Did you watch the video? It’s just a discussion about how advocating for communism, in praxis, is dangerous. Like it’s really about how if you go to a mutual aid group and start talking about communist theory, you’re going to be shunned, stalked or worse. I personally think it’s important to educate people about this, especially if they are new, as I don’t want people get all excited about building communism only for everyone around them to crush their hopes, or get themselves in danger, and, then leave the movement permanently.
Nobody is forcing you to step outside of your comfort zone, nobody is saying your work is lesser than theirs, but please at least some respect. Whatever happend to non-sectarian unity? Just do what good you can, but try to be good.
I honestly feel like Lenin would have been cancelled for being an opportunist grifter, if he was alive rn.
Like it’s really about how if you go to a mutual aid group and start talking about communist theory, you’re going to be shunned, stalked or worse.
No. You won’t be, IF you can set your ego aside.
From an abundance of personal experience, you can talk about class consciousness to almost anyone across the political spectrum. We’re pretty much all working class schmucks who don’t like smug insufferable wealthy out-out-touch elites. We all just want our basic needs to be in reach.
Imho the biggest problem that most budding young communists run into is that they want so badly to be a symbol of communism, convert everyone to stalinism, revert all CIA propoganda, and rehabilitate the image of Russia and the DPRK.
You have to pick your battles. You can’t get the average USian to love the word “communism”, but you can easily get them to hate billionaires and federal establishment corporatists.
You have to pick your battles. You can’t get the average USian to love the word “communism”, but you can easily get them to hate billionaires and federal establishment corporatists.
So this is something I’ve observed. I can get right wingers to agree with leftist positions by identifying these problems as long as I don’t use the word “Communism.” But that does not make them end up joining up, they just take those ideas and go with strasserite shit. My big fear is that if we do not get people to understand that functional and effective solutions can only be found on the Left, they will turn to the Right for their solutions. They’ll want ‘socialism’ but only in one country, and only for themselves, hang the rest of the world.
but you can easily get them to hate billionaires and federal establishment corporatists
The effect of blunting revolutionary language like this is to defend capitalism. How often have we all heard “the problem isn’t capitalism, it’s corporatism” or “it’s oligarchy”, often closely followed by an unfavorable comparison between America and one of its enemies. This leads directly into reformism at best, which leads directly nowhere.
I’m not trying to attack you here, but I have never seen the word “corporatism” used outside the context of either obscure discussions of Italian fascism or (much more commonly) defending American capitalism from criticism.
Yeah you’re probably right. I would be a coward and pick a different battle if I could choose to not be born as a marginalized person, who wouldn’t want to do that? Be thankful you’re able to make that choice. I hope you can understand why I would prefer if people actually tried to help me though? “Yeah, but helping you is unrealistic, sorry we have to think of the grand strategy.” Doesn’t make it any better.
It’s just basic materialism. I’m obviously going to cheer for the people who fight for me, even if they hurt your big plan. It’s within my interest.
She talks about being harassed for being a communist, and this is what you have to say?
Also, no, engaging in those things doesn’t make you a communist at all, you can do all of those things and still not be one. In fact, you could argue all of those things actually help the system you are fighting survive, especially if you’re not doing them within a revolutionary organization. Revolutionary praxis does not exist without revolutionary theory, you’ve had plenty of horizontal movements that failed to do anything, espousing those same ideals of pure praxis and have even let counterrevolutionaries win and reverse the status quo itself.
Better tell the CPC that they’re not really communists because they can’t revolt against themselves. A lot of self-identified Marxists are disliked because they’re very annoying all the time, not because they need to be kept down lest they become the Western Lenin.
This is also a silly argument because praxis has meant the same thing it means now since before English existed as a language, so it’s not even like, a recent invention.
Yes but nobody in my outreach group uses it and we even had an hour long discussion into why the word was useless. It’s a buzz word co-opted by leftists radicalized on the web that use it frequently to have some weird pissing contest over “how much praxis” they’ve done.
It stands for the practical application of ideological principles, it’s just a shortened version of that. It should just be “helping peoole” ffs.
It stands for the practical application of ideological principles, it’s just a shortened version of that. It should just be “helping peoole” ffs.
These are literally two different concepts. “Praxis” is the application of theory (as you say). “Helping people” is meaninglessly vague. I’m seriously confused by the argument that “praxis” is useless but “helping people” is somehow a specific, useful term.
it’s just a shortened version of that
All words are shortened versions of longer explanations, that’s why dictionaries exist.
