There are people on this board (right now) that have actually paid money to the DSA

social democracy*

Why does the Left gaining traction trigger you? Have decades of NeoLiberalism made you addicted to watching the Left lose?

why are ultras so bootyblasted ?

and didn't the bolsheviks work with the mensheviks at one point?

The alternative being either violence or lack of union support. A Corbyn-esque candidate is really the only non-violent option here, and if that fails to support worker's rights, then so be it, we work on becoming more violent.

But violence in a population of this scale is mostly pointless, and actually counter intuitive, it should be the last possible option as it has no net positive goal for public support as we aren't at the tipping point yet.

You can larp about finally leaving your arm chair all you want faggot, but at the end of the day you're not the one organizing for workers.

It has failed and will continue to do so.

Yes, and more so Lenin fully endorsed working within the framework of electoral politics and other Bourgeoise institutions whenever necessary or pragmatic. The only Marxists who deny this basic common sense shit are certain strains of Leftcoms and anti-revisionists who are far more interested in abstract theory then actual praxis.

Not to mention that the People don't like violence that much and are unlikely to go there unless they feel like their other options are exhausted. The purpose of reform is to demonstrate to the masses that reform doesn't work.

It doesn't have a majority government 1) 2) it hasn't existed long enough for a fair track record to be made of work accomplished.

That being said, once again, violence is not currently possible as we are not at the material turning point for the population to support it.

These are the decks of cards handed to us.

He's right you moron.

HE

We all know you're actually just a dude Hoochie

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That you?

I never thought I'd ever say this, but Hoochie is 100% correct.

Lel, you've never seen a pic of Hoochie before? What are you, a newfag?

Can we not make this thread a circle jerk about hoochie minh

Socdems won't get elected here in burherland in enough numbers to make an impact, assuming they are elected beyond the local level at all. Even if they are elected, based on the actions of euro socdems they will go along with liberal policies anyways. This does not mean that we must immediately embark on a terrorist campagin or attempt to overthrow the state with a rag tag team of maybe a thousand leftists, but that time is better spent organizing in a different manner.

$120 to Bernie in increments. Dues to DSA every year. Some money to WSWS. Have fun on chans while we occupy state power.

This user gets it.

And let's not forget that certain reforms, although limited, have strategic values. Like shorter working hours, that Marx considered vital to give working people the time and energy to focus on their education, on politics, etc.

Hoochie has always made sense; you've just finally opened your eyes.

Of course, I have a pic right here.

then stop tripfagging dumbass

You're suggesting violent communists will any time soon, that's just not an option. It's acceleration or reform or bust, and by saying that only voting for the Neocons like Trump is acceleration you're admitting that the sacrafices involved with that choice are worth it.

I disagree, I think they're not worth it. I think the only real way to victory here is to isolate all possible electoral options until we reach the point inevitably this century where all these options have been exhausted to the public and they're still in the state they're in BECAUSE of the #1 problem we're up against

which is capitalism.

Not mobilizing at all isn't an option at this point

No faggot, whether you like it or not this thread is now a Hoochie Gang takeover!

Because we have more to deal with than just Capitalism now, we have to deal with its industrial consequences.

If we don't vote in someone who is good about the environment what the hell kind of post-capitalist paradise are we even looking at here

This is always good

My nigga, the SAPD made use of elections in the heydays of the anti-Socialist laws and they only had like two niggas in parliament during the first years. It's not about numbers, it's about platforms. What they said there and their opposition, even if symbolic, to certain policies reached the ears of millions. Lenin followed a similar reasoning to convince other Bolsheviks to partake in election in the Third Duma.

Think of elections as a tool for mobilization and maybe, maybe, small strategic gains. The real movement obviously happens elsewhere.

Ultraleftists, thoughts on Debs?

this will be seen as a failure of leftism, you absolute retard

What will impotent violence or impotent arm chair speculating be called that supports worker's rights in no way what-so-ever, or allowing the government to break up unions even further be called, or allow the election of people who's entire MO is making our environment even worse, brilliant success?

By supporting nothing you're doing more to support neoliberalism than the people you're arguing with

This. The dsa won't bring us communism but it's useful in other ways.

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You're a sloth

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your mums fat

That's a good advice. Rosa didn't call this form of politics "childish, half-baked and one-dimensional" without reason.

(FYI: I'm not the same leftcom seen ITT.)

