What should I be doing?

[Full Metal Bolshevik]

There's a quote from Bill Haywood, "I've never read Marx's Capital, but I've got the marks of capital all over my body". The workers around you might not have intimate knowledge of the Soviet Union, they might not have a deep understanding of Marxist economics or philosophy, but they're going to have grievances with their bosses, be annoyed by bills they have to pay and be baffled by the nonsense of the politicians - particularly in this era of austerity. Marxists don't create the conditions for revolution, capitalism does that all for us. If you engage with people around you about their everyday struggles, you can draw them further towards revolutionary conclusions. They might not call themselves 'communists' but workers everywhere are faced with the questions that only communism can answer.

I don't work, I barely leave home, and I don't want to lose my few friends (2 of them right wing) because of politics.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

I don't work, I barely leave home, and I don't want to lose my few friends (2 of them right wing) because of politics.

Who knows? The perspective of your right wing friends may change. Certainly, if nobody speaks clearly to them, and from a place of genuine human care/friendship, your rightwing friends are likely to remain rightwing. However, if presented with valuable insight into the functioning of their world - and don't present it as a dismissal of their humanity - they might just change their minds. Of course, this rarely happens over night, but the thing that is really great about a coherent radical politic is that it has real, practical, explanatory power. An idea may sound like "pinko bullshit" until one finds oneself stuck in year 10 of a shit job, until one sees a friend or family member deported, etc. - then suddenly that "crazy idea" serves to clarify the situation where "'Murica's #1!" falls short.

And, hey, who knows what new friends might come out of the woodwork? When I was a chronically house-less alkie I had couches and roofs appear from coast to coast because I was also a dedicated anarchist. Because of my commitments I've met hundreds of people, and a healthy handful of really close "BFFs". That's p. special, y'know?

[Full Metal Bolshevik]

Who knows? The perspective of your right wing friends may change. Certainly, if nobody speaks clearly to them, and from a place of genuine human care/friendship, your rightwing friends are likely to remain rightwing. However, if presented with valuable insight into the functioning of their world - and don't present it as a dismissal of their humanity - they might just change their minds. Of course, this rarely happens over night, but the thing that is really great about a coherent radical politic is that it has real, practical, explanatory power. An idea may sound like "pinko bullshit" until one finds oneself stuck in year 10 of a shit job, until one sees a friend or family member deported, etc. - then suddenly that "crazy idea" serves to clarify the situation where "'Murica's #1!" falls short.

And, hey, who knows what new friends might come out of the woodwork? When I was a chronically house-less alkie I had couches and roofs appear from coast to coast because I was also a dedicated anarchist. Because of my commitments I've met hundreds of people, and a healthy handful of really close "BFFs". That's p. special, y'know?

They do work for a few years, both got their jobs in the same places their parents work at (they are not the owners however, I think mid level bosses). But they are the type who complains about colleagues and that they are lazy unlike them who work hard. I even heard them criticize some people for leaving at the hours they're supposed to leave instead of working until the job is finished even if it takes longer.
And there's a problem about convincing people face to face, I'm still learning, but when I discuss online I can backup claims with sources or search when I have doubts, while face to face if someone says something I'm unsure about I can't look for the answer, or even verifying if what they claim is true, it's also hard to argue with people who don't use logic and facts but superstitions and myths, they are also the type who criticize immigrants, left wingers, etc. Yes I do wonder why I'm friends with them, but oh well, I trust them and we have some good times occasionally. Tho I'm seeing them less often and I don't really mind... Used to o out every week but once or twice per month fills my social needs.

What do you mean by

I had couches and roofs appear from coast to coast because I was also a dedicated anarchist

You did something like couchsurfing?

[Ele'ill]

I found the scene to be uninviting unless you're a social butterfly and even then...

[Rafiq]

On the other hand, the whole framework of disseminating ideas needs to be appraised from a historical perspective; as I said in the thread on Keynes, for the past 60 years all of the "consciousness models", ideas about radical intellectuals fostering significant change in the activity of the working class, failed.

Correct, if we are speaking only about the past 60 years. Socialism not only is impossible, but cannot even justify itself as a force - if we cannot disseminate the same 'consciousness' of our predicament that we intellectuals have among the working people. Of course, this doesn't mean that they all must be intellectuals, the ways in which this is disseminated is more complex - for example, practical consciousness of their social predicament can be inscribed through organization and action.

It is practical after all - we can't really introduce into working people the initial 'want' to be dissatisfied with their existing conditions - they are already dissatisfied.

"Faith", the clear recognition of our ability to act collectively and the impetus to action coming from it, I don't think it can ever be fostered primarily through political communication and dissemination of propaganda.

I agree, this alone could never be enough. It must be built through struggle - but this is why a socialist movement, so to speak, must be cumulative in that regard. Inspiring working people with the confidence that they can fulfill more immediate goals, for example, must occur first and foremost before the faith necessary to overthrow the existing order can be in place. I genuinely think that this alone isn't that difficult - all one needs to do is lay out a practical, concrete course of action, i.e. here is what needs to be done and how exactly it can be done in a concrete way. The Left hasn't even come close to doing that - because I don't even think intellectuals know what they want or what to do. Most of the Left has no actual understanding of our concrete circumstances, the nature of politics today, what people are thinking, or even in economic terms how things are rolling.

All that is required is to inspire them with the necessary hope in themselves - their propensity for activity alone is clear enough (even as that activity is reactionary). I think one of the greatest problems is that it is reciprocal - intellectuals generally don't actually have faith in ordinary people. But that faith must be a precondition to approaching them. This is done particularly through encapsulating issues which speak to working people in particular on a concrete level.

This must be done through assessing why working people are attracted to reaction - anti-semitism, because on a level it speaks to their experiences as working people and their lives, but in a mystified way. Locating exactly how one can relate to the lives of working people in a direct practical sense, without such mystification, must be the goal. This is why I emphasize forming intellectual spaces - because this is first an intellectual task, and the Left today simply doesn't even know how to speak to ordinary people in that regard. If one can do that, this would be quite enough - speaking to their already existing grievances in a direct way.

[Rafiq]

there is simply nothing that one can do, not because of a threat, but because of an age old victory against communism.

A Communist should choose death before accepting the notion that 'there is simply nothing that one can do'. I say this without blinking - if one is really a Communist, is serious about being a communist, then quite literally they should die before accepting this abject hopelessness. They can die as Communists, or live as faithless philistines. Or, they can have faith in themselves, faith against superstition. Gramsic - I know you despise him - was right. Pessimist out of intelligence, optimist out of will. He wasn't saying that inspite of the cold hard truths he chooses to fight. He was saying that: He can intelligently recognize that left to its own devices things are going to shit, things are really bad. Only will, the will of the same men and women who constitute this in the first place, makes the difference - the will to steer the ship, rather than leave it to its own devices (and yes, my brain is literally fried right now - I can only apologize for such 'poetry' - I've been, you see, spending hours and hours per day repelling some Randroid). The "things" are literally just the social order 'organically'. Will is scientific consciousness.

Social consciousness alone entails that one can always do something, because there are no externalities outside of men and women, that which permits socialism. The conditions of socialism today are just as ripe as they were 100 years ago. The difference? It's solely tactical. Meaning, the only reason there were Bolsheviks 100 years ago, was because they did something and they did it in the right way. Lenin went over this extensively - nothing external from the will, dedication and acute theoretical rigor allowed fro their success - there were no external conditions which guaranteed this. That's why I say there's no excuse whatsoever for the sorry state we're in. None.

To say that there is 'nothing one can do', is simply superstitious, one can do something, the difficulty in doing something is a tactical problem, not some inevitability one wallows in. Of course no one sais you can build a movement overnight. But you can take baby steps and learn by donig the right things. People get disillusioned with activism because they don't know what the fuck they're doing. So I'm saying sit down, and think - think extensively - and stop repeating the same mistakes over and over again. It's so painful to watch - these 'energetic' leftists doing the same things over and over again, and then they become disillusioend with their leftism in general, without even questioning the fact that - it takes quite more than JUST the propensity to do things to get something done. History doesn't care to compensate hard work alone - the point of scientific practice is that you need to do it the right way.

There is no age old victory against communism. There is no age old anything. Such a statement emanates a profound ignorance of the dialectic. History, for all intensive purposes, is a blank page. Nothing about the past justifies the prerogatives of men and women in the present, because the relevancy of the past can only ever be reproduced in the conditions of the present. What that means is quite simple: the nature of this 'age old victory' against communism isn't simply the regular re-assertion of the power of the bourgeoisie over this communism, but the fact that this 'communism' truly is dead. The communism of the 20th century is dead for the same reason that the communism of the 19th century was dead for the 20th. If it were any way otherwise, then we'd notice a struggle going on - and Communists perpetually losing this struggle. But that isn't what is happening - there is no struggle to begin with right now. Communists lost, but this loss doesn't justify the faithlessness of Communists today.

We are in the situation today not because we are still feeling the effects of a major blow, but because we expect us to recover from this blow. But we won't. Communism is simply social consciousness - it isn't something that any external thing from men and women guarantees. Communists don't wait for things to get better. Communists are able to - literally - become conscious of the social sphere, they are able to approximate themselves to and 'keep up' with historical developments as it concerns motion. Lenin succeeded toward this end. To no longer simply be a passive observer as a communist - but to actually relate yourself as an individual toward historical motion as it is occurring in the here in now, that is Communism. You do not watch things develop and then only after qualify them - you actively relate to developments as they are occurring RIGHT NOW, literally - at this second. The Left broadly speaking doesn't do this.

There's nothing really mystical or even complex about this - because such developments are constituted by nothing more than men and women, nothing outside of men and women account for this motion. So Communism simply means you're conscious of that which you are already a part of.

You might disagree. And yet this thread was not made to argue this. This thread was made for socialists who are serious about their ideas - you see, it is practical what I am offering. I'm not convincing anyone to be a socialist - I am telling you, if you are lost and feel like you don't know what to do, this is what you need to be doing. The impulse to want to do something - I cannot give this to anyone.

[Thirsty Crow]

Correct, if we are speaking only about the past 60 years. Socialism not only is impossible, but cannot even justify itself as a force - if we cannot disseminate the same 'consciousness' of our predicament that we intellectuals have among the working people. Of course, this doesn't mean that they all must be intellectuals, the ways in which this is disseminated is more complex - for example, practical consciousness of their social predicament can be inscribed through organization and action.

It is practical after all - we can't really introduce into working people the initial 'want' to be dissatisfied with their existing conditions - they are already dissatisfied.

What I'm getting at is this: if the whole model failed spectacularly, the model of radical intellectuals disseminating ideas among working class people as a precondition of revolutionary action, then the question is why it failed.

One option is to cling to the view that somehow generation after generation of radical intellectuals made mistakes that culminated in failure; I don't think this is plausible at all. The reasons must lie deeper.

The other option is to reject the model entirely and to explain the past failure as a product of determinate social conditions which don't and can't make idea dissemination effective. In other words, only in some specific circumstances can radical intellectuals make a mark and effectively intervene in class struggle. But we can't produce these same circumstances, we can't make it happen.

The upshot to this is a kind of passivity; radical intellectuals can only react to developing conditions. Not affect their development. This might seem pessimistic, defeatist or what have you. But personally, I'm convinced that this is the only way that radicals can sensibly and soberly reflect on their position and do what we can do (which isn't much at all).

After all, there can be no guarantee of working class victory; matters are completely open. And it isn't only, nor primarily, a matter of ideas and views. One can have a perfectly correct view on things such as the social form of capital not being an eternal damnation, and still be stuck in the same old muck of passivity, fear, manage-life-as-you-can and keep-your-head-down. And to suppose that this behavior is a sign of incorrect grasp of things would be a huge, huge mistake.

