i never know whether to find it encouraging that all these left groups are willing to work together or discouraging that there are so many tiny left groups that havent really shown signs of uniting in a bigger org yet
my hot take is that is the biggest problem for the “left”, there are actually more of us than i thought out there (i saw some poll recently that 2% of americans are willing to call themselves outright communist!) but we are so divided it is nearly impossible to actually 1) measure our strength and 2) actually corral the “left” energy in the masses, PSL seems like the best at it but they dont really seem to be able to do anything with it besides milquetoast peaceful protests. anyways i think a big part of this is so many of us are either unorganized or organized into orgs so tiny they struggle to meaningfully communicate/coordinate with other tiny orgs
This sounds like an excuse, but I think the sprawl of America and it’s car centric infrastructure makes it way harder to organize. When you’re in smaller country with dense, walkable urban centers, worker power is strengthened. I could be coping though. Russia’s population density surely wasn’t that high either.
I read a book written about 20 or 30 years ago about how cities had been putting in policies against any kind of fully public square type situations for a while. To discourage hanging out together. And that as you say this was part of a larger plan to disperse the population into the individuated suburbs. That concept has been very recuperated into the whole “walkable cities” and similar in the intervening years but thats not necessarily a refutation.
See it also in context that creating places like that is predicated on a prior demobilization and disconnection. No city falls out of a coconut tree. The newer post war style created during labor peace red scare. Think of redlining also as active contributor to the atmosphere. Redlining made formally illegal in US in ?70s so very much in living memory. And say nothing of settler genocidal state stealing land.
In the places with dense cities there are different (related) histories.
In other contexts, public squares are actually interventions to control civic unrest. They provide an obvious location to gather when the populous becomes agitated, which is inevitable. They are designed in ways which allow crows to be managed by cutting off routes, to guide them as required to non disruptive dispersal locations. They are usually near locations of economic and political power as the crow flies. But actually with a lot of barriers to prevent access to those.
I wouldn’t say it’s an excuse. I think that formulation is exactly what Marx had when he was writing about the Proletariat. The formation of the proletariat can’t be disconnected from enclosure. Peasants and surfs stripped of their lands and corralled into city centers to work shoulder to shoulder. Sharing their experiences together. In some sectors of the labor force that’s still true, but as we more and more embody a service and information economy, the days of working in tightly packed spaces have faded. No one has idle conversation via work email. You might not even talk to people outside your department in the same company. Capitalism wants nothing more than to atomize all of us, into little work cubes, alone for hours at a time, with no time to stick our head out of the hole and see whose around us, and if they’re ok.
Have you considered the need for my particular Post-Maoist neo-formation as the last bastion of socialism?! /s
In all seriousness, that is the depressing part, from what I’ve seen at a local level where I’m at half the work for things like ICE watch, mutual aid, etc. sees a bunch of different orgs from radlib to commie having to work on finding ways to work together and cooperate on different structures. Something that wouldn’t be needed with something more consolidated or even if there was a more formalized united front. Seems like the squeeze of the current administration is almost forcing these groups closer together, but that has the downside of the ramped insanity of the current administration.
Putting an org’s logo on a protest callout is not “working together”. Normally it’s just “hey is [org] ok to have their name on this” “yeah go ahead”, and I imagine that’s the case here.
In any case, the US left is pathetic. It’s not the left that needs to unite, but the working class. Remember that the majority of people who fought for the Red Army during the revolution were not communists; the revolutionary subject is the entire proletariat, not communists.
Maybe I’m misrepresenting some stuff as a lot of this is off memory but from what I heard out of Philly, factionalist infighting was so common there used to “beef” over who had “rights” for protests, rallies etc. Complaints about people trying to “usurp” a protest etc. were common and sometimes it was bad enough to be noticed by those outside of any of the dozen of orgs. A mutual sign-on with most of the common nominal socialist formations which has become more common in the last year or so has seen less of this which is why I found the development interesting. Is it a *strong *development that indicates the US is on the cusp of revolution? Hardly. But I don’t think I know a single person that thinks we’re where we need to be. But it’s an getting past the point of thinking eating paint chips is good nutritional advice.
I also know several of the orgs do work together fairly often. the Philly DSA, FRSO, PSL, WWP, PAAPR (Though for anyone that’s in the know NAAPR org is heavily mixed with FRSO so depending on how intertwined the Philly Chapters are that could be essentially the same membership signed on twice) and Palestine Coalition I’ve heard of working together on various smaller projects to various degrees for a while now, so just being a sign on is something that I don’t know necessarily applies here.
