How many of you are actually members of a socialist organization/party? What party?

How many of you are actually members of a socialist organization/party? What party?

For those of you who are not affiliated with any organization, why not? What is keeping you from committing suicide and donating all your money to the communists who are engaged in the struggle? serious question

I have a creeping suspicion that this board is overrun with greenhorn marxists, who have never gone doorknocking, street tabling, or canvassing once in their lives.

Other urls found in this thread:

marxist.com/big-bang-alternative300402.htm
marxist.com/unity-conference-pakistan-april-2017.htm
twitter.com/AnonBabble

Sorry I forgot I was in the 1970s.

They do nothing to actually oppose the system, they are mostly a shadow of their former self.

Yes. Leftist alliance party (Finland). Been member of the youth organization since I was 16, and I`ve carried the membership card for the party itself for 2 years now.

Anarchists need not reply.


Fuck man I forgot. People don't live in houses and use sidewalks anymore, it's 2016, not 1970.

Any socialist party worth its salt uses both digital, modern methods of organizing (social media, internet propaganda, etc) as well as other more "dated" methods such as doorknocking. The fact that you think it a tossup between the two, shows your lack of political experience

Based

I agree to an extent but I think you are underplaying the role that radical parties play in worker education. I'm a former member of Left Unity (inb4 lel radical, idpol, cpgb-lite) and my local branch had discussion meetings every fortnight, the best of these were really informative and motivating. Radical parties are also a good way to meet comrades and find out about groups and issues you didn't even know existed.

I was organized in University.
Then I came back to real life and couldn't see why I should join a party that had no hope to enter the parliament. I do vote for it and so on. I even joined the union this year. Gave them my money. Implying they're gonna do anything beyond one or two day strike.

I agree with

Also, as says, these practices don't really work. People are fed up with slogans and street propaganda.
I do my share of propaganda on the internets.

Also am not good at meeting new people.

In real life, I'm a dirty reformist socdem scum.

ewwwwww fuck off

Radical parties are full of overly optimistic retards who think revolushun is just around the corner.

They're full of dipshits larping as woke revolutionaries fighting for le werkers

Waste of fucking time

So communism is just around the corner then….

I go to marches etc, I've talked several times about getting people from here together to do some things, but don't tell me I'm lazy and then come back with street tabling

Because if I was I would most certainly lose my job.

...

For propaganda purposes yes, we certainly have.

A simple image or tweet or post can circulate globally by the time you're done talking to one person if you go irl, and it requires less effort and energy.

If you have presidential campaign money then sure, go door to door or distribute leaflets. If you don't, be cost-effective and flood social media.

For the most part this user is right.

There's already some new organizations popping up here and there with modern theory, modern tactics and no mentally ill people, but if you join something like a Trot organization today you're basically joining a cult.

If there's one thing the consistent failure of the Left for the past half century impels us to, is to question the conventional wisdom of left-wing organizations.

You're counting on the facebook page or twitter account of your local radial leftist group to be read by people all around the globe? Nope, with the best will in the world the number of leftist social media pages with that kind of reach among people who aren't already leftists is vanishingly small. There's also a difference between someone seeing something on the internet and really engaging with it and being convinced by it. One person talking to a leftist irl who answers all their questions and is genuinely convinced is worth a hundred people who just see a left wing meme on the internet and keeps scrolling.

If you think that people will schedule a meet-up and join a socialist organization, and remain active within the party, after seeing viral propaganda on social media, I have bad news for you. Over the past four years of being in my party, I have not met a single comrade who joined from online propaganda. Virtually every single comrade I have met learned about our organization through attending events/protests.

Are you in a political organization that prioritizes social media propaganda? If so, how effective is this, and (how?) does it bring new people into the party?

If you are not in a political organization, what makes you so certain that people don't respond positively to face-to-face organizing?

Every bit of this is wrong.

Any social media today was literally designed for you to share content with your entire milieu at once. Your activity log is, essentially, a conversation you're having with everyone you know at once.

So if content is produced and distributed by one of those groups is shared by a person, then it will also reach whoever this person knows. If we can make the content resonate with them, we'll gain their attention.

And they don't have to be "memes", you can just share fucking writings. Many interestings passages have gone viral on Twitter or FB and reached people who'd probably never read them otherwise.

And maybe this is why you're a bunch of autistic larpers who call each other "comrades".

In theory each post you make on social media is seen by all of your friends and all of their friends etetera until thousands of people have seen the post. In practice it doesn't work like that. I would know, I'm an admin of a couple of socialist and regular FB pages and theres a counter under each post whichshows how many people have seen it. Usually it only gets above a hundred or so. The vast majority who see it will be other leftists, and only a minority of them are likely to pay it any mind. The same goes even for bigger socialist social media accounts, just on a bigger scale. I'm not saying don't use social media because it doesn't work, obviously we absolutely need it and without it we are going nowhere, just that having an irl presence is equally, if not more important. And imho face to face conversations are, and will always be, a much more fruitful means of debating and convincing people.

Make better content. I once toyed with a Facebook page for a few days, it never got past 500 likes and the average post (usually some screenshots from Twitter) would get a lot more than that.

Answer my question before skipping to personal attacks, comrade.

