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2 months agoIt was off puting and kinda showed a lack of vision and like honestly the fact the economics of Astroid mining crashing the market because of the sheer amount of supply in a rare earth astroid being an example of how space breaks the frame work of supply and demand. Full stop you need to be able to imagine something more even if capitalism still exists in some way.
At a certain point it’s bad story telling
I think we might be conflating being a communist and being a 20th century Marxist or anarchist. at a very basic conceptual level being a communist just means to want to bring a classless society into existence, the how, where the why is all the ism we attach to it our, theoretical, (theoria) The practical (praxis) and the Creative (poiesis) these 3 concepts are the basis of our sect forms we adopt these our are Maoisms, our Marxism Leninist variety anarchism of all flavors.
Now that we got some clarification out of the way we can begin to answer this question. “is it normal to feel like your slowly becoming less of our classical 20th century leftism?”
No not all not even a little bit the left is in a process of reformation its clear to people who have a long view of the lefts history of its self. That the 20th century for better or worst we lost a battle in a war with many battles to come. Right now a lot of people want something to hold on too they want a way out, they want hope really we must also rember that marx said the following…
“And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present …” Brumaire
Marx is talking about revolutionary taking up banners of the past to creature the future. all politics is a larp to put it kinda crudely we are always going to the past to search of the gold laden gravel the paths uncharted to create a future. Paraphrased from -Ernst Bloch principle of hope. (if you don’t know who Ernst Bloch he was a Marxist who chose to live in east Germany after the war and then got canceled by the soviets for being too allegedly being idealist they arrest a bunch of his students and blocked him from publishing and removed him from his chair at the collage he worked at then he moved to west Germany and got called too materialist and was looked down upon as a sort of outsider. Its a wild story and its kinda sad.)
the second problem is hope blinds one self to the reality that surrounds our self. its self limiting we have to sit down take note were we really are. This is a very uncomfortable conversation to have with ones self, their comrades. I think what your feeling is the sobering reality that the left isn’t in a good place at the moment which objectively it’s not. we are confined to online spaces and our organizations are tied to boug institutions, we haven’t built up any pre political organizations to even engage workers outside of social media. In others words I cant in a mid sized city go to a leftist organized hobby space, soccer club, skill sharing center where I can learn fun skills or serious skills. Lastly I cant even get a drink with people of a similar political persuasion outside of places leftists are politically captured I.E democratic controlled states like New york and California.
a lot of folks think that building the party is the same as doing pre poltical work and its not at all entirely, you want women in orgs? offer childcare.(its a major factor in why women can’t spend time doing political work, take care of their obligations, likely they will return the favor.) you want to have a movent that matters you have to build the infrastructure. You want a fucking movement that can seize on the revolutionary moment all of this is non negotiable, what do you think dual power means? in today day and age it means building durable non CASCADE FAILURE PRONE structures that fail if one part fails, it means building party’s were everyone is prepared to be a leader, it also means that we listen to each other and allow our selves to have factions other wise it turns every disagreement into a power-struggle. (if your arguing for capitalist restoration it don’t count you shouldn’t be in the party your not on the left at this point for me we have to draw a line somewhere sorry not sorry)
you can’t seize on the revolutionary moment without building the revolutionary party… everyone always stops at the part, you cant build the revolutionary party with out the pre-political work that means not lecturing working people for getting access to this infrastructure but offering them access to the meeting with the knowledge… these communists help me get cheap childcare and access to legal, food, after school sports, hobby skills, professional services I could not get otherwise, maybe I should see what these communist party meeting are all about they talk about they seem very moved by this communism thing they talk about sometimes at the building they give me these services with and they said their will be free food too. I hope I’m getting my message across here… we aren’t doing charity we are building something where workers can come to understand their class interests and their class power to change their conditions without depending on the fucking capitalist state, the idea is to get rid of it the disagreements we may have amongst our selves between anarchists and Marxists is largely how long it will be before that happens and how it happens. we have to build that new way of being today right now, it has to be lived, it has to be materially touchable.
cough anyways sorry rant over
So yeah maby this is why you may not feeling like a communist or slowly not becoming one. its hard to feel apart of a movement you cant touch see or hear in real meat space outside of online spaces which have a place but are no substitution for what I talked about above. we didn’t become communists because we where likely to win, or because the road to changing the world would be easy and automatic. Anyone telling anyone that is fool and a damned liar. Nothing is free in this world, everything costs something, your time, your money, your life. The decisive moment will ultimately boil down to 1 simple question how fucking bad do you want it, and do you want it more then the people opposing you?