Tangential to the idea, I do believe there is a bit of a focus on “socialist membership” numbers that is an error committed by many on the left here considering much smaller communist organizations did much more under more repressive regimes. But I think that is people trying to cope with the lack of other types mass organizations in the US, and essentially trying to create mass socialist orgs to supplant them. (I’m dubious of that strategy since it lacks the militant power and working class governance experience of labor/tenant unions, the relief and agitation value of mutual aid groups etc. But it’s an observation I’ve had for a while and feels related towards the desire for a singularly encompassing left entity to subsume them all).
i never know whether to find it encouraging that all these left groups are willing to work together or discouraging that there are so many tiny left groups that havent really shown signs of uniting in a bigger org yet
What a mood NGL. I often feel the same thing when looking at our current state of affairs.
my hot take is that is the biggest problem for the “left”, there are actually more of us than i thought out there (i saw some poll recently that 2% of americans are willing to call themselves outright communist!) but we are so divided it is nearly impossible to actually 1) measure our strength and 2) actually corral the “left” energy in the masses, PSL seems like the best at it but they dont really seem to be able to do anything with it besides milquetoast peaceful protests. anyways i think a big part of this is so many of us are either unorganized or organized into orgs so tiny they struggle to meaningfully communicate/coordinate with other tiny orgs
This sounds like an excuse, but I think the sprawl of America and it’s car centric infrastructure makes it way harder to organize. When you’re in smaller country with dense, walkable urban centers, worker power is strengthened. I could be coping though. Russia’s population density surely wasn’t that high either.
I will tell you first hand that car centric infrastructure makes it much harder to organize
I read a book written about 20 or 30 years ago about how cities had been putting in policies against any kind of fully public square type situations for a while. To discourage hanging out together. And that as you say this was part of a larger plan to disperse the population into the individuated suburbs. That concept has been very recuperated into the whole “walkable cities” and similar in the intervening years but thats not necessarily a refutation.
See it also in context that creating places like that is predicated on a prior demobilization and disconnection. No city falls out of a coconut tree. The newer post war style created during labor peace red scare. Think of redlining also as active contributor to the atmosphere. Redlining made formally illegal in US in ?70s so very much in living memory. And say nothing of settler genocidal state stealing land.
In the places with dense cities there are different (related) histories.
In other contexts, public squares are actually interventions to control civic unrest. They provide an obvious location to gather when the populous becomes agitated, which is inevitable. They are designed in ways which allow crows to be managed by cutting off routes, to guide them as required to non disruptive dispersal locations. They are usually near locations of economic and political power as the crow flies. But actually with a lot of barriers to prevent access to those.
I wouldn’t say it’s an excuse. I think that formulation is exactly what Marx had when he was writing about the Proletariat. The formation of the proletariat can’t be disconnected from enclosure. Peasants and surfs stripped of their lands and corralled into city centers to work shoulder to shoulder. Sharing their experiences together. In some sectors of the labor force that’s still true, but as we more and more embody a service and information economy, the days of working in tightly packed spaces have faded. No one has idle conversation via work email. You might not even talk to people outside your department in the same company. Capitalism wants nothing more than to atomize all of us, into little work cubes, alone for hours at a time, with no time to stick our head out of the hole and see whose around us, and if they’re ok.
The legacy of Robert Moses weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.
Have you considered the need for my particular Post-Maoist neo-formation as the last bastion of socialism?! /s
In all seriousness, that is the depressing part, from what I’ve seen at a local level where I’m at half the work for things like ICE watch, mutual aid, etc. sees a bunch of different orgs from radlib to commie having to work on finding ways to work together and cooperate on different structures. Something that wouldn’t be needed with something more consolidated or even if there was a more formalized united front. Seems like the squeeze of the current administration is almost forcing these groups closer together, but that has the downside of the ramped insanity of the current administration.
Putting an org’s logo on a protest callout is not “working together”. Normally it’s just “hey is [org] ok to have their name on this” “yeah go ahead”, and I imagine that’s the case here.
In any case, the US left is pathetic. It’s not the left that needs to unite, but the working class. Remember that the majority of people who fought for the Red Army during the revolution were not communists; the revolutionary subject is the entire proletariat, not communists.
Maybe I’m misrepresenting some stuff as a lot of this is off memory but from what I heard out of Philly, factionalist infighting was so common there used to “beef” over who had “rights” for protests, rallies etc. Complaints about people trying to “usurp” a protest etc. were common and sometimes it was bad enough to be noticed by those outside of any of the dozen of orgs. A mutual sign-on with most of the common nominal socialist formations which has become more common in the last year or so has seen less of this which is why I found the development interesting. Is it a *strong *development that indicates the US is on the cusp of revolution? Hardly. But I don’t think I know a single person that thinks we’re where we need to be. But it’s an getting past the point of thinking eating paint chips is good nutritional advice.
I also know several of the orgs do work together fairly often. the Philly DSA, FRSO, PSL, WWP, PAAPR (Though for anyone that’s in the know NAAPR org is heavily mixed with FRSO so depending on how intertwined the Philly Chapters are that could be essentially the same membership signed on twice) and Palestine Coalition I’ve heard of working together on various smaller projects to various degrees for a while now, so just being a sign on is something that I don’t know necessarily applies here.
Tangential to the idea, I do believe there is a bit of a focus on “socialist membership” numbers that is an error committed by many on the left here considering much smaller communist organizations did much more under more repressive regimes. But I think that is people trying to cope with the lack of other types mass organizations in the US, and essentially trying to create mass socialist orgs to supplant them. (I’m dubious of that strategy since it lacks the militant power and working class governance experience of labor/tenant unions, the relief and agitation value of mutual aid groups etc. But it’s an observation I’ve had for a while and feels related towards the desire for a singularly encompassing left entity to subsume them all).