this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2024
91 points (85.3% liked)
Memes
45659 readers
1633 users here now
Rules:
- Be civil and nice.
- Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
You've written walls of text in this thread, yet it's not clear what it is you're actually proposing. How exactly are you planning to reach people if not by talking with them?
In the modern era the problem isn't "reaching people". It's getting them to show up. It's the same problem of electoral politics dude.
If I am a McDonalds worker you have to convince me that it's worth my time to go to your little meetings, time that I could be using to watch Mr Beast give someone a million dollars in return for the same kind of light torture I experience at my job.
Talking to leftists is the same as talking to Democrats sometimes. You just have to be "the smartest" while willfully not understanding that to a real life worker your hands look as empty as the lib next to you.
You're not competing with 20th century poverty, you're competing with 21st century dopamine rat poverty and the left as a whole hasn't evolved to handle that.
Getting them to show up for what specifically?
Again, people need to understand what it is that's being proposed and why it's in their interest to participate. If you can't even articulate that here, whom are you going to convince exactly. And yes, you are very much dealing with real genuine poverty and overwork in 21st century. Millions of people are struggling to make ends meet, working multiple jobs, and being stuck in debt.
In that order, as it's more difficult to actually win gains through "polite" society shit like voting and negotiations, you have to do things that require more sacrifice. And in fact the terrain isn't an even gradient because union meetings and card signing has a lot more risk, than being represented by an existing unionized shop and showing up on the right side of a contract vote.
If you are in any way thinking that the conditions in the 21st century US are equivalent rather that merely rhyme with the conditions in the 19th and 20th in Russia as much as you can take "What is to be Done?" off the shelf and use it as a playbook then there's really no point in this discussion.
The reality of history is that labor consciousness developed through completely two different antithetical processes across the Atlantic. The creation of the IWW literally is the refutation of the core thesis of "What is to be Done?" that class consciousness cannot spontaneously emerge out of labor action with bosses. Lenin was right for his time in Russia, he is not universal. His further global success is based on the export of support and material from the USSR to movements, and that tactic effectively failed in China which lead to the Sino Soviet Split.
Your failure to actually describe realistically the terrain of the labor movement in the US in the 21st century is literally the first hurdle. We don't have theorists in the US capable of this anymore. We don't produce that as a society. Russia had a grand tradition of intelligensia where there were hundreds of people like Lenin writing.
And how are you going to convince them to show up to that union meeting exactly. Perhaps you might even have to talk to them, to have a conversation where you convince them that showing up for a union meeting is in fact in their interest. That's what debate, discussion, and education means.
Weird straw man since nowhere did I say that. What I said is that there is real poverty in the US, and people are struggling to make ends meet. Nowhere did I suggest there's going to be some sort of a proletarian revolution in the US as there was in Russia at the start of the 20th century.
Also, there are plenty of highly intelligent and articulate people in US who explain the problems in clear terms. Russia doesn't have some unique tradition of grand political theorists. The problem in US is that most people don't think they need to be educated, and want quick and easy solutions to difficult problems.
I'm going to stop here because it's clear that we're not getting anywhere convincing each other of anything. I've said all needed to say here.