Praxis

Join Action Front.

I was hoping for something a little more inspiring than 'join the autist meme brigade' when I posted this thread

In any case I've probably wheatpasted more posters than you've fucking seen in your life, it doesn't fucking get us anywhere.

Where the fuck is the good praxis hiding, Holla Forums?

His general thrust is completely correct. You can toil away in your shitty aimless party politics and building "movements" as much as you like. You can sell out to the right because the only community you can conceive is stupid nationalism. You can either continue to worship the state and fail like all the Marxists before or abhore power like anarkiddies.

Or you can follow the last open path and see that local issues and politics are the only place where any kind of worker communality and organic organisation actually arises.

This post is exactly what I mean when I say that Bookchin only looks good compared tot he fucking retarded 20th century. His first argument is [all the praxis adopted in the 20th century was retarded], which is correct, but he follows it up with [therefore, we have to return to utopian commune-building] which absolutely does not follow.

Massive striking. The machine shows cracks when 50000 are out in the streets

What happens at 500000? 1000000?

The Bookchinite: lowest of them all.

I feel like this image sums up bookchin quite well, am I correct?

All you've done is layout the worst case scenario for many of the strategies you've outlined. Sometimes they will turn out that way, sometimes they won't.

Yes, but it still envelops the political consciousness of the proletariat. Thus, we need to engage in it in order to make people aware of alternatives to capitalism. There's a reason we saw an upsurge in memberships of socialist orgs after Bernie ran.

True for the most part, but they're good for making yourself look like the victim when they are suppressed and thus have a just cause for further action.

true enough.

Reforms will be reversed if they are done by piecemeal social democrats and not the result of arduous class warfare with the state goal of achieving socialism at the end. Reforms are a sign of the power of a class, the more reforms, the more powerful we see the proletariat are.

That's why you make them accountable to a socialist organization that helps get them elected, an org that is further accountable to its rank and file.

Not on its own, but we're already seeing trump invigorate the far left, and people, even former hillary supporters, are seeing the failure of neoliberal politics.

This is a possibility, sure. But men make their own history. There is still a chance to escape this fate.

Which is why the focus needs to be, in any revolution, on proleterian democracy, and not vanguard parties as the foundation of a new society.

It does work occasionally, even if it's a tactic for very specific situations.See Cuba and China and hell, even the Yugoslav Paritsans.

They will if they have proper political force behind them.

True

Individual co-ops, sure. But, much like the communes, with proper political force behind them they can challenge capitalism if they can possibly become the dominant mode of production. Thus instating a radical form of proletarian democracy that will pave the way to a new society.

some of them have. Some of them are still fighting.

Yes, but we can still learn from their mistakes.

True. We have to save ourselves, and the third world while we're at it.

True

Automation will show that capitalism is naked domination once everyone looses their jobs and all that remains are a select few owning the means of production.

If everyone has your attitude, then yes.

I wouldn't be too sure fam

There's no real hope, that's why I've become a shitty lifestyle situationalist. Planning the revolution is a sham, the fuckin armchairs are right. We can only plan our lives and I know that's some shitty half baked liberal stoicism but unfortunately it's the only avenue left to us.
Agitate, Educate, Organise. You won't be able to spark a revolution but you have the power to imesurably improve the lives of the comrades around you and unfortunately that's going to have to satisfy all of us for now.
It seems hopeless and futile but the neolibs did a good job of scorching the earth and now it's our responsibility to replant the roots for a future forest to take hold.

>Armchairs will wear out and you will run out of books before capitalism collapses
What makes you so sure. Capitalism is shakey as fuck, it will eventually collapse, or at the very least, trip and fall. We need to be there to usher in its death when that happens. It may mean we are on standby for a bit, but it will happen man, Its only a matter of time.

...

Cool, sure, sounds reasonable. Now what can I do to help make that happen?

Thanks bros, I was really hoping a thread asking for actionable praxis wasn't going to end up as me v dumbass bookchinite

Thanks for the effortpost. Given how you've responded, I assume your preferred praxis is something along the lines of a revolutionary party? I have had pretty extensive experience with that, it's by far the option I'm least convinced of.

Ugh fuck that's so boring though, it's tantamount to giving up entirely. Plus I don't think we have time for that 'just sort of improve people's lives' shit anymore. I would prefer to believe that there is a solution to this capitalism problem but we haven't found it because we've stupidly left the task to a bunch of humanities students. I hope that we can figure out some really effective praxis if I yell at everyone who posts in this thread long enough.

So your revolutionary praxis is to wait then. That's fine, but the nice thing about 'doing nothing' is that if you aren't 100% sure it's the correct move you can hedge your bets by doing it alongside other stuff that you think has an outside chance of working. Any suggestions on some other stuff? Again, it's fine if it's something that will take all of my time and money.

Encourage automation, in spite of the capitalists. I will soon finish an undergrad in Systems Engineering and intend to help however I can with the theory and implementation.

Also, some comrades are discussing practical solutions in these two threads:
Empirical Marxism

Soviet Cybernetics

My wishes also couldn't be satisfied by this system, even if I was a billionaire. I want to become a cyborg and travel between stellar systems, establishing colonies.

