#i think the committee might be important but i don't think they're necessary all the time

[asterdeer]

been rewatching gravity falls during therapy and i think "double dipper" unlocked something in my brain for real. yeah it does feel like there are often 12 or 13 of me in my brain, all yelling about Plans and being Correct and how to do things Exactly Right Or Else You're Evil And Bad And Probably Ruined Everyone's Day And Will End Up On The Internet As A Subject Of Ridicule. there's also a half-baked version of me that's just Screaming. maybe sometimes it's okay to just douse the whole committee with a can of sprite and see what happens without them. maybe this will make it easier to ask if the anxiety-inducing thing has the power the committee is telling me it has or if maybe i can just not micromanage myself into paralysis and self-hatred.

[firefly7probably]

Thank you for responding!

If you've joined the organizing committee for your union drive then there's a good chance you're more experienced in organizing than I am. I apologize for assuming you were inexperienced and a liberal.

I don't disagree with pointing out his inadequacies, but in the last two paragraphs you did generalize what he was doing wrong to be true of "the people that want to make it happen" and "the group of people that wants an AMERICAN REVOLUTION", which is of course a very wide group of people with varying beliefs and knowledge levels.

I agree that a lot of online leftists are down for a revolution, without actually doing much reading or knowing how to organize. A lot of people get jaded with capitalism and the US government, and base their ideology off of that, but find it uninteresting to examine exactly how socialist revolutions have played out in the past, or how capitalism actually functions. There's a number of forums online that are basically "sit back and wait for China to save the day", and these are largely unhelpful crowds.

I also agree that, ideally, every pro-revolution person would be able to adequately explain the rationale behind a revolution, how it might be carried out, who would be affected and how, what things would look like afterwards, what could go wrong, and answer any questions that came up to them. The most important skill to have as a socialist is absolutely being able to patiently explain concepts to others.

That said, it's impossible for every member of a social movement to have fully read the literature, to understand everything that is going on, to be a leader. As you said, many people in America are illiterate (these numbers did surprise me when I looked them up, thank you for mentioning that), and beyond that, most people in an actual revolutionary scenario won't have the time or resources to read dozens of theory books. This doesn't mean they can't understand what they're doing, but it often means they'll be bad at explaining it.

In fact, for many successful revolutions in history, most of the members of the revolutionary force were, indeed, illiterate, and many of them would have done a piss-poor job explaining what they were fighting for.

So, I think it's unfair to harshly judge a movement just because some (or many) of its members are poor at debate or explanation.

What's more important is being able to look at the organizations involved, and seeing which of them are good at explaining their ideas, which of them put a priority on the education of their own members, which of them are democratic enough to take feedback and shift course when they're wrong.

We're entering a period of American history where there will be a lot of unrest. The US empire is falling apart, real wages have stagnated for the last 50 years, the cost of housing and education has risen substantially, we're gearing up to fight wars against Russia, Iran, and China all at once, Covid is still around, etc etc. It's important to put a lot of scrutiny on organizations which claim to lead the way to revolution, because there are a lot of interested people who won't know how to tell between a strong revolutionary program and a weak one. The structure and ideology of these organizations could genuinely mean the difference between revolution in 50 years and revolution in 100+.

Still, I don't think it's negotiable that a revolution is necessary, and that those with a vague idea that a socialist revolution would be good are further along than those who deny its possibility or its necessity.

I agree that a revolution would cause a lot of immediate harm to a lot of people. A revolution is a type of war, it's going to involve a lot of death and destruction. The question that needs to be asked, of course, is "what is the alternative to revolution?" I believe that capitalism is unsustainable, that it becomes less and less stable as time goes on, and history suggests that the people with power under capitalism, when capitalism is falling apart, heavily promote fascism, because fascism provides for endless scapegoats, and allows the government to clamp down hard on any left-wing activity, thus keeping capitalism afloat for a little while longer. Both Hitler and Mussolini came to power, supported by business interests, in states with failing economies where socialist revolution seemed a real possibility--they both ran their countries into the ground, but not without first making a lot of money for businesses.

I know "If we don't revolt, Hitler 2.0 will come along," sounds very doomer-y, but it's also true that far-right politicians are gaining popularity throughout America and Europe, and this trend will become more severe as the economy frays further, and as our imperialism becomes less able to extract wealth from the Global South. If the choice is between fascism and communism, then it's better to have a revolution sooner, before things get too dire, than it is to have one later.

And there is reason to hope! Historically, things have turned out... pretty okay. The only socialist state I'm aware of which was not a marked improvement on what came before, was that of Cambodia. For all their flaws, the USSR and China and Vietnam and Cuba and such have managed to do better than their peers (compare the USSR to Latin America, China to India, Cuba to Haiti... They've done pretty well!) These countries had (and have) a lot of issues, but they also improved the lives of hundreds of millions of people, and brought impoverished nations to great economic success.

I’m still reeling. I am BEGGING “revolution not reform” leftists to actually come up with a plan.

I got into an argument yesterday on TikTok (bad idea, I know), because I commented that instead of coming up with an actual solution, a lot of leftists will choose instead to just argue and piss all over themselves, or use buzzwords or fall for propaganda. Of course that made someone upset. So I asked him, “What is the solution? You want a revolution, what does that look like? What are we going to do?”

After several rounds of pointless insults, do you know what his answer was?

“Organize.”

And when I asked him how we were supposed to organize (because that literally means NOTHING), do you know what he said?

“Google is free.”

The group of people that wants an AMERICAN REVOLUTION wants others to GO ONTO GOOGLE DOT COM and ask GOOGLE DOT COM how to overthrow the American government. As if that wouldn’t get my ass a knock on my door from the FBI immediately.

This is why people are not taking the idea of revolution seriously. It’s not that people don’t want a revolution, god knows we’re overdue. But the people that want to make it happen have actively no idea how. They’ve spent so long throwing around useless buzzwords that they don’t know what those words actually mean. You want to organize but you don’t know how to put anything together. You want community but you can’t even tell me the first thing about your actual real life neighbors. You tell other people to have a scrap of empathy but you have none yourself. And you think you can lead the people?

If you want to lead a revolution then lead.