So are we supposed to wait for revolution or try to make it happen...

So are we supposed to wait for revolution or try to make it happen, and if we are supposed to try and make it happen how do we do that?

Personally I don't believe revolution will occur within my life time.

What I do believe is important is having a foundation for it. Various economists such as Richard Wolff and various others (including more right wing economists) would say that in this current state that we are in, there is an economic crisis looming.

So far, anarchists, marxists and the like have little to no foundation. No workers co-ops, no syndicates, unions etc, and for any """foundation"""" there seems to be a shit load of liberals within it, or unironically COINTELPRO.

I think the best option for us (as leftists) is to form workers unions, co-ops, and if not that then spread propaganda that isn't idpol bullshit which is what of liberals do. SJWs must be disassociated with the left, even laughed out and howled at. It will be messy and be seen as barbaric to some, but in my opinion it's worth it.

In this case, when capitalism falls, we can promote these workers co-ops and unions and offer refuge and opportunity. A revolution would still be unlikely, as Capitalism itself can take many forms with either the state or corporations muzzling themselves in to put a band-aid on an already flawed and rotting system, but it would be a good moment for workers co-ops to shine in the midst of economic carnage.

In that case, when ANOTHER economic collapose occurs, hypothetically the workers co-ops and unions (free from idpol) would be able to take charge and violently oppose the system once again, HYPOTHETICALLY leading to a revolution.

Obviously make it happen.

The most efficient model we have so far is that of the Bolsheviks, I think we should adapt it to democratic capitalism and the age of the internet, creating a mass movement organized locally but coordinated by a smaller, closely knit group of dedicated lefties who will vote on issues and then implement it regardless of personal preferences.

The main task of this "core" group would be to expand its social and political influence by mingling in local union and partisan politics and perpetually expand its repertoire of online publications of all sorts. If we have an organic tie to the masses and our own collectively-managed mechanisms of public opinion, all tied together by a group capable of planning and coordination, then we can maneuever in favor of the working class and left-wing designs.

Of course, we don't just decide to make a revolution happen, but once the circumstances allow it we should be ready.

Obviously we must make the revolution happen (what the fuck else are we going to do with our time?), but revolutions are not made by solely gaining petty political control over society. As we have seen from the failure of the Bolsheviks, coup-making will only lead to the restoration of the capitalist productive mode.

If we want to make a revolution, we first have to work to change the mode of production. We have to create the networking/information processing infrastructure necessary to support a society that produces for use and not for exchange. Once that infrastructure actually exists, communism will become the new 'common sense', and the capitalist system will be a pushover, just like feudalism was once commodity production had grown sufficiently.

Why not just, lets say, agitate insurrectionist's and just start marching in the streets, armed, raid the military bases and gain military dissenters. Seize equipment, organize local control over production and distribution by the workers. If you do it quickly enough and with enough momentum, many people will leap at the chance to fight for a revolution. And if possible, reach out to international aid as soon as possible, you might get supplies and volunteers from around the world to aid you.

The only problem is, if we do this in one single place, it just wont work. We need loads of small insurrections over a decent amount of land at once.

We do that or just keep shitposting i guess.

Why not just stop LARPing and try to actually come up with plans tho

You're leaving the most important part of that process (organize local control over production and distribution by the workers) to part of one sentence.

That part is the most important part - it's literally the difference between a capitalist coup and a communist revolution. You can't just leave the implementation of that to 'oh I'm sure we'll work it out at the time'.

Make it happen. Don't give me any of that "Don't interfere in the class struggle revolution will just happen" stuff. You are a member of the proletariat and your actions are a part of class struggle. Just because you know your part of it doesn't mean your interfering with the class struggle. We need to organize a vanguard now.

NO, YOU SHOULD SIT ON YOUR ASS AND DO NOTHING.

READ BOODEGA, YOU ACTIVIST SUBVERSIVE

READ BORDIGA
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If your 'vanguard' is going to put some effort into figuring out how the transition to actual communism is actually going to work then fine, build your vanguard. If it's just going to run another dictatorial social democratic state that folds the entire oppressive apparatus of the capitalist class into itself then no thanks, have a bit more of think about what the fuck you're doing before you repeat every other cunt's mistakes.

Also fuck Bordiga, read Dauve.

The best possible plans and theories we have to try and organize production in theoretical model's negate the reality and unpredictability of economic model people have little experience with. If this is supposed to be a revolutionary act, then we must organize in a truly revolutionary way. We cannot possible predict the motions a economic system fully under worker would take, besides a few attempts in history with very little practical data left for us to analyse and predict what to do or what might happen.

And this is a necessity, because if the workers are not fully in control, it is not our revolution, its a revolt with revolutionary potential. But in order for it to succeed on any level, we must have popular support from the population before we proceed. We must develop a sense of community solidarity before anything really revolutionary can begin.

