the question is how does a person in the 1st world struggle against capitalism versus how someone in the 2nd or 3rd word struggles against capitalism... or feudalism
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How can we struggle against capitalism today?
They have police, army, nuclear missiles on their side, we - nothing but words. Every year poor from all over the world are trying to break through the granite of capitalism, coming to the rich nations as refugees and then most of them being returned back to the homelessness, unemployment, hunger. Is there or would it be possible to create such a thing as a global socialist movement, that would unite all the left forces in the world and would act towards certain objectives in every country? I witnessed the rage with which books of Marx and Engels were destroyed in Russia during the time of capitalist transition: they were burned, some were used as construction material, ect; it was common to see fragments with Marx's face in the dirt on the streets of the cities, while the TV grandiosely reported the defeat of communism promising it would never return to the face of the earth again. After that followed the years of famine when people and children were dying on the streets...
the question is how does a person in the 1st world struggle against capitalism versus how someone in the 2nd or 3rd word struggles against capitalism... or feudalism
How can we struggle against capitalism today?
Yes nothing but words -- at the moment. I think you hit the nail on the head, at least for the situation in my region. In the US past locations of class power (primarily unions, although they are problematic) and incubators of class consciousness (again, mainly unions but also working class communities in urban and suburban industrial areas) have been disrupted or weakened externally and internally.
The effect is no sense of class power which on the one hand makes capitalist individual competition among worker more of a lived experience (which reenforces capitalist ideas among the population) and on the other means class, let alone revolutionary socialist, ideas just words. In the world of words, capitalist and socialist ideas are equal. But since capitalism is a daily fact, this gives more weight behind their arguments (no matter how absurd and easy to pick apart and no matter how logical or reasonable a socialist argument is.
So we need to build our ideas while looking for ways to help other workers build their class power which in turn will build class consciousness and confidence and give weight to socialist ideas.
So it's not any easy answer: we have to build movements in order for there to be various regional movement that then can begin to coordinate or learn from eachother.
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I think we are sitting on a powder keg of potentially explosive social change. People are more growing knowledgeable about the world around them I think now more then ever and its likely that this will cause a large scale breakdown of the current order.
I honestly think now is the time to start thinking Militancy in the western world. Organizing Anti-fascist and Anti-capitalist actions and forming new alliances between active groups.
If you want to combat capitalism you can either be destructive or creative. Attack institutions like banks and industry; or be creative and work towards creating a viable alternative to capitalism in your community.
This talks about Anarchist economic practices in a ‘capitalist’ society
This was made by a organization on New York I believe that shows some ideas on how to combat capitalism with an Anarchist counter economy now instead of waiting for some theoretical revolutionary event.
Through the process of working towards a communal economy you will likely find like-minded comrades and perhaps be able to do some real damage; both creative and destructive, to capitalism.
Direct action is needed now!
"It is only by the abolition of the state, by the conquest of perfect liberty by the individual, by free agreement, association, and absolute free federation that we can reach Communism - the possession in common of our social inheritance, and the production in common of all riches." ~Peter Kropotkin
"Let us fight to free the world - to do away with national barriers - to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness. Soldiers! in the name of democracy, let us all unite!" ~Charles Chaplin
"Communism is Anarchy. You can't regulate or reform your way to communism; it can only be achieved by direct action against state, class and capital."
You are right, and on top of that what we have in USA and in many other capitalist nations is people of the low income classes with an excess of narcissism, an excess of pride, silence, and lack of communication of problems and pains. In a country like USA where the low income sectors (that are supposed to be pro-communism and political active) are so lazy, so conformists and so silent, there is not even a need of police to prevent the rise of a communist party into the US government
MikeN: I forgot to add that the right-wing is not really to blame for poverty and misery. The ones that radical leftists should blame for this world of misery and poverty, is the leaders and owners of most radical leftist parties who are so group-narcissists that they hate other marxists from other tendencies, which leads to a divided far-left. And then we also have to blame and should blame the great majority of poor people that are more capitalists than Bill Gates.
