What have you achieved from left wing politics?

[jstrodel]

Just curious, what have been your biggest accomplishments? My impression of the left is that the left is always sitting around talking about ideas, while other groups of people go out and just serve people, build houses, serve food to people, the left tends to sit around and talk about ideas and how they can be more powerful.

I know their are some groups like Food not Bombs that do serve people. I was wondering, what have you all actually accomplished as radicals. How much furthur along are you.


Also, I realize that I am a huge dick when I post on this forum. I am not trolling, I am trying to get people to think about what they believe. My life was ruined because of leftwing philosophy, sometimes it takes being an asshole to get through to people.

I am not really an asshole in real life, honestly. :) I care about all of you. I lost a lot of years of my life to radical pursuits.
The Bible says "rebuke a wise man and he will love you". :)


What are the good stories? What are the good things you've seen? I am saying this because I sincerely believe the accomplishments of radicals tend to be very small (e.g. the Soviet Union, Communist China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam - some of the worst places on earth to live). There are some things that radicals do that I respect (e.g. union organizing). What have you accomplished personally?

Where has your knowledge of societies enabled you?

[Art Vandelay]

A philosophy cannot ruin your life, it is a set of idea, benign on their own; if your life was ruined, it was probably through your own doing and you should own up to that.

[Fourth Internationalist]

A philosophy cannot ruin your life, it is a set of idea, benign on their own; if your life was ruined, it was probably through your own doing and you should own up to that.

This exactly.

@jstrodel You can't keep blaming leftism for your former problems. I have none of those problems you had, so the cause is not leftism.


e.g. the Soviet Union, Communist China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam - some of the worst places on earth to liveThe more you spew that these places were socialist the less people will take you seriously. Actions speak louder than words. The words of those nations were socialist, their actions were not.

[bad ideas actualised by alcohol]

A philosophy cannot ruin your life, it is a set of idea, benign on their own; if your life was ruined, it was probably through your own doing and you should own up to that.

Your life can be ruined because you follow a certain philosophy though, mccarthyism being a good example of that.
So I would say it can ruin your life, to some extent.

[Art Vandelay]

Your life can be ruined because you follow a certain philosophy though, mccarthyism being a good example of that.
So I would say it can ruin your life, to some extent.

Well this has some truth to it, but I can`t say that it was the philosophy which did it. A philosophy or set of ideas can exist completely in a vacuum, if one so chooses. I`m hardly attempting to peddle the personal responsibility line here, its just the OP`s claims are quite ridiculous.

[Popular Front of Judea]

Care to share with us your definition of "left"? If you visit Seattle I would happily take you out to the municipally owned dam that provides the bulk of our power. Further away are the massive Bonneville Power dams that power this region. Public power is emphatically a "left" accomplishment. (Just ask the folks at the Koch owned Reason magazine who are constantly agitating to privatize it.)

A personal "left accomplishment" is the vacant apartment building that I and others occupied that is now affordable housing for formerly homeless veterans.


Just curious, what have been your biggest accomplishments? My impression of the left is that the left is always sitting around talking about ideas, while other groups of people go out and just serve people, build houses, serve food to people, the left tends to sit around and talk about ideas and how they can be more powerful.

[o well this is ok I guess]

My life was ruined because of leftwing philosophy, sometimes it takes being an asshole to get through to people.

No thinks you had any involvement with left wing politics cuz you don't know shit about left wing politics.
Or its philosophies, for that matter.

[nativeabuse]

Just curious, what have been your biggest accomplishments? My impression of the left is that the left is always sitting around talking about ideas, while other groups of people go out and just serve people, build houses, serve food to people, the left tends to sit around and talk about ideas and how they can be more powerful.


Right now personally I'm doing some community organizing with the huge Burmese refugee population in the area I live in. I also do some union organizing. What exactly counts as an accomplishment? Every time I convert someone to communism or anarchism I take it as a major accomplishment. Class consciousness, and putting power in the hands of the people is always an accomplishment regardless of the scale.

If you think the left consists of people sitting around arguing on the internet, you are simply talking to the wrong people.

Edit: I didn't realize he was banned already when I posted this. Oh well.

[Narodnik]

I agitate on every workplace I work at, and outside it, too, both online and IRL.

Me and a couple of friends started and now we have a group of almost 40 people spreading ideas of revolutionary democratic socialism, agitating, doing social insertion in unions, civil rights, anti-discrimination and social-walfare organisations.

Not IDK how big of an achievement, but you have to start somewhere.

[prashranger]

How about the weekend? Child labor laws? Radical leftists were instrumental in instituting these and other once unpopular policies such as abolition or women's suffrage.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Served food, built houses, got free LSD.

<3 My life.

[cynicles]

"it is much more easy to have sympathy with suffering than it is To have sympathy with thought."