Also, it seems to me that things are becoming more tense around the globe, things can really shift at any time, we must lay the ground work as much as possible.

GOO GOO GA GA

We're all for doing that, but doesn't that also have to take into account the mistakes of abstentionists from the days of the International to today, the mistakes of completely open, mass-based parties that within a generation lost all revolutionary sentiment and became liberal, the mistake of horizontalists that never move past a few protests and often become charismatic leaderships with no mechanism to oust them, of insurrecionists who disdained organization, the many socialist communes and states that were not able to survive the smallest counter-reaction, etc?

It seems to me that when Leftists say we must learn with our mistakes and not repeat them they basically mean we shouldn't do anything they think the Soviet Union represented, and often suggest as alternative an idea that by Lenin's time was not only old and tired, but also discredited by experience as well.

I'm not talking about 'organising production in theoretical models', that shit's for utopian chumps. I'm talking about taking lessons from Actually Existing Communism (ie, FLOSS and similar formations) and consciously attempting to apply them to all parts of the productive forces.

We can't and shouldn't try to predict or modelevery part of the new economic system, but we can identify and promote those already existing trends that point the way toward the development of communism. It is the existence of those embryonic parts of the communist system that will enable a successful revolution.

We must build the infrastructure for a successful revolution, but we have to remember that a great deal of this infrastructure is economic, not just political. Capitalists didn't win over the aristocracy just because of their organisation, they organised and were able to win because the capitalist mode of production was already developing.

Trying to foment a revolt without having a clear idea of where the new system is is exactly the failed model of the failed revolts of the 20th century.

This. Many of the Left-wing theories we still use to this very day were only possible because of the organizational and financial success of the Second International, and to this day we suffer with the fact that most economists and social scientists need to conform to the prevailing mindset of the academia in order to have a career. There's a whole economic and sociological dimension behind the creation and organization of knowledge, and the Left needs to develop that so we can sustain theorists and analysts of our own.

Of course, we're never going to predict 100% how things will happen because circumstances influence that a lot more than theory does, but we'll have a few blueprints to use. An understanding of what's possible in the future is a precondition for revolution, because it makes us aware of the imperfections of the present.

That's nice, but I'm not proposing we follow any of those proven failures either. Every single method tried so far has failed for the same fundamental reason: in focusing on secondary political questions, these 'revolutionaries' have never actually revolutionised the mode of production.

I am sick to death of people arguing about purely political strategies like insurrection or horizontalism or electoralism or vanguardism or what-the-fuck-everism. None of it cuts to the heart of the issue, which is production for exchange. If you don't have a method for overcoming that, you don't have a revolution. The Soviet Union was the prime example of this fundamental mistake. They tried the half-measure of folding the functions of the capitalist class into themselves and succeeded only at creating a transitory despotism.

It is telling that Actually Existing Communism was created by libertarian internet geeks before a single politically-obsessed modern 'Marxist' even came close.

Revolution requires that we have the solution to the question of overcoming commodity production at least somewhat in hand. Without that we are doomed to repeat the unmitigated failures of the last century.

Proles make the revolution. Not "The Left". As long as you are aware of this in what you are doing, you will most likely not end up LARPing

We are supposed to convert non-communists into communists.
Leftism right now does NOT have the support of the masses, and liberals have done a splendid job binding leftish people to themselves.
So doing a revolution right now is doomed to fail. So rev up you dialectic materialism and poach among liberals, anti-globalists, anti-establishment, workers and unions.
Convince them that they are more worth than what porky is willing them to pay.

What are you referring to here? Bitcoin?

If nothing overly dramatic happens and neocons and neolibs don't change their behavious we will get a revolution around 2080. Increasing income gap, unfair wealth distribution, debts caused by compound interest and ecological damage will force even the armchairs to act up

You criticized the concept of vanguard so I made an argument about it being a valid model, not sure what's so complex about this. Everything else you wrote is besides the point.

New people welcome.
I've seen people say giving distant dates is a cop out but this is truly the biggest cop out date I've seen.

Hello 15 y/o.
You may reach 2080 alive. When you do, you will remember this post.

Show your working or shut the fuck up.

Why the hostility?
This isn't a League of Legends game, kiddo.

Ebin.

provide said evidence, kid

...

Thank you. I rest my case.

Free (Libre) Open Source Software, open hardware/design, Wikipedia, software/media piracy, 'citizen journalism', etc. These are all examples of the communist mode of production operating.


I criticised the concept of the vanguard and you sperged out accusing me of following any number of other failed revolutionary strategies.

I responded by pointing out what fundamental part of the revolutionary process the vanguard strategy totally ignores, and why that ignorance has led to the unmitigated failure of the vanguard strategy historically. Every part of my post was a relevant response to yours.

Holy fuck you're retarded.

