I truly hope he doesn't turn out the way I think he will turn out. I know we have a lot of people on here who love Mamdani, and I'm not trying to pick a fight. But goddamn, he's not beating the allegations these days.

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[–] glimmer_twin@hexbear.net 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Please read reform or revolution and stop being so patronising with this attempted psychological profile of me because I don’t believe voting for liberals achieves the aims of the working class. It isn’t about manifesting something good to happen this time vs having a negative outlook, it’s about a historical materialist understanding of past events likely predicting future events. I feel like hitting you with a “deeply unserious” for that comment tbh but I can’t quite be that guy.

[–] MemesAreTheory@hexbear.net 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

And you can go read Left Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder, and see Lenin talk about working with electoral socialists.

I don't even have a dog in this fight, I'm just tired of people calling everything a failure without the epistemic standing to do so. It's an experiment in progress and some of your comrades here are directly involved in its execution. Some critical support seems the least we can afford them until it has concluded. In the mean time it reeks of sectarianism or doomerism to me, and that too might qualify as deeply unserious.

Wild that you're leveling death wishes on comrades for finding this shit grating.

[–] glimmer_twin@hexbear.net 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I’d love for you to find a single line of Lenin that endorses supporting liberal candidates running in bourgeois elections representing a capitalist imperialist party. It doesn’t exist which is why you just gesture vaguely towards it.

Shall we actually quote Left Wing Communism?

Frankly acknowledging a mistake, ascertaining the reasons for it, analysing the conditions that have led up to it, and thrashing out the means of its rectification—that is the hallmark of a serious party; that is how it should perform its duties, and how it should educate and train its class, and then the masses. By failing to fulfil this duty and give the utmost attention and consideration to the study of their patent error, the “Lefts” in Germany (and in Holland) have proved that they are not a party of a class, but a circle, not a party of the masses, but a group of intellectualists and of a few workers who ape the worst features of intellectualism.

Even if only a fairly large minority of the industrial workers, and not “millions” and “legions”, follow the lead of the Catholic clergy—and a similar minority of rural workers follow the landowners and kulaks (Grossbauern)—it undoubtedly signifies that parliamentarianism in Germany has not yet politically outlived itself, that participation in parliamentary elections and in the struggle on the parliamentary rostrum is obligatory ON THE PARTY OF THE REVOLUTIONARY PROLETARIAT specifically for the purpose of educating the backward strata of its own class, and for the purpose of awakening and enlightening the undeveloped, downtrodden and ignorant rural masses. Whilst you lack the strength to do away with bourgeois parliaments and every other type of reactionary institution, you must work within them because it is there that you will still find workers who are duped by the priests and stultified by the conditions of rural life; otherwise you risk turning into nothing but windbags.

You want to create a new society, yet you fear the difficulties involved in forming a good parliamentary group made up of CONVINCED, DEVOTED AND HEROIC COMMUNISTS, in a reactionary parliament!

Emphasis mine. Lenin explicitly states that yes, as long as the parliamentary form remains relevant to less class conscious sections of the working class, it can be useful for proletarian revolutionary parties to enter those parliaments, even if just for agitational/propaganda purposes. Members of a proletarian party (call it a CP, call it whatever you want, a democratically central organisation for proletarian revolution) who are elected to those offices are beholden to proletarian party discipline. They can’t just win office and immediately betray the workers like every liberal politician does - at least it is less likely and has some consequences for the class traitor.

Literally nowhere in Lenin does it say “communists should throw their support behind milquetoast social democrats running in the party that stands for murderous imperialism and capitalism in its worst form”.

Now I am going to call you deeply unserious. Please go to bluesky or something if you’re going to be this liberal and hold such indefensible positions then attempt to defend them with vibe based analysis.

Also, death threats? I literally have no idea what you are talking about lol. Grow up.

[–] MemesAreTheory@hexbear.net 0 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

So I'm the idiot for knowing the extremely common meme. I didn't say death threats, I said death wishes. What the fuck did you think you were evoking? Check yourself and your moment of being the asshole.

We're both on 5 year accounts, let's not let a simple disagreement turn into actual bad blood. I appreciate you contributing interesting and educational analysis to the conversation above. That's a lot more useful than essentially calling our comrades here working with the campaign now liberals out of hand. Frankly, I was just turning your invocation of theory around on you because if you're going to pull it as a cheap dismissal so will I. You didn't offer the suggestion in good faith and neither did I, so don't pretend you're on the high ground on that lmao. My interjections across this post is to say the dooming and disrespect being shown to people putting in real work on this is uncomradely and unnecessarily divisive until the evidence is in, nothing more. It's not all about you and your psycho social profile, simply meeting your glib energy. I'm not an electoralist or tailist myself so no, I'm not going to go digging for a quote for a position I don't support.

There may be an interesting conversation to be had about whether the material conditions of Lenin's time can even remotely be compared to our own given how meek and completely off the radar leftist theory is from public consciousness in America, and that may entail that previously unviable strategies might be worthwhile transitory ones at least until socialist theory gains wider recognition. I mean, just look at how many people radicalized after/during Bernie's campaign. Did it achieve socialism? Of course not, but it shook off the brain worms from the word itself for a lot of people who were red scare polluted because it was just part of the cultural zeitgeist.

But I suggest we cool it and post again on better terms another day. You get what you put out into the world and we're both tasting venom.