Another thing that is to blame for poverty, misery, boredom, and pain is that most people, are full of fear and have zero warrior institnts, zero willing to fight, to fight the political enemies (rich class, capitalist class, capitalist system and lower class and middle class who are anti-communism). When people's warrior instincts have been maimed and destroyed by morality, religion, media, schools, laws etc. they won't be able to fight with violence and passion against their own political enemy which is capitalism, capitalist class, middle class and even lower class people who are anti-communism.
So because of all these problems together:
1- a divided left, group-narcissist leftist parties like The Socialist Equality Party of USA which is very group-narcissist. I used to be part of the political debates of their news website http://www.wsws.org/ (World Socialist Web Site). But most of their members lack love between each other, are too unfriendly and lack the necessary humility toward other leftist members of that website
2- The great majority of poor people who also hate communism (lower class people who hate communism, middle class people who hate communism)
3- The excess of fear, excess of pacifism, of anti-violence, anti-war attitude in the great majority of poor oppressed people
4- Physical weakness, lazyness
5- Lack of knowledge of basic politics, and knowledge about reality
6- Extreme love for their own nation, for their own country (an excess of emotional love toward the place in which people are born, can destroy any hatred, any necessary violence against the oppressor class
7- Unwilling to hate, people are also educated not to hate any thing and anybody. When humans do not hate negative things, they will accept it and have no problem living with it. There is no way we can see a destruction of capitalism to be replaced by a socialist state, if people don't hate first capitalism
8- Low will to power, low will to be the ruling class of the nation
9- And many many many other factors that prevent the unity of the left and the rise of the radical left to be able to destroy capitalism
10- The destruction of the political systems that were an experiment toward socialism, but have been destroyed by the burocracy, reformism and infiltrated bourgeoise politicians. Like the bolivarian revolution, and the other anti-imperialist revolutions that are in economic crisis and that because its population are in economic crisis (maybe created and caused by global capitalist imperialists) they are giving a bad reputation to marxist radical socialist ideology
Well it's a frustrating thing to be a revolutionary in a non-revolutionary time, but I don't think there is anything necessarily automatic about being pro-communist for anyone. There are a lot of things stacked against this automatically. workers need to bend themselves to meet the needs of bosses to get a job, workers have to compete with each other for a job... these realities make capitalist thinking "common sense" to a degree. On top of the material experience, the ruling class puts a hell of a lot of effort into convincing the population that this order is natural and unalterable. Then there's a whole lot of daily repression and restrictions that make organizing difficult at best. I don't think they fear an imminent communist movement, but I think they fear the radicalization of black lives matter or occupy like movements... which would likely begin to demand things akin to a communist movement or develop and feed into one.
What is automatic is class struggle--but workers in the us have been loosing this struggle for more than a generation. This reinforces ruling class propaganda, causes cynicism and defeatism, and smothers any budding class consciousness because people have no reliable class-based way to fight back. What's the readymade alternative for workers who can not join with others in their class to fight for collective advancement and power? Individual methods for attempting to increase personal power or stability.
Defeated people are more likely to fight each other for rotten scraps compared to people who have tasted master's wine and food and hunger to take the whole meal for themselves.
So I don't think it's a failing on the moral character of workers--it's a result of defeat followed by increasing austerity compounded over years.
I don't think the problem of the left is lack of communicating revolutionary ideas-although we can always do better and there's room for a lot of subjective critique. I think fundamentally, until workers SEE or experience class power as an effective source of power, class consciousness will remain low and the best arguments by socialists will still seem abstract or like nice sentiments to most people.
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Can't thank this enough, although I would say there's a lack of communication of revolutionary ideas. Even ostensibly "left" people or groups are subjected to the "echo chamber effect." Some see the solution as dilution of radical theory and organization.
Of course it's not sufficient, but it is necessary to show that false "alternatives" to neoliberalism cannot resolve class struggle in a way favourable to workers. If we restrict ourselves to joining a "lively debate within [a limited] spectrum", then it's unlikely more people will understand what socialism is, let alone consider if it's possible.