I think there should be a party, but only as a smaller piece of a larger workers movement.

I have read those threads, they're very nice. Definitely a bit different from the tired old answers the rest of the Left wants to sell me. Is that it for the practical activity, though? Encourage automation + program the communist computer economy + co-ops OR wait for revolution? It's more than anyone else has got, at least.

Every group says they're part of a larger workers' movement, but in the absence of such a movement they end up shrivelling into sectarian little cults that don't unshrivel when a resurgence happens.

you keep trying until you get it right. This system wont last forever.

work hard and become an upper-middle class prole or a petite booj. Enjoy yourself but save up enough money and learn a few languages so you can flee if fascism or climate change start to fuck you country up too much. Save yourself

I agree with the sentiment that there must be a solution somewhere but you're not going to find it here. If a bunch of jerk off humanity students couldn't do it in a century and a half why would circle jerking basement dwellers be a better resource?
It may sound boring but local communities are the only place where you might find a solution. You have the right idea about crowdsourcing for information but it would be much more effective in materially local rather than online communities. La committee invisible made some really good points about it. Talk of revolution is everywhere, everyone is on edge, and as far away as the revolution seems, it feels uncomfortably close.
If a revolution is immanent we can only respond to the natural forces. Trying to shape the revolution is what's killed it before, it only puts us at a disadvantage. Porky can feel revolution breathing down its neck, he wants us to pop our heads so that the labour movement can be crushed even more brutally than the last time.
Instead, talk with locals, form study groups, organise unions together, start a coop. Certainly none of these things will start the revolution but if it comes you'll have a strong foundation to weather the torrents.

That's fine, but the question I'm asking with this thread is 'what can I try?' The idea is that you give some concrete ideas about what to do. I'm not really a guy who needs encouragement to try to kill capitalism, I don't really have any other desires in life.

I'm already pretty much in that position. What I want is to destroy capitalism though.

They wouldn't. It's just that, tragically, there's nowhere else left on the internet to discuss left-wing ideas. Even this place's terminal case of retardation manages to be better than what the rest of the internet has to offer.

The rest of your post is very fine and level-headed, and I commend you for it. I had pretty much come to the conclusion that the activities you described were my only real option when I started this thread. You're right about it sounding boring though - it kinda sucks that you can't end capitalism via some really fun plan like building a giant laser and threatening the UN.

Those are the real issues here. What's the point if you can't? What's the point?

I do believe you've put that in the wrong thread

No it follows that we have to create the circumstances where any kind of movement building becomes possible again.

Be more specific or find a way to shove your head into your asshole.

This is wrong. Automation will be pursued for military purposes even if it isn't pursued for profit. An advanced automated military will always beat a conventional human military, so it's only a matter of time before natural selection does its thing.

We aim to do more than wheatpasting, wheatpasting is just one area. Wheatpasting was a mechanism to gain more people to start of a global solidarity network, which has successfully grown and is growing. Which other praxis network do you know of that focuses on gathering people without identities for global action in total anonymity?

Automation of the military != extensive industrial automation necessary to make capitalism collapse.
Tell that to the vietnamese peasants who kicked your asses, or the goatherds who've built an endless quagmire out of old russian mortars and nokia cell phones.

What actions? All I've heard about action front is memes and posters. What actual activities do you engage in or intend to engage in? This is a thread about praxis, I won't tolerate you jerking off about your solidarity network or how much consciousness you've raised. I'm interested in results, or concrete plans to get them.

You are most certainly not going to get these over night. Any kind of praxis takes organisation and recruitment and that takes time.

Further to this, the more people we have the more results we get.

If you find yourself thinking all current attempts at praxis are lacking why not try out a new one?

So far we have protested the censorship of Kurdish Symbols by targeting German Embassies, besides other things. Soon we will be launching a program of other ways to resist.

We will be, for example, helping out the homeless and helping employees who are getting fucked by their bosses in the coming weeks.

The goals are identical: general artificial intelligence. If one happens, the other is guaranteed to follow. It's no different to the way in which civilian and military uses of nuclear technology went hand in hand.

No automated military currently exists, so I don't know what point you think you're making. Humans are fundamentally limited in their ability to think strategically and micromanage their forces. Superior intelligence is why a species of weak, hairless apes has managed to conquer the entire planet and drive the most ferocious animals to near extinction. Artificial intelligence is simply the next logical step in evolution.

Parliamentarianism will work if magically the overwhelming majority of people wanted socialism
Assuming there want a right wing coup

Encouraging automation and programming a computer economy would also compete with Capitalism, hopefully weakening it.

Also the reason worker's movements shrivel in little sectarian cults is, I think, that their objective is not concrete enough. They basically theorize about how the new system should work or who should lead it and, because theorizing relies so much on couch philosophy and so little on the external world, everyone comes with their own idea.

Building an automated economy, on the other hand, even on a local level and for a few industrial branches is a problem of mathematics, physics and programming, which offer only a few or a single solution towards which people will gravitate. That's why STEM research in general is so productive, nature is oppressive, and forces you on the right path.