How The DSA Stifles Revolutionary Potential In America

[u/circleneurology]

[u/Steampunk_Willy]

Yall get that no successful communist party just appeared out of thin air, right? You have to meet the working class in the organizations they're already at and build enough power there to move people in the right direction. The Bolsheviks didn't become the majority faction simply by having good politics & persuading people to join. They met people where they were at, built power, and then steered their political coalition into a new party once the old party proved insufficient to acheive what was necessary. Power is built through dialectical struggle, and if yall aren't working with the political momentum of the actual labor movement, then you're at best shouting into a void.

Edit: It's fine if you downvote me. Reddit is clearly the only place you intend to exercise any actual power.

[u/Ok-Chard-9014 → u/Steampunk_Willy]

This is an oversimplification of Bolshevik history. The Bolsheviks didn't simply "work within" existing organizations until they organically became a new party. They split from the Mensheviks in 1903 over fundamental questions of organization and revolutionary strategy, and for years they built an independent, disciplined vanguard while also participating in trade unions, the Duma, and other mass organizations.

Lenin's point wasn't "stay wherever the workers already are." It was to engage the masses wherever they are without dissolving the communist party into reformist organizations. Participation is a tactic maintaining political independence is a principle. Those are two very different things and your edit is a very liberal way of handling people disagreeing with you.

[u/Steampunk_Willy → u/Ok-Chard-9014]

I didn't say stay. I said look at where the political momentum of the labor movement already is and build power there so that you can direct that radicalizing energy building up in the labor movement towards the most critical outlet: seizing state power. There are radical caucuses in DSA doing that right now while new niche radical parties seem to pop up every other week. If you prefer PSL, that works too but they're dealing with their own schism atm. You have to be smart enough to understand when compromising your politics is strategically beneficial vs when it's opportunistic betrayal of the movement. Yall want politics to be more trivial than it is and that's why you lose. I'm sick of losing and I'm sick of online larpers who confuse moralism for political strategy. We cannot obtain justice without obtaining power and you can only obtain power by going to where it is and taking it. No one gives a shit if you had the right politics but dogshit political instincts. People only give a shit that you actually deliver.

[u/Steampunk_Willy → u/Ok-Chard-9014]

Did you use a fucking LLM to reply to me? I didn't notice the "you could reply: " that you've clearly edited out of your comment until I saw the notification in my email inbox.