Technicaly not fully a member as the process is quite, aparently they have had problems with fakers and infiltrators.
Communist party sweden is very small anyway.

Quite long*

Depends what you mean by good content tbh.

I don't even have to because in however many personal encounters you had, I'm 100% sure you've never heard the words "you're right, maybe I'll join you".

You don't just get someone to renounce a worldview in a conversation, let alone through this evangelical, cultish, "do you have a minute…" approach.

It's a lenghty process, where they need to be routinely exposed to things that make them question their current beliefs and ponder alternatives, and that can only be achieved if there's always new content for them that is accessible and easy to digest. No one is "talked" into their views, these views are constructed day by day by narratives pushed on the media, schools, mainstream parties, etc. And, lacking institutional power, we can only counter it through online content.

I'm a member of a union of egoist at my local milk bar.
pic related.
It's my comrades and I.

I went do your milk bar once and no one had any milk

Total waste of time, to be fair.

…okay


Well that's not what they say ad verbatim, but I have met three people at protests who have said "I'm interested in joining your organization" when I asked them if they would join. One of them joined our organization, the other one didn't, and the third one I am meeting with this Sunday!

Nobody said recruiting in public was easy, comrade. Join your local socialist organization and I'm sure they will help you improve your skills.

I'm genuinely interested in this social media propaganda campaign you are involved with. Post some content from it?

I used to be. Joined a socialist party at 14, but got bullied by psychotic feminists, so me and some friends migrated to a slightly more socialist and much less popular party. Good people but I decided to focus on a activist/anarchist café coop thingy. Ended up burned out and disillusioned at the age of 19. That's some years ago now, and I'm thinking of going out the door again, but frankly the current political climate is unappetizing.
Between idpol and refugee politics it feels like the movement has lost all momentum, spiralling towards it's own death. But that might just be me wearing my crippling depression glasses.
How are things looking from the inside? Can one join a organization with out having facebook?

That's a joke question, right? Of course u don't need a Facebook.

I don't understand this assertion that any organization that actually organizes, does street stalls or sells papers, is somehow necessarily under the illusion that revolution is just around the corner. These tactics for spreading ideas are not ones to be used in a revolutionary situation, they're ones to be used to build support.
And yes I am involved in an organization.

finnishbolshevik is dat u?

Nope, I think that he is KTP member and not a dirty social democratic entryist like me.

This isn't even a super common assertion, in my opinion. It mainly stems from a lack of experience and knowledge about the nuts and bolts of party-building on behalf of most Holla Forums posters.
Just goes to show how few people on this board are actually involved in the struggle.

I'm skeptical of what party I could join would be effective enough and non-sectarian enough to suit me. Also, while I haven't scoured the web, I don't think there's any lefty parties with a meaningful presence where I live (Louisiana, US). Would love to be proven wrong on that though.

Louisiana Socialist Network

Do you guys actually takes this stuff seriously?

marxist.com/big-bang-alternative300402.htm

This seems like a very bad case of an philosopher trying to play scientist

Also what exactly happened to your Pakistani section?

You're citing one minor article in 2002 as the example of IMT analysis? You're probably right, our science articles probably aren't our best.

Our Pakistan section split over the question of the orientation of their work, where they were best placed to focus. The split was a shame, but necessary and healthy; splits are how organizations get rid of bad ideas.

the Australian Greens, i don't dedicate my life to them or anything but their system enables me to actually influence policies and vote on decisions

well, it's something I guess. thanks.

Well I just used that article as an example, there are many other examples of the IMT denying the big bang theory


Let me guess, one of the factions wanted to try entryism in the local bourgeois social-democrat party?


Wouldn't it be better to conduct unity-criticism-unity as a better way to get rid of bad ideas? In light of the stereotypical caricature of Trots endlessly dividing amongst each other.

boots on the ground can still be effective, even if results are sporadic. I had a chance encounter with a worker's group out of Oakland who were passing out lit (usually i ignore people who try to engage me on the street, but as a backsliding leftist who generally had been non-involved for the prior few years due to apathy, the headline of the pamphlet caught my eye) and i credit that encounter for getting me back into the struggle, at least enough to get involved again at the local red and black and renew my IWW standing. Minor improvement, to be sure, but I believe you can't completely discount that person-to-person shit

Lol have you even read the article you posted?

And regarding the Pakistan split, if you're so well read on the IMT then surely you've read the open articles on the issue?
marxist.com/unity-conference-pakistan-april-2017.htm

A split is exactly what allows for the kind of unity you are discussing. Splits are necessary. If the correct ideas don't necessarily prove themselves as such until after the event, then the kind of discussion-til-agreement approach you propose is fruitless; people will not always agree. When such impasses arrive, a split allows work to continue, and the outcome of events sees one idea bloom and the other die. Thus unity can be formed again around the correct idea.

Yep. Communism is punishable by law here. Talk only with the people you know and all that.

my comrade


i'm in the imt (and doing an astrophysics degree, incidentally) and i recognise this as complete bullshit. even from a dialectical perspective, i don't see the motive for defending the notion that time and space are eternal, immutable etc. i think a lot of it is just ignorance about the actual nature of the theory. it's as if they have a creationist's interpretation of what the BB actually implies…

Why?