Unless you do your own organizing and praxis then I don’t want to hear it. This just feels like a Reddit response so I am just going to go ahead and not reply to you after this one.
They say they’re being harassed for “speaking truth to power”, and right wing reactionary chuds and Nazis say the exact same thing. I hear all the time that “people hated Charlie Kirk because he spoke truth to power”.
Also, no, engaging in those things doesn’t make you a communist at all, you can do all of those things and still not be one. In fact, you could argue all of those things actually help the system you are fighting survive, especially if you’re not doing them within a revolutionary organization.
They don’t make you a communist, they make you a good person. Everyone will be overwhelmingly more receptive to listening to your theory, when you’ve established yourself as a good person and not a bad person.
“Don’t be a good person because you might help slow the collapse” isn’t communist either, it’s accelerationist.
I think the plot gets lost way too early when people start treating it like culture war slop when the whole point was to make everything better for the most people possible.
Communism is not a hard sell when you meet people where they’re at, and speak to their needs and fears, instead of treating it like your moral high horse.
They say they’re being harassed for “speaking truth to power”, and right wing reactionary chuds and Nazis say the exact same thing. I hear all the time that “people hated Charlie Kirk because he spoke truth to power”.
One person saying something that is an absurd lie does not mean everyone who says it is a liar. You know this. Do you not see this happen literally every day with anti-zionists? I sure do.
When she says that, she explains that she was harassed, stalked and threatened in connection to her anti-war advocacy in the wake of 9/11. That’s a completely expected result in some places (as the older protestors in her story acknowledge), even if I think some aspects of what she says are wrong-headed.
One person saying something that is an absurd lie does not mean everyone who says it is a liar. You know this. Do you not see this happen literally every day with anti-zionists? I sure do.
Coopting right-wing reactionary language is unhelpful, no matter how right or justified you feel. At best you’ve muddied the waters, at worst the libs are now pointing at you saying, “look they talk just like Nazis”.
On a deeper level, persecution complex is a Western/US issue, rooted in Christian Puritan values. Even for people who aren’t Christian, it’s subconsciously ingrained.
Just let it go, stop feeling bad about yourself because people were not receptive to your message. Rewrite it into a better message. Anti-war, pro-socialism, pro-communism sentiment is on the rise. Don’t be like the Dems and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
When she says that, she explains that she was harassed, stalked and threatened in connection to her anti-war advocacy in the wake of 9/11
Absolutely not okay that happened. Harassment and threats are never acceptable. And in hindsight, their anti-war stance aged like fine wine, as the same warhawks eager to invade Afghanistan and Iraq in 2001 pretend they knew it was a mistake the whole time in 2025. The tides turned and being anti-invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan is extremely popular today.
I was serious about thinking she is wrong headed in some respects and more specifically is somewhat reactionary in her wrong-headedness, because these ideas about how you’re always going to be unpopular and have the people against you and the people will be ungrateful when it turned out that you were right is all fucking bullshit from someone severely socially maladjusted who has let that corrupt their political perspective.
But the specific part about being ruthlessly attacked for “speaking truth to power” is correct and justified and in no way inherently tied to reaction. It’s also a common phrase in progressive circles (in fact I hear it more from progressives).
But the specific part about being ruthlessly attacked for “speaking truth to power” is correct and justified and in no way inherently tied to reaction. It’s also a common phrase in progressive circles (in fact I hear it more from progressives).
I have to say I do slightly envy you from living around mostly progressives because I’m telling you, when a Nazi finds out they’re hated for their beliefs, their immediate response is, “you hate me because I’m speaking the ‘truth’ and you can’t handle it”, and they take hate as validation for digging in deeper to their Nazi beliefs. The “truth” being, “race realism”, or whatever way they rebrand their shitter bigotry.
You get the same thing from racist white Facebook Karens, “the lion does not concern itself with the opinions of the sheep”. It’s so common it’s like a corny meme.
I’m also just way too aware of how racists and Nazis act online and it’s not a comfortable place to be either.
I’m completely aware of Nazis talking about speaking the truth, though also that’s something almost everyone does, but the specific phrase “speaking truth to power” is the progressive association I was talking about.
