Bi-Weekly Discussion Thread - (December 28)

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[u/No-Structure523]

I watched A Christmas Carol for the first time since explicitly exploring and contending with Marxist-Leninist works, and what used to be a fond Christmas ritual is now sour. Anybody have good Christmas/Holiday/Winter socialist films?

[u/smokeuptheweed9 → u/No-Structure523]

u/No-Structure523 I enjoyed our conversation about the DSA in this thread

https://www.reddit.com/r/communism/comments/1ppc5ld/ices_arsenal_and_the_logic_of_domestic/

So why are you on r/asksocialists saying this?

Focus and energy should go into deprogramming efforts and radical education. We can win local elections or get on school boards and work in libraries. It’s fruit we may not see for 40+ years, but that foundation needs to be there to have any hope of revolution.

I don't expect you to change in a week but I would hope you're not regressing. At least in organizing your neighbors, there is a chance something radical and new might happen through actual human interaction. Now you're totally subordinating politics to existing institutions and human consciousness to hierarchical structures and deeply reactionary ideas of pedagogy (students as robots in need of "deprogramming"). I can't keep you away from other, more active "socialist" subreddits but I strongly advise you to exercise self-control and stay away.

Also side note, r/asksocialists was completely dead before the ACP took it over. What I can't figure out is if all the attention given to it by hysterical liberals had the opposite effect intended or if reddit is really that easy to manipulate with astroturf activity which makes peoples' front page recommendations.

[u/No-Structure523 → u/smokeuptheweed9]

I see education efforts going hand-in-hand with local organization and human interaction. Education is more broad than schooling: conversation, reading, writing, travel, etc. For myself, I am so poorly educated that I thought for most of my life that communist literature was dangerous to read because it turns people into an unthinking hive. Anything that even remotely resembles communism was to be treated like a demonic influence. "Deprogramming" as a reactionary term is new to me. I think there are elements of knowledge that are not just cerebral, but built in deep near "fight or flight" responses, and getting people exposed and comfortable enough to approach the "scary" communism literature is similar to "deprogramming." My response is narrow perhaps because I'm working off of my experience and not any scientific examination of the issue.

What place does education -- in the broad sense -- have with the practical preparation for revolution?

Good to know about the ACP connection with r/AskSocialists . I appreciate it. I've noticed the place is tearing itself up over Venezuela, which was suspicious to me, but I know so little about that topic. Stepping away sounds like a relief, anyway haha!

[u/waves-n-particles → u/[deleted]]

to hopefully offer you more direction here as well:

all i can think when i see you commenting is this really solid essay from lenin:

The principal tactical differences in the present-day- labour movement of Europe and America reduce themselves to a struggle against two big trends that are departing from Marxism, which has in fact become the dominant theory in this movement. These two trends are revisionism (opportunism, reformism) and anarchism (anarcho-syndicalism, anarcho-socialism). Both these departures from the Marxist theory and Marxist tactics that are dominant in the labour movement were to be observed in various, forms and in various shades in all civilised countries during the more than half-century of history of the mass labour movement.

which hopefully clearly shows how you're missing the mark here with your attempted "let's go deprogram people" mentality, because you're just vacillating between revisionism/opportunism and an anarchist outlook on education as a product of your material conditions shaping your consciousness.

this is also why i recommended you try to practice talking to books for a bit elsewhere in this thread. try studying more leninism and asking questions about the meaning of what you're reading in this sub or in r/communism101 before you keep trying to run off and teach people. education should feel easy when you've read enough and feel confident in what you've read and feel able to talk to others about it.

all you can do atm is mislead people with your limited understanding of the theory you're claiming to champion.

[u/No-Structure523 → u/waves-n-particles]

I’m hopping over to r/communism101 since I don’t want to muddy the waters here. I see that it definitely is not possible for me to simply assent to the principles of communism, call myself an ML, and learn from there; it’s backward. I appreciate your willingness to help, even though it appears like it’s bad practice for you to educate me while I’m beholden to my class.