Jesus Christ, you criticized an organizational format by saying we should not repeat mistakes, I said all other models of organization have also lead to errors and that doesn't invalidate Bolshevism. If by learning with mistakes you meant something else, or you attribute failures to something unrelated to organization, then I wouldn't be able to guess it.

Good luck innovating the means of production if you get confused by a simple interaction like that.

Like talking to a brick fucking wall, it is.

My criticism is of the entire concept of a political organisation that leads to revolution. I cite the vanguard only because it has led to the most egregious failures. The 'mistake' that needs to be learned from is the mistake of thinking that the revolution will be made by any kind of political organisation in the absence of a change in the mode of production.

You fucking idiot.

Mate, we all understand your point in general ITT, but in the post I answered to you said:


i.e. a criticism of an organizational format (Bolshevism).

This is an anonymous board, so it's not like I could immediately make the connection between your post and everything else you said in this thread. The way you wrote that post makes it sound that by not "repeating mistake" you meant something relating to Vanguardism, as I couldn't magically guess you were talking about Open Source shit or whatever.

I really don't know what's so difficult about this, but just by the insane amount of reiterations of the same point you've made ITT and your inability to understand how conversation works I assume there's something wrong it you, and I'll stop replying to your crazy ass now.

The internet is at least a great example for why material conditions are important. Not saying anything new, but the reason the internet produces so many communal and diffuse modes of production is because it is non-physical and the agreed upon rules surrounding its usage allow it to continue to have relatively few barriers. It could be much more restrictive, but it isn't and so it takes this form. In the real world, physical space lends itself to encirclement and control. The internet renders its objects easily transferable, nearly instantaneously to anywhere at the same time.

But I am in agreement with you that we need to focus on concrete methods of socialist production, and for that very reason. I think possibility is like a fertile soil that causes patterns of behavior and systems to rise around it. But, that possibility needs to be apparent enough and more easily accessible than alternatives. The "possibility" may have been there to create a steam engine and start industrialization in any time period, but obviously it was only likely after certain other conditions arose. The basic "material conditions" mantra.

If some person or group of people can create the easily accessible possibility for different modes of production, people will come to it. And the more they do, the weaker the current mode of production will get. That doesn't even necessarily mean something like a socialism that exists within capitalism, though maybe it could. It could just mean having a concrete plan that people can rally behind, rather than the vague slogan "the workers should own the means of production". I think most of the time when people hear something like this, there is always the phantom in their minds of "what does that look like?" and that confusion stops them from really knowing just what to do.

And then get shot by right wingers who own all the guns
And get shot by soldiers who are actually trained properly how to use their rifles
Yes I'm sure they'd love to join you after you killed all their buddies.
That you won't even know how to use because you lack the proper training to operate and maintain said equipment
Been proven by history time and time again to not work and result in a failed economy, but go ahead.
Good luck organising an uprising of that scale with plans to assault military bases all over the country without being infiltrated by the FBI and CIA and having your whole plan destroyed before it even begins.

You can only get your revolution if the people really want it, and the people will only want it if they need it.
Out of economic necessity is when you will find people to join either a Nationalist uprising or a socialist revolution.

Ok, so here's the problem with that. In order to change the overall economic system, we need to get rid of the old one which would also suppose the old system would fight to preserve itself in whatever way's i chooses to do so. And one of those ways if find most effective, is violence.

When the system we wish to dispose and replace is at all times and constantly fighting back the gains and attempts we try and implement within the system, we fight a loosing battle. How are we supposed to build the ground work of revolution is doing so is already an act of revolution?

Heres the things about plans and in general theory. Theyre all a Utopian ideal that is used as the ground work of people attempting to build a new society in all its aspects, economic, political, social ect ect. We set ourselves up with the notion at first that the plan is our probable best course of action. Then, as always, reality interferes, things go wrong and people look for a reason why. Some people will suppose that the plan itself didn't work, others will say things didn't work because they didn't follow the plan hard enough. If people suppose they must continue to follow the plan, we see the death of the revolution, as the will of the people is subverted by our strange obsession with idealism.

That's what happens when we try and plan for an event that is utterly unpredictable for the most part, its leads people to this Utopian ideal that you can see in almost all our current economic systems, they blame the people for not following the rules that were given to them and when things fall apart, its not because they system was flawed, but because the people didn't do it correctly. Because really, planing is just promising people that if we do this, we will be guaranteed to succeed. But we cant know if it will actually succeed, best you can do is hope for it to be true and try to make it happen.

We shouldn't make promises about economic plans, or plans necessary for revolution, because they're all just empty promises. Really, theirs only one thing we can guarantee people, and thats if we work together and fight we have the possibility to change our lives in a way we decide. Really, all we can do is tell people their is a choice, we just have to fight for it.

your life is a lie

I hate to say it but the Nazi's right.