Just put up a piece on the abject horror of capitalism so some "left" folks can read that instead of having to look in the mirror and face why they do so little to seriously confront the reigning order. Enjoy.
The problem with the post, as with all such sectarian screeds, is that it can't seem to imagine how one might integrate some (not all) of these 'sins' into the 'political work' needed to seize power. I'm imagining Street delivering his withering critique of capitalism (with which I agree) to, say, average White US workers, the ones who voted for Obama twice, only to turn to Trump in disgust and desperation.
Oratory, even the most magnificent conceivable, devoid of day-to-day substance, of a real-life, personal connection, will not convince today's working class (a very different group than Lenin addressed) the necessity (or even desirability) of overthrowing the present systems of oppression. Millions of the very people needed are terrified of the 'socialist/communist' Democrats. Speeches about political economy or geopolitics ain't gonna change that. On the other hand, actual experience in a locally controlled operation (work, medical, housing, community garden.....) just might convince them that they don't need the 'benevolence' of Volvo-driving, latte-sipping, bi-coastal, elitist liberals, but they also don't need to be deprived of basic necessities.
See right off the bat., we see you think the Trump base is working-class populist or at least you help channel that GOP/Dore/C Johnstone/Tucker/pink-brown narrative (you have company in even Chomsky so feel good about that) though nice of you to specify white...which means no serious invetigation of the data. This is just religion on the trumpyleft. Then the misleading phrases "sectarian" and "screed" both of which are badly misapplied to this document --- quite ridiculously so I might say --- if one reads it with any care. And then the absurd critique that it doesn't imagine a political project when it is in fact just one part of a five part series - a series that makes no claim to offering a full on What is to be Done but that is part of clearing out some of the nonsense that is making a coherent revolutionary strategy impossible. And then your use of the word sin, which you actually put in quote marks to pretend it is used here. Wow, John --- borderrs on disgraceful. This is what I'm talking about, people.
Makes me think where on the lame am I. When I worked for Sane/Freeze, then to become Peace Action I would deprecate my lack of canvas skills. How well I became hyper-pacifist yet still passive-ist. You manage to write concise and coherent throughout your critique. I will draw on the points you made. They are very well taken.
(9) Yes I label myself as one if those awful liberals anti capitalist but I sin: I'm a Portfolio of equities owner
(10) yes I give allegiance to service- ism. Work with folks with like minded seviceism to our communities fighting the good fight to make it better.
(11) yes I participate in local(ism) issues of environmentalism, affordable housing, green energy. support local farming...I could go on but enough of my petty self agrandising aren't I just wonderful
(12) yes I participate in single-issue-ism: see my partial listing above (11)
(13) and yes I practice pacifism: no gun. No boxing gloves. No marshal art skills. No violence for me...peace brother and sisters.
What can I say Paul but: forgive me father for I have sinned all 9 thru 13 of you anti commandments I commit daily. Guess you and your followers/readers have to put me on the naughty list. I just don't have it in me to be the revolutionist needed to get us out of capitalism and into socialism/communism
oh I don't expect this series to not elicit defensive response. That's the point. I have done and do a number of these things --- direct service/mutual aid, single issue, local stuff, and no I don't own guns or boxing gloves etc. --- but I don't confuse any of that with revolution and am convinced that we need an actual socialist revolution, nothing less. When I engage in local and single issues I do so in a very different way and with a very different framework than most of what one sees on the left. There's zero language of "sin," zero, in my series....I find the really existing US left horribly inadequate and misguided and often kinda stupid or at least ignorant but sinful? No, never. I'm not sure you saw the parts where I said that left anarchs are valued allies in revolutionary struggle and where I said that of course decent human beings try to assist and serve people who are hurting --- of course. The Old Brick story is not made up: it really was that awful and a sign that the next four years would sadly not see "the left" do what it should have done: remove the Trump-Pence regime with a mass movement in the streets. Again and again I helped Refuse Fascism beseech people to take en masse to the streets and public squares to seriously take on that regime and the system underlying it and again and again these various seventeen afflictions (I conclude with 14-17 next week) kept people stuck in their own little sad lanes. Look at the situation here now --- not really that much to boast about on "the left," for God's sake. Seriously. Maybe we can learn from all this and build the movement/s we need. You may have noticed from some of my previous recent reports that fascism is marching along quite nicely here.
And to be clear, I do not here denounce direct service, local activism, and single issue activism as such. I have fairly good experiential background in the great majority of the "afflictions" I discuss in this series. I've been inside most of them, so to speak. The exceptions are Trumpenleftism, geopolitical neo-campism (though I did briefly write for RT-America and [just 2 pieces] Consortium News so I guess that's some inside experience), conspiratorialism, wokester hyper-identitarianism (though I did once work as the research director of a local bourgeois "anti-racist" NGO), and reflexive anti-communism. So I have committed 5 of the 17 "sins" (LOL) in my series.
good post.
Definitely! :)
Just put up a piece on the abject horror of capitalism so some "left" folks can read that instead of having to look in the mirror and face why they do so little to seriously confront the reigning order. Enjoy.
