but i mean, discounting enthropy thesis for a second here, multitude of tactics is fairly understood if not applied principle, obviously you can simultaneously feed homeless with anarchists, read a book with ml club and collect batteries in neighborhood, and shitpost about political candidate on social media, you are not pigeonholed into one avatar by anything outside of free time
The practices you just described are very pigeonholed: they are within what’s common, socially acceptable and expected from a leftist, which is a very narrow and specific frame, much more narrow than what’s necessary and more narrow than what’s possible.
Here the expansion of the frame of action goes beyond the boundaries prescribed by your political identity and ideology. It’s about doing all of those things, but also infiltrating companies, foundations, and the academia to work on both sides if it’s useful to generate leverage. It’s about building infrastructure, protocols, and systems that scale and can outcooperate the capitalist system. It’s about building structures that can surpass in power the existing ones in order to replace their oppressive “power over” with a liberating “power with”. It’s about sabotaging the old and scaling up the new. What has been tried so far by “leftists”, whatever it is, has failed and therefore it was not sufficient nor we have reasons to believe it will be sufficient in the future.
Again, there are plenty of leftists in the boards of companies, foundations, and decision bodies of academia, but they often lack a bigger frame to coordinate their action beyond their direct social structure, especially because they have to operate under cover.
A metaphysical shift, and with it a narrative shift, can enable these actors to recognize each other in a common language, distinct from that of the manichean left but also distinct from who is operating within the old world and with old practices. This is something the current frame doesn’t offer, and forces, through a fake duality, that there’s an “inside the system” within which change is not possible, and an “outside the system” where change is possible. In reality, there’s a single system of power, and no inside or outside: we are complicit. we are all participating in evolving the system. The only difference is if we are contributing to evolve the system in a liberating direction or not.
a) piracy is that btw (including pharmaceuticals/diy movement), megaprofits come from ip licenses
b) you can’t infiltrate institutions, because that implies lowkeyness until critical mass, never happened, unlikely ever will after the red scare.
c) the leftists (as in majority ascribed as left) in the imperial core fight the wrong fight (as i perceive it) to overthrow capitalism, they fight for treats instead of against profits (which didn’t not work since collapse of military keynesianism/vietnam war spending/start of neoliberalism) and liberation. If you parse your enemy as profits of capitalist class which gives them power, suddenly you have myriads of options which doesn’t associate with higher wages: anti-trust/low ip protection/lesser working time
outside the system doesn’t exist i agree, but returning to nunes/bogdanov whatever, the increase in friction/resistance of the system serves a goal it’s an orientation to make the system grind and stop, so might as well call it leftwing, instead of inserting fifty epicycles to make it run better or poine for a time it was better.
but i mean, discounting enthropy thesis for a second here, multitude of tactics is fairly understood if not applied principle, obviously you can simultaneously feed homeless with anarchists, read a book with ml club and collect batteries in neighborhood, and shitpost about political candidate on social media, you are not pigeonholed into one avatar by anything outside of free time
The practices you just described are very pigeonholed: they are within what’s common, socially acceptable and expected from a leftist, which is a very narrow and specific frame, much more narrow than what’s necessary and more narrow than what’s possible.
Here the expansion of the frame of action goes beyond the boundaries prescribed by your political identity and ideology. It’s about doing all of those things, but also infiltrating companies, foundations, and the academia to work on both sides if it’s useful to generate leverage. It’s about building infrastructure, protocols, and systems that scale and can outcooperate the capitalist system. It’s about building structures that can surpass in power the existing ones in order to replace their oppressive “power over” with a liberating “power with”. It’s about sabotaging the old and scaling up the new. What has been tried so far by “leftists”, whatever it is, has failed and therefore it was not sufficient nor we have reasons to believe it will be sufficient in the future.
Again, there are plenty of leftists in the boards of companies, foundations, and decision bodies of academia, but they often lack a bigger frame to coordinate their action beyond their direct social structure, especially because they have to operate under cover.
A metaphysical shift, and with it a narrative shift, can enable these actors to recognize each other in a common language, distinct from that of the manichean left but also distinct from who is operating within the old world and with old practices. This is something the current frame doesn’t offer, and forces, through a fake duality, that there’s an “inside the system” within which change is not possible, and an “outside the system” where change is possible. In reality, there’s a single system of power, and no inside or outside: we are complicit. we are all participating in evolving the system. The only difference is if we are contributing to evolve the system in a liberating direction or not.
a) piracy is that btw (including pharmaceuticals/diy movement), megaprofits come from ip licenses
b) you can’t infiltrate institutions, because that implies lowkeyness until critical mass, never happened, unlikely ever will after the red scare.
c) the leftists (as in majority ascribed as left) in the imperial core fight the wrong fight (as i perceive it) to overthrow capitalism, they fight for treats instead of against profits (which didn’t not work since collapse of military keynesianism/vietnam war spending/start of neoliberalism) and liberation. If you parse your enemy as profits of capitalist class which gives them power, suddenly you have myriads of options which doesn’t associate with higher wages: anti-trust/low ip protection/lesser working time
outside the system doesn’t exist i agree, but returning to nunes/bogdanov whatever, the increase in friction/resistance of the system serves a goal it’s an orientation to make the system grind and stop, so might as well call it leftwing, instead of inserting fifty epicycles to make it run better or poine for a time it was better.