I’m going to keep agitating this at the general cohort of Unalloyed Posters, especially now. There is no excuse at this point. You will not imagine socialism into reality. You will not imagine us out of capitalism. You need to do what you can as soon as you can and the time is and always has been Now to start locking in.
Go outside and organize. By organize, I specifically mean join a local chapter of an existing socialist organization that exists and is real and is comprised of socialists and go to their meetings and events and demonstrations as much as life allows you to.
(EDIT: And if there are no local chapters–even if there ARE local chapters–get to know your neighbors and get to know your coworkers. An antisocial socialist is a contradiction upon themself. Talk to the people around you. Push yourself to put yourself out there. Combating alienation is praxis. The more communal a community is, the more will to resist it can summon. You hear it in Minneapolis right now–the people on the ground right now are fighting for their neighbors! Take the community out of communism and you get sadomasochism.)[1]
I genuinely don’t care if there’s no organization that is aligned 1:1 with your sensibilities/preferences. If you actually care, you need to do the work to move the one that is closest to your sensibilities in that direction. Stop whinging over which specific one you join for fear of missing out on the vanguard party or whatever. My local DSA and PSL chapters coordinate with each other when prudent. Stop treating this like it’s team sports. It’s an unserious approach. You are not locked in forever to a specific org when you join it. You can change orgs. Membership is not a blood pact. You need to join an org first to do that, though. You need to join an org and you need to be an active part of your org.
Otherwise, please spare the world from irresponsible, ungrounded ‘critique.’ Without grounding in reality, without real organization and the insight it provides, it is utter drivel. Stop pre-emptively guarding yourself against disappointment. It’s cowardly and pathetic. It’s even more embarrassing than terminal vote-brain. At least voters walk their talk (voting and doing nothing for the next four years).
communism↩︎
The average human is not some evil monster lol. This is literally the most basic step of organizing, you do it or you just let the fascism wash over you
people don’t need to be evil monsters to be miserable to interact with or to breathe covid at you.
our shitty society enforces shitty norms, it doesn’t matter if the person reproducing that is ontologically evil or not, they’re still spreading disease and still bigots if you don’t stare a hole in their eyes.
If you’re so afraid of COVID that you’re not willing to speak to any person not wearing a mask, I’m not sure why you’re even in this thread. There’s not anything meaningful you can do politically without going outside.
Do you know about this disease? Do you know what it does? What it is currently doing? Do you know that there is no cure? Why are you not so afraid of it? Why are you not trying to avoid it? This is baffling to me.
I’m much more worried about the consequences of not organizing than I am of potentially getting COVID. Barring people that are immunocompromised or whatnot, staying inside while fascists literally drag people off the street makes one a failure of a leftist