I think you have a small point about annoying lifestylist-leftists get off on making marxism, etc. seem like a countercultural undertaking and we’re so fucking cool and hard for doing it. Which is the worst sales pitch of all time to anyone else that isn’t a lifestylist as well.
They say they’re being harassed for “speaking truth to power”, and right wing reactionary chuds and Nazis say the exact same thing. I hear all the time that “people hated Charlie Kirk because he spoke truth to power”.
Should we also abandon our anti-zionist positions since antisemites espouse them as well? Or give up guns to the government because the chuds are all gun nuts?
They don’t make you a communist, they make you a good person. Everyone will be overwhelmingly more receptive to listening to your theory, when you’ve established yourself as a good person and not a bad person.
Yeah, because the guy who just received 70 millions votes in an election in her country is the exemplar of being a good fucking person. Aremoved, pedophile, war criminal and a scammer. Yet people like him and listen to him. Not because he’s a good person, but because he promised them an improvement in their material conditions amidst a crumbling economy in the last election. The Bolsheviks didn’t win because they were nice, but because they promised the people peace, land and bread. They knew the whites were principally opposed to this, and the best propaganda they could conjure up was antisemitic bullshit, which is why they got their ass kicked.
“Don’t be a good person because you might help slow the collapse” isn’t communist either, it’s accelerationist.
Which is why I was very careful in saying that it wasn’t effective unless done with a principled communist organization.
Communism is not a hard sell when you meet people where they’re at, and speak to their needs and fears, instead of treating it like your moral high horse.
That’s what Mamdani is doing in a way, entryist politics simply looking the improve the local conditions in NYC. Do you think he’s gonna be some revolutionary leader? You can do that, but only inside a principled organization that also educates it’s members in theory.
average anti-intellectual be like “true anti-intellectualism has never been tried!!!” meanwhile anti-intellectualism has had the amerikkkan “left” in a death grip for its entire existence pretty much. like there really is not nearly enough theory being read among people who identify as being on the “left”, there is way too much arguing about extremely basic stuff from people who claim to be on the “left”
I do agree that there is also that persecution complex that needs to be struggled against though.
Theory is really important, but if you need every member of your revolution to have a PhD in dialectical materialism, you will never have a revolution. You’ve gatekeeped your revolution to the intellectual bourgeoise.
You need revolutionary leaders who can take theory, and distill it down to values that ordinary working class people can understand.
It’s extremely important to recognize the balance to walk here: to encourage solidarity between both the intellectuals, and the proletariat who cannot afford higher education.
You need revolutionary leaders who can take theory, and distill it down to values that ordinary working class people can understand.
It’s extremely important to recognize the balance to walk here: to encourage solidarity between both the intellectuals, and the proletariat who cannot afford higher education.
This is only a balance if you assume that proletarians cannot understand theory and need to be guided by “intellectuals”. Ordinary working class people all over the world have historically been able to understand a lot of theory just fine. A lot of it was actually written for ordinary working class people by ordinary working class people or intellectuals.
Mutual aid, volunteering, community outreach.
If you want to make a difference, it happens in action, not from a soapbox where you wokescold people for not reading enough theory.
Do you want to spread class consciousness, or do you want to indulge in a self-pity party of how persecuted you are.
Did you watch the video? It’s just a discussion about how advocating for communism, in praxis, is dangerous. Like it’s really about how if you go to a mutual aid group and start talking about communist theory, you’re going to be shunned, stalked or worse. I personally think it’s important to educate people about this, especially if they are new, as I don’t want people get all excited about building communism only for everyone around them to crush their hopes, or get themselves in danger, and, then leave the movement permanently.
Nobody is forcing you to step outside of your comfort zone, nobody is saying your work is lesser than theirs, but please at least some respect. Whatever happend to non-sectarian unity? Just do what good you can, but try to be good.
I honestly feel like Lenin would have been cancelled for being an opportunist grifter, if he was alive rn.
No. You won’t be, IF you can set your ego aside.
From an abundance of personal experience, you can talk about class consciousness to almost anyone across the political spectrum. We’re pretty much all working class schmucks who don’t like smug insufferable wealthy out-out-touch elites. We all just want our basic needs to be in reach.
Imho the biggest problem that most budding young communists run into is that they want so badly to be a symbol of communism, convert everyone to stalinism, revert all CIA propoganda, and rehabilitate the image of Russia and the DPRK.
You have to pick your battles. You can’t get the average USian to love the word “communism”, but you can easily get them to hate billionaires and federal establishment corporatists.
