#socialist praxis

[khruschevshoe]

There is a conversation to be had about the fact that Taylor Swift's album is being played in its entirety across all of iHeartRadio's 868 stations, pushing out the opportunities other artists might have had to get radioplay. That's the literal definition of a monopoly. No wonder she'll hit the top of the radio play charts with this maneuver, because at least 65 minutes (if not the back side of the album, which would take it to nearly twice that length) across EIGHT HUNDRED AND SIXTY EIGHT STATIONS will be dedicated to her, artificially boosting her radio play and decreasing everyone else's. In this essay I will—

[whereserpentswalk]

You cannot opt out of capitalism to destroy it. At best you can save yourself from capitalism that way. If someone's plan to fight capitalism is to create a new community somewhere in the woods, they don't want to fight capitalism, they want to start a high control group nine times out of ten, the other one time out of ten they just want a few middle-class people to escape it.

Our mutual aid networks, our community organizations, our unions, must exist within the towns and cities of our nation, and must be things every worker has access to. That is what threatens capitalism. It's what scares them. They aren't scared by a commune in the woods, because that commune can never serve as an alternative to their system for most people, it will never be bigger than the capitalist world, at least without being forced to join it, if anything they'd be happy that socialists built their own gulag. What they're scared of is a network that any worker can draw support from, unions that their workers use to collectively bargain, within the towns and cities that their workers live, that's what an actual threat to their power looks like.

A commune that's separate from capitalist society isn't resistance it's surrender.

[anarchopostings]

Zine Rec: Sticking To It

So, you wanna get into public Vandalism?

"Sticking To It" is marketed as a Beginners guide to stickering, identifying, and countering Fascist propaganda. Although with an Anarchy A on the front, it is written with a non-anarchist focus, so it can be picked up by any aspiring antifascist.

The zine takes the reader through a series of sections that go over the basics of why someone would want to sticker/deface public property, fascist propaganda and groups to look out for, and how to both create and take down propaganda on your own.

This zine includes multiple lists, including a long list of dogwhistles and Fascist groups to get an aspiring leftist started, as well as a list of ways to both remove and aquire material.

Originally found on Sprout Distros monthly zine shout out, it isn't very popular simply because of how new it is, but the contents can easily help any leftist begin to pickup the simple art of praxis that is Stickering.

It keeps itself basic, leaving room both for growth later and also for the reader to learn on their own how to get better.

Overall, a very useful zine that can help be a starting point for Praxis.

[anarcho-catboyism]

I think we should be attempting to find pockets of people in our communities and start building "safe zones" in our areas. Staying close together, helping each other, having large servers or chats to keep each other up to date, etc.

Like imagine if you found a few people and formed a small, decentralized "collective" of sorts. Maybe you live in the same neighborhood or across the city, but you all keep in contact. Sure maybe you hangout like friends but more importantly you begin to share knowledge and help each other. You each begin to grow food, whether 1 plant in a raised bed or an entire backyard depending on your circumstances, and you pass food to each other and others. You begin to add people over time. You make an online place to talk, maybe like a discord server (bad example Opsec wise, but think something similar), where you update everyone as things go. People can post if they need help and get aid, people can coordinate donating supplies to each other, anything from food to HRT to clothing etc. People can post if they saw fascist propaganda like racist stickers, where, and how to take them down. People share ideas for better ways to support each other and others, and when the collective gets big enough, planning larger things for larger communities. An affinity group, but instead of focused heavily on political motivation, is instead motivated to help people. No leaders telling collective members what to do, no expectations except that you're there to help make your small part of the world better.

Imagine being apart of a group of people, whether a few minutes or longer apart, working together with those near to make the world better in just small but meaningful ways. Working outside the collective to start showing people by example that we don't have to wait to help each other.

[thirdtimed]

i liked parkour civ its like baby sensory videos straight to my head But it Does hurt me in the way that whenever i see someone unironically praising it for being a quote "brilliant portrayal of capitalism/dismantling of meritocracy" i wince a little (a lot) inside

[dionysus-complex]

this is not a coherent theory of anything except my own lived experience, but as someone who came of age in a leftist subculture in a liberal-ish but very white city in one of the reddest states in the US where even centrist Democrats are completely shut out of power at anything except the local level and basically gerrymandered into non-existence, I must say that there's something about having no hope of actually achieving anything through electoral means that causes leftist circles to become clique-ish and maximalist and obsessed with ideological purity. combine that with the fact that a lot of people there have been raised in or around a religion that emphasizes personal purity and the second coming of Christ and well it's real easy to leave the church and subscribe to a leftist-atheist version of that worldview without questioning most of the underlying assumptions

[barely-coherent-anarchist]

reminder that praxis is, and i cannot stress this enough, extremely important to anti-capitalism as a movement.

sure, reading theory is important, but what's the point of reading said theory if you don't put it into practice in some way?

now, that doesn't mean that theory is useless, in fact i'd say the opposite. Theory is the basis for which IRL direct action is predicted on, but without putting said theory into practice, nothing will change.

join a union, organise in your local community, practice mutual aid, join a picket line, donate to mutual aid and strike funds if possible, spread leftist ideas however you can.

but remember that theory is nothing without praxis, and praxis is nothing without theory.

