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this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2025
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He's so fucking lucky that we don't have an organized left in this country
Mao said that it took the CPC longer to get to 10,000 members than it did from 10,000 to a million. And you wouldn't believe what
membership is looking like these days.
When the conditions are right, a small, well prepared organization can make a very large and powerful revolutionary movement very quickly.
They were also working in a country with an actual proletariat class is the thing.
Ok. If you think revolution is impossible, no one's coming to force you off the armchair.
Thanks, this armchair is pretty comfy
Please use SovietBeerTruckOperator's username as per the tags SovietBeerTruckOperator has set
I'm repeating a Simpsons meme, not addressing this person in any way.
Although I get that other users were uncomfortable enough with the reference as it referred to this user that there were reports about it. It's not a big deal just be more respectful of pronoun tags in the future
I generally am, and I get that people might not understand that it's a reference to a known quote (which doesn't make it automatically ok, even if it is), it's annoying that I get this mistake permanently associated with my account in the modlog without any recourse. I wish I could have had the opportunity to correct it instead.
https://youtu.be/Lar0fNuBA1U
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
In the conditions under which the CPC made these strides, the proletariat was much smaller than the peasantry. In a typical ML analysis, the peasantry have a petty bourgeois character, or at least adopt one once liberated from landlordism. This was one of the major contributions of Mao's CPC to ML theory, as even though the Russian Empire had a similar dynamic, it was not as extreme as China's. In the Russian Empire there had been kulakizatiom to bring more petty bourgeois character to the peasantry and undermine the landlords and the proletariat was larger. China's peasantry were often basically serfs.
This is my way of saying that basically every country has enough proletarians (we can quibble about how prole they are) compared to past successful revolutions. What we run up against most often is a deeply propagandized population that has some kind of dependency on financialization and imperialism, where they receive an "artificial" experience of their class, one heightened. Not quite a labor aristocracy, but one that fails to develop even vulgar class consciousness because nothing happens to them that can break through the propaganda. The coworkers that think unions are for lazy people and just accept being fired as a fact of life, as they are sure they will be employed again very soon, their industry being "in demand", propped up by imperialist technological advantage or some insurance grift. The PMC technocrat that, at least for now, believes they can help solve climate change for a decent wage if they just make good enough slide decks (while their paycheck actually comes from capitalist lobbyists). The retail worker that knows conditions are bad but just puts up with it because they are young and believe the line that it's a practice job and they'll naturally get paid enough and work in better conditions as they get older. It's a house of cards that I believe will crumble when imperialism becomes less effective and the expectations of these workers get a reality check. This is what I would usually call proletarianizatiom of the imperial core, it's making proles prevented from developing class consciousness by confidence in future rewards become instead more directly aware of the bum deal, of seeing their exploitation.
The real challenge is how we will contend against modern fashy reactions to what will probably be seriously incompetent first stabs at real mass left organizing.
Anyways sorry for the really long response. I hope it is relevant and makes sense.
The Chinese state was a shambles back then and the skies weren't full of murder drones. Mao would be the first person to tell you not to run the same plays he ran in the modern US.
I mean, you don't see PSL members waging guerrilla warfare in the countryside, so yeah.
Well that's kind of where the next 990,000 people came from. But maybe I was responding to a non-sequitur and it went over my head.
The 990,000 come from doing the organizing work of a communist party when institutions are dramatically failing the people and they are looking for political leadership.
Yes. While they were engaging in a guerilla war in the countryside.
Just gotta invent the Molotov EMP
do you know the reasoning behind PSL not publicly sharing numbers? from my understanding most of your members are required to be open about being communists, PSL cant be trying to hide the number from the state right???
No need to show our hand to the state, I suppose. Provides no advantage to do so - our numbers should speak for themselves in our organizing.
i dont understand this, if most members have to be public about their membership how would the feds not have at least a rough idea of how many are in the party? this is ignoring the extremely high probability of assests they've manged to slip inside the PSL who have enough access to inner party knowledge to aquire an even more accurate estimation (not trying to say PSL is co-opted by the feds btw, but i assume they've probably had got one decently highly ranked asset in each notable org in the US).
I don't quite agree with that description. Membership can be secret for any number of reasons, and even non-secret members aren't required to blast it publicly all the time.
maybe i misunderstood about public membership, i was using "have" to very loosely as in you are encouraged to do it if you dont think you will be under threat from local fascist elements. this is a vaguely remembered thing so maybe i am misremembering or something like that. regardless, see my most recent edit, unless this is like top secret information i find it hard to believe the feds dont have a decent estimate on membership.
as a side note, does PSL have an internal online forum like the DSA? asking cause i saw someone bring that up in that slop thread about r/dsa and it made me curious, seems like a relatively decent idea to exchange ideas between distant branches to me
edit: reread my first comment not even sure why i said "required"
Yeah, in sure they do. But we don't have to make it easy for them.
No. That sounds like a mess.
The DSA and being a mess, name a more iconic duo.
why? unless psl is somehow hiding some crazy numbers (especially in the military) and are preparing to try stoke the flames during the next period of large civil unrest in the next few years i dont really understand the advantage of feds knowing "somewhere between 5 and 6 thousand members" and psl putting out online that they have 5k plus members.
how so? it's a forum with inherently limited membership and tied to your real identity, moderation burden should be pretty light and provides a unified platform for discussing local tactics and discussing ideas before the party line is decided upon.
Libs and leftists
"Leftists - help us!"
"Oh, now you want our help."
"Please help us!"
"Let's start with an easy question. Are you willing give up brunch?"
"No."
"You know what? Let's cut to the chase. Are you willing to do anything at all that's radical? Anything at all..."
"No."
"Are you actually asking us to do all the hard work?"
"You need to help us!"
"Oh, it's need now - huh. Without radical action - the US is doomed."
"This was not a productive conversation. Now look what you did. You forced us to be enthusiastic about democratic party lurching to the right to get GOP voters. But it'll work this time. It will.
"Best of luck with that. But maybe it's not a good plan? But you forgot something important. Some GOP voters said that about you. That their anger at you made them vote for Trump."
"Well, fuck you flag burners who hate America anyway."
We're a nation of crabs in a potato sack
Mmm potato crab