"I'm a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will." - Antonio Gramsci
"If he did advocate revolutionary change, such advocacy could not, of course, receive constitutional protection, since it would be by definition anti-constitutional."
- J.A. MacGuigan in Roach v. Canada, 1994
Why isn't it possible to create mini communist communities within the global capitalist context, so to say global island/s of salvation for all losers? I think the whole question comes down to this: kill or not kill losers of capitalism. Today it is solved this way: they risking their lives and spending the last savings, using all means possible, try to break through the lines of defense of the so called successful capitalist countries; then they are put in prisons, made to go through the humiliating process and then 10% are allowed to start a new life but 90% are returned to where they came from. So the problem is not getting solved at all for 90% of the losers! A person only spends energy, the hard earned money (under capitalism) and gets returned back to where he fled from. (Im not saying that all refugees are losers of capitalism, some of them may be capitalists themselves, criminals, ect, but this is the natural place for a loser) We know that the traditional place for losers in capitalist countries is the garbage dump, the lowest level of society, where they "survive" by scavenging, ect. The idea is to create such communities globally where level of life would be lets say 10 times higher than on a garbage dump.
Good question.
The problem with this approach is that it would suffer from the political problem of 'letting the bourgeoisie off the hook', meaning that grassroots efforts for humane ways of living in the here-and-now would implicitly *tolerate* continued class rule because it would be at the 'ground' level -- also vulnerable to military-type attacks as we see in many Third World situations.
History, Macro-Micro -- politics-logistics-lifestyle
Instead (I would say) the point should be to leverage our collective material position as the *producers* of the world and its economy -- our strength -- so as to *displace* bourgeois rule, all at once, so that conditions of class struggle, overthrow, and post-capitalist common control over social production are broadly-*even* and geographically consistent, or 'egalitarian'.
Here's a current example of what happened to someone who bucked the state's education system:
Kiarre Harris, Arrested For Parenting While Black
http://www.revleft.com/vb/threads/19...ng-While-Black
I believe the thing to do now is to come to an agreement on our ideology. Without this, we cannot hope to challenge capitalism. My critique of your comments on Ukraine is a part of this process.
Can you provide a link to this critique of yours -- ?
<--Man I would very happy if we had nothing but a lot of words, like you said in this comment.
In the United States of America, we don't even have words coming from the mouths of the economically oppressed. There are 3 classes in USA (upper, middle and lower classes). The upper class and middle class are anti-communism right-wing classes. And the only class that could be pro-communism is the lower-class.
But in USA the lower class thinks that if they emulate, copy, imitate the political ideology and the behaviour patterns of the upper classes and of the middle classes, they will sooner or later be as physically attractive, as rich and as full, self-realized and happy as the members of the upper class and middle class (George Clooney, Tom Cruise, Taylor Swift doctors, lawyers etc) (the 2 anti-communism right-wing classes) (narcissism, arrogance, hate, pride, mysanthropy and evil).
So at the end of the day what we have in USA is 3 right-wing anti-communism classes with behaviour patterns of arrogance, evil, narcissism, silence, social phobia, family narcissism, group narcissism, church narcissism. That does not require FBI, CIA and police to prevent them from being communists and to overthrow the capitalist state.
That's why I don't really know how will we see socialism (a workers' state) and a social-democrat government in USA in the near future. A capitalist system with human face (Capitalism with free medical care and free university professions), in a society where the lower class are supposed to be pro-communism and are supposed to be right now taking part of the Refuse Facism protests, the anti-Donald Trump protests going on in the whole country by a minority of the lower classes. Because I think that the majority of US citizens of the lower classes are not taking part in any active anti-capitalism, anti-imperialism, anti-donald trump protests
Just the other day there was a major media news item about Trump's slumping popularity:
Poll: President Trump's approval rating hits a new low
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/p...-low/99409570/
I think this barometer is what we on the left have been anticipating due to Trump's losing of the popular vote -- he made many blatantly overextended / false campaign promises, to round-up the political capital / support he needed for the win.
