It's all hopeless

[Queen Mab]

Is the feeling after my last meeting. God, if anything the fascists will take over before we have the chance. :(

[Blake's Baby]

Last meeting with...?

Certainly things can look hopeless. From a political standpoint, the working class is not showing much sign of resisting the attacks of capital. From a personal standpoint, we're living in the twilight of a system that's threatening destruction of the planet. Those are obviously bad things from any perspective.

But we achieve meaning as human beings through our interactions with other people. That's what counts. To a large extent, I think, our feelings of powerlessness/hopelessness stem from social atomisation which is a result of decaying capitalism. We're actively trying to work against that; that despair tht says there is nothing to be done is one of the very reasons we have to fight against the current order of things. It's a symptom of the social sickness that we're trying to overcome.

Of course, without a response by the working class it is somewhat hopeless, at least at present. But the fact that the working class is not responding here and now does not mean it won't or can't. We shouldn't mistake our desires for relity, but we shouln't mistake our fears and hesitations for reality either.

[Queen Mab]

Last meeting with...?

Just discussing things with a guy from the CWO. He was telling me about how in the late 70's he was convinced there was going to be an imperialist war and breakdown of capitalism ending in revolution. Kind of depressed me that his dreams came to naught...and I in my own youth don't have any equivalent hopes.



To a large extent, I think, our feelings of powerlessness/hopelessness stem from social atomisation which is a result of decaying capitalism.

Sure, but isn't this the problem? Our individual feeling of powerlessness is mirrored in the class as a whole. It would absolutely be better if that weren't the case.

[Blake's Baby]

Certainly, but the point about not taking our esires, or our fears, for reality is that we can't extrapolate from our own experience and assume the working class as a whole has the same fears and hesitations. The class has a collective life that transcends (yes really) the individual experiences of its members and that's why I was talking about other people giving us meaning.

Society is more than the sum of its parts, it is in the process of summing that new things emerge; I'd say it's dangerous to assume that the class as a whole mirrors our experiences as individuals.

[Queen Mab]

Certainly, but the point about not taking our esires, or our fears, for reality is that we can't extrapolate from our own experience and assume the working class as a whole has the same fears and hesitations. The class has a collective life that transcends (yes really) the individual experiences of its members and that's why I was talking about other people giving us meaning.

What I mean is that my individual feeling is influenced by the state of the working class as a whole. If the British (global?) proletariat was in a militant mood and fighting back after 35 years of neoliberalism and austerity, then I myself wouldn't be so 'depressed' as it were. Fact is that's not the case, which is where this thread springs from.

[Blake's Baby]

Sure. But as individuals, we're all subject to social pressures that collectively, we can overcome; so it is in striving towards that very collective existence that we overcome the individual hopelessness that you mention - both as individuals, and as a class.

[Queen Mab]

I don't disagree that individuals can overcome hopelessness when acting collectively, in theory. But how can the feeling be overcome collectively when the working class, the collective, is hopeless itself at this historical juncture?

[Blake's Baby]

But is it?

I'm not sure you're not projecting your own atomised and partial understanding (resulting in hopelessness) onto the class as a whole.

I hope that's what you're doing anyway. Otherwise, we might be up a creek with no visible paddlage. Perhaps, my confidence in the working class's ability to overcome the present conditions is an illusion that I use to get through the day.

Too early to say for sure one way or the other I think.

[Queen Mab]

Too early to say for sure one way or the other I think.

Perhaps. Though it's been a long time since the last upsurge in class struggle.

Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will I suppose.

[tallguy]

Is the feeling after my last meeting. God, if anything the fascists will take over before we have the chance. :(Are you tasking the piss. Fucking hell man, the shit is kicking off all over the world. There hasn't been a time this ripe for decades for socialism to start taking hold than right now. All that's needed is for the fucking left to get it head out of it's ideological arse and start organising and acting like it believes we can change things. And yet, all I hear on places like this and elsewhere is how various uprisings/movements aren't properly this version of "real" socialism or aren't really that version. Either that, or endless, pointless debates about the far end of a fart politically correct linguistic niceties that don't change anything.

