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↩︎
This is such an epidemic on reddit. That is, people in left-wing spaces always talking about “Americans aren’t doing this, Americans aren’t doing that, why won’t anybody do something”. Like you said, that’s US, that’s YOU as socialists or whatever. Who the hell else is supposed to change things? DSA/PSL/FRSO/Code-Pink/Samidoun/whatever are the opposition in the US. There is no other “adult in the room” that you can just whine at and have things fixed. There are no official rules. There is no bigger plan. What we have now is what exists.
Was listening to the most recent ChapoTrapHouse episode and they do the same crap. Endlessly complaining about Democrats. Like what do you want Democrats to do? You hate them. They’re evil. Why are you complaining that they’re not doing something you know they aren’t going to do? (It’s because they need something to talk about on a podcast, I get it, whatever)
That is a good point, if you want (insert newspaper club here) to be the opposition, talk as if they’re the official opposition , not the dems. That’s half the reason Mamdani won, the DSA acted as if they were the actual contenders, rather than running as “The Squad” or some other kind of dem+
it is much easier to get an internet connection than to be within driving distance of so much as a food not bombs cell
A number of organizations, such as PSL, have remote events now and then.
Wish I had a PSL chapter near me but my DSA chapter does good work with the situation we work under
then that DSA chapter is exactly where you should be at this moment in time
Hell yeah I RESPECT the TROOPS.