I mean, if the PSL is actually a stagnant failure on the whole (or even a conscious capture group), then that’s what it is, but this way of talking about it loses me very easily. I still don’t know quite what the case being made against PSL is, other than it not being socialist enough or something and having stagnant protest tactics. Sometimes working with others who aren’t socialist doesn’t automatically mean you’re not one now. Tenuous alluding to connections between things doesn’t exactly make for a solid takedown.
I’m not trying to be mean when I say this. It’s just, I try to be open-minded about these things, but it’s hard to take the criticisms seriously in the form you are presenting them. If we said that having the wrong connections taints you, then China engaging with israel at all would mean they’ve ceased to be run by communists. Of course in China’s case, we can point to other things to show that it’s actually doing communist practice on the whole. If PSL has nothing to show for what it’s doing other than some taglines, that’s not a great sign.
Every institution has critics and attempts at socialism/communism in the west can very easily get vilified from both directions. From the “right” saying they are evil even if they’re a bunch of reformists and from the “left” saying they’re a bunch of reformists / inadequate / etc. It’s important for people to be able to tell if a criticism is legitimate and a party is actually something to stay away from, or if the situation of parties as a whole is so bad that it’d be worth more trying to be Lenin yourself, as opposed to if it’s simply that a party is flawed and it’s more a disagreement over strategy than it is ideological failure. What became the USSR was far from a single homogeneous bloc in constant agreement and even after consolidating power, they still had to deal with threats both inside and outside.
So I am asking you to consider it from this perspective, that there is a we, and that we need to know what we’re up against and working with. Not with passing high octane hits, but with a thorough understanding of the situation. As annoying as that can be sometimes to go through. People need to have something they can fight for and believe in. This means if the seeming “best there is” is overall not very good, people are still going to be inclined to make excuses for it because they don’t have an alternative. They need to know what to do, not just what not to do.
I agree that sticking to pointing out connections is by far the least effective way I can go about it. The patterns of sheepdog strategies across the linked orgs are suspicious, but this leaves people open to the impression they can overwhelm these orgs regardless of their structure & create something positive out of them. That’s what people would say whenever I made the case these were part of the CIA’s portfolio before I had much of a grasp of Marxism-Leninism.
Key issues we will get into, once I finish rewriting old pieces, which I have decided to do next since it seems like good timing:
form of organizing (not comparing recruitment messaging)
misrepresentation of US’s dependency relationships with other countries, particularly other members of the imperial core & subimperialists (let’s not repeat the mistakes of the 2nd international)
It’s been quite a long time, & nobody else has brought this up for me to passively cheer them on. I should have done it before the war started. Main people who talk about this network are just hypervigilant, clearly no idea what the party form of socialism even is.
The reasoning for putting it off (need to stare at wife, need money, need money, more money, need to go to China again, need to go on a nice walk, oh look a squirrel, people were mean to me so they should be duped by reactionaries & go die) has no weight versus the prospect of moving up the historical recognition of the alt media - social media system or whatever we call it by, idk, five years? Who knows when it will be understood. Maybe it really requires luck to figure out
It seems to me the only part of, say, Prof. Gabriel Rockhill’s criticism of the western left people have metabolized is a caricatured version where we are wary solely of people who explicitly condemn AES countries!! I think if the Zohran Mamdani types could keep it in their pants a little better with the Google Uyghurs stuff they would be more effective sheepdogs. Shit is offputting
I mean, if the PSL is actually a stagnant failure on the whole (or even a conscious capture group), then that’s what it is, but this way of talking about it loses me very easily. I still don’t know quite what the case being made against PSL is, other than it not being socialist enough or something and having stagnant protest tactics. Sometimes working with others who aren’t socialist doesn’t automatically mean you’re not one now. Tenuous alluding to connections between things doesn’t exactly make for a solid takedown.
I’m not trying to be mean when I say this. It’s just, I try to be open-minded about these things, but it’s hard to take the criticisms seriously in the form you are presenting them. If we said that having the wrong connections taints you, then China engaging with israel at all would mean they’ve ceased to be run by communists. Of course in China’s case, we can point to other things to show that it’s actually doing communist practice on the whole. If PSL has nothing to show for what it’s doing other than some taglines, that’s not a great sign.
Every institution has critics and attempts at socialism/communism in the west can very easily get vilified from both directions. From the “right” saying they are evil even if they’re a bunch of reformists and from the “left” saying they’re a bunch of reformists / inadequate / etc. It’s important for people to be able to tell if a criticism is legitimate and a party is actually something to stay away from, or if the situation of parties as a whole is so bad that it’d be worth more trying to be Lenin yourself, as opposed to if it’s simply that a party is flawed and it’s more a disagreement over strategy than it is ideological failure. What became the USSR was far from a single homogeneous bloc in constant agreement and even after consolidating power, they still had to deal with threats both inside and outside.
So I am asking you to consider it from this perspective, that there is a we, and that we need to know what we’re up against and working with. Not with passing high octane hits, but with a thorough understanding of the situation. As annoying as that can be sometimes to go through. People need to have something they can fight for and believe in. This means if the seeming “best there is” is overall not very good, people are still going to be inclined to make excuses for it because they don’t have an alternative. They need to know what to do, not just what not to do.
I agree that sticking to pointing out connections is by far the least effective way I can go about it. The patterns of sheepdog strategies across the linked orgs are suspicious, but this leaves people open to the impression they can overwhelm these orgs regardless of their structure & create something positive out of them. That’s what people would say whenever I made the case these were part of the CIA’s portfolio before I had much of a grasp of Marxism-Leninism.
Key issues we will get into, once I finish rewriting old pieces, which I have decided to do next since it seems like good timing:
form of organizing (not comparing recruitment messaging)
misrepresentation of US’s dependency relationships with other countries, particularly other members of the imperial core & subimperialists (let’s not repeat the mistakes of the 2nd international)
It’s been quite a long time, & nobody else has brought this up for me to passively cheer them on. I should have done it before the war started. Main people who talk about this network are just hypervigilant, clearly no idea what the party form of socialism even is.
The reasoning for putting it off (need to stare at wife, need money, need money, more money, need to go to China again, need to go on a nice walk, oh look a squirrel, people were mean to me so they should be duped by reactionaries & go die) has no weight versus the prospect of moving up the historical recognition of the alt media - social media system or whatever we call it by, idk, five years? Who knows when it will be understood. Maybe it really requires luck to figure out
It seems to me the only part of, say, Prof. Gabriel Rockhill’s criticism of the western left people have metabolized is a caricatured version where we are wary solely of people who explicitly condemn AES countries!! I think if the Zohran Mamdani types could keep it in their pants a little better with the Google Uyghurs stuff they would be more effective sheepdogs. Shit is offputting