While there are plenty of spaces for debate, news commentary, “political internet culture”, memes, and so on, I still haven’t found a single community dedicated to any form of collective action, either IRL or in digital spaces. There are some communities dedicated to unions, but it seems mostly news commentary and very little action, educational material, events, or projects to plug yourself into.

I understand that the core user base of lemmy might not be the most prone to collective action, but I’m still surprised there’s nothing even on the most political communities.

Any suggestion?

  • Cowbee [he/they]
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    4 days ago

    Exactly. Lemmy can be a cool place to discuss theory and check up on the news with likeminded comrades, but that’s close to the extent that it can handle with political organization. Actual org work is handled in orgs.

    • chobeatOP
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      4 days ago

      Actual org work is handled in orgs.

      I fundamentally disagree. This mindset is why so many leftist orgs still operate through processes, governance structures, and methodologies invented when the horse was the main vector to transfer information. There are plenty of spaces to become better at organizing, and digital spaces to exchange expertise and grow are important.

      • Cowbee [he/they]
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        4 days ago

        You can use digital communication to organize large-scale orgs, I never disputed that. My point is that an open forum based social media platform is not going to be the vanguard of the revolution, or even a good union platform. Security and privacy are far too important for organizing, and social media is far too easy to attack from bad actors.

        • chobeatOP
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          4 days ago

          I’m not talking about organizing on social media platforms. I’m talking about learning, sharing expertise, and interesting material on how to build organizations.

          • Cowbee [he/they]
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            4 days ago

            Oh, well there’s a decent deal of that, mostly on Hexbear.net and Lemmygrad.ml. I even made an intro Marxist reading list and linked it on my profile, and share it frequently. There are several communities dedicated to learning and sharing.

            • chobeatOP
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              4 days ago

              Indeed, but these seem to be mostly focused on political topics, rather than organizing per se. I’ve rarely seen content about organization design, facilitation, effective communication, process design or other similar topics. It’s usually sociology/economy/political theory stuff for what I’ve found.

              The lemmy users have only interpreted the world in various ways, the point, however, is to change it.

              • Cowbee [he/they]
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                4 days ago

                There’s a good deal on org theory as well, such as theory on Democratic Centralism, the Mass Line, how to conduct yourself within orgs such as Liu Shaoqi’s How to be a Good Communist (on my reading list, in fact), and more. If you have specific questions, there are also comms for asking those as well.

                • chobeatOP
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                  4 days ago

                  I was thinking more about practical knowledge to employ today, rather than political speculation on hypothetical societal/political structure. I need people to get better at facilitating meetings, tracking tasks, and writing notes. Until then, discussing democratic centralism is sterile escapism.

                  • Cowbee [he/they]
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                    4 days ago

                    I think you’re a bit confused here, Democratic Centralism and the Mass Line are organizational principles. They are primarily for party structure, not only mass societal structure, and Liu Shaoqi’s work is on behavior within orgs. Any union, political party, etc. can and would benefit from learning these and discussing them.

                    Is there something specific you are asking about? Like, how to file for specific legal status or something?