And the predicament we as radical "intellectuals" have or find ourselves in; it would be another mistake to suppose that this is a common situation and a common predicament. The situation of a radical student, for instance, or a paid member of a political organization is fundamentally different from that of a wage worker. It's no surprise then that workers' don't listen; if the former group wanted to generalize its situation and argue from that, they wouldn't have any real reason to listen after all because their life conditions are different. Striking against the union involves all sorts of pressures and risks which simply do not present themselves for the radical standing on the sidelines and urging workers to strike. The obssession over political matters, which is itself a kind of a personality aspect many radicals exhibit, is something quite distinct and not something which needs to be, or even can be, generalized.

I agree, this alone could never be enough. It must be built through struggle - but this is why a socialist movement, so to speak, must be cumulative in that regard. Inspiring working people with the confidence that they can fulfill more immediate goals, for example, must occur first and foremost before the faith necessary to overthrow the existing order can be in place. I genuinely think that this alone isn't that difficult - all one needs to do is lay out a practical, concrete course of action, i.e. here is what needs to be done and how exactly it can be done in a concrete way.

Again, laying out a course (which translates to political experties, like we are sorts of technicians who need to resolve a particularly nasty practical problem) of action in the absence of an already existing momentum and drive to action would be futile. No such micro plan making could ever inspire someone for the simple fact that apathy and demoralization isn't due to a defective view on possibilities for action.

Obviously, when and if there is growing momentum, for instance based on a particularly acute social problem, then there could be space for engaging with people. But that wouldn't be a matter of a group of experts visiting people who're engaged in action (it would be like that, in actual fact, for many organizations today) and offering their expertise.

All that is required is to inspire them with the necessary hope in themselves - their propensity for activity alone is clear enough (even as that activity is reactionary). I think one of the greatest problems is that it is reciprocal - intellectuals generally don't actually have faith in ordinary people. But that faith must be a precondition to approaching them. This is done particularly through encapsulating issues which speak to working people in particular on a concrete level.

The basic problem I see here is this continued schism and dichotomy. Approaching people - as intellectuals. Approaching poeple with faith in them.

The latter is not necessary; when one observes a situation clearly, for instance if I'd clearly observe how the student movement here where I live developed, no faith would be warranted. And I'd be a fool if I tried to persuade people to enagage in one kind of action. Sure, I'm not saying that couldn't change, but what would I end up with if I approached other students like that? Invariably, that would be bitter dissapointment and perhaps a conclusion that they simply can't grasp ideas and possible courses of action. Which would work as again entrenching my own position as a privileged "outside", the poor bringer of knowledge who's not listened to. But I'm not interested in any such positioning; first and foremost I relate to other students as a student myself (albeit one in a peculiar position); and that goes for working people in the future. Would I advocate an unsanctioned strike action if I weren't a visiting radical, but worker myself? That remains to be seen, but what is crucial is that I've no interest in relating to people as educator, but one who's in pretty much the same mess. That's why it would be entirely possible to correctly see a potential course of action and still refuse to actually do all of that. Because people have got something to lose, and no verbal solidarity can act as a counterweight here. Only material acts of solidarity can. And if these latter are in short supply, well let's just say things aren't pretty.

Anyway, what the left would be wise to do is to dissolve itself into wider social groups, but then again we all know paid officials and academics aren't in a position to do so. And yes, that's part of the problem; of course they don't know how to relate to ordinary people - because they themselves aren't ordinary people. And many of the problems can be traced back to their peculiar class position no doubt.

Of course, no one should demand they give up on their jobs, their careers and their paid activist work; all that's necessary here is to clearly think about what one's doing and what one can do and cannot. Entrenched traditions and ways of coming together work against that.

A Communist should choose death before accepting the notion that 'there is simply nothing that one can do'. I say this without blinking - if one is really a Communist, is serious about being a communist, then quite literally they should die before accepting this abject hopelessness.

C'mon. See, this is part of the problem, this unabashedly moralist and ethical stance which prescribes how one should behave and think without actually considering the actual possibilities for action. It just very well may be that potentials for fruitful, effective action are so limited that any belief in successful action is just ridiculous. Not to mention the simple fact that this optimism of will is bound to cloud one's judgement, and that there is no reason to assume that great things can be done irrespective of what the conditions faced actually are. And that's what you seem to be doing here, damning actual conditions to hell for the sake of preserving a belief in meaningful action (along with the ethics of duty and sacrifice, which is shit and completely at odds with those ordinary people you invoke - who would rather find some other avenues for action which don't involve blind self-sacrifice, in most cases).

Then it's just a matter of appeasing your conscience by flailing about and doing stuff for the sake of doing stuff - and for the sake of your own peace of mind.

[Rafiq]

One option is to cling to the view that somehow generation after generation of radical intellectuals made mistakes that culminated in failure; I don't think this is plausible at all. The reasons must lie deeper.

No, they don't have to lie much deeper - that is literally quite it: Radical intellectuals failed in concretely assessing qualitatively new conditions of capitalism, they failed to mobilize working people because they were doing this the wrong way. It was not a total failure, however, and this must be emphasized - the model of movement building that as far as the United States is concerned stands as the most sophisticated, and the most successful in the past 60 years are - for example - the black panthers, who correctly assessed that conditions vis a vis the proletariat had simply changed.

It is entirely plausible. 50 generations of intellectuals can fail and make mistakes, and this alone is enough to explain our predicament, the problem is quite simple:

The other option is to reject the model entirely and to explain the past failure as a product of determinate social conditions which don't and can't make idea dissemination effective.

This is simply superstitious - 'determinate social conditions' is not some external force from the state of activity and consciousness of men and women, determinate social conditions do not determine anything. People simply forget: Communism does not hinge upon any 'social conditions' in capitalism, the point of communism is the application of consciousness and ideas into a real material force. There is no external conditions radical intellectuals can fall back upon to give them a sense of guarantee, and that includes justifying their incapacity to do anything on grounds that it's our 'material conditions' that are to blame.

The point is quite simple: Let's assess all 'consciousness models' that existed in hte past 60 years. The controversy is simple: I contest that not only were these radical intellectuals mistaken in how they thought disseminating scientific consciousness (i.e. an SPD notion, btw), but that these very same radical intellectuals were not of scientific consciousness themselves. To go into detail about this would already be de-railing the point of the thread, which was never meant to open up such questions in the first place - the thread was made for tactical reasons. I find people come to me and ask me what they should be doing, and this is why I made the thread - I cannot convince anyone to have the will to do things.

The upshot to this is a kind of passivity; radical intellectuals can only react to developing conditions.

The problem with this is that developing conditions are the product of men and women alone, no one else - there are no 'developing conditions' that are external from men and women. Radical intellectuals can only approximate themselves, in other words, 'hitch a ride' on the train of history, not passively sit back and 'react' to its direction.

The point of socialist consciousness is to accentuate antagonisms not only as they outwardly appear in the social sphere, but accentuate them in the sphere of people's consciousness. This requires a degree of ruthless criticism I do not think Leftists can stomach.

One can have a perfectly correct view on things such as the social form of capital not being an eternal damnation, and still be stuck in the same old muck of passivity, fear, manage-life-as-you-can and keep-your-head-down

Having a 'correct view' about the social form of capitalism is practical. If one can't act upon this practical knowledge, then the practical knowledge is worthless to begin with. For example, having a 'correct view on the social form of capital' often times takes the form of various ossified abstractions, ossified theoretical 'laws' that don't really keep up with capitalism in its concrete existence in the here and now. This is the point of forming a concrete analysis of concrete circumstances: if one cannot relate to the social order this way, their identification with socialism is most likely pathological.

And the predicament we as radical "intellectuals" have or find ourselves in; it would be another mistake to suppose that this is a common situation and a common predicament. The situation of a radical student, for instance, or a paid member of a political organization is fundamentally different from that of a wage worker

This is simply a silly dichotomy: the predicimant we find ourselves in, especially in society as it is so inter-connected and centralized today, is one that concerns the state of politics, the state of the social totality as a whole, the point isn't about 'your predicament' personally, the point is: Our present historical predicament.

It's no surprise then that workers' don't listen; if the former group wanted to generalize its situation and argue from that, they wouldn't have any real reason to listen after all because their life conditions are different.

Right, that's why workers, who care so much about politicians focusing on the particular aspects of their personal lives, are quick and eager to rally behind anti-immigration reaction - even though the political discourse tehy immerse themselves in 'generalizes' their situation. We have every right to 'generalize' the situation of the worker as it concerns what they can do tactically, because the conditions of the proletariat ARE generalized. The situation of workers as it concerns real political action, as it concerns something that is politically controversial - IS something that is generalized. I mean one can play this game all day - one can say that not as workers, but as individuals their lives are too different to even be a political category. Yet Marxists recognize that individuals can only be constituted as social beings, and therefore the particularities of their individuality relate to a universality, one that can be related to in a way that is irreducible to them.

You don't get the point: There is nothing about being an intellectual which disallows you to understand these things. If the conditions of life for proletarians are so different, that is an intellectual controversy, something which can be consciously and scientifically assessed. If one can't do this, one can't make a pretense to 'differing life conditions' without making a pretense to conditions, including as it relates to their present state of consciousnesses, that are consciously accessible and conceivable by intellectuals.

Have you forgotten Marx's justification for why the proletariat are the revolutionary class? Because they are NOT a class, THEY HAVE NO particular interests whatsoever AS a class, they are only a 'class' because they don't own private property. They are the excess, the 'bastards' of capitalism. The ordinary subject in capitalism is the bourgeois subject. That is the individual which is the golden standard for all individuals. The proletariat simply refers to those - who in their conditions of life find themselves incapable of collectively relating this subjectivity to themselves.

There is no proletarian consciousness as a given. The differing conditions of proletarians, in other words, don't justify them having some 'proletarian consciousness' intellectuals need to adopt. They don't have shit. The proletariat for all intensive purposes is not a uniform class with a particular interests. The proletariat is negative - it simply represents the universality of the subject within capitalism, the least common denominator of all real classes. The proletariat is the class which isn't a class - the contours of what defines this as a distinct social group, are defined solely by the fact that it is the only social group which doesn't think, or act as a class, which has no by default affirmative class interest. The 'proletariat' are just individuals playing the game of capitalism. Only through political mobilization can they act as a class.

That's the point of class warfare - class warfare IS NOT THE FIGHT BETWEEN DIFFERENT PARTICULAR CLASS INTERESTS, it is the fight between the class which represents a universality for all of society, and the class whose particular interests reproduce the existing conditions of life.

I mean it's quite simple. Why even have a category of the 'proletariat' by these qualifications? The particular conditions of living for the steel worker are incomparable to a janitor, incomparable to a tenant farmer, incomparable to a precarious Mexican living in California, whose lives are also incomparable to that of a wage-earning fishermen, cargo transport worker, and so on. All of these conditions in their particularities are different IN THE SAME WAY that the lives of intellecatusl are different from what you call 'the workers'. So by that logic, there might not even ebe any classes whatsoever. You also don't seem to grasp what is meant by an 'intellectual ' - an intellectual can be a proletarian, but only incidentally.

An intellectual adopts a class position IN THOUGHT - they do this IN THEIR THOUGHTS, how they live and make money is quite irrelevant (well, their social background certainly can influence this, BUT IT DOES NOT -necessarily - determine it). Thinking otherwise is just a bad, horrible misinterpretation of 'social being determines consciousness', it is purely confused: social consciousness, doesn't simply refer to neutrally observing capitalism, but that this observation itself is already partisan and already entails taking (or establishing) a side. You cannot justify understanding capitalism without also critiquing it - seeking its overthrow. This understanding is not like an empirical understanding we're its neutral, confined to a space where all subjects can, despite their social backgrounds, empirically observe and see it.

