I feel like the way to make revolution in the US (in a general sense) is actually quite clear. The broader left needs to organize under a disciplined party that sows itself deep into the American proletariat and teaches them to fight - like actually fight with strikes, weapons, sabotage, etc. - and win things for themselves. I don’t think the material situation is particularly ripe for it but it doesn’t matter because most of the American “left” are radlibs that reject this as the means of making change instead opting for something between non-profit work or endless “party building” among the middle class.

Seeing all these people return to the same platitudes of “resistance” “non-violence” and trying to recruit off of Trump taking power again is driving me up a wall.

I did think it looked pretty but otherwise it sucked.

Would I be wrong to say that the carnage and mayhem of the last four years was at least made substantially worse if it wasn’t entirely a product of high level Democrats conspiring to kill tepid social democracy in this country by installing a senile old man at the top of their party?

I don’t believe the president could single handedly fix everything but this ceasefire deal is highlighting just how pathetic of a president Biden has been.

Both of these organizations include police unions. I’m not sure if SEIU represents any MIC workers but the AFL-CIO certainly does.

I don’t think we should just write the unions off as too conservative because many people in these organizations are quite radical, but we should also be very careful not to tail them like basically every left org in the US does. It’s imperative that we develop a strong analysis and critique of these unions as well as relations to their members that can be relied on to connect the unions to the communist movement.

On top of that product is sometimes insured against theft/loss and iirc it’s a tax write off too.

I’m not really sure what point you think I’m ceding. Is it that we shouldn’t replicate the housing solutions of the post-war Soviet Union because we don’t live in the post-war Soviet Union? My point is that Marxist solutions to the housing question are based on the existing conditions, not caricatures of what the Soviet Union did 70 years ago.

I don’t really know if Marxism is relevant here

Marxism specifically is relevant here because the housing market in the US and many parts of the imperial core is the premier example of how capitalism turns in on itself and hinders the development of the productive forces in the name of profit. Capitalists will never build enough housing because the market values scarcity and the housing they do build will be as detached from social consequences as it can be.

This doesn’t mean we should want a bunch of ugly concrete apartment blocks built and administered directly by the central government everywhere (no offense to those who do), but socialism would mean structuring our economic system in a way that the state and private sector could be mobilized to build in excess of what we need rather than significantly less than what we need and to build it where it needs to be.

It’s definitely an interesting development. It’s much harder to say if it will be good or not. I don’t see substantial difference in the approaches of the AFL-CIO or their member-unions and SEIU except the latter is slightly more activist. Maybe the concentration of resources will free up lobbying and campaign money to be used in other more productive areas though I wouldn’t get too hopeful. It will shake up the labor councils all over the country though that might not mean much.

I think it also brings up a lot of questions about the last twenty years of the labor movement and what’s happening going forward. Did Change To Win succeed because SEIU style mixed organizing/lobbying is now the dominant strategy or did it fail because most of the unions are back under the AFL-CIO? Is this the labor movement cloistering together to defend their position in the face of a second Trump administration or is it in preparation for an offensive and maybe even a break from relying on the Democratic Party? Will this more effectively utilize resources or will it just lead to more confusion?

Idk the answers to any of these and I’m sure it will be a while before we find out.

I’ve been at the new Project Zomboid build. I’ve settled into one of those big houses with tall fences in the south of Muldragh and I’m trying to set it up for long term. The late game stuff seems a lot more developed now with significantly more complex agriculture, smithing, and crafting. It’s kind of all too much for single player though, like it could take months if not years of ingame time to master all of it and it’s also easy enough to loot that it’s like why bother?

Idk I’m having fun at least.

It’s good to read some critical analysis of organized labor. The article is correct when it says Labor Notes and Jacobin tend to uncritically regurgitate the reform caucus’ line whether it’s in power or not. Yet somehow these outlets remain on the forefront of labor reporting.

The left in the US desperately needs to engage with the labor movement and people as workers. Aside from some Trotskyist groups (who seem to oppose the union establishment more because of perceived “Stalinism” than actual critique) the major orgs fail to do this and they just tail the unions and all that is left is some liberal reform efforts in the unions loosely tied to DSA who end up, like DSA, supporting opportunists and sellouts. Without going to the masses as workers the left can never lead them in struggle and we’ll continue to just be citizens waving signs at protests. Without understanding the intricacies existing labor movement we will only lead them into capture by the opportunist collaborators. The left must thoroughly understand how to do both if it wants to be effective.

Love to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and thousands of collective labor-hours valorizing a guy who is gonna get on the stand and claim he didn’t do the the thing everyone supposedly supports him for doing.

There is a large segment of the American population that is sympathetic to leftist ideas. There is a miniscule portion that is actually doing anything to make them happen. That miniscule portion is the radical inteligentsia and they come primarily from the downwardly mobile children of the middle class who are still getting extensive educations and working in middle class jobs and so they are still completely isolated from the American proletariat, the one class that could actually wield power by withholding labor-power and fucking up production. Because the American proletariat is isolated from the revolutionary intelligentsia they are left disoriented, disorganized, and clueless by the barrage of bourgeois-fascist ideology that surrounds us in our day to day lives. Because the revolutionary intelligentsia doesn’t actually help direct the proletariat, they cannot scientifically analyze struggle and learn the correct ideas and methods of revolution. Thus we live in an endless cycle of radical students waving signs at the protest of the week and achieving nothing all while the world around us burns.

it seems like it’s sorta working more

The lower classes have always been vaguely supportive of or at least not opposed to terrorism whether it was 19th century anarchists or 20th century guerillas. The problem is that assassination and other forms of terrorism have never moved the masses into action. People might agree that the victim got what they deserved, but they’re just voicing the opinion they already had - that health insurance companies are evil - and historically there’s no evidence that an assassination will spur them to act on that thought.

And this is what comes out while he has almost a month of his presidency still left

Sony Ericson Z525.

That sounds like a good start. When I ran the membership committee in my area we ran some surveys and it was sort of helpful to identify the structural barriers to participation.

Making an effort to just reach out and talk to less involved members on a regular basis can be surprisingly effective too. I wanted to do more of it but nobody really wanted to pursue it with me so it died.

My great grandmother lived and worked in lumber camps for her first thirty years and then textile mills for thirty more. She smoked like a chimney and started every morning off with a screwdriver. She lived into her mid 90s. Sometimes I wonder if I should be more like her.

Lol I talked to some RevComs a few months ago. When I tried discussing labor politics with them they had no idea what I was talking about. Then they told me they knew someone who was organizing at the company I worked for. Then they asked me to join the party.

After a month of trying to get in touch with the person organizing, they told me that the effort had stalled out, they were never really involved to begin with, and they were probably going to quit in the near future. Then they asked me to join the party.

I did the math out in here maybe a week after the election and it was pretty clear that even had all third party voters voted for Harris it wouldn’t have made a difference both in the popular count or in a number of swing states. Trump’s success is because he gained a lot of votes from 2020 and Harris lost a lot. I haven’t seen breakdowns of the numbers but I would guess it was mostly abstainers or libertarian voters in 2020 that came over to him this year, not former Biden voters.

When I was in the organization I found that their internal organization was genuinely horrific and it was no surprise that they could barely do anything except glomming onto Democrat campaigns. You should focus on identifying who your members are, where they work, what they want to do, and what skills they have and how you can get them to be active. Train them to be semi-cadre who actually have a degree of discipline, education, and investment in the organization. Then you should work with them to identify and solve the issues they face, especially if they’re genuine proletarians.