"hyurr nehh bluhh we have his thread every day muhh comrade" Shut up I know we do.
I wanted to have a serious discussion about why the Left isn't doing anything (anything) and what can be done. I don't mean people sitting at home who aren't in orgs because they'll always be around, I mean the people who ARE in orgs and THINK they're doing something and they're doing… nothing. I'm going to be approaching this from an American/Puerto Rican perspective so I can't speak for Europe but from what I understand things are generally pretty similar over there. So first off I'm going to list things that aren't working for us.
First of all, posturing. "What's posturing, Lares?" Oh you fucking know what it is, even if you don't realize it yet. You will know that you knew before the end of this paragraph. I'm talking about when you go to your local YDS chapter's Twitter page and oh hey that's great, they show some signs of activity, oh hey that's cool, the moderator posts dank memes on occasion that are actually funny and not just stolen from FC and Zuccbook, oh hey that's neat, they raised some money, and oh god guess what they did with it user, they went to a fucking march. And then they did it again, and again, and again, and wow, there he goes, he posted it again! That's their idea of how to waste their own resources. Raise your goddamn hand if you or anyone you know is in a socialist organization or a socialist because they saw some 19 year old hipsters holding up a "Take Back The Night" banner and thought, "oh, maybe socialism isn't Satan!" FUCK no, it doesn't happen, people see them and think, "oh, those poor misguided youthses!" especially when they look like how Nazis wished we look, stop with the bullshit already.
Secondly, on the other extreme, book fetishism. The only thing worse than an org that thinks it's a marching band is an org that thinks it's a reading group. I can hear the autistic screeching even now. Look I get it it's important to get educated. But the people we are going to have the most viability with are the angry dude(tte)s working three jobs to support the family they didn't want to have and they don't have time to read fucking Das Kap. Surprisingly guess who has their shit together on this? The IMT. Instead of publishing a stupid fucking newspaper they put the exact same resources into making their own literature. I think we can't fairly ask people to read theory until we can distribute something at a prole's reading level and this includes people who dropped out of middle school. Breadbook, Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists and Kropotkin are obviously a great starting point but even it isn't really definitive and it's getting old. I've actually pondered working on such a thing myself but I've got my book to keep me busy for now.
And holy shit that's really it. I guess that's where my post is going- we need to stop "disciplining ourselves" and "putting our names out there" and actually DO things for once. Do you think more than 1% of the population was reading socialist publications in I think 1900 because socialists showed up to hold up signs at suffragette demonstrations? That's that shit I don't like. It takes literally the exact amount of funds and manpower organization to distribute socialist literature and food to the homeless etc. as it does to go to some fucking gay pride rally I mean Jesus there's literally no excuse other than LARPing (something I think is greatly exaggerated), COINTELPRO (also probably the same) and the far more likely possibility that the people really passionate about leading socialist organizations have no idea what they're doing but want to help, or, even worse, are in it for themselves. Small tangent if your socialist organization has a "leader" or even "leaders" you've got a problem, administrative positions are different and acceptable.
So what's the solution? Well, we could all start putting our chips in the most promising organizations in our home countries/regions. So let's take a look at the American state of things. I looked into the offerings and combed through them myself, and my findings are in the first post in this thread. So that leaves us with the following orgs, many of which could be eliminated or added at a later date- CPUSA, SAlt, DSA, IMT, ISO, CS-LCF, WSA, Black Rose, IWW, FNB
WHAT THIS THREAD IS ACTUALLY FOR: INPUT ON 'THE LIST', IDEAS ON HOW TO INFLUENCE ORGS IN A MORE PRODUCTIVE DIRECTION, IDEAS ON STARTING ORGS, IDEAS FOR ACTIVITIES THIS NEW GENERATION OF PRODUCTIVE ORGS CAN ENGAGE IN THAT WOULD ACTUALLY HELP CONSTRUCT THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT AND/OR AID THE WORKING CLASS, ETC.