The position of social consciousness is simple: You don't INTRODUCE a social antagonism, it is there - one simply articulates it in an ideological way, and this is how it is reproduced. People find this fact hard to believe: There is no 'material force' outside of men and women, capitalism is literally reproduced by merit of collective superstition and NOTHING more. There is no externality which sustains it, it's totally contingent. The world as it is now does not have to exist. People find this fact hard to believe: That a social order can be sustained by something that relates to controversies of consciousnesses. But that's the whole point of Marxism, direct, intentional scientific consciousness itself becomes a material force as it pertains to historical movement. There's no way out of this. You can't say "Well I understand capitalism, but don't want to overthrow it" - any justification you have for not doing this, is fundamentally ideologically grounded. If you say you're scared to die, that is ideological, not something that can be uncritically assumed to just be a 'human' thing. If you're too lazy and 'would rather just do other things', the dimension that which you would rather do other things - again, - is purely ideological. That's ruthless criticsim. That is why Marx's motto was question everything. Nothing is a given. Nothing. Marxism, Communism (which are synonymous), rather than being a 'neutral' scientific notion, is already constitutive of an engaged ethical subjectivity.

Decades of bourgeois positivism make this notion appalling - because it is superstitiously assumed that 'objective truth' and the human moral dimension are separate. They aren't, truth is simply practical, it refers to truths that are only truths insofar as it relates to the practical dimension of human life. This dimension is inherently also a moral one, irreducible to any external empirical truth. Morality is alien - we don';t talk about it much as Communists, because moral engagement is synonymous with one's being as a Communist. I went over this, in fact quite extensively on my blog:

Communism is consciousness of social processes, that such ideas are not widespread is for us Communists a problem that is tactical – if we believed that the conditions of life as they exist in the here and now were inevitable, we would not have the views that we do. I mean what you say is literally just abominably fucking stupid – literally, quite crass and stupid – OF COURSE IT IS RELEVANT TO SUCH PROCESSES, even if such ideas do not IMPACT them, THEIR ONLY CONTEXT, THEIR ONLY BASIS OF EXISTENCE IS HOW THEY RELATE TO THOSE VERY CONCRETE PROCESSES. If Communism is social-consciousnesses, then this quite clearly means that it entails consciousness of social processes, by those who constitute it – consciousness of one’s social being as an individual, which means that one no longer spontaneously holds ideas that reproduce the existing order – the whole point of Communism is consciousness of the social, meaning, you are no longer alien from your social being, you are congruent with it, you keep up with your social being, rather than abstract an individuality and encircle it – chase after an idea of yourself. To be a Communist is therefore to be a conscious human being, emphasis on the last word – meaning one’s consciousness is not ossified information, but exists in congruence with your being, with your very action, with the motion of your life – you don’t simply know how the ship sails, and functions, you know how to steer it. At the onset of asking such a question – why does Rafiq deem such principles (?) worth fighting for (which are not principles at all – in fact), why does Rafiq identify as a Communist, we already approach the social dimension. “YOU” have deemed worth fighting for, this fucking idiot sais, as though Rafiq has deemed this worth fighting for and that’s the end of story – the intricacies, the complexities as to why, of course, are uncritically accepted as irrelevant – Rafiq, in a vacuum, simply ‘deemed’ such ‘principles’ worth fighting for, relating not to an order of existence which is beyond his own physical body, but solely because for reasons that are sufficient unto his own distinct physical constitution n and being, he has deemed them principles worth ‘fighting for’. Perhaps with the magical, inherent, genetic rational self-interest, Rafiq adopted such ideas, i.e. ‘deemed’ such principles worth fighting for, out of a pre-ordained standard of rationality that included a trade off. In Quinlan’s mind, there is no subject but the bourgeois subject – Rafiq took a step back, and said “hmm…. How can the ideas of Communism benefit ME?” – no wonder your idol, Rand, was so fucking scared of Kant, because already with Kant we recognize that this is not what defines the contours of ethical duty. What ‘benefits you’ is not a given – the standards of what benefits and what does not benefit you, is already an ethical controversy, THERE IS NO INNATE, ETERNAL standard of ‘rational self-interest’, for this is already a partisan, ideological controversy. This is the point of Kantian ethics – it is not simply that you do your ethical duty, your ethical duty is not a given – you are responsible, as a living being, for the contours of your ethical duty, and this is a short-circuit process that cannot be escaped – it does not relate to any simplistic relationship of causation, you adopt a mode of being, which is perpetual, and there can be no static causal justification for this. One – properly – falls into becoming a Communist, becomes possessed by it, wherein only a lack of will, faith and strength – philistinism, the inability to actively possess conscious of a world in motion – causes one to shirk from their duty as a Communist and renege. One becomes a socially conscious being, and this constitutes their existence – they are no longer a mere individual, they are a being with no roots, absolutely no gods, no superstitions, no big other, no sense of guarantee – in the bourgeois pathology, a monster. There is no clear – a to be causation in how one becomes a Communist, one simply is a Communist, there is no external reason that which one falls back upon – no pre-conceived standard of ‘rational self interest’ that which Communism fulfills – it is precisely the abdication of any and every single big other, every single external guarantee to your own existence as a socially self-conscious person.

[...]

Julius Caesar said a coward dies a thousand times before their final death. He is right. If a coward chooses surrender to the enemy over death, then the contours of their fear – a worm of doubt that constituted their previous subjective existence, literally bridges them over into a new life, the life of a coward. If, for example, you do something which totally contradicts your ethical existence, as a constituted subject, you already are in effect killing yourself – or the previous self. The ‘ghost’ in the machine, in other words – dies – the machine lives on, but a new ghost occupies it. This is the point of Kantian ethics – in relation to death. You are responsible for the contours of your ethical existence. What that means is quite simple – if the only option is either your continued subjective-ethical existence, and your physical destruction, choosing the former option is still choosing suicide. One speaks not simply of what one consciously proclaims of their morality – but the very contours of what defines ones ethical existence as a social subject, what literally constitutes you as you, to the point where if you contradict this subjective basis of existence, you literally become a different social being. Before a Communist can be a Communist – they must die.

They must die so that they cut off all their roots, become a different social being as it relates to their consciousness, change so extensively that little remains between them as communists and their former self. I spoke about being 'born again' and that's all I meant, and for almost two years people made fun of me for it. My potion is more refined than what they think. You cannot exist as a non-ethical subject insofar as you are a living person, even if you are purely a hedonist who simply wants to experience nothing but pleasures and no pain, this is an ethical position, furthermore it is an ideological one, because how one 'fulfills' pleasures, is not a given of ones existence, you can only do this in an ideological way, in a way that is historically particular. Even as it concerns the most base sexual act - the physical stimuli isn't enough to understand this dimension.

Striking against the union involves all sorts of pressures and risks which simply do not present themselves for the radical standing on the sidelines and urging workers to strike.

I mean, this is preicsely the point: This is why it is so frustrating for me, the notion that if traditional means that 'worked in the past' as far as politically mobilizing workers doesn't work, then nothing can work. It is actually infuriating: OF COURSE sitting on the sidelines and agitating workers to strike is a pure futility! This is not because workers are unwilling to fight, but because first and foremost phenomena like the increased socialization of labor moves political struggle out of the individual factor floors and into - for example cities, political districts, and so on. Labor is centralized enough j today, the means of production are centralized in their coordination with the state today, so much to the point where reform struggles that relate to policy making are virtually the only kinds of class struggle one can engage in today.

You must understand why this is frustrating - because preicsely we who implore leftists to go back to the beginning, to see how organizational models worked, scientifically and concretely, we are accused of being "Kautskyites" and so on. Well this is preicsely what we're talking about. We talk about precisely this kind of shit. For Leftists it's either agitate, agitate, agitate! Or sit home and do nothing. It's pathetic. The point of Marxism is educate, agitate, and organize. How to do this is the only controversy communists can concern themselves with. Not whether they can do it. If you ask whether this is possible, this calls into question ones commitment to Communism in the first place, which refers to nothing more than social consciousness. If building a real existing movement consciously is not possible, then a post-capitalist society is not possible either.

a kind of a personality aspect many radicals exhibit, is something quite distinct and not something which needs to be, or even can be, generalized.

A personality aspect, and where does this personality aspect come from, in your mind? What horrible times we live in - what a disgusting predicament we find ourselves in, where even critically attacking THE VERY CONDITIONS we found ourselves in is conceived as nothing more than the particular expression of an idioyschrasy of sorts inherent to that condition. The 'radical intellectuals' obsess over politics because of a 'personality aspect'. You don't get it: The controversy is a historical one, it's about the very historical basis of differing so-called 'personalities', we refuse to take this as a given. It is no different than, for example, conspiracy theories against the October revolution - it is assumed to the expression of only some kind of particular interest inherent to the status quo.

As a class, proletarians ARE in effect just mere individuals - only their organization politically, their mobilization, allows them to act and think as a class.

It means nothing to say this is a 'personality aspect'. Excuse me? A personality aspect? As though our present social order is reducible to a bunch of idiosyncratic personalities? One's particular personality relates to the universality of their social totality, of their social relations YOUR personality is constituted only in relation to the social epoch that which you live. One doesn't simply 'have' a personality, their personality comes from somewhere. The notion therefore that the 'obsession' with politics on part of radical intellectuals is something traceable to some particular personality traits, means nothing at the level of the historically controversial. Fascists might be 'obsessed' with politics, and so might radical intellectuals. Personalities are abstractions, it's their historical context that matters.

Frankly, the notion that people simply passively exist in capitalism is also abominably wrong - every single person who lives in capitalism actively relates to their conditions of life in a way that is already energetic, impassioned, relating them to a universality - whether it is through religion, or something else. The fact that people are so willing to look for alternatives - cults, to join ISIS, evangelicism, etc. demonstrates this. All peoples are miserable. This is not even a romantic statement - it's true. Down to the very core of the suffering and misery of the individual, this is the spark that which one can be come a Communist. And it is only the proletariat whose suffering is the least common denominator of all suffering, to be a nothing, to be a nobody, to be worthless, a slave subject to private interest.

Again, laying out a course (which translates to political experties, like we are sorts of technicians who need to resolve a particularly nasty practical problem) of action in the absence of an already existing momentum and drive to action would be futile.

the only pre-condition as existing momentum is the social antagonism. You simply have no notion of how working people live yourself if you don't understand the dimension of pure hopelessness, pure despair, that defines their lives. It is not that they are neutral, it's that they are literally hopeless. Those who can't see that: We really have nothing to say to them.

the simple fact that apathy and demoralization isn't due to a defective view on possibilities for action.

In fact that's EXACTLY what it is owed to! Behind what you call so-called APATHY is the most general, soul-crushing misery, rage, which finds expression not only in religion but in reaction. If you look at working people and literally think they're passive animals, I'm sorry, but we have nothing to say to you - THEY ARE dissatisfied with their predicament. they simply articulate this dissatisfiaction in a way which does not emanate an understanding of where it comes from and how they can resolve it. You literally have to have your head up your ass to think this. YOU live in Europe! Look around you! Look at what's happening, you're telling me ordinary people are political apathetic, are simply content? In these times it is purely scandalous to say such things - do you even realize what we're up against right now? Just wait. Wait one year and if you think ordinary people are simply disengaged zombies, you have to be living under a rock. You can see it already now - but everyone is going to see it soon enough.

Obviously, when and if there is growing momentum, for instance based on a particularly acute social problem,

Wrong! People are not going to just spontaneously identify 'acute social problems', they are going to express their already existing discontent and dissatisfaction in other ways. It is a POLITICAL task to IDENTIFY acute social problems CONSCIOUSLY, and to lay out a very concrete course of action about how this can be done. People literally say this shit - you realize the Left doesn't even OFFER, and HAS NOT offered anything ACTUALLY practical. You don't seem to understand: It's not like we have some plan and we can't spread the message. We don't have a fucking plan. So I'm saying - for those inclined - sit down and think about a minimal, concrete thing we can pursue. This must be done politically, and not simply economically. That includes - fighting against the technocraticization of politics and the strengthening of bourgeois-democratic institutions, which are eroding. That's just as much socially controversial as the struggle for a higher wage - as evidenced by teh fact that working people actually do care about power, about not being at the mercy of the state unconditionally (come to the US and look at the class composition of the militia members).

The basic problem I see here is this continued schism and dichotomy. Approaching people - as intellectuals. Approaching poeple with faith in them.

