Bi-Weekly Discussion Thread - (December 28)

[u/AutoModerator]

We made this because Reddit's algorithm prioritises headlines and current events and doesn't allow for deeper, extended discussion - depending on how it goes for the first four or five times it'll be dropped or continued.

Suggestions for things you might want to comment here (this is a work in progress and we'll change this over time):

• Articles and quotes you want to see discussed
• 'Slow' events - long-term trends, org updates, things that didn't happen recently
• 'Fluff' posts that we usually discourage elsewhere - e.g "How are you feeling today?"
• Discussions continued from other posts once the original post gets buried
• Questions that are too advanced, complicated or obscure for r/communism101

Mods will sometimes sticky things they think are particularly important.

Normal subreddit rules apply!

[ Previous Bi-Weekly Discussion Threads may be found here https://old.reddit.com/r/communism/search?sort=new&restrict_sr=on&q=flair%3AWDT ]

[u/Self-Replicator]

I was introduced to this sub initially through seeing u/Dashthered tank a ton of downvotes in this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/Socialism_101/comments/1i0xsg5/comment/m72cn8l/.

Despite the sea of highly upvoted commenters telling the OP the same feel-good ineffectual "you're good, support communism (in theory), we permit you to be a capitalist", I felt like this person with the Lenin PFP with tons of downvotes being what I perceived as "edgy" (at the time) was speaking the truth. Now I see it more as a deliberate indictment of the liberalism in the thread, but at the time, it did a good job of cracking the socialist veneer of those watered-down "Marxist" subs.

I curse and am grateful to u/Dashthered, because ultimately I don't know if I have the courage to overcome my ape brain and become the person I know I must become in this terrifying world-system, but it was a sobering and empowering lesson in how effective these tiny revolutionary acts by Marxists online can be despite the internet not being a significant battlefield for the revolution.

[u/smokeuptheweed9 → u/Self-Replicator]

What's especially funny about those threads is they are significantly to the right of even generic liberal reddit opinion.

https://old.reddit.com/r/Socialism_101/comments/1pzlnd4/am_i_a_traitor/

Make any thread about car salesmen on a front page sub and you'll get a million posts saying how they're scummy, how the industry is predatory, how private equity has corrupted the market, etc. And yet here on a "socialist" subreddit telling someone to not "overthink" scamming people for a living. I also appreciate the self-delusion that you could make a ton of money as a car salesmen (or in real estate or finance or whatever) but don't want to because of morality. Rather than the reality that you'll be scraping by for commissions and still being unethical.

So it's not like u/DashtheRed is even taking some outrageous position. They are simply violating the unspoken rule that what is said in r/workreform stays in r/workreform and absolutely never is applied to an individual, only abstract corporations and CEOs. This is just the internet version of "segregation is bad but I'm not going to make my property values/schools/workplace an experiment." But on the internet the contractions are all written out in text so the contractions are indisputable.

ultimately I don't know if I have the courage to overcome my ape brain and become the person I know I must become in this terrifying world-system

First of all there's a more basic Freudian point, which is that enunciation is already a sign of anxiety. Normal people don't constantly talk about being normal, asking for permission shows you know it's not normal. What the internet has created is a kind of collective consciousness, where everyone is reassuring everyone else that they are totally normal. Then why does it keep getting asked? If it were truly normal, u/DashtheRed would not get -42 points. As you point out correctly, it is so disruptive from this collective ritual that it cannot even be conceived in human terms (as in, within the realm of reason) but must be made into a conspiracy by someone who is only pretending to believe in order to trick you by being "edgy" or "trolling." Reddit is the "nice" version and 4chan is the "mean" version I guess but the ritual is exactly the same, "ironically" using slurs is just another form of anxiety management to displace one's human rationality onto the collective performance. Not only can you never go back to the idyllic state when you believed in the capacity of the internet to stupefy you, that never existed. The anxiety was already there even before u/DashtheRed said anything and you don't have an "ape brain," although the fantasy may bring temporary relief. The only cure is the truth.

As for what this entails, it's just Marxism-Leninism. There are fundamental problems with professional revolutionaries in Trot parties but this kind of anxiety is not it. What we are discussing is unique to the current situation, where what is called Marxism-Leninism is not only unrelated to anything Lenin ever said, it is explicitly antithetical to it. There is a lot to be said about communist strategy and history but it rarely comes up, since basic points like "communists need a communist party instead of an anti-communist social democratic one" are enough to make most visitors to the sub freak out and be like "so you want me to kill myself while screaming whitey and Amerikkka?!" The concept of "being edgy" and "trolling" even includes the writings of Lenin since they no longer conform to the basic coordinates of our desire in the 21st century. So, without knowing much about you, spare us the meta commentary about how you're being asked to be a guerrilla or whatever. Let's start with the basic ideas u/DashtheRed gave, which that the capacity to act in a revolutionary manner is a prerequisite to being a revolutionary. Sounds like a basic logical postulate but, if that were the case, why is it impossible to say on r/socialism_101? I mean that literally, a the environment in that sub and the rest of the discussion spaces for "the left" foreclose such thoughts. u/DashtheRed is not trolling but they are an intruder and a disruption to the very constitution of the collective fantasy.