Most ultras commend Eugene Debs for his internationalism during the first Great Imperialist War, which was similar to theirs:
>I have no country to fight for; my country is the earth; and I am a citizen of the world. […] I am opposed to every war but one; I am for that war with heart and soul, and that is the world-wide war of the social revolution. In that war I am prepared to fight in any way the ruling class may make it necessary, even to the barricades."(marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/themilitant/socialist-appeal-1938/v02n14/debs.htm)

For the sake of parity, I've looked on both the ICC's and the ICT's websites, but only the ICC has written an article on Eugene Debs, and it is reasonable as an introduction for the differences between left communists and leftists on the appreciation of Debs: en.internationalism.org/internationalismusa/201004/3733/legacy-eugene-debs.

I am far from an expert on Debs. I here only repeat what I have read and heard from people I hold to be more knowledgeable on these matters. I've also heard some less commendable things, so we should take into account the possibility that Debs changed positions in his time as militant of the working class. And in the end, a communist should not worship or divulge authority on matters to particular leaders or thinkers. As I said above you will also see that I specifically mentioned that Debs was commended for his position on the First World War, not because he was allegedly correct on everything all the time. In fact, you will find that this can be said about most revolutionaries that we can nevertheless hold in high esteem for their militancy, both practical and theoretical.

To laugh with afroplasm is to know the joys of youth, to know that Hoochie was right is to embrace adulthood

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It doesn't matter if it failed or not because 1) we haven't had the internet since the 19th century so this information wasn't readily available and critique couldn't be carried so easily 2) even then things ended up quite violent eventually in labor battles with the police in the 20th century when they found out what you just mentioned and what I predict will happen later 3) the material conditions are reaching a turning point both fascism and capitalism cannot successfully answer where socialism can 4) we are not currently at that turning point so have to rely on symbolic victory and what's best for the environment come the turning point 5) we don't have generational memory and each successive generation does run the risk of repeating the same mistakes, this is less so with access to the internet to make a recorded history more available

Revolutions also failed. So did unionism. Do we just cross our arms and wait for capitalism to collapse on its own, then?

that's exactly what we do

Count me in

You're an absolute idiot because the consequences of doing that now are greater than what we did then. The environment is an issue which can be solved by electoral politics, and it is the only thing worth voting for. Letting in someone who continues to dismantle what little EPA we even had is not a fucking option because they'll likely decrease education funding as well, making our jobs twice as fucking hard when we get there.

Stop talking out of your ass

The 90's called to tell you the internet isn't a liberatory environment. The information is available right now yet nothing changes. If anything the internet has been a tool for a more efficient integration into the Spectacle.
Right so we shouldn't shill for succdems or waste too much time with the bourgeois political circus.

Unions and reform were always destined for failure because they both necessarily operate within the boundaries of capital. While individual revolutions have failed for various reasons that doesn't negate the fact that by it's very nature a revolution has the potential to expand past those boundaries.

You're living in a fantasy if you think we can fundamentally alter the way in which we reproduce our existence through reform. What does "solved" even mean here? We're already past the point of no return.

Do you really think climate change is real? Have you ever actually researched it yourself or do you just believe what the media tells you?
We're constantly told the world is about to melt but it never happens

I'd love to see your "proof" against basic physics

literal baby logic

Based on what? If you make reasonable necessary demands that the workers will back, but that the bourgeoisie will not meet, the workers aren't going to just throw their hands up and say "well I guess we were wrong to look out for ourselves!" Fuck no, almost nobody is that classcucked. They'll realized that the ruling class won't meet the reasonable, necessary demands and that their problems are beyond the scope of reform, i.e. they'll see that the system has to be "repealed and replaced" to use the parlance of our times, i.e. they'll be radicalized.

Wrong. Capital itself came into being within the framework of a different mode of production and a ruling class that didn't correspond to it, until the maturity of the capitalist class allowed for it to become dominant. To say change significant can't happen within the boundaries of an antithetical system is undialectical and ahistorical.

Second, capital is a totality. Not even revolution can escape it. To think you can boycott it away puts on the same class as the people who think being anti-capitalist is about not owning things made by capitalism.

No no no! You've got it all wrong! Violent civil war is no way to go about destroying slavery. We should elect a black white representative that claims to speak on behalf of the slaves. We should broker a deal with the southern slaveholders to give us lighter whippings and half a chicken leg of extra rations, while still maintaining the wisdom and leadership that the plantation owner can provide. Besides, ending slavery will only result in communism. Some slaves are lazier than others and so they shouldn't all receive the same equal food scraps that the master gives them. Maybe if they just worked a little harder they could afford their rent, food, water, and living expenses enough to buy their freedom.