It is acknowledging nothing more than the truism that the grand majority of ordinary people either don't have time, or for whatever reasons were never socially bastardized to the point where they would become an intellectual. Intellectuals are freaks by nature - they become intellectuals because they don't know how to play the game of reality right. So yes there is a dichotomy - we intellectuals can understand the present predicament, ordinary people can't. If someone is an ordinary person who understands their present predicament, they are doing so as an intellectual, not as a member of their class (as Lenin said). Only when scientific consciousness is inscribed into the foundations of a mass movement can there be talk of a general, proletarian discourse. There's nothing ennobling, enlightening or liberating about being a worker. Nothing. Workers who are intellectuals are intellectuals at the expense of their social being, not because of it.

The latter is not necessary; when one observes a situation clearly, for instance if I'd clearly observe how the student movement here where I live developed, no faith would be warranted. And I'd be a fool if I tried to persuade people to enagage in one kind of action. Sure, I'm not saying that couldn't change, but what would I end up with if I approached other students like that? Invariably, that would be bitter dissapointment and perhaps a conclusion that they simply can't grasp ideas and possible courses of action.

One doesn't need faith in students. One needs like minded intellectuals who may or may not be students who are willing to think politically. Movements don't come from nowhere, they are not owed to anything outside of what men and women do. If a movement is successful spontaneously, the question is not whether we can replicate this by conscious action, the question is: HOW did it become successful, even if they weren't aware of what they were doing?

There will always be intellectuals who are practically inclined. Look at how many people on Revleft liked my post. People do care, they do give a shit. And there is a generation of young intellectuals emerging who give a shit about these things in particular and are wiling to start afresh. Admittedly one can't convince other intellectuals, they must become Socialists as it relates to their own soul. This process is arbitrary and usually by chance. The question then becomes - finding these like minded individuals and talking and thinking about our present predicament. This includes IN DEPTH assessments and analysis's about the past failures and successes of certain models and movements, engaging in ruthless criticism without petty internet tendencies, that which one calls others "Kautskyites" and so on. All of that needs to be thrown the fuck away.

Which would work as again entrenching my own position as a privileged "outside", the poor bringer of knowledge who's not listened to. But I'm not interested in any such positioning; first and foremost I relate to other students as a student myself (albeit one in a peculiar position); and that goes for working people in the future.

Only insofar as such a student will relate to the particular demands and wants of students. A Communist movement, so to speak, doesn't base itself in the particular demands of a demographic that by in large also includes the children of exploiters - the only significance of students is that one can rally them to reach out to working people. Universities can't be a particular political context, they must be a battleground that which wider social controversies are related to. If universities have lost any hope or possibility of this function, then fuck them.

Finally we probbably even disagree about how one relates to working peopel. You don't send people to factories. That's not how politics works today. Politics is more centralized. One sees a phenomena, and relates to it as an individual. My point is simple: If you're a worker in some factory in california, and a factory worker in Detroit, the ONLY WAY you relate to the universality of your social being is through - for example - things that are 'in the air', like Black lives matter. You relate yourself to phenomena which is mediated in a centralized way, which isn't really reducible to a particular context. You see what other people are doing in cities, and JUST TALKING ABOUT THIS becomes socially controversial. A black kid getting shot by a cop - is something that has everyone across the country talking. Yet they don't really have to have anything to do with this.

That's how politics works today, and that's how it needs to be conducted. Utlimately you're going to need to approach a particular context, as you know - five people. But you need to accentuate those SMALL, little particular contradictions, a context that is going to speak and relate to people on a much, much larger level. So it's a matter of picking and choosing your battles carefully - a small battle that can incite something much larger. One neesd to understand particular contexts in relation to their universality. So even if you're just five people - you can make a difference (which of course would include and necessiate other people joining up with you). It cloudiness having the right ideas that will attract people.

There are users on this very forums, and other places I'm told, which are even attracted to my ideas. Why is this? It's not because I'm special. It's because I offer an alternative.

And yes, that's part of the problem; of course they don't know how to relate to ordinary people - because they themselves aren't ordinary people.

You don't have to be ordinary people to relate to them. The consciousness as it is present in the minds of ordinary people is ultimately irreducible to them alone in accessing it. One can decipher conciseness that belongs to ordinary people EVEN in the most base expressions of bigotry, racism and anti-semitism among them. You can do this. you can actually identify why ordinary people would relate to these things in relation to their conditions of life.

C'mon. See, this is part of the problem, this unabashedly moralist and ethical stance which prescribes how one should behave and think without actually considering the actual possibilities for action.

no, the latter must be considered and is controversial for the Communist. But whether or not one can do something to begin with is not - this defines whether you're a Communist or not in the first place. If one is serious about being a Communist, and they are absolutely certain nothing can be done, they can either die or renounce their Communism. Something can ALWAYS be done. The basis for a socialist movement exists INDEPENDENT of any external factors. Hence why - Germany had an infinitely more sophisticated proletarian movement than England, and why even Russia was able to - at the end, have a more militant proletariat than the German proletariat. This relates solely to the application of will. Nothing more. Your will must relate to concrete circumstances correctly. the point isn't imopsing your will IN SPITE of prevailing conditions, but imposing one's will in the traversing of social conditions constituted by men and women alone already. Our 'social conditions' are CONTINGENT, not externalities. They can be - traversed, understood, and therefore manipulable. If you cannot practically apply knowledge of the social, your knowledge of the social is a scholasticism which is meaningless, which is TOTALLY unjustiifed as knoweldge. All knowledge is practical knowledge, even astronomical knowledge ultimately is only made with this presumption.

It just very well may be that potentials for fruitful, effective action are so limited that any belief in successful action is just ridiculous.

Let's think in practical terms, Thirsty. Who are the people who talk about such limitations? The same people who insist upon THEMSELVES limiting their possibilities. You can't come to me and talk about 'limited action' when one speaks of 'kautskyties', 'reformism' and so on. If your action seems limited, it is because the scope of your action in your mind is too limited. There is always something one can do. It's just a matter of proper understanding your present predicament - which I say - the left hasn't done, and though Rafiq has a good idea of it - I can't even say I have a thorough enough understanding yet.

Marx and engels for example recognized whatever shortcomings they had. That's why they spent such a long time before they formed the conclusion that the proletariat are the only potential revolutionary agents. Leftists, because they superstitiously assume that the hard work, dedication and will put in by others in our tradition is owed to something external, think they are exempt from this same kind of hard work, because they find it hard to believe that WILL ALONe was responsible for what seems to be historical miracles. This can be traced back to the exact same, very same superstition that which they conceive history in general. History is totally contingent and meaningless. The more people understand this, the more they can recognize that from this chaos only social consciousness can make meaning of it. There is nothing outside of the prerogatives of men and women which is responsible for history, NOTHING. So it's just a matter of putting this under conscious control.

irrespective of what the conditions faced actually are.

That things can be done is a given. The debate between Communists must take this as a precondition. Particular conditions that are faced, warrant only particular different kinds of action and that's it. Particular conditions warrant particular action. But that one CAN engage them and do something is a GIVEN for a Communist. It's juts how you go about this must emante respect for according conditions. That's the point of Communism: it is a WE CAN, all other questions become tactical. That is how science works in general - scientific practice is absolutely taking something arbitrary and saying - one can know it, one can manipulate it, it is just a tactical question of how. You don't look at some empirical natural phenomena and say "What a mystery", as a scientist, the precondition that it can be understood, and therefore manipulated, must occur at the onset of even approaching it. The same goes for the social. For scientists, insisting that something is a mystery only happens the closer and closer it relates to social concerns - like in neuroscience and quantum physics.

and completely at odds with those ordinary people you invoke

Because they have no faith. We forgive them. We don't forgive the self-proclaimed Socialist intellectuals. THEY HAVE NO EXCUSE. Ordinary people's hopelessness can be excused - they are in soul-crushing conditions that are even antagonistic toward critical thought. Intellectuals, especially if they are privileged, CAN think.

Socialist intellectuals have a duty, they are privileged and this privilege is a duty, not something you 'keep in check' and humble yourself because of. If you're privileged to intellectualize in the first place and you call yourself a socialist - you have a duty and responsibility. The heroes of our tradition went to Siberia, would be imprisoned, beaten, would sacrifice EVERYTHING for what they did! EVERYTHING! What do we have today? Cowards and philistines who are good for nothing but shit-talking. Yes socialist intellectuals have a responsibility of duty and self-sacrifice. if they aren't willing for this - they shame the tradition of socialism by merely making a pretension to it. And the qualifications for doing this aren't even that detrimental to their lives. I simply ask that people - form intellectual spaces and think critically about things. Take time away from time otherwise spent on stupid and arbitrary hobbies. Right now I'm not even asking other people quit their jobs and live underground. I'm just saying - sacrifice your stupid fake individuality maybe once a week to think critically about things with others.

[Thirsty Crow]

No, they don't have to lie much deeper - that is literally quite it: Radical intellectuals failed in concretely assessing qualitatively new conditions of capitalism, they failed to mobilize working people because they were doing this the wrong way. It was not a total failure, however, and this must be emphasized - the model of movement building that as far as the United States is concerned stands as the most sophisticated, and the most successful in the past 60 years are - for example - the black panthers, who correctly assessed that conditions vis a vis the proletariat had simply changed.

Nah. It's a downright perverse vision of "being successful" that's peddled here. The failure is measured aginst what the aim was - and f the aim was working class liberation, or in more modest terms complete and irrevocable racial justice, then the failure is complete and total.


You just have to be completely honest with yourself and actually compare the declared goals against reality. Which could in fact mean that the proposed goals were rhetorical and not honestly formulated - but then you're back to square one.
Like this one:

It is entirely plausible. 50 generations of intellectuals can fail and make mistakes, and this alone is enough to explain our predicament, the problem is quite simple:

...which is simply empty in absence of the actual, concrete as fuck analysis of where things went wrong in communication and political action:

This is simply superstitious - 'determinate social conditions' is not some external force from the state of activity and consciousness of men and women, determinate social conditions do not determine anything. People simply forget: Communism does not hinge upon any 'social conditions' in capitalism, the point of communism is the application of consciousness and ideas into a real material force. There is no external conditions radical intellectuals can fall back upon to give them a sense of guarantee, and that includes justifying their incapacity to do anything on grounds that it's our 'material conditions' that are to blame.

... and this is the move which lets you forget about actually explaining decades and decades of failure. Unless the goal was something other thatn the proclaimed one

What I'm interested in is simple and straightforward. You're claiming that there were mistakes; and I sure as hell want to see a plausible, convincing demonstration of said mistakes and not

a) claims of superstition (the very first sentence); what's next, tying the nviews presented here to a religion?

b) nonsense claims of constraining conditions not actually constraining anyone - since that's bollocks which is easily refuted. The constraints of my own education, for instance, make it near impossible to land certain jobs. That's what I'm getting at by mentioning concrete and determining conditions; along with the historical examples of a certain struggle hitting dead end, e.g. the miners' strike in the UK which was a bang good way for the traditional miners' communities to say goodbye, and nothing much else (through no fault of their own, to be clear).

The point is quite simple: Let's assess all 'consciousness models' that existed in hte past 60 years. The controversy is simple: I contest that not only were these radical intellectuals mistaken in how they thought disseminating scientific consciousness (i.e. an SPD notion, btw), but that these very same radical intellectuals were not of scientific consciousness themselves.

...and this move lets you to equivocate on the basic issue by dragging correct views into it.

Let us all, not stupid people at all, have another half a century with coming up with correct views and then, only then can we begin to do our work as the social-political hub of correct views.

Or, you know, this whole fucking mess might have nothing to do with incorrect ideas but with decisive defeat and pretty much one sided class struggle - where the bosses actually to get to fucking break us.

go into detail about this would already be de-railing the point of the thread, which was never meant to open up such questions in the first place - the thread was made for tactical reasons. I find people come to me and ask me what they should be doing, and this is why I made the thread - I cannot convince anyone to have the will to do things.

It would be derailing if it had nothing to do with the way you justify your ideas of what can and needs to be done.

