sometimes you need linear disciplinarians to make a political enterprise work.