The very fact the violent reaction against slavery happened as culmination of a half a century-long anti-slavery movement that operated in the electoral and legal arenas and happened within the context of a global anti-slavery trend that happened through parliaments makes your entire basic one-dimensional satire invalid.

Jesus, this dude's comics are so painfully unfunny and predictable.

I never said change can't happen within capitalism. Concessions have been won. But a union can't go beyond capital because it's function is to be a mediator of capital which organizes an uneasy peace between capitalist and proletariat. Nothing about that is revolutionary. Nothing about that challenges capital as we can obviously see.
Nice straw man dork

Climate change denialists bringing the good arguments as usual.

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You said they were destined to failure, which is bullshit. It's only destined to fail in its goals if you conflate its goals and ends with the goals of ends of the overall worker's movements, which you just did. No one said unions and elections are enough to transform society, only that they're vital to it. Just read Marx's comments on the limitations of the working day or Engels's comments in the German parliaments after the First International to understand what I'm talking about.

I was just making a parallel between you two.

is this real?

yes

zazzle.ca/greatmomentsinleftis

when we become more popular this is definitely going in a cringe compilation somewhere

This is either LARPing, memeing, sectarianism or Feds trying to create dissent, I can't tell anymore.

There is no alternative right now. Some of you retards are acting like DSA is poisoning the well for something else. There is nothing else, there is the DSA, an organization being pushed leftward by an influx of new, more left member than the old socdems that have been running it for 30 years, and then there are tiny orgs and the democrats. You act like the DSA has a bunch of liberals in it, when half the roses I see on Twitter are fantasizing about executing bourgies just like you. Shitposting is fine in moderation, but there are several layers of irony I can't penetrate when some of you chucklefucks claim to be more serious than everyone in the DSA, but you are also just here doing what seems like ironic, sectarian shitposting in order to bait people because it's just normal halfhan culture. Like your serious politics isn't any different from shitposting about gaming consoles.

If the DSA is ever as big as the democrats, I'd agree that there needs to be an even more left wing party that is ruthlessly critical and hostile towards the DSA. Right now they are the left wing party of the dems. Loudly calling a tiny party of 25,000 socialists "the enemy" when it's your only option is the worst kind of masturbatory LARPing.

Here's a crazy idea. What if instead of just unions we organize syndicates. And what if we stopped arguing over semantics and the fine detail of what we said in posts written up quickly in a first-draft state to communicate a point in basically real time. Who has better form in their chinese cartoon forum arguments is really fucking irrelevant.

man eat a dick

youtube.com/watch?v=52KLGqDSAjo&list=PL82yk73N8eoX-Xobr_TfHsWPfAIyI7VAP
TLDW: No fuck you watch it.
Now off yourself

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LEFTCOMS THE T-SHIRT, LEFTCOMS THE COLOURING BOOK, LEFTCOMS THE CERAL BOX AND LEFTCOMS THE FLAMETHROWER.

Can't forget LEF-T-BOY brand armchairs.

Yeah because I was talking about the overall workers movement you dishonest fuck.
I have and I don't think their context specific strategies for the political situation of the 19th century is infallible or an immutable model for all-time.

I mean your implication that unions and electoral activity can't transform capitalism as if any of us ever said otherwise. Only worker's movements can transform socialism, and small reforms, just like revolution, are part of it.

You sound like the people who haven't read Marx and just go "oh, 19th century philosophy/economy, it's not applicable anymore!". Stop being a fucking simpleton and read it. Most of the constitutions that were in place back then remain in place, at most with minor alterations, and their reasoning for electoral maneuvering is obviously evergreen and relevant. The shit you're saying is not new, and they've dealt with people making *exactly* the same points throughout their entire lives.

You're putting words in my mouth and strawmanning me to hell and back. Simply because I disagree with something Marx or Engels proposed doesn't mean I reject all 19th century philosophy or economics.
Whoa! And if legislation was only confined to changes in the constitution you would have a point.

Anyway have a good one dude. I'm not wasting my time arguing with someone as dishonest as you.

Yes

Literally slavery ended in the US on its own magically because one day Lincoln declared the civil war which had no context outside of itself. There was nothing leading to this ever, and Lincoln was a magical insider.

I'm not even a third generation immigrant and I know this is a bunch of horse shit

Learn to own up to your mistakes and rethink your shit like a grown man fam

So you're saying it doesn't effect political change and isn't a good medium for political organization?