But it has a lot to do with it.

In short, if you're unable to actually make an argument about how these patterns of activity - propaganda of ideas as a way to change the activity of the broader working class - stumbled and what mistakes were actually made, then there is no reason whatsoever to assent to your view. That disseminating ideas is the way goals can be accomplished.

To reiterate, I don't believe that this is the way class struggle can ever escalate; I do think that in periods of either wide compromise or decisive defeats it is near irrelevant what radicals communicate and how they go about doing this.. But this is the point of contention that makes all this nice talk of "what are we to do" meaningful in the first place; and if you can't produce an argument, own up.

I have no fucking clue what is to be done by radicals, but the actual balance sheet of propagandizing your views seems so dismal as to be a non-starter; and it's better for everyone to be clear on this one point. Likewise for ideas about what kind of communication needs to take place and what kind of understanding. In absence of clear understanding where prior generations of communists went wrong, all of this talk is empty.

The problem with this is that developing conditions are the product of men and women alone, no one else - there are no 'developing conditions' that are external from men and women. Radical intellectuals can only approximate themselves, in other words, 'hitch a ride' on the train of history, not passively sit back and 'react' to its direction.

The point of socialist consciousness is to accentuate antagonisms not only as they outwardly appear in the social sphere, but accentuate them in the sphere of people's consciousness. This requires a degree of ruthless criticism I do not think Leftists can stomach.

Precisely, the developing conditions are a product of what men and women do alone.

But this means that radical intellectuals have a specific role to play in this; it isn't the fact that we get to shape these conditions the way we would like to.

And much worse still, the balance of class forces bypasses us completely; it is people working and facing capital day-to-day that can in fact do something about it, because of one motive or another. But all of this happens not due to injunctions to act, but due to actual life conditions and what people need to ensure their livelihood; that's why radical intellectuals are always reactive, because advocacy of a new way of life can only make sense when the old conditions of life themselves become a burden upon further making-ends-meet.

These are the conditions that count; the way we get screwed so damn hard that our human existence is no longer sure at all. When all is up for grabs.

And it may be that leftists can't stomach something; but that is besides the point. The point is to explain the decades and decades long inability to stomach it (since it is on the face of it not really plausible that this problem is due to personal deficiencies in confronting working class people; if it were a personal problem then the question would be how the hell did it persist for so long); and the point is to see clearly how things went wrong, very wrong, in class struggle.

The point also stands when we understand the functional differentiation, or stratification in the formal working class if you will - the numbers of people who work on understanding the overall historical trajectory are tiny, puny in comparison to the numbers of wage laborers proper (since the former aren't exploited and do not depend on capitalist production for their sustenance). If you factor in here the amounts of people out on the dole and living through some form of permanent unemployment or another - the idea that there aren't definite differences in life conditions becomes laughable.

And what do we say about those life conditions, that this is the real sources of what appears to be abstract differences of opinion? Yeah, well do go on and carry this logic through.

This is simply a silly dichotomy: the predicimant we find ourselves in, especially in society as it is so inter-connected and centralized today, is one that concerns the state of politics, the state of the social totality as a whole, the point isn't about 'your predicament' personally, the point is: Our present historical predicament.

How about no?

The predicament we all face is the way we're drawn into the class relation, or to put that more succintly, how some of us aren't a part of that. And what that fact might entail.

And it just might entail all of this bollocks about relating to workers as ordinarly folk; it just might relate to an almost clear cut class division whereby members of one class approach them ordinary working folk for goals clear only to the former.

In short, it just might be that social conditions determine the consciousness of men and women; and the way the former stumbles and keeps on stumbling in the dark with no signs of recovery (cheap shot I know but: weren't SYRIZA a major game changing factor back then?; or is it the fact that workers have struck against SYRIZA that somehow justifies their actually epochal significance?)

I don't find any dichotomy or way of looking at stuff that emphasizes people's roles in capital accumulation as silly in fact. Do you?

So, to summarize, if you don't have any actual detailed explanation of just how things went wrong - then sorry, all is up for grabs including the grand framework itself (which can't be fitted with nice explanatory data it seems; so it's less worth it than worthless actually).

This is crucial for any argument here since all of it is based on that same framework; which looks more and more like a unified wishful thinking, a kind of a good hex upon the world, day by day.

Not to mention how this sick moralism about the history ordained duty of communists really is fucked up. We forgive workers - for being demoralized. It's like good Lord the Father, and the two of em further combined, in flesh. We forgive you for not being good foot soldiers for us.

[Rafiq]

The failure is measured aginst what the aim was - and f the aim was working class liberation, or in more modest terms complete and irrevocable racial justice, then the failure is complete and total.

If that's how success is qualified sure - but that only leaves us with the truism that we aren't living in socialism today. It wasn't a total failure, because there were successes as far as movement-building is concerned that we can learn from. We are speaking after all of the dissemination of consciousness - not necessarily whether people decades ago were successful in establishing a proletarian dictatorship.

You just have to be completely honest with yourself and actually compare the declared goals against reality. Which could in fact mean that the proposed goals were rhetorical and not honestly formulated - but then you're back to square one

The controversy isn't at the level of 'declared goals', the controversy is at the level of how they want about attempting to achieve such declared goals, in relation to the declared goals themselves. The fact of the matter is that it is quite simple to understand: In hte past sixty years, radical intellectuals were unable to not only disseminate scientific consciousness because of organizational failures (Which are real and can be assessed - and yet not the topic of this thread), but because they themselves were not of scientific consciousness - in other words, the argument being brought forward is that for the past six decades, radical intellectuals did not actually posses social consciousness or a concrete understanding of their historical predicament. But again, as I've pointed out, this varies - the black panthers were exceptional insofar as they understood qualitative changes in concrete conditions that the rest of the Left didn't.

...which is simply empty in absence of the actual, concrete as fuck analysis of where things went wrong in communication and political action

You miss the point: the only point being made here is that there is no guarantee of success, no matter one's self-proclaimed goals, there can be fifty generations of failure and this would say nothing about the inevitability of failure. This is what you amply fail to understand - there is no guarantee that people will possess social consciousness and apply this, this is contingent upon active agency and will, of certain individuals, there is no external guarantee, no external factor which determines this. There is no Communist movement today, unlike 100 years ago, not because of so-called 'material conditions' (a meaningless and worthless phrase in this context), but because Communists 100 years ago were able to successfully traverse, assess their predicament and apply this knowledge concretely. I went over this before, and my point is simple: At the onset of recognizing just how much actual work these individuals put in, in building their movements, in regularly engaging circumstances concretely even in the darkest and most dire times, it is simply irrefutable and not up for debate that we see a stark contrast here in comparison with Leftists today, who think that somehow, there is already a ready-made solution as far as to our shitty state of affairs, as though things will - independently of the engaged and conscious prerogatives of socialist intellectuals - simply work out in our favor somehow. But again, assessing the success of socialist movements historically demonstrates this is a false assumption - nothing ever simply 'worked out' in anyone favor, this was contingent on again direct agency and nothing more. The degree that which 'material conditions' affect agency is not a relationship of determination - if we are talking about consciousness of these same material conditions - it simply means that this very same agency, is faced with different tactical conditions.

You speak of an "actual, concrete as fuck analysis of where things went wrong in communication and political action", but we are talking about an epoch in politics which spanned and encompassed 60 years, if you want to start a new thread where we can talk about this - a subject which has been thoroughly discussed over and over again before - I would welcome this. A detailed explanation with regard to why socialists failed in a time period spanning sixty years toward the present is something far too complex to be summed up in a mere sentence - because there are a plethora of complex factors which surround this. We can, for example, quite easily talk about the relationship between 'real existing socialism' and these movements, as far as influencing how they themselves formulated and understood their predicament, and so on. We can talk about how qualitative changes in the state of what constituted and defined the proletariat, as a result of the second world war, confused their actin. We can talk about it all day - the fact of the matter is that this is a subject which would be too extensive and furthermore too complex to be appropriate for this thread. If you want to start a new one, I'd be happy to participate - we can focus directly and specifically on specific socialist organizations, their self-proclaimed 'goals' regarding the dissemination of scientific concussions, and why their entire approach was responsible for their failure - and not specifically the broad and for all intensive purposes overly-vague self-proclamation that they want to spread class consciousness. I claim that they didn't even know what they were talking about to this end insofar as they themselves did not posses socialist consciousness. That they failed sais nothing about the ability for scientific consciousness to have been disseminated among the broad masses - it simply means that they failed and nothing more.

Unless the goal was something other thatn the proclaimed one

And again you're thinking about this in such crass simplistic terms. That one identifies with a goal, does not mean they actually have the means to see through this goal, does not even mean they themselves have the confidence they can do this. I mean what a skewed logic - we are not talking about concrete goals, we are talking about vague ones - 'spreading class concussions'. It doesn't matter that they want this vague fucking goal - anymore than the fact that the Soviet Union and China proclaimed that they were marching towards a post-capitalist society - what matters is in practical and concrete terms how they set about this. I mean you're arguing, as though merely proclaiming a certain goal (whether you are genuine or not about wanting it - within the contours of the proclamation that is) automatically bestows upon you the ability to successfully achieve that goal.

But again, I won't even be so modest as to say just this - that they had this goal in the first place, in real ideological terms, but simply couldn't see it through. On the contrary, the nature of this 'goal', just as the nature of the goal as it exists among Socialist organizations in 2016, is a superficiality and isn't something one actually, genuinely takes seriously. The self-proclamation of a goal, especially in the context of the counterculture, was almost always hysterical - one spoke about spreading class concussions, one spoke about revolution, precisely in the absence of actually having a concrete course of action - having the actual responsibility of, for example possessing strength and power. Virtually the whole radical momentum of 68' was hysterical, it was as series of impossible demands so as to compensate for the actual inability to know what the fuck you're doing, coupled with an opposition to the establishment. This is why Jacques Lacan famously told the students in 68': What you are looking for is a new master. You will get one. And his words haunt us to this day, they precisely weren't actually serious about their radical ideas, these possessed a hysterical character and ultimately they ended up simply facilitating the rise of a new kind of cultural epoch in capitalism which reinvigorated it. And don't get me wrong - I know this is a simplistic explanation, and I am far from claiming that the entirety of 68', the counterculture, and so on was a futility that we have nothing to learn from. I just say that this was ultimately as a momentum a failure and there are real, theoretically explicable reasons for this.

Communists don't accept this failure as saying something generally about socialism, including the task of disseminating class consciousness, anymore than they accept 20th century Communist states as demonstrating the 'failure' of the proletarian dictatorship. These must be concretely and scientifically assessed, CRITICALLY assessed in their entirety - nothing is taken for granted. If one can possess scientific consciousness, so too can the broad masses as it is inscribed practically into real organization. It's not a question of whether this is possible - but how one is to go about doing this. Again, it's a tactical question. What you attempt to argue is that scientific consciousness is merely the expression of the particular conditions of the intelligentisa, like all the bourgeois philistines in their juvenile critiques of Marxism. I am telling you this is utter nonsense, because this would mean that these definite, 'social conditions' as far as how individual intellectuals live determines their intellectual character. But that's pure garbage: Intellectuals by nature adopt a class position as it pertains to intellectual controversies. An intellectual who happens to come from a proletarian background can be a bourgeois ideologue (want me to name you some?) and an intellectual from a bourgeois background can possess scientific consciousness.

This is simply for the reason that to engage the sphere of the intellectual is to relate to the totality of social relations as a whole directly - to adopt a position that relates to the social order directly. It does not matter that in your practical mode of real activity, i.e. the actual way in which you make money, this is literally fundamentally irrelevant insofar as these individuals are intellectuals and are intellectualizing. This is a crude and almost laughable bastardization of Marx. Intellectuals do not have a particular interest, there is no particular interest of the 'intellectuals', because all this word means is simply that one actively relates to the social totality in thought. An intellectual can make money in any kind of way - and the relevancy of their intellectual dimension will have nothing to do with it. What you say is simply confused - and ultimately nonsensical even on its own terms. Do not get me wrong - if a person comes from a bourgeois background, it is likely they will in intellectual terms be a partisan of their class. But it is not the fact that they are intellectuals that determines this, it is the fact that they are intellectuals as in the core of their being bourgeois ideologues. If one relates to the social order in a scientific manner, made possible because they opposed the status quo for whatever reason (i.e. the Young Hegelians, drawing from the French revolution, who opposed Prussian absolutism for example), they are not doing this as a particular expression of their 'class character 'as intellectuals, because they are relating to conditions of life - in thought - in a way that relates to a universality. To do this in practical terms, of course, is the very point of Marxism, and subsequently the very point of me making this thread in a way.

