I’m not kidding. Urban areas with a high density of population are always more left-wing than rural areas. Lonely losers are the ones who become incels/groypers and shit. Workers who worked in small businesses with few colleagues were the most likely to support the literal NSDAP in the 30’s. The more people you talk to the more likely you are you support left-wing ideas. I just have to make a shit ton of friends and the revolutionary spirit will bring about communism. Wish me luck comrades. Also 
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Memory of a lot of people during BLM that were committed to revolutionary burning of cop stations on paper but very wary of leaving the house to meet people at protests.
Sadly capitalists have realized this and have done everything they can to make cities more and more unliveable
I totally get where you’re coming from OP, but bear in mind that as stupid as this may sound…touching grass is a privilege in the cool zone.
You’re right that cities are awesome, but no one knows this better than rich people: hence why they decided living in a city should be a luxury and all us poors have to fuck off to the suburbs in bumfuck nowhere. It’s a lighter, more subtle form of ghettoization and ghettos are a breeding ground for useful idiots for reactionaries. I say this as someone who’s never been able to leave the sticks. While it may not be nearly as violent as good ol’ fashioned ghettoization, but suburbs do have their negative impacts on the working class who call it home: absolute isolation, nonexistent community, promotes consumerism, car dependency, and not only is it a “jobs desert”. It also serves as a “culture desert”. The sticks are just that soullessly boring and you end up missing out on some really good experiences.
TL;DR: I agree with your main idea, but remember that porky REALLY doesn’t want you or me touching grass. I should write an effortpost about this tbh
What about small cities/large towns? There are lots of these all over the country, they’re way more affordable than the big cities, in many cases they simply are not large enough for a big class dividing line, there are lots of people you can meet and organize with, and there’s usually mass transit or relatively short driving distances to the big city for pretty much anything short of regular in-person employment.
You can touch grass far easier: the edge of town is much closer, the center of town is within easy biking distance, you have a lot more in common with everyone you’re likely to bump into, and it’s easier to exert an influence on city politics.
The only point I disagree with you on is that I don’t think it was done with intention. That is, getting people into the suburbs wasn’t an intentional conspiracy. I’d argue that if there is intention, it came after people started settling into the suburbs.
They used to be more vibrant, with libraries that have since been defunded, and sidewalks that don’t get built or maintained anymore, and a greater selection of local businesses that have since been driven out by Walmart and chain restaurants.
Removed by mod
Yeah, we always complain about the piles of corpses Dracula leaves in his wake, but we never give him any credit for how much longer vampires live!
I fully agree in fact, I think it’d be the biggest challenge to overcome, socializing despite how hard capitalism made it to. The vanguard party needs to organise socialising for the masses. We need mutual aid that directly consists in bringing people together
Back when there was a substantial labour movement socialising was absolutely a part of their strategy. They didn’t just organise strikes or hold political meetings they also organised dances, social events for pensioners, night classes, bands, scouting associations — the works.
All of this soft cultural work was not only helping workers to make the best out of the current conditions under capitalism, it helped to build class consciousness and solidarity. I believe that a future successful proletarian movement will need to incorporate these elements as well.
That does remind me. If we are going to organize, part of the strategy should be to make the left the fun side.
There’s actually an article about it, although it was written by a liberal doing electoralism: here
One of things I realized going back home is just how much of a bubble suburbanites are in. I mean I always knew this ever since I moved out of the suburbs, but it started to dawn on me how that warps your political conscious.
For example how am I supposed to convince a suburbanite that homeless is not just a natural outcome of laziness but a conscious choice by the capitalist system? These people see a homeless person maybe once in a year. They are just so far removed from how the capitalist system fails people. And it’s so easy to get them to be hostile towards immigrants because they are in this bubble where the status quo must be preserved forever and anything that challenges that is bad.
I realized that you can’t really reason with them because they are in this bubble and you are speaking a different language than them when you talk about reality.
I’d be interested if anyone has done any marxist analysis on suburban/urban/rural living conditions and what can be done about it, cause it just seems hopeless
Wtf I’m a fascist now.
Jk, I actually enjoy socializing, even if I’m drained by the end of it because I’m masking so hard. But that’s more of a me problem.