[music-for-them-asses]

I'm watching a Netflix documentary about consumerism and the ways companies hand trained us to buy things we don't need, all for the sake of profit. I was already feeling meh about Christmas, but this is making it 1000% worse.

I'm also reading a book on socialism and I'm like....hmmmmmm. Shit is starting to come together, in a bad way lol

[queenalyx]

the coffee and diet coke I chugged today are really hitting hard I'm about to demolish this toilet at work

[montyshistoryblog]

You will never write a blog post or snarky reddit comment that will incite the revolution.

You can, however, organise and make sure that the world stops getting shitter, even if it doesn't improve overnight.

Saying this as a historian, you're not getting a revolution out of ideology, and if your politics starts and ends at "we'll fix it when we rise up", I hold you in the same regard I hold accelerationism, since it has the same end result.

Revolution does not happen because people are pissed off. Revolution isn't the movies, where someone makes an impassioned speech and suddenly everyone goes "Why didn't I think of that?" before overthrowing the government in a day or two. I get the impression from many leftists that that is exactly how they think it goes, that the Russian revolution was both a normal revolution (far from it, it was a bit of a lucky farce and likely wouldn't have succeeded if anything was guarded) and solved all of the problems immediately (also far from the truth, they couldn't even sign a ceasefire with the Germans).

Revolution happens when people are desperate, and I mean truly desperate. Before revolution happened in Russia, people were quite literally starving to death as grain rotted at the sides of the railway due to the war. It took war, famine, government instability and a new populist ideology taking over the cities in numbers that do NOT match modern leftist participation. Revolution is the vast majority's last resort, that's the difference between revolution and a coup.

Want to do something more realistic? Organise, get your workplace into a union, protest, commit sabotage against corporations, put pressure on your local government to actually do something. Revolution is not the answer, it's the final resort. We can revolt when the world won't need more time than we have to recover and save the world.

I think more leftists need to recognize the gap between “this should happen eventually” and “this would be feasible to achieve in the near future”

Like, I’m an anarchist. And I think an ideal world would have no nation states or borders. But that’s not going to happen tomorrow, or next year, or for a long time

So while I wait, instead of endlessly hemming and hawing over what the would should look like, I try to focus on what I can do right now to improve the world in material ways and to lessen the suffering of others

[whereserpentswalk]

I hate how "protests should be disruptive" has gone from "protests should disrupt systems of power" to "protests should disrupt the lives of the common people they're supposed to be in the name of, and have no concept of boundaries, and anyone who claims is ungrateful".

[hakaiika]

Project HECoPs Update #1

Currently writing the script for the first part of the Half-Earth Socialism Cybernetic Planning System! Currently on page 3!

[anarcho-catboyism]

Leftists aren't asking you to burn down walmarts or whatever shadow you're boxing we literally just want you to help us organize community support and mutual aid the other 364 days of the year you aren't fucking voting

[owl-liberation-now]

reposting here because apparently accelerationism is on my mind as well as all over my dash today xoxo

[genderqueerdykes]

i guess it's scary to me when white leftists say that the punk scene is the scene where you wanna go if you're trans or a person of color or a drug addict or someone else who's been kicked down in life. cuz like, if you've lived in this scene, is it really where you wanna send people?

i got involved in my local punk scene and the problem is that people aren't actually focused on looking out for each other. punk is heavily white. punk is heavily abled. punk is heavily cis. i know everyone says "real" punk is this and that, but the problem is: i live in a punk house venue. i live in a house where punks throw punk rock shows weekly and invite other punks into our home to throw music and art shows. the DIY scene is a mess. it's full of abusers. it's full of enablers. it's full of queerphobes and tranny chasers. it's full of people who collect vulnerable traumatized people. it's full of people who will hand beers to recovering alcoholics and pass lines to recovering addicts.

this scene is full of people who scribble "this machine kills fascists" on every object they own and turn around and cower and say "I'm scared, can you come pick me up, there's some scary guys outside." because some black dudes listening to some rap posted up outside of the punk show. this scene is full of virtue signaling assholes who put antisemitic symbols on their "battle vests". this scene is full of half-assed "communists" who just want to brag about the big scary words they learned like "praxis" and "proletariat" and "bourgeoisie".

this scene is full of fake socialists who won't lift a finger to help each other, but will drag each other into hell instead.

the problem with punk as we know it is that it's whitewashed to hell and back, and the spaces created by these individuals are not centered around safety, but violence. yeah, you kill fascists, but do you provide meals for the hungry, shelter for the homeless, and harm reduction for the addicted? do you pass out extra blankets and clothes? do you help people get to the hospital? do you pat someone on the back when they turn down that beer? do you remember to not offer a baggie to the person who just got out of recovery?

no? then you aren't a safe person to be around, and you ain't punk. you are the reason this scene is unsafe.

[vanilla-voyeur]

I was only into people around my age since the age I started having horny feels. But the second I hit 30, my attraction age range went between 23-80. Like Biden do be looking good for 80. Doesn't look a day over 77. He could hit it. I could fix him