What I'm interested in is simple and straightforward.

"I want a simple and straightforward explanation for something that is in fact - not simple at all."

You're claiming that there were mistakes; and I sure as hell want to see a plausible, convincing demonstration of said mistakes and not

You want me to pull something out of my ass which 'proves' this? Again, the very basis of your question is nonsense - I can't give you a 'convincing demonstration' of anything, if one doesn't have the genuine practical inclination to transform the existing order, there is nothing to 'prove' to them. It is sort of just as silly as, for example, asking one to 'prove' historical materialism vis a vis some other superstition. You can't - because the truth is a practical one. Whether one can do it or not is a matter only of whether one has the practical inclination to do it - because again, the social order is constituted by nothing more than men and women and their practical mode of activity. You literally miss the point: Only after the precondition of opposing the existing order for whatever reason, and this can literally turn into ANYTHING, islamism, antisemitism, nationalism, the worst filth - but THIS precondition of opposing just the status quo, the state of affairs, things as they are, is necessary before one can critique capitalism - and by critique, I mean subject to critical assessment scientifically. Without this initial practical inclination, which cannot be justified in any externality, you have nothing. I mean the crass arrogance is appalling - Communism emanates precisely from the controversies as they exist in the here and now, every political controversy, every war, every strife, all of these relate back to the least common denominator of the social antagonism, we say "This does not have to exist", we do not say "You should prefer something else to this".

So your question is literally just silly. If you want a detailed explanation of their mistakes right now, it's quite simple: provide me a concrete example of an organization attempting to disseminate scientific consciousness and then failing within the past 60 years and I will give you a detailed explanation as to why specifically they failed where they otherwise could have had success. I mean I could just be an asshole and say: "Show my why IT WAS INEVITABLE that they failed, why disseminating socialist consciousness INEVITABILITY had to fail because of concrete conditions" but I won't, because such a question is impossible to answer because no one will ever agree on the qualifications for what constitutes proof or not. So it goes back to - again - having the practical inclination in the first place as a socialist. If you don't have this, we have nothing to say to you.

a) claims of superstition (the very first sentence)

b) nonsense claims of constraining conditions not actually constraining anyone - since that's bollocks which is easily refuted. The constraints of my own education, for instance, make it near impossible to land certain jobs.

That's literally just a silly example. Did I say you can just do whatever you want as it concerns the inner logic of the existing order? Did I say that socialist consciousnesses is going to land you whatever job you want? No, but there are very rationally explicable reasons for why you can't land the right job - because we are talking about limitations that are established formally by our social order, the same way that you couldn't run for president in the US if you were born somewhere else. Yes? All that tells us is that it is made illegal to do this by the state, and subsequently, all it tells us regarding your inability to land certain jobs, is that interviewers by in large have certain educational requirements and whatever. These are formally established constraints.

You don't even understand the point - it is literally unbearabely nonsensical: THESE CONSTRAINS are ones that YES, only exist because of the certain organization of men and women. But they are practically irrelevant, because no movement cares to relate to and transform the consciousness of job-interviewers to the point where they would desire to give you a certain job - and why? This is so muddied and confused it's almost criminal: The point of political activity, of conscious activity, is to challenge and traverse the very SOCIAL BASIS THAT WHICH SUCH THINGS EXIST IN THE FIRST PLACE, the ESSENTIAL foundations of ALL such things in the first place. It is simply bizarre what you are saying. Let's go back to what you are quoting:

This is simply superstitious - 'determinate social conditions' is not some external force from the state of activity and consciousness of men and women, determinate social conditions do not determine anything. People simply forget: Communism does not hinge upon any 'social conditions' in capitalism, the point of communism is the application of consciousness and ideas into a real material force. There is no external conditions radical intellectuals can fall back upon to give them a sense of guarantee, and that includes justifying their incapacity to do anything on grounds that it's our 'material conditions' that are to blame.

I didn't say that there are no restrictions within capitalism as it concerns life in capitalism. I said there are no external constrains, outside of this very same social order, which make existing conditions sustained in the first place. So your inability to land a job, ultimately, is a social constraint, but it isn't owed to anything external from the social order. Now that doesn't mean you can get whatever job you want, because insofar as we are talking about critiquing the social order in the first place, one would have to relate to conditions that are universal, to social conditions as they develop in social antagonisms, not the particularities of your individual life as they are immersed in that context in the first place - but targeting and relating to the context to begin with. When i said social conditions don't 'determine' anything, the context was quite clear. Social conditions are very real, but they are constituted only by men and women, their mode of activity and how this reflects and relates to their sphere of consciousness. That doesn't mean it isn't real - it just means there is no external force outside of the social order which is responsible for the conditions that exist in this very same social order. So what exactly do you hope to demonstrate by pointing out that there are constrains within this social order regarding one's mode of activity? These constrains, ultimately, are irrelevant to the point, because we are talking about purported external constrains to the activity of socially conscious men and women to traverse and practically critique the existing order in the first place, not use this knoweldge to further certain personal ends within it, but to act in a way that is political, and relating to social processes irreducible to such an individual particular interest as getting a job.

'Constraining conditions' don't constrain anyone in their ability to critique and challenge the constraining conditions in the first place. You aren't doing that by looking for a job - not directly at least. The prerogative to 'want to get a certain job' and to want to engage our present predicament politically is simply incomparable to that end IT's that simple. Need I point out the fact that it was the Bolsheviks in Tsarist Russia, by far the most repressive state in Europe, that were successful? If there can be any example of 'constraining conditions' as it relates to the restriction of political activity, it was Tsarist Russia, and yet they were successful all the same. Like even then - when it relates to illegality, this is a tactical consideration, i.e. that one would have to go underground, etc. Finally I never said certain conditions are less hospitable than others - but that doesn't determine whether one can do something, it determines how one can do something. It's a tactical question. One can always do something. There is a place for Communism in EVERY SINGLE political controversy that exists, EVERY SINGLE expression of the social antagonism is a context for Communism.

Let us all, not stupid people at all, have another half a century with coming up with correct views and then, only then can we begin to do our work as the social-political hub of correct views.

What? Sorry, is having a correct understanding of the world somehow an inevitability of time alone in your mind? You don't seem to understand: 500 years can go by where people don't get things right, and what makes or breaks the difference is not owed to external conditions from men and women, but the capacity for certain individuals to have a correct understanding. You cannot be a Marxist without understanding this fact: Nothing made the Communist movement more powerful 100 years ago, or even 150 years ago outside of this: the dimension of social consciousnesses, remains. Differing social conditions only mean it is necessary to have social consciousness of those differing social conditions, but ultimately the impulse to be socially conscious itself - is what defines the history of Communism within capitalism, that is what Communism owes itself to. This isn't contingent upon our degrees of stupidity, it's contingent upon the framework that which we abide by. As far as the history of the Communist movement is concerned, all that has been done is the parasitic building off of the momentum of the October revolution - including it's offspring (China). They took for granted the actual organizational models that led to the success of the Bolsheviks in the first place, did not think this had to be intricately re-assessed, replicated in different ways, and so on. Marxism has not gone under such a rigorous transformation since the times of the October revolution, that is what I am saying. This is not owed to any degree of stupidity, but will and faith that there is no big other. The October revolution was carried out, at least partially, because the Bolsheviks wanted to provide an example to the rest of the world, and for generations to come, about things they can learn from - from it (this is literally what Lenin said). That is not what a generation of radical socialist intellectuals did, what they did was latch onto this event, when its momentum had long passed.

The cultural changes and the degree of relative power for the Left in general, was by in part actually owed to differing conditions: The strengthening of feelings of democratic life, newly established standards following the second world war, the same war that was by in large responsible for the period of growth up until the 70's, the necessity for the bourgeoisie (through the state, that is) to appease the wants of the people purely out of a fear for Socialism. This alone gave people a relative degree of freedom to practically do whatever they wanted - a degree of freedom that was simply unprecedented in the history of capitalism. But this freedom allowed them to maneuver in ways which clearly were not going to last, people took it for granted and thus didn't have to go through the same rigorous trial and error within the confines of the constrains that exist by default for liberal capitalism. People adopted such a loose attitude of being opposed to rigidity, discipline, direct hierarchies, organization, 'conformity', etc. because they were provided with a space of freedom that which this was made possible by the state. There are a multitude of complex factors that led to this. But ultimately, people didn't have a concrete understanding of concrete conditions, did not possess an acute understanding of what they should do in practical terms and what specific goals that should be wrought, because in that context they didn't have to - they could get demonstrations going, get people moving, because they had wiggle room which they took for granted, furthermore which the bourgeois state did not yet develop mechanisms to combat and which capitalism did not yet appropriate as a system. Their opposition was one of negation, it was purely an empty opposition, one that was not yet historically qualified (which did become historically qualified - in contemporary post-modern capitalism's cultural substance).

Or, you know, this whole fucking mess might have nothing to do with incorrect ideas

I'm literally so sick of arguing the same thing over and over again. I'm so sick of this basic pseudo-materialist posturing - ideas, ideas as juxtaposed to 'da real material tings'. In fact, you attempt to make the position look ridiculous by abstracting ideas and reducing it to mere ossified notions in peoples heads. That's not what we're talking about, we're talking about the very core of how people are understanding the world, in their consciousness how they are relating to it. You fail to understand - Communism is nothing more than social-consciousness. THAT'S IT. THAT IS LITERALLY IT. It ALL depends on having correct ideas, having correct strategies, approaching your situation correctly, having a correct understanding of it, ETC. - THIS is all it depends upon, and yes - it is not inevitable that one will be correct simply by calling themselves socialists. Capitalism is chaotic - the social order is chaotic. there is no meaning to it to that end - it does not 'breed' socialism or create conditions that re more 'ripe' for socialism. All socialism is, is the introduction of scientific consciousness. This is why Engels spoke of scientific socialism. Natural processes aren't by themselves going to work in the ways that which we would like them to. For that reason, we have natural science, which is purely the (practical) knowing of things otherwise arbitrary under the control of conscious men and women. The mode of activity of men and women socially is not conceived by them consciously, it is facilitated and reproduced ideologically. So even if - spontaneously - the masses became socialists, this would be an accident, purely arbitrary (the same way that natural processes might accidentally work in the favor of willful observers). It's not enough, and the chances of this are simply minuscule (and the chances that it could sustain itself are even smaller than that).

Of course YOU hystericlally think I am saying everything can be done in one giant sweep - that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying things can always be done, and if you only have five people, you do things that are within your scope of power - first things that could be small, local and so on, but in way that relates to the universality of capitalism and it's internal contradictions - you accentuate these contradictions on a local level within your scope as an individual. It is everywhere - down to an individual arguing with a co-worker about politics, these contradictions manifest themselves everywhere. The task is to light the right sparks, to encapsulate the right issues which divide people socially, hit the very core of their being as peoples. A radical is one who grabs a problem by its root (literally, that's what it means in French). That is what a radical does. People relate to reaction, because it relates to them in indirect ways - the task of the radical is to relate to people, people who are already constituted as social beings, in ways that are direct, hit the very core and root of their being, what makes them tick, what makes them view the world as they do, with all their resentments, bitterness, sufferings, humiliations, and so on. That's the point.