-Oscar Wilde

[Delenda Carthago]

Just curious, what have been your biggest accomplishments?
I made you look.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

My biggest accomplishments I feel have mainly been during strikes and organizing strikes effectively to ensure that our demands will and have been met. Most recently I and several others went on strike because we hadn't been paid in over 2 months, tons of bullshit involved and all of us were about to or were losing just about everything until we went on strike and we're paid all back wages plus a little compensation in the end. I consider my day-to-day struggles to be my biggest accomplishments. Others I will not mention on the open forum.

[Ele'ill]

understanding the world and understanding myself better

[Beeth]

Biggest achievement? Not getting banned on revleft, lol.

[Ocean Seal]

Actually leftism has helped me in perhaps one of the ways that would make a bourgeois moralist most proud. Ever since I started posting on this site (my junior year in high school) my quality of writing improved significantly to the point where I got a perfect score on my SAT essay. So thank you leftism for making me more desirable to the bosses, and thank you jstrodel for allowing me to tell everyone.

[human strike]

There was a cop in my head - I killed him.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

In all seriousness, "the left" has allowed me to spend the better part of my adult life engaged in a combination of collective creative pursuits (music, art, gardening, etc.) and radical projects that have had either directly positive impacts (tent cities, antidumping blockades, serving food), or served to strategically strengthen longer-term movements to destroy capitalism and save the planet from total catastrophe (buildin' the party!). Often the distinction between all of those things has blurred - even during the last three years during which I've been sober.

Oh, yeah, and probably if I weren't on the left, I'd still be drinking my life away, or abusing antipsychotic tranquilizers. Feeling like there is an alternative to waiting passively for the apocalypse has been a key factor in resisting the temptation to melt my brain and die in a gutter.

[Thelonious]

What have you accomplished personally?

The first company that I worked for in my early twenties was a non-union workplace when I began there. Along with a handful of other "leftists" we waged a year long battle with the company (and unenlightened workers) to bring a union into the location. 132 workers gained healthcare benefits, paid vacation, uniform allowance, paid sick time, and an incremental pay raise to be paid out over 3 years; unsafe conditions were identified and corrected.

I have been directly involved with unionizing 9 other locations in the New York metropolitan area, which provided hundreds of families with health benefits and other protections.

What have you accomplished personally?

[hashem]

my accomplishment was abandoning my reactionary ideas. i was religious once. i wasnt worried about real life, i was more worried about going to heaven instead of hell!

left is not just "sitting around talking about ideas". if the "saints" give food to the poor, we ask why do they have nothing to eat and try to give them an answer. if "other groups of people" were just serving people, world wasnt like what it is.

if you had spent lot of years of your life to "radical pursuits" or if you were truly a radical, then you wouldnt count USSR, "Communist"(!) China, Cuba, North Korea or Vietnam as an example of radicalism.

have you ever heard how the Naxalites help people of India? they give food to people but they also do a more important task: they fight for a better society. those who give food to people in order to keep them silent are indirectly helping the ruling class in order to maintain an oppressive system.

[Yuppie Grinder]

Where has your knowledge of societies enabled you?
Left wing politics has enabled me to get in a lot of silly arguments on the internet.

[Comrade Nasser]

Just curious, what have been your biggest accomplishments? My impression of the left is that the left is always sitting around talking about ideas, while other groups of people go out and just serve people, build houses, serve food to people, the left tends to sit around and talk about ideas and how they can be more powerful.

I know their are some groups like Food not Bombs that do serve people. I was wondering, what have you all actually accomplished as radicals. How much furthur along are you.


Also, I realize that I am a huge dick when I post on this forum. I am not trolling, I am trying to get people to think about what they believe. My life was ruined because of leftwing philosophy, sometimes it takes being an asshole to get through to people.

I am not really an asshole in real life, honestly. :) I care about all of you. I lost a lot of years of my life to radical pursuits.
The Bible says "rebuke a wise man and he will love you". :)


What are the good stories? What are the good things you've seen? I am saying this because I sincerely believe the accomplishments of radicals tend to be very small (e.g. the Soviet Union, Communist China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam - some of the worst places on earth to live). There are some things that radicals do that I respect (e.g. union organizing). What have you accomplished personally?

Where has your knowledge of societies enabled you?

How did this troll make it this far? Impressive :)

[MarxArchist]

Just curious, what have been your biggest accomplishments? My impression of the left is that the left is always sitting around talking about ideas, while other groups of people go out and just serve people, build houses, serve food to people, the left tends to sit around and talk about ideas and how they can be more powerful.

I know their are some groups like Food not Bombs that do serve people. I was wondering, what have you all actually accomplished as radicals. How much furthur along are you.


Also, I realize that I am a huge dick when I post on this forum. I am not trolling, I am trying to get people to think about what they believe. My life was ruined because of leftwing philosophy, sometimes it takes being an asshole to get through to people.

