I thought it might be a good time for me to write up a actual post about mass line. Both cuz it’s a bit of a nebulous concept and typically not defined in its entirety and that it can hopefully help explain to people what use this whole like “federating to onboard cool people” idea has.

Principles of the Mass Line

First off, the mass line is defined in a few different Mao writings including On Practice and Some Questions Concerning Methods of Leadership but the description given never typically identifies the concept for all of its components.

Contrary to some people’s belief, mass line did not mysteriously unexist until Mao coined it! Mass line has been a central technique to Marxist-Leninist organizing from the beginning with even CPUSA members notably having written practical pamphlets on it in the 1930s. Mao did however coin the term itself and wrote specifically about it, consolidating and adding to our understanding of it.

Principally the mass line is a method of categorization. The categorization follows that:

• The Advanced are people who identify that capitalism is the issue and are willing to organize to combat it.

• The Middle are people who may or may not be aware that capitalism is the issue, but are yet to actively participate in the organizing process. Single issue people are typically the middle.

• The Backwards are people who are reactive to the idea that capitalism is the issue. Democrat, Republican, Centrist, whoever what we care about is how aware they are that capitalism is the issue and needs to be overcome.

Within each category you can also categorize people as Advanced, Middle or Backwards within their category. There are Advanced (of the) Middle, Middle Backwards, and Backwards Advanced people. These categories serve multiple purposes. The most important thing to note is how the mass line relates to society at large: “through the Advanced we can reach the Middle” and “through the Middle we can move some of the Backwards”. The task of “a vanguard” is to organize cadre to organize the Advanced to move the Middle and some of the Backwards. This formula is designed to allow us to pinpoint the leverage points in society.

Using the Mass Line to elevate Class Consciousness

Relevant to our “task” here (not sure if its really important enough to call task cuz i just like this place as a chill environment to hang but ig its a task if you believe it is) is that the mass line can be used as a practical tool to elevate the consciousness of people (it may be more accurate to say that mass line is the process that we use to move people whether we are aware of it or not).

When we are “mass lining” a person, we are trying to investigate their level of class consciousness as well as their class interests and push them to elevate towards a higher level of class consciousness. In essence, investigation is about mapping where somebody is in relation to mass line, and using this information to nudge people towards the next highest level. Online you really can’t do any of this so more so its mostly guess work but the principal remains. You won’t push the backwards into the advanced and you’re wasting your time entirely when you could be doing much better things with your life. The best you can hope for typically is to move the advanced backwards and middle backwards towards the middle. Get them to believe in one of the actual issues of society. This could be incredible wealth disparities, this could be the liberal destruction of community and encirclement of the family, this could be the corruptness of the democracy of the US whatever. The backwards will never be able to accept capitalism in its entirety is the issue in almost all cases. If you can convince somebody to go from Backwards to Advanced in 1 conversation they were never really “Backwards”.

What is integration?

When thinking about the middle the most important concept to think about is integration. Integration is about forming unities with the people you are talking to. It is about listening to people and helping them with their issues while elevating their consciousness of them. Again, it is a lot harder to do this online where there are few things you can do to help people with their problems while elevating their consciousness about them, although there aren’t none, technically. Successful integration is translating the principles of Marxism naturally and having the person you are talking to easily understand them. Marxism makes sense and people can put it together for themselves if they really experience it and you aren’t failing to integrate. Some people’s material experiences also will just not have proven the accuracy of Marxism to them and that’s okay! That is the whole basis of class struggle.

Summation

In short tl;dr, who gives a fuck about federating with completely backwards websites and users. Complete waste of your time while achieving very little. If your goal is to use federation to “introduce Marxist politics to greater amounts of people” you have to tactically decide on instances where the vast majority of the users are The Middle or The Advanced. Also libs if you are not actually organizing you are the Middle. Advanced Middle, sure, but touch grass and move to the Advanced; it feels good!