Politicians from both capitalist parties are terrified that Mamdani’s dominant primary victory signals the emergence of a mass socialist movement in the heart of global finance capital.
Just go check facebook under any remotely political post, there will be endless rabid reactionary and violent anti socialist comments. Thats where we are at in american consciousness. Its like impossible to even talk to conservative boomers because you have to hold their hands thru the simplest most basic of social and economic relations we LIVE WITH EVERYDAY that are seemingly obscured from them. To even get to the starting line you have to untangle so much incoherent nonsense and instinctual ideological jerking
or, you know, you could be strategic and stop making politics an identitarian issue to avoid such reactions. Mamdani won despite defining himself as a socialist, not because of it.
“The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly
declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of
all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a
Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their
chains. They have a world to win.”
~ The Communist Manifesto
Instead of “Social-Democracy”, whose official leaders throughout the world have betrayed socialism and deserted to the bourgeoisie (the “defencists” and the vacillating “Kautskyites”), we must call ourselves the Communist Party.—Lenin
are you aware the world of communication, identity and political decision-making resembles very little the world they were living in? Do you think a century of anti-communist propaganda does nothing and it will magically disappear if you state your identity hard enough? So egocentric.
Are you of the belief there was ever a time when the ruling class did not oppose communism with their full might? You think communism rose in popularity in Russia because there was no repression? Meanwhile Lenin was exiled?
No, communism will be opposed full force regardless of cutesty trying to shift terms around. The western left isn’t toothless because it faces repression from the bourgeois organizations, the western left is toothless because it has no discipline to established party lines and nueters itself constantly.
The opposition was there, but the construction of a shared mass identity for workers was a viable strategy in the face of that specific environment, that now has changed. Political strategy is not a blueprint and just because it worked in a radically different environment, doesn’t mean it’s going to work again and, in fact, it failed over and over in the West for the last 40-50 years.
Identity is a primary driver of political participation and today almost nobody wants to be a communist: right-wingers because they are right-wingers, progressives because communists lost over and over, and even communist more often than not prefer to identify with a specific sect and present themselves as such. Just because an identity and a narrative worked once, doesn’t mean they will work every time.
The idea that “historical marxists were right but this time it’s different” is not a new or unique line. It’s a common basis for revisionism which dates all the way back to early Leninism. I would also love to see this disciplined western leftist movement, because from what I see, western leftists have been trying your strategy of capitulations and reformism (in everything but name) since before Gus Hall cemented it in the 60s which is what led us specifically to this moment in which the movement has no teeth. The solution is not to defang even further by removing even the allusion to socialism.
Nobody wants to be a communist in the west because the western communist movement doesn’t fight for anything. “Right wingers” and “progressives” don’t want to be communists because we have allowed communism to become an ambiguous term for whatever they dislike, rather than standing firm and saying “we are communists we want x”.
Have the workers been freed? Have the chains of capital been broken? If not then communism is alive and well, it just needs people willing to pick up it’s banner and put in the work and stop throwing it under the bus every chance they get in efforts to capitulate to liberals. Mamdani winning while calling himself a socialist is proof that the banner itself isn’t the problem, your asking us to retreat in the face of victory.
his voter base is people of color, wtf are you talking about? That’s helping him.
He just represents novelty and anti-establishment values like talking about the problems of working class people, in the same way Trump does, but he does that without appealing to fear or hate. That’s it, that’s why he won. The rest is just ornamental. He defines himself socialist to get traction and participation among volunteers, but for the voter base, that’s not helping him.
Just go check facebook under any remotely political post, there will be endless rabid reactionary and violent anti socialist comments. Thats where we are at in american consciousness. Its like impossible to even talk to conservative boomers because you have to hold their hands thru the simplest most basic of social and economic relations we LIVE WITH EVERYDAY that are seemingly obscured from them. To even get to the starting line you have to untangle so much incoherent nonsense and instinctual ideological jerking
or, you know, you could be strategic and stop making politics an identitarian issue to avoid such reactions. Mamdani won despite defining himself as a socialist, not because of it.
~ The Communist Manifesto
~ Lenin April Theses.
are you aware the world of communication, identity and political decision-making resembles very little the world they were living in? Do you think a century of anti-communist propaganda does nothing and it will magically disappear if you state your identity hard enough? So egocentric.
Are you of the belief there was ever a time when the ruling class did not oppose communism with their full might? You think communism rose in popularity in Russia because there was no repression? Meanwhile Lenin was exiled?
No, communism will be opposed full force regardless of cutesty trying to shift terms around. The western left isn’t toothless because it faces repression from the bourgeois organizations, the western left is toothless because it has no discipline to established party lines and nueters itself constantly.
The opposition was there, but the construction of a shared mass identity for workers was a viable strategy in the face of that specific environment, that now has changed. Political strategy is not a blueprint and just because it worked in a radically different environment, doesn’t mean it’s going to work again and, in fact, it failed over and over in the West for the last 40-50 years.
Identity is a primary driver of political participation and today almost nobody wants to be a communist: right-wingers because they are right-wingers, progressives because communists lost over and over, and even communist more often than not prefer to identify with a specific sect and present themselves as such. Just because an identity and a narrative worked once, doesn’t mean they will work every time.
The idea that “historical marxists were right but this time it’s different” is not a new or unique line. It’s a common basis for revisionism which dates all the way back to early Leninism. I would also love to see this disciplined western leftist movement, because from what I see, western leftists have been trying your strategy of capitulations and reformism (in everything but name) since before Gus Hall cemented it in the 60s which is what led us specifically to this moment in which the movement has no teeth. The solution is not to defang even further by removing even the allusion to socialism.
Nobody wants to be a communist in the west because the western communist movement doesn’t fight for anything. “Right wingers” and “progressives” don’t want to be communists because we have allowed communism to become an ambiguous term for whatever they dislike, rather than standing firm and saying “we are communists we want x”.
Have the workers been freed? Have the chains of capital been broken? If not then communism is alive and well, it just needs people willing to pick up it’s banner and put in the work and stop throwing it under the bus every chance they get in efforts to capitulate to liberals. Mamdani winning while calling himself a socialist is proof that the banner itself isn’t the problem, your asking us to retreat in the face of victory.
Absolutely unhinged take. Might as well have bleached his skin before he ran for office while he is at it.
his voter base is people of color, wtf are you talking about? That’s helping him.
He just represents novelty and anti-establishment values like talking about the problems of working class people, in the same way Trump does, but he does that without appealing to fear or hate. That’s it, that’s why he won. The rest is just ornamental. He defines himself socialist to get traction and participation among volunteers, but for the voter base, that’s not helping him.