John and Dennis, I just pasted the piece into Word and did a search for the world "sin." No matches. Jesus, guys...to quote Joe Biden: "come on, man."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sin LOL
The problem with the post, as with all such sectarian screeds, is that it can't seem to imagine how one might integrate some (not all) of these 'sins' into the 'political work' needed to seize power. I'm imagining Street delivering his withering critique of capitalism (with which I agree) to, say, average White US workers, the ones who voted for Obama twice, only to turn to Trump in disgust and desperation.
Oratory, even the most magnificent conceivable, devoid of day-to-day substance, of a real-life, personal connection, will not convince today's working class (a very different group than Lenin addressed) the necessity (or even desirability) of overthrowing the present systems of oppression. Millions of the very people needed are terrified of the 'socialist/communist' Democrats. Speeches about political economy or geopolitics ain't gonna change that. On the other hand, actual experience in a locally controlled operation (work, medical, housing, community garden.....) just might convince them that they don't need the 'benevolence' of Volvo-driving, latte-sipping, bi-coastal, elitist liberals, but they also don't need to be deprived of basic necessities.
See right off the bat., we see you think the Trump base is working-class populist or at least you help channel that GOP/Dore/C Johnstone/Tucker/pink-brown narrative (you have company in even Chomsky so feel good about that) though nice of you to specify white...which means no serious invetigation of the data. This is just religion on the trumpyleft. Then the misleading phrases "sectarian" and "screed" both of which are badly misapplied to this document --- quite ridiculously so I might say --- if one reads it with any care. And then the absurd critique that it doesn't imagine a political project when it is in fact just one part of a five part series - a series that makes no claim to offering a full on What is to be Done but that is part of clearing out some of the nonsense that is making a coherent revolutionary strategy impossible. And then your use of the word sin, which you actually put in quote marks to pretend it is used here. Wow, John --- borderrs on disgraceful. This is what I'm talking about, people.
Makes me think where on the lame am I. When I worked for Sane/Freeze, then to become Peace Action I would deprecate my lack of canvas skills. How well I became hyper-pacifist yet still passive-ist. You manage to write concise and coherent throughout your critique. I will draw on the points you made. They are very well taken.
Thanks,
Dan
(9) Yes I label myself as one if those awful liberals anti capitalist but I sin: I'm a Portfolio of equities owner
(10) yes I give allegiance to service- ism. Work with folks with like minded seviceism to our communities fighting the good fight to make it better.
(11) yes I participate in local(ism) issues of environmentalism, affordable housing, green energy. support local farming...I could go on but enough of my petty self agrandising aren't I just wonderful
(12) yes I participate in single-issue-ism: see my partial listing above (11)
(13) and yes I practice pacifism: no gun. No boxing gloves. No marshal art skills. No violence for me...peace brother and sisters.
What can I say Paul but: forgive me father for I have sinned all 9 thru 13 of you anti commandments I commit daily. Guess you and your followers/readers have to put me on the naughty list. I just don't have it in me to be the revolutionist needed to get us out of capitalism and into socialism/communism
***sorry Paul****
oh I don't expect this series to not elicit defensive response. That's the point. I have done and do a number of these things --- direct service/mutual aid, single issue, local stuff, and no I don't own guns or boxing gloves etc. --- but I don't confuse any of that with revolution and am convinced that we need an actual socialist revolution, nothing less. When I engage in local and single issues I do so in a very different way and with a very different framework than most of what one sees on the left. There's zero language of "sin," zero, in my series....I find the really existing US left horribly inadequate and misguided and often kinda stupid or at least ignorant but sinful? No, never. I'm not sure you saw the parts where I said that left anarchs are valued allies in revolutionary struggle and where I said that of course decent human beings try to assist and serve people who are hurting --- of course. The Old Brick story is not made up: it really was that awful and a sign that the next four years would sadly not see "the left" do what it should have done: remove the Trump-Pence regime with a mass movement in the streets. Again and again I helped Refuse Fascism beseech people to take en masse to the streets and public squares to seriously take on that regime and the system underlying it and again and again these various seventeen afflictions (I conclude with 14-17 next week) kept people stuck in their own little sad lanes. Look at the situation here now --- not really that much to boast about on "the left," for God's sake. Seriously. Maybe we can learn from all this and build the movement/s we need. You may have noticed from some of my previous recent reports that fascism is marching along quite nicely here.
And to be clear, I do not here denounce direct service, local activism, and single issue activism as such. I have fairly good experiential background in the great majority of the "afflictions" I discuss in this series. I've been inside most of them, so to speak. The exceptions are Trumpenleftism, geopolitical neo-campism (though I did briefly write for RT-America and [just 2 pieces] Consortium News so I guess that's some inside experience), conspiratorialism, wokester hyper-identitarianism (though I did once work as the research director of a local bourgeois "anti-racist" NGO), and reflexive anti-communism. So I have committed 5 of the 17 "sins" (LOL) in my series.