So this is something I’ve observed. I can get right wingers to agree with leftist positions by identifying these problems as long as I don’t use the word “Communism.” But that does not make them end up joining up, they just take those ideas and go with strasserite shit. My big fear is that if we do not get people to understand that functional and effective solutions can only be found on the Left, they will turn to the Right for their solutions. They’ll want ‘socialism’ but only in one country, and only for themselves, hang the rest of the world.
The effect of blunting revolutionary language like this is to defend capitalism. How often have we all heard “the problem isn’t capitalism, it’s corporatism” or “it’s oligarchy”, often closely followed by an unfavorable comparison between America and one of its enemies. This leads directly into reformism at best, which leads directly nowhere.
I’m not trying to attack you here, but I have never seen the word “corporatism” used outside the context of either obscure discussions of Italian fascism or (much more commonly) defending American capitalism from criticism.
Yeah you’re probably right. I would be a coward and pick a different battle if I could choose to not be born as a marginalized person, who wouldn’t want to do that? Be thankful you’re able to make that choice. I hope you can understand why I would prefer if people actually tried to help me though? “Yeah, but helping you is unrealistic, sorry we have to think of the grand strategy.” Doesn’t make it any better.
It’s just basic materialism. I’m obviously going to cheer for the people who fight for me, even if they hurt your big plan. It’s within my interest.
Oh yeah I fully agree with you, and you can educate me on what’s the best way to fight for you and your better material outcome, I’m all ears.
She talks about being harassed for being a communist, and this is what you have to say?
Also, no, engaging in those things doesn’t make you a communist at all, you can do all of those things and still not be one. In fact, you could argue all of those things actually help the system you are fighting survive, especially if you’re not doing them within a revolutionary organization. Revolutionary praxis does not exist without revolutionary theory, you’ve had plenty of horizontal movements that failed to do anything, espousing those same ideals of pure praxis and have even let counterrevolutionaries win and reverse the status quo itself.
Yes. Everyone should read Malcom X Didn’t Dish Free Out Free Bean Pies
Better tell the CPC that they’re not really communists because they can’t revolt against themselves. A lot of self-identified Marxists are disliked because they’re very annoying all the time, not because they need to be kept down lest they become the Western Lenin.
CPC is a revolutionary organization…? im not sure what point you’re trying to make here?
I wish people would stop saying praxis it’s such a dumb made up word
I have news for you about how words are made.
This is also a silly argument because praxis has meant the same thing it means now since before English existed as a language, so it’s not even like, a recent invention.
Yes but nobody in my outreach group uses it and we even had an hour long discussion into why the word was useless. It’s a buzz word co-opted by leftists radicalized on the web that use it frequently to have some weird pissing contest over “how much praxis” they’ve done.
It stands for the practical application of ideological principles, it’s just a shortened version of that. It should just be “helping peoole” ffs.
These are literally two different concepts. “Praxis” is the application of theory (as you say). “Helping people” is meaninglessly vague. I’m seriously confused by the argument that “praxis” is useless but “helping people” is somehow a specific, useful term.
All words are shortened versions of longer explanations, that’s why dictionaries exist.
Unless you do your own organizing and praxis then I don’t want to hear it. This just feels like a Reddit response so I am just going to go ahead and not reply to you after this one.
praxis
They say they’re being harassed for “speaking truth to power”, and right wing reactionary chuds and Nazis say the exact same thing. I hear all the time that “people hated Charlie Kirk because he spoke truth to power”.
They don’t make you a communist, they make you a good person. Everyone will be overwhelmingly more receptive to listening to your theory, when you’ve established yourself as a good person and not a bad person.
“Don’t be a good person because you might help slow the collapse” isn’t communist either, it’s accelerationist.
I think the plot gets lost way too early when people start treating it like culture war slop when the whole point was to make everything better for the most people possible.
Communism is not a hard sell when you meet people where they’re at, and speak to their needs and fears, instead of treating it like your moral high horse.
One person saying something that is an absurd lie does not mean everyone who says it is a liar. You know this. Do you not see this happen literally every day with anti-zionists? I sure do.
When she says that, she explains that she was harassed, stalked and threatened in connection to her anti-war advocacy in the wake of 9/11. That’s a completely expected result in some places (as the older protestors in her story acknowledge), even if I think some aspects of what she says are wrong-headed.