A decisive and one sided class struggle he sais, as though the class struggle can be abstracted to be some separate force which we simply observe neutrally and then take a side in. What you fail to understand is that the 'class struggle' refers to something that is constituted by nothing more than men and women, nothing more, that's it: Men and women, what they are doing, and how what they are doing is related in their consciousness. There's no 'class struggle' outside of this, and thus you can't relate to the class struggle without already presupposing a side within it. You say - people are unwilling to fight for some external reason. And yet if you make a pretension to being willing to fight YOURSELF, as a subject, DESPITE these very same purported 'external reasons', there is a rationally explicable reason for that. I mean the general anti-democratic logic of contemporary capitalism has manifested itself in the minds of Leftists in the most sick ways - the broad masses are no longer approached and conceived as subjects which actively relate to their conditions, which actively have a place in our collective standards of reason. The broad masses are dismissed as passive animals who can only be herded along in this or that direction by conditions external from them. What makes this anti-democratic is because certain specific qualified political aims, which make a pretension to 'knowing', exclude them from the space of collective reason. The point is that only in their own heads are they determined by conditions external from them, BUT these conditions are IN FACT constituted by nothing more than individuals like them. Instilling confidence of this fact - which subsequently leads to the ability to determine social conditions as they please as a collective force - is the task and has always been the task of Socialists. The point of socialism is to instill them the ability to ACTIVELY be conscious of their predicament, even if this is only manifested on a practical level (and not an intellectual one).

It would be derailing if it had nothing to do with the way you justify your ideas of what can and needs to be done.

Actually no, we're not arguing about what needs to be done - we're arguing about whether one can do anything in the first place. To taht end - this thread is actually being derailed, you simply don't understand this fundamental difference. What you are asking is to justify one's inclination to be a Communist vis a vis not being one. I can't do that for you - ultimately this is what your question can be traced towards. What right do you have to say this can be done? I have no right to say this, and I don't presuppose that I need such a right. Do you understand? I don't have to justify in any external empirical fact, the fact that one can do something - one either has the inclination to do something or don't, because maybe they're too scared, maybe they lack confidence in themselves and think themselves to be too insignificant at the level of world-historical change, maybe because they have hidden doubts - hidden even to themselves. This is not my problem, that's your problem - people regularly come to me and ask me what they can be doing, because they clearly have an inclination to change things as active Communists and simply feel lost about what they should be doing. They don't ask me "CAN I do anything at all?" - such a question is not one Communists deal with, anymore than we say we need external empirical proof that Communism can exist in the first place. There is none - because such a question is worthless. CAN Communism even exist? The conditions of Communism's existence is contingent upon the social consciousness - applied not only intellectually but practically, in congruence with one's active social being, not 'reactive' towards it. That's all. There is no external conditions which make or break this to be possible or not.

What you ask is therefore a question that must be resolved in your own heart - no one can guarantee for you faith. Of course after a socialist movement kicks off, this might be enough for you to have faith. But for those of us who actively seek, as active historical agents, the building of such a movement, we have nothing to say to you. What I'm saying? THERE WILL BE NO socialist movement that will inevitably kick off - the conditions of its exsitence is owed to the active prerogatives of men and women. So you can keep waiting forever, there are some of us who seek to actively build it.

That disseminating ideas is the way goals can be accomplished.

I think I also need to re-emphasize the fact that - the whole basis of your question is thoroughly rooted in superstitious assumptions. Your questions are testament ultimately to the most crude faithlessness, because you are demanding some kind of magical wand which is going to prove to you that this task of disseminating ideas is even possible. You are saying : "PROVE TO ME that disseminating ideas IN ANY WAY whatsoever is possible". The presumption is that the means that which we seek out to do this is identical to the ways in which others professed their inclination to do this. But it isn't.

Part of this thread TO BEGIN WITH was to ask people to have ruthless criticism - to sit down and talk about the organizational failures, both of the past and the of the present, as well as their successes, in relation to what needs to be done today in a critical and scientific manner. The actual belief that one can disseminate these ideas to begin with, that's not up for debate - that is synonymous with asking whether socialism is possible to begin with. The only question we need is: IS IT POSSIBLE for ordinary people to be conscious of their own conditions of life? Of the very same antagonism which is already propelling them in a plethora of different directions? Is this possible? OF COURSE IT IS. Ideology is proof of that - not knowing what can otherwise be known. The only empirical proof you need - is your own existence. This proof doesn't guarantee anything, of course, but the presupposition that you exist in the first place is all that is necessary. There is no external empirically loceatable thing which makes it impossible for people to have social-consciousness. It isn't an inevitable fact of their existence. SO if you yourself think that having social-consciousness is possible, IF YOU YOURSELF make a pretension to understanding our existing order, so can the working people immersed in it - who have nothing to lose in critiquing and opposing it (they already oppose it - but in different ways).

real Communist consciousness comes from precisely relating yourself to the soul of the universal proletarian, in your opposition to the existing order. Your opposition must be based in this misery, in this hell, you must see it and feel it with your own eyes everywhere around you. It must - invigorate and electrify you, animate your very will to live, animate your corpse where you are otherwise a dead person. The first Communists didn't have to talk about this - it was an unspoken fact of their engagement. Moses Hess - literally would tell them, "Let's be blunt, everyone, this (misery, suffering, hell which poisons their own soul) is why we are here." The reason we need to talk about this today is because the sheer ripples of power, the sheer fact that this enigmatic phenomena - Communism - has influenced our world today, to the point where it is unignorable, has allowed people to in a very silly manner adopt this as a political identity. And I don't really berate you - Thirsty, I am far from thinking you are a juvenile adolescent, ushanka "comrade3!!!111" 'communist'. You are much farther up the ladder than that, it goes without saying. But I still don't think you understand what it means to be a Communist - why this attracts you I do not doubt is for a genuine reason, of course - perhaps this reason is the problem, or perhaps it is simply a lack of theoretical knowledge. But it remains subject to further qualification (meaning, you will one day have to be faced with such questions).

I do think that in periods of either wide compromise or decisive defeats it is near irrelevant what radicals communicate and how they go about doing this.

The first obvious question is to ask the nature of this defeat and compromise, how it was orchestrated. And of course, it was orchestrated through the use of political power, among other factors (trade agreements, etc.). This defeat doesn't determine anything, it simply means that the repeating tactics and having delusions about your strategy being rooted in conditions that fundamentally preceded this defeat is mistaken. We are not living in a period of 'wide compromise', that's what you don't get - the momentum of the class struggle IS NOT ACTIVELY being suppressed, THIS particular momentum which was defeated - is DEAD, it is irrelevant and has no place in the world today. A new kind of momentum must be opened up, and the social antagonism is just as constitutive of our conditions, all of our political controversies, EVERYTHING that makes people 'tick' on a world-historical level as it was 40 years ago. What we need is political leadership, discipline and organization. The defeat - is not a perpetual one. That momentum IS defeated. Remains defeated. The reasons why it was defeated are quite clear: THE MOMENTUM was never sustained by scientific consciousness in the first place, but again owing to - geopolitical circumstances that gave workers a higher degree of freedom in dictating the terms of their struggle. New conditions have simply arisen which we must account for - we will eventually need a new International (or something more powerful) to coordinate struggles internationally, so that struggles in China can be synchronic with struggles in the US, because of the phenomena of capital flight. We need to actively politically support the increased erosion of the nation state - which includes opposing those who oppose the disintegration of the EU.

We've argued this before - what you (or the people you designate as radicals, with radical ideas) are communicating is particularly irrelevant because it literally has no place as far as our existing circumstances are concerned, and the very basis that which they hold such ideas is fundamentally often times reactionary and petty-bourgeois. Most radical socialists... Adopt this identify cosmetically and superfiically. It is clear that their essential ideological basis in something quite different - often times aligning itself implicitly with Russian reaction, and so on. The archetypal proletariat in the minds of the socialists is a pure delusion - this 'proletariat' no longer exists, and even as it concerns the US, those who are in the factories have much more to lose than those precarious workers who are not. It's very basic problems like this which are responsible for their failure - what radicals communicate isn't at all ever concrete. What they communicate are incessantly worthless agitations (i..e "DOWN WITH CAPITLAISM!") or calls to action they themselves don't even fucking know how would work out. If you can lay out a concrete plan of what people can do, simply a plan that seeks to GET SOMETHING done, if you can tell ordinary people at the level of politics a particular, concrete plan and how it can be done, they will get behind it. Radicals don't even know what they can do in concrete terms - they don't even have an idea of what can be done CONCRETELY, that is, INSOFAR as it relates to conditions AS THEY exist, not as they would like to exist. They themselves don't know what the fuck to do, and the minute that an iota of the responsibility that is necessary to actually see your actions have a real, tangible effect in the arena of politics, most Leftists are simply quick to shout their disgust that one would 'compromise' and 'sellout' by engaging politics as is, petty notions of 'reformism', and so on.

I have no fucking clue what is to be done by radicals,

Because you're missing the point at hand. I'm telling people: FIND OUT what is to be done in your own particular circumstances, TALK about it. Recognize something CAN be done, you just don't know what can be done yet. The only starter for asking this question is simple: In what ways are people discontented by the existing order, what are some problems in the existing order, and how can these be worked upon. If you don't think there are any problems, this calls into question why you are a socialist in the first place.

And I'm always quick to emphasize too - class struggle today cannot be solely or even primarily economic, it must be political - which means, the democratic fight, the fight for the strengthening of the capacity to even influence politics meaningfully in the first place, socialists must be at the forefront of this fight. That's the biggest obstacle today - is the increased technocratization of politics. This isn't inevitable and can be fought politically, in the same way that bourgeois democracy was never inevitable, but actually had to be fought for - often times with socilaists at the forefront of the struggle (if not most times) for democratic reform. Giving power to 'the people', i.e. giving power EVEN AS IT CONCERNS power within the confines of our predicament - to simply influence and have an effect with regard to policy making, is the first and most primary struggle. This struggle must be congruent with the fight for - a 15 dollar wage, the UBI, or whatever you like - BEFORE any of these economic struggles can be fought for, the political struggle must take primacy, so that the very space of fighting for such economic demands can be opened up. We can't conduct class struggle, unless we fight for the ability to make a political impact in the first place.

This political struggle first and foremost, WILL be class struggle. The nature of politics, how it is directly controlled by capital, in spite of the interests and prerogatives of ordinary people, this will be the rallying cry of the democratic political struggle and low and behold - it IS an issue that people care about, so much to the point where even mainstream politicians - Hilary, Bernie and Trump, speak about it regularly. I'm not saying the class struggle ought to be put aside in favor of democratic reform, but that on the contrary democratic struggle today is synonymous with class struggle, or must be to even be successful. This is such a powerful avenue of struggle which AT ITS CORE ENCAPSULATES AND STRIKES AT THE VERY BASIS of world-historical movement today, and the antagonism today. Do you realize how much those in power are increasingly disdainful of what remains of bourgeois democracy? Do you even realize where we are headed? No, you don't, becasue most Leftists don't care - it is 'irrelevant' to the ultimate 'class liberation'. But again, there is no class liberation without a thorough understanding of the concrete nature of the social antaonism today. THE WHOLE POint of their disdain for bourgeios democracy are both the hard-won reforms fought for by ordinary peope, as well as future ones - the inability for capital to operate without being subject to the interests and demands of ordinary people. We're literally heading straight to hell right now - I don't even know how someone can say "maybe there is nothing we can do".

Look around! Those who say this bring shame to our tradition, insult the legacy of those who sacrificed themselves before us, who fought their entire lives for the cause, by making disallowing them to find peace in the today, by disallowing their struggles to not have been in vain. Literally - everyone - everything they fought for, everything the Bolsheviks fought for, what the Luxemburgs of the past died for, what the Marx's and Engels' concentrated their whole lives upon, to not mention the thousands and thousands of socialists who actively devoted their livers to the struggle - THE MEANING and LEGACY of this remains unqualified! It remains totally meaningless unless we have a stake, have a say in the conditions of today - they laugh at our tradition. Look at how much of an impact we had on the world, even in shaping the world today!