Same actually, it’s a perpetual struggle
Same here, but I’ll tell you what I tell myself - masking is like holding your breath, so stop masking, be unbashedly yourself, let the world rearrange around you and your ideas. If you’re going to find yourself alone with your ideas, then that was inevitable anyways, at least you lived a more open and free life.
@barryamelton@lemmy.ml This post is not equating the Nazis with an actual socialist party, though I agree it could be a bit more clear, what it seems to be saying is that more insular homogenous communities are more likely breeding grounds for fascism.
Urban areas with a high density of population are always more left-wing than rural areas.
nah. unless you mean that places with more people have more total leftists than place without people… which is maybe not a revelation. though i suspect you mean that urban dwellers are more likely to be left-wing than rural dwellers. which, i reiterate: nah.
having lived in and serviced the glittering metropolises and their antipodes, what Phil Neel describes as the “Far Hinterland”, where one can find the bones of extractive industries being actively scavenged, human trafficking rings feeding into furloughed prison labor gangs, indigenous communities sharing traditional ecological knowledge and protecting natural resources… it’s pretty easy for people to become lonely losers in an anonymous, world class city and it’s pretty easy to learn the names and relation to capital of most people in a tiny rural village within a few weeks and a few conversations.
the interface matters less than the person and their will to meet and connect with others.
in many cases, for all their activism and protests, the cities are not invariably the site of history’s successful revolutions nor are they what capital formations seem to struggle to control. che’s memoirs talk extensively about the failures of the urban socialists to achieve more than symbolic acts and the successes of the rural people in recognizing the opportunities and rapdily aligning, at great personal risk, to resist batista and his murderers. by the time the revolution came down from the mountains, the tide had long turned. i personally have seen multiple wildcat teachers’ strikes start in tiny rural towns, spreading across a state only to dash upon the rocks of larger urban political machines, where the insurrectionary energy is rapidly defused into lip service for liberal reforms.
in the way that david harvey says it is easier to teach marxism to prisoners than university students, materialism and class confict is likely easier to resonate with those who are not buffered from being ground between the gears by the features of civic life. and civic life is nowhere more degraded in america than the mysterious interior that every movie for the past 50 years has been framing as a place of backwardness, incivility and evil. which, as we all know, is actually the official motto and organizing principle of staten island.
it’s pretty easy for people to become lonely losers in an anonymous, world class city and it’s pretty easy to learn the names and relation to capital of most people in a tiny rural village within a few weeks and a few conversations.
the interface matters less than the person and their will to meet and connect with others.
I think that different localities can effect different people, differently. Granted this is mostly moot at an individual level, because we have very little control over the social contexts we end up living in; but like humans are kind of born instinctually wanting social connection with others. It’s the inability to pursue or receive it, that leads to people learning to live without it; or hardening themselves against it.
I honestly don’t think this is so correct. Maybe there’s a marginal increase of socialists in urban areas (which I’d be more inclined to attribute to access to university education) than rural areas. I do think urban areas where people interact with a variety of people are significantly more likely to have good takes on social issues, but mostly just end up being a
lib instead of a 
libRich urban centers are definitely lib but underprivileged neighbourhoods with massive blocks are where the real left enjoy a massive popularity
Agreed there. It’s the kind of spots where slumlords run rampant and communities deal with basic infrastructure being on the fritz. In places like that a little can go a long way.
At least that’s been my grasstouching experience.
Actually, socialism is when you
Get to know your coworkers
Community outside work is important too ofc, but getting to know your coworkers is the first step if you want to organize. And you might discover that you work with some cool people!
You may discover you work with almost zero cool people
You may discover that you, a lib, are the furthest left among your coworkers and that every single white person is racist
Unironically true. You cannot be socialist without community and you cannot have community if you do not know anyone
Many of us have had strong an-com tendencies either currently or on the past. “Praxis” is a word that could make a comeback in our community. You can do praxis without organizing. One example of which in the imperial core is knowing your damn neighbors, something that’s truly revolutionary in capitalist hellworld.
You can do praxis without organizing but you cannot do praxis by yourself
My biggest internal conflict is that I agree this is true, but I hate socializing and I hate “community”. Just want everyone else to be a utopian socialist community while I’m a hermit.
In Capitalist America, a protracted people’s war starts from the radicalized cities and expands towards the reactionary countryside.