Oh no, not the spectacle, might as well throw our hands up and say all is lost and not fucking organize at all and watch as our jobs get twice as hard because we stood back while the enviornment degraded and education was slashed more than it should have had we been responsible

Fuck
No

Unions are the only thing we have to support fucking workers right now in America and they're fucking dead. The goal isn't a magic utopia where everyone gets cotton candy, the goal is to help the fucking working class.

If you don't believe in unions, stand aside from those who do want to help the working class.

Is this someone important?

I never said that. I said that we need to be strategic about who we fucking elect so whatever happens in the future happens in an easier way that doesn't end in us having a shit heap world we win after the fact.

What's the point of fighting if we allow ourselves weakness in the form of being irresponsible for the environment and our detractors pointing it out for that generation like every little consequence of that is our fault. Not to mention education being needed.

No we need thee things, and you offer nothing positive to the road to victory but false promises and lies worse than reform. You are a larping fool and you need to stop posting.

Unions and reforms aren't "destined for failure" so much as they're very susceptible to sabotage. The unions of early 20th century US built the basis for the opulence workers enjoyed post WW2. It took decades to dismantle the unions and the reforms.

But unions and reforms aren't the entire equation, and just like parliamentary politics, are useless without a class conscious proletariat and organization dedicated to establishing communism.

I don't think that it's the radical space you were trying to paint it as.
That's funny I don't remember ever saying that.
No. The goal is to abolish the working class.
Bitch I'm in a union. Recognizing the inherent limits of the organization doesn't mean I don't think they aren't useful for certain things. I simply disagree that they can be radical organizations anymore.

You sure about that? "Solving" climate change would require a fundamental shift in our logic of production.

But they are if your goal is socialism. They're great If your goal is to win some reforms that will be repealed in a few decades or pay increases that will be eaten by inflation in the coming months. They're function is to mediate class conflict not facilitate it.

I'm telling you to do the opposite of LARP actually. Also this is rich coming from the girl who thinks she's a VC in the Tet Offensive. You even come with your own little flag.

I disagree.

It has the potential to be used as a good mode of political organization and communication as well as record keeping and that's really all that matters

Subtext, implications.

That's more unrealistic than anything I'm saying. Your strategy is only going to end up hurting people.

I'm not saying they're radical, I'm saying they're the only thing America has left, and if you're in a Union you should fucking recognize that already

I'm not talking about solving it because we both know that's impossible, I'm saying about minimizing its possible effects to delay it so we can work on solutions when we get to the moment where the tides shift, we already have enough on our future plate as it is.

This and "abolishing the working class", will not end pretty in your strategy because you have none besides shaking your head and stomping your feet at capitalism like an insolent child.

That's funny.

No.

Here is the true Ultra position. SuccDem accelerationism. You know why Scandinavians never vote to dismantle the welfare state, even when they can't buy as many shitty products as Burgers? Because they are used to a certain standard of living, not only for themselves, but also for their neighbors, friends, and their children, grandchildren, etc. Workers get used to a certain standard, and once you have reached that, it becomes difficult for politicians to return to before, without major friction between the politicians and the population. And politicians do love to get elected. The accelerationist part of SuccDem policies is that once the strain on the government budget starts to really hurt, they will have to do something, and if they decide to go back to neoliberal policies, the workers will get pissed. Aside from that, it will also create solidarity, instead of the autistic burger mentality of everyone for himself.

Agreed

Then you've got the intelligence of a rock. Go vote for the DSA or whatever wheel spinning floats your boat.

No we must seek new avenues. Something that has never been tried before.

I opt out of your shitty option. Right now DSA can't hold a candle to the green party and even those guys are totally irrelevant.

People said all these things about Obama back in the day. But next time will be different I'm sure.

why does "proud contrarian" costs 4 bucks more?

Reminder that Sandals said cops are socialism

There's a price for being different.

It seems the DSA listend to him.

class

Read a book you faggot.

What, in policy? The DSA fully acknowledged at the convention that they want to end capitalism. The economic policy of the greens is a mixed, socdem economy with an emphasis on workers cooperatives and some unstated, "alternative economic structures" which sounds to me like liberal market incentives for shit like green development. Their website also says "we supported single payer since 2000", while DSA voted to emphasize that nationalized, state run healthcare removes the profit motive completely from healthcare and is preferable. They're to the left of the greens in almost every way, with several resolutions being put forward during the convention to just change the wording of policy so that it is made clear that they are against markets, against profit, advocate for the dissolution of capitalism.

[citation needed]

In numbers.

Cointelpro has really stepped up the DSA hate lately.

If leftcoms were true Marxists, they would not criticise socdems but themselves.