Coopting right-wing reactionary language is unhelpful, no matter how right or justified you feel. At best you’ve muddied the waters, at worst the libs are now pointing at you saying, “look they talk just like Nazis”.
On a deeper level, persecution complex is a Western/US issue, rooted in Christian Puritan values. Even for people who aren’t Christian, it’s subconsciously ingrained.
Just let it go, stop feeling bad about yourself because people were not receptive to your message. Rewrite it into a better message. Anti-war, pro-socialism, pro-communism sentiment is on the rise. Don’t be like the Dems and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Absolutely not okay that happened. Harassment and threats are never acceptable. And in hindsight, their anti-war stance aged like fine wine, as the same warhawks eager to invade Afghanistan and Iraq in 2001 pretend they knew it was a mistake the whole time in 2025. The tides turned and being anti-invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan is extremely popular today.
I was serious about thinking she is wrong headed in some respects and more specifically is somewhat reactionary in her wrong-headedness, because these ideas about how you’re always going to be unpopular and have the people against you and the people will be ungrateful when it turned out that you were right is all fucking bullshit from someone severely socially maladjusted who has let that corrupt their political perspective.
But the specific part about being ruthlessly attacked for “speaking truth to power” is correct and justified and in no way inherently tied to reaction. It’s also a common phrase in progressive circles (in fact I hear it more from progressives).
I have to say I do slightly envy you from living around mostly progressives because I’m telling you, when a Nazi finds out they’re hated for their beliefs, their immediate response is, “you hate me because I’m speaking the ‘truth’ and you can’t handle it”, and they take hate as validation for digging in deeper to their Nazi beliefs. The “truth” being, “race realism”, or whatever way they rebrand their shitter bigotry.
You get the same thing from racist white Facebook Karens, “the lion does not concern itself with the opinions of the sheep”. It’s so common it’s like a corny meme.
I’m also just way too aware of how racists and Nazis act online and it’s not a comfortable place to be either.
I’m completely aware of Nazis talking about speaking the truth, though also that’s something almost everyone does, but the specific phrase “speaking truth to power” is the progressive association I was talking about.
Ah, well “truth to power” itself has been long occupied by Nazis now, since around 9/11.
I think you have a small point about annoying lifestylist-leftists get off on making marxism, etc. seem like a countercultural undertaking and we’re so fucking cool and hard for doing it. Which is the worst sales pitch of all time to anyone else that isn’t a lifestylist as well.
Should we also abandon our anti-zionist positions since antisemites espouse them as well? Or give up guns to the government because the chuds are all gun nuts?
Yeah, because the guy who just received 70 millions votes in an election in her country is the exemplar of being a good fucking person. Aremoved, pedophile, war criminal and a scammer. Yet people like him and listen to him. Not because he’s a good person, but because he promised them an improvement in their material conditions amidst a crumbling economy in the last election. The Bolsheviks didn’t win because they were nice, but because they promised the people peace, land and bread. They knew the whites were principally opposed to this, and the best propaganda they could conjure up was antisemitic bullshit, which is why they got their ass kicked.
Which is why I was very careful in saying that it wasn’t effective unless done with a principled communist organization.
That’s what Mamdani is doing in a way, entryist politics simply looking the improve the local conditions in NYC. Do you think he’s gonna be some revolutionary leader? You can do that, but only inside a principled organization that also educates it’s members in theory.
average anti-intellectual be like “true anti-intellectualism has never been tried!!!” meanwhile anti-intellectualism has had the amerikkkan “left” in a death grip for its entire existence pretty much. like there really is not nearly enough theory being read among people who identify as being on the “left”, there is way too much arguing about extremely basic stuff from people who claim to be on the “left”
I do agree that there is also that persecution complex that needs to be struggled against though.
Theory is really important, but if you need every member of your revolution to have a PhD in dialectical materialism, you will never have a revolution. You’ve gatekeeped your revolution to the intellectual bourgeoise.
You need revolutionary leaders who can take theory, and distill it down to values that ordinary working class people can understand.
It’s extremely important to recognize the balance to walk here: to encourage solidarity between both the intellectuals, and the proletariat who cannot afford higher education.
This is only a balance if you assume that proletarians cannot understand theory and need to be guided by “intellectuals”. Ordinary working class people all over the world have historically been able to understand a lot of theory just fine. A lot of it was actually written for ordinary working class people by ordinary working class people or intellectuals.