I am not really an asshole in real life, honestly. :) I care about all of you. I lost a lot of years of my life to radical pursuits.
The Bible says "rebuke a wise man and he will love you". :)


What are the good stories? What are the good things you've seen? I am saying this because I sincerely believe the accomplishments of radicals tend to be very small (e.g. the Soviet Union, Communist China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam - some of the worst places on earth to live). There are some things that radicals do that I respect (e.g. union organizing). What have you accomplished personally?

Where has your knowledge of societies enabled you?

By in large socialists are materialists who focus on praxis not idealists who sit around and smoke pipes around the camp fire.

[ВАЛТЕР]

Even if everything falls through, and I get old and never live to see a revolution and if everything fails around me. I can say "Look, you did what you believed in. You stood for something." Just meeting the amazing people I have met through left wing politics is a reward in itself.

[DoCt SPARTAN]

Just curious, what have been your biggest accomplishments? My impression of the left is that the left is always sitting around talking about ideas, while other groups of people go out and just serve people, build houses, serve food to people, the left tends to sit around and talk about ideas and how they can be more powerful.

I know their are some groups like Food not Bombs that do serve people. I was wondering, what have you all actually accomplished as radicals. How much furthur along are you.


Also, I realize that I am a huge dick when I post on this forum. I am not trolling, I am trying to get people to think about what they believe. My life was ruined because of leftwing philosophy, sometimes it takes being an asshole to get through to people.

I am not really an asshole in real life, honestly. :) I care about all of you. I lost a lot of years of my life to radical pursuits.
The Bible says "rebuke a wise man and he will love you". :)


What are the good stories? What are the good things you've seen? I am saying this because I sincerely believe the accomplishments of radicals tend to be very small (e.g. the Soviet Union, Communist China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam - some of the worst places on earth to live). There are some things that radicals do that I respect (e.g. union organizing). What have you accomplished personally?

Where has your knowledge of societies enabled you?


How has left-wing philosophies ruined your lives

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

How has left-wing philosophies ruined your lives

To be fair, while in some ways radical politics saved my life, it has also made me suspicious, prevented me from keeping steady jobs, and led me to use LSD semi-regularly. It basically ruined my life vis- popular understandings of what one should achieve in life under capitalism.

Whatever. Totally worth it.

[LOLseph Stalin]

Not a lot actually. I'll be completely honest and say I have been an armchair revolutionary for years. However, due to geographical isolation it has been beyond my control. Once I move I strive to finally become active.

My growing up in poverty and knowing other people have it even worse than me certainly played a huge role in the development of my views today. That encouraged me to pick up Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, etc. and start reading. I can say I have achieved becoming your typical teenaged commie at about age 15 :laugh:. I'm almost 22 now though.

[Ravachol]

My life was ruined because of leftwing philosophy

http://biz.viacom.com/sites/mtvdocs/PublishingImages/TRUE%20LIFE%20LOGO.jpg

[Ele'ill]

To be fair, while in some ways radical politics saved my life, it has also made me suspicious, prevented me from keeping steady jobs, and led me to use LSD semi-regularly. It basically ruined my life vis- popular understandings of what one should achieve in life under capitalism.

Whatever. Totally worth it.


Sorry, but I'm really glad to hear this because I don't want to be the only one who hates things so much that jobs become just a part time thing that occasionally happen (like school and most other normal things people are supposed to do). It seems like a lot of my radical friends end up with these jobs without drama and I don't know how they do it. I can't, no matter what.

[La Guaneña]

I started smoking pot and other harder drugs, discovered my bissexuality, dropped out of school and lost my job.

In short, I'm a better person, now I'm fighting capitalism on a daily basis by rolling mad blunts and engaging in raging unprotected sex. Fuck yeah. :cool:

[Chris]

Well, it isn't just my accomplishment as such, but while serving as local leader of an environmentalist organisation we did manage to reduce the price of collective transport for youth, and increase the number of buses to rural areas. I've also recruited a couple to the Communist Party, and given quite a few a more positive look at communism/marxism-leninism.

I've also worked within the Young Communists/Communist Party of Norway for... about four years now, and partaken in quite a few actions of various sorts. One thing that stands out in my memory is when I partook in the school elections in 2011 (basically, high schools vote for the various parties before the actual election, albeit it has no effect), and in one of the schools I attended the Communist Party ended up with 5.6%, and a couple blokes from the school (a trade school) joined the Party afterwards.

I'm not terribly involved with the ideological/philosophical side of the party, and I've only read the Communist Manifesto, some of Lenin's books and some norwegian books on the subject, along with some anti-revisionist texts.

[RadioRaheem84]

How do you guys find these progressive jobs?

[c0z]

Lots of friends.

[rednordman]

My life was ruined because of leftwing philosophy, sometimes it takes being an asshole to get through to people.how the hell did a political idea ruin your life? and just because you didn't achieve what you wanted, don't try and tell others what to do. Believe it or not, some communists have actually achieved remarkable things and actually help make peoples lives better. just this all gets white washed from history, just to manufacturer consent within nations.