It's places like this and the ideological, intellectual and moral bankruptcy it represents that sucks the fucking hope out.

[BIXX]

I do feel hopeless, which is partially why I turned to individualism. May as well have fun while I'm here.

[tallguy]

post removed by author

[Art Vandelay]

I do feel hopeless, which is partially why I turned to individualism. May as well have fun while I'm here.

That was my thought process when I was into Stirner and truth be told I still feel like that somedays.

---

OP, I tend to find some hope in that fact that things really can change in the blink of an eye: 'there are decades where nothing happens and weeks where decades happen'. I believe it was early in '17 or perhaps late in '16 when Lenin was talking to a group of young communists in Switzerland and his message was basically 'I'm an old man and won't see the proletarian revolution, the task falls to you, the youth of today.' Within a year the Bolsheviks seized power. You never know when things are going to change and they can indeed change quite quickly. The working class, in my opinion, generally has an understanding of their antagonistic relationship to capital (perhaps not in the sense we'd hope however), or at the very least are aware of the fact that they are getting screwed. They just don't know what to do about it. It makes me think of that Hegel quote (and I'm paraphrasing cause I don't remember it exactly) that goes along the lines of 'what is known, is not thereby understood.'

[Blake's Baby]

It was 1917 (I think January) when Lenin said that those of the older generation might never see the revolution.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Are you tasking the piss. Fucking hell man, the shit is kicking off all over the world. There hasn't been a time this ripe for decades for socialism to start taking hold than right now. All that's needed is for the fucking left to get it head out of it's ideological arse and start organising and acting like it believes we can change things. And yet, all I hear on places like this and elsewhere is how various uprisings/movements aren't properly this version of "real" socialism or aren't really that version. Either that, or endless, pointless debates about the far end of a fart politically correct linguistic niceties that don't change anything.

It's places like this and the ideological, intellectual and moral bankruptcy it represents that sucks the fucking hope out.

What "shit" is "kicking off all over the world", the glorious people's fascist revolution in the Ukraine, or the glorious people's Islamist revolution in what can be called the "Arab world" if we want to be particularly lazy? No, if we want to accomplish anything - and I am convinced that I will live to see the revolution, unlike some people - the first thing we need to do is stop tailing everything that appears to be moving (in most cases, the movement is actually due to the buildup of gases in the decaying corpse of capitalism). We are socialists - this means that, to us, the fascists, the Islamists, the bourgeois populists, all of these are enemies. They're not something to fawn over - either we defeat them or they'll slit our throats.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

If you *expect* world revolution, then you're going to be disappointed, because to mis-appropriate a famous quote, it's not going to be some sort of dinner party.

In fact, I really think we should ban the phrase 'the revolution'. It is literally the figurative cousin of 'the second coming'. There's not going to be 'the revolution'. There may or may not be a revolution, it may be soon or farther into the future, it may be with us at the helm or left in its wake.

We can fight as hard as we can to educate, agitate, and propagate our own views and visions for a better and more humane society, but let's not get this god complex where we talk about 'the revolution' and whether it will come tomorrow, next year, or next decade.

We are not prophets and Marx is not coming round for a re-birth. Let's get that straight first of all, I think it's important.

[motion denied]

good thread.

[MarxSchmarx]

Hopeless?

Our vision of equality, liberation, self-realization has inspired millions even billions of people from so many different circumstances, cultures, classes, languages, education levels, to join our cause often out of the noblest of motives.

Maybe it's "idealism" but an aspiration as compelling as ours never dies. It has its ebbs and flows, sure. But as a wise man once said "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice". When I look back at human history, it is impossible to ignore the progression from blind superstition, hereditary prejudice and "might makes right" to, however gradually, the triumph of righteousness. One cannot deny that.

And that, my friend, is anything but hopeless.

[mindsword]

Im pretty sure its lost too. :unsure:

you havent seen what ive seen...........

[Ele'ill]

embrace the void