Don't let those who preceded us, don't let their struggles be a vanity, because they ONLY live on through us! Without us, everything they fought for was for naught. Without us, everything they did - is totally fucking worthless and totally meaningless. Darkness and filth is approaching us. What would those who preceded us, what would they have done? You're going to sit by and let this SHIT happen, where we could otherwise ACTUALLY be a formidable foe to the enemy? To the darkness and filth? They lament in our absence - they are so confident that the puny, weak left are full of nothing but worthless cowards who are going to be trampled upon by the onslaught of their barbarism. Show the fuckers!

Die, die before you live contently in the face of the hell that is approaching! None of you take me seriously and think I'm some fucking clown, but you don't understand the DEGREE that which things are getting really fucking sick - you don't get it, you won't get it until it's too late. Unless you take the responsibility to own up to your ideas. Everything you can do as a living individual, you must sacrifice to this cause. You only have your life to lose. You must do everything that is worthy of this - absolutely EVERYTHING within your power, that within the constrains of your life, you can do, to repel the darkness and filth. If you don't have this strenght - if you are too spiritually weak - then stop claling yourself a socialist and give up. Give up to the enemy and just let it all happen. Stop complaining. Stop opposing. Just live your life contently as a coward. I know none of you want to do this - BECAUSE YOU CANNOT. There is something inside of you which makes this simply ethically IMPOSSIBLE. OWN UP to this impulse and listen to it, let it carry you to the very edges of your life. Do it now, stop doubting it, it's already too fucking late.

Now is the time where you ask the question: ARE YOU SERIOUS about your ideas? Do you ACTUALLY care? Are you willing to die for this? Are you willing to sacrifice irreversibly any future life as a normal person, as content person, for this? This is the seriousness that which socialism demands of the individual. If you are all on the border - on the fence right now - I'm telling you that you need to choose right now because soon it will be too late.

it is people working and facing capital day-to-day that can in fact do something about it, because of one motive or another. But all of this happens not due to injunctions to act, but due to actual life conditions and what people need to ensure their livelihood; that's why radical intellectuals are always reactive, because advocacy of a new way of life can only make sense when the old conditions of life themselves become a burden upon further making-ends-meet.

No, that's precisely why radical intellectuals must NOT be reactive. they must actively approximate themselves to this antagonism as it exists. As I said before, the social antagonism is owed to the irreconcilability of the universal bourgeois citizen with the grand majority of actual living people, the universal bourgeois subject, the golden standard of what it means to be an individual person, is fundamentally outside of the grasp of the grand majority of people. What that means is that we have to fight the delusion of the American dream, allow working people to recognize that they are working people, not potential future billionaires, and that they need to fight for things in approximation to this fact of life. We must introduce a course of action wherein ti will ask people: "Do I fight for this, as a worker, or do I continue thinking I'm going to get out of this?" - and with the decline of the so-called 'middle class', this question is raised more and more. That's why we must be suspicious of Bernie Sanders, that champion of the 'dying middle class'. this 'class' is a vestige of an epoch of capitalism (cold war) which is dead. We must not even mourn it but approach our conditions so that the death of the 'middle class' is simply a given. Obama was right: It wasn't just the financial crisis which is leading to all of these outcries, but fundamental qualitative changes in our economy long before 2008 which are responsible simply for new emerging social formations. Social consciousness not only entails fulfilling what you already want, but actually actively constituting the very contours of what you want in the first place - not becasue you 'want' to do this, but because it defines your very social being. True freedom is questioning your wants in the first place. the only given is that working people are discontented, are angry, bitter and oppose their existing state of affairs. Again the propensity for people en masse to become evangelicals, to join cults, their escapism proves this- the existing framework of life does not suit the grand majority of people, spiritually, because it sets a standard they are starting to know they can never actually fulfill - not being bloodscukers and exploiters themselves.

So it is a result of 'injunctions' to act, to act upon things they already would to otherwise want, if not for a lack of confidence. But this must be done through organization - we must introduce things they could fight for, where the only variable remaining is their propensity to fight for it - that "if you do this, you can get this done". This can be something very small. And then one thing leads to another, as history has shown. Workers DO want to live in dignity, support themselves, their families, be constituted as dignified subjects. So the task today is to allow them to fight to have dignity not only at the level of their profession but as citizens which can actually make a difference as far as political power is controlled. That's just as important. Many reform struggles today are aimed at 'increasing social mobility', but it seems more and more that this is a delusion. It is possible we need to fight for those reforms (against an emerging aristocracy), but it's something we need to talk about.

These are the things which I am telling people to start talking about.

And it may be that leftists can't stomach something; but that is besides the point. The point is to explain the decades and decades long inability to stomach it

This is a problem leftists face today. Leftists during the period of WWII-Neolieralism, didn't have to face this question because there was nothing they *had* to stomach. they didn't need ruthless criticism, there was a momentum which was lively enough that didn't hinge upon this. But this momentum culminated into something they did not expect - which was a new kind of cultural face to capitalism. The same demands and impulses of the Left today, might have worked in the counterculture because the wiggle room that which this would have made the difference was there. The state had to regularly justify its legitimacy, against the red nemesis, and so on. This postwar period of anti-Fascist democratic solidarity is over. It's time to return to square one - before even the October revolution.

From the period of the Communist manifesto up until WWII (I know, a rather long period) - Leftists WERE able to stomach this. They WERE able to actually be leftists and socialists. Events after the Soviet Union, and WWII, gravely complicated things for the Left. But it wasn't all a failure - there were pockets of success to one degree or another, pockets of real and genuine socialism. The Black panthers got close, so did Allene's populism. these things genuinely did relate to their conditions in a way that was full of strength and was able to answer to these new changes. In fact I said it before and say it again - we need a new kind of 'black panthers' but not something nationally exclusive to black people. this same model of discipline, community organization, and so on, was very innovative and we have a lot to learn from it. People want a sense of discipline and organization, the channeling of strenght in a direct way. People by default want to have a place somewhere, want some kind of home. So socialism today MUST be 'cultish' in that regards, as it always has been.

the idea that there aren't definite differences in life conditions becomes laughable.

No there are, and that's why I differentiated the intelligentsia from ordinary people, how they are to approach them - something you criticized. An intellectual is an abstraction which is unqualified. The nature of one's intellectualizing is differentiated on class lines, ones that are irreducible to ones social background as far as how you make money. Workers can be as intellectuals total reactionaries and total bourgeois ideologues. The same goes for the opposite. Becuase a worker is not a particular interest, but precisely the negation of all particular, private interests - the proletarian represents a universality which only THEN is expressed in particular ways.

And what do we say about those life conditions, that this is the real sources of what appears to be abstract differences of opinion?

The moment one becomes an intellectual is the moment wherein their social consciousness is no longer determined to how they PERSONALLY physically relate to the existing order, i.e. no longer determined by their specific mode of activity as it relates to direct physical production, because what differentiates them as intellectuals is that they relate in their heads to this social sphere. Marx said in the 18th brumaire - the logic of direct representation is anti-Marxist - he said that certain politicians were not petty bourgeois themselves, but could not think beyond in their heads what the petty bourgeoisie could not think beyond in their life. There are bourgeois and proletarian intellectuals. They are intellectuals insofar as they relate to this in their heads. Relating in practical terms what you relate in your head to actual practice is the very point of Marxism.

The unity of one's being in its entirety, not just as it concerns your head but your soul, doesn't mean you go work in factories, it means you disseminate this consciousnesses among ordinary people, it means you act upon the knowledge you have. What do you think was the basis of Marx and Engels's break with the very first Communists (even after the young hegelians?). The trick isn't changing your social position and how you get money, the trick is acting upon what you think in your head. No other contingent circumstances - like how you relate to physical production, is going to determine teh expression of htis action. Hence the point of social-consciousness.

The predicament we all face is the way we're drawn into the class relation, or to put that more succintly, how some of us aren't a part of that.

No one is outside the social antagonism. Everyone is a part of this totality, and everyone relates in their consciousnesses to this totality in the constitution of their very selves as individuals. Even if you elect to go live in the forest naked. So yes, insofar as we are a part of society, we do face a collective predicimant, which refers to nothing more than the state of society, where it is going and so on. We alreay adopt proletarian consciousness insofar as we are able to critique society and understand it on these terms. So the point isn't that individual workers know about their predicament, which is a universal one, irreducible to their particular existence, but that whether they know it or not it's a part of their predicament too.

And of course, you're just wrong about how you're approaching this. Let's say I say: "Work is becoming increasingly precarious". This is a part of our predicament as a society. It doesn't relate to anything particular to me as an intellectual, I'm not saying "Intellectuals are being paid less" or whatever. Shit.

members of one class approach them ordinary working folk for goals clear only to the former.

or is it the fact that workers have struck against SYRIZA that somehow justifies their actually epochal significance?

Correct. I've gone over this before. People who never were 'with' Syriza, i.e. people who dismissed them from the onset are in no position to critique them, becasue the way in which they criticized them emanated not a single care for whether they would be successful or not in implementing their reforms. the fact that they were doing this is what angered them - after Syriza failed, they simply stood back tauntingly. 870 used to use this cheap shot all the time, and I've argued the same thing over and over to no avail - Syriza was already successful on grounds that it was able to attract and mobilize ordinary people politically in the first place, along lines that were not reactionary but actively related to their existing circumstances.

Where Syriza failed is of course owed to the fact that they gravely underestimated the degree that which Brussels would work against them, they were too naive on these lines. That's why for much of us, what we learn from Syriza isn't that they were a total failure - but conclusions, such that politics must be conducted on a pan-European level in order to reach any kind of success. That's what Syriza taught us - not that their inclination to engage politics in the first place was a futility. Any other kind of conclusion, such as that "Leftists will always fail" (which is identical to saying that "Syriza failed cuz they were reformists"), is simply superstitious and emanates no concrete understanding of the complexities of their failure. That's why the fight for a European political union is something the Left must get behind - precisely the technocrats don't want this, they want to create economic policies that impact ordinary people without consulting the political.

The left dose not fail and quit. We fail, and fail again, fail better.

Do you?

No I just disagree about what constitutes those roles.

We forgive workers - for being demoralized. It's like good Lord the Father, and the two of em further combined, in flesh. We forgive you for not being good foot soldiers for us.

All I was saying is that we don't hold it against workers that they are not engaged. We hold it against intellectuals who would otherwise have the capacity to sit back and think. Intellectuals can be from worker backgrounds, and be intellectuals while also being workers. It's just that they won't represent the broad masses, their background will only be incidental. There are just as much if not infinitely more intellectuals from worker backgrounds who are reactionary.

My point is simple: We don't even expect ordinary people to have the same faith that is worthy of an engaged intellectual. Not that they committed some mistake and we forgive them, but that we don't hold it against them and don't expect this of them as a general mass. if we did expect this of them, we would already be living in Communism (or else, our expectation would be unjustified by facts).

[Anderson]

We need a new centre of advancement to political power by working class.
Long live Russian and Chinese Revolutions
We are on losing side as of now. Lets accept that first.
We need to really be better at our mission - apologies to those here who are not sure whether this is worth the time - Anyway cheers to you all for being on this incredible forum.

[VCrakeV]

Only read the first post... Was going to read more, but I just don't have the time right now... So, pardon me if I'm interrupting a current discussion.

Can the first step of "what we should be doing" be summarized as getting more people to think critically about political and economic situations? Ie teachings, discussions, and just generally getting the idea out there. Right now, all I have planned is an awareness and discussion group at university.

[Kohai]

I'd like to have everyone here out voice and call for socialism, communism and anarchism. In my city, there aren't hardly any communists or socialists that I know of and I'm not sure that there are really any at all. I don't want to liberate alone, I want my fellow revolutionaries to be with me! We want equality and freedom and I want to have our voice be heard across the world. What do I do in my city to make us known? Do i start a protest in the middle of downtown? Do i blow stuff up? Vandalise? Riot? I'm really not sure what the best option is so I would like to hear everyone's opinion on what i/anyone can do to sound our trumpets and what is in the interest of communists, the working class, anarchists, humans, etc,.