I suggest Rosa Luxemburg’s Reform or Revolution to break people out first, less scary than Lenin, and a I think a “woman’s touch” does a thing for peoples minds under patriarchal norms, with the assumption that they’re somehow less capable of all of the things they’re afraid of. It was critical in my political education when I was starting off grabbing from everywhere to see what gripped the road I saw us flying down (Conquest of Bread sucked, never read more ‘kum-ba-ya’ utopian idealist tripe in my life, and I could tell that having barely even read much Marx at that point); and Reform or Revolution is more focused on dismantling the single topic. From there, once the reader are forced to mull on that reform will never save us, haunted by their discomfort and spurred by the sprouting seeds of their discontent the only logical next step is to try to find out “okay, well then what is to be done?”

But you have to give a background lesson first if the book/site of it you send them doesn’t explain in the preface, the whole thing that in the context of her book “Social-democrat” meant socialists in general; both revolutionary and the Bernstien-type ‘voting in socialism through reform’ revisonists; because this was in like 1900, before the failure of the second international and resultant split of the communists. It’s only after all of that and the 3rd international and the betrayal of Rosa and the communist KPD by the reformists that that the “social democrats” came to be understood as we know them today, reformist welfare liberals (which, incidentally, thoroughly and undeniably vindicates Luxemburg, Lenin and the Bolsheviks, et al and their criticisms of reformism).

Marx has been blunted and made tame and by those who haven’t read him.

You might say they have “Turned Marx Into A Common Liberal”

that is not what “disenfranchised” means at all. These people are business owners with large portfolios?? They are objectively some of the most enfranchised people in the country. They’re literally sitting on their thumbs in their bathtubs of money deciding which genocidaire would be better for their wallets? How is this a disenfranchised population? This is objectively the opposite. Fuck them.

Anyone catering to these very enfranchised sociopaths for votes, rather than to (and while actively repressing and brow-beating) those who are demanding an end to the bipartisan US-financed and US-armed genocide in Palestine, and rather than to the huge portion of actual left-wing voters and poor working class voters who are moving to 3rd parties or among the 35-50% who have stopped voting because of how actually disenfranchised and abandoned by this imperialist-corporate-conglomerate pretending to be two different parties they are — anyone catering to the former group instead of the latter two groups is my enemy

“disenfranchised conservatives” he says

over a corrupt and narcissistic megalomaniac.

boy I hate to tell you this, but you’re not escaping that by voting for the democrats. the establishment parties are personifications of all of the worst vices and cruelties of the imperialist capitalist class of war mongers, racketeers, and liars which keep the globe under their boot with 800+ bipartisan military bases and CIA blacksite torture camps, and bipartisan Hunger Plans and bipartisan competing to see who can do more genocide faster.

Biden’s such a corrupt narcissistic megalomaniac he wouldn’t even step down while his brain was visibly leaking from his ears his own party including the speaker of the house (also being one of the most corrupt, narcissistic megalomaniacs in congress) was demanding he do so. He only did when the billionaire imperialists that finance the democrats (and who they work for, who both parties work for) pulled their funding.

because their interests don’t allow it. Their donors and the people they work for, recruit from, and get hired by after leaving office, are all the billionaire imperialists that benefit from exactly what the democrats are doing and have been. It’s in the base structure of the democrat party. A lot of times these capitalists donate to the democrats, then vote republican. Both parties work for the same class of capitalist imperialists in whose interest they are so entrenched, they literally can’t do anything else but fly to the right and become more and more indistinguishable from each other as they both compete for who can be better at committing genocide and who can be more fascist on immigration and the border concentration camps and also militarily and operationally abroad

The only way to break the duopoly is to throw weight behind a 3rd party (the further left the better, PSL or greens if you’re a liberal or your state is strong for it and you like that idea), which would starve the democrats of the margin they need to ever get power, and force a reorientation where the ruling class would have to float a reformist “labor” party to keep people from further radicalizing and flooding to the socialists away from the open-fanged republicans, who would remain as the only real political force when the mouth-closed-smiling but just-as-fanged democrats, entrenched in their position, can no longer cruise-control on “not being the republicans.” Which they already are in most ways, and in the ways they wear a mask of not being they’re totally feckless and actively capitulate in order to drum up more fear about the republicans to scare people into voting for them without doing anything to earn those votes (Obama had both houses of congress. He could have codified abortion rights and LGBTQ civil rights protections into law then and there. He didn’t. He also gave away a supreme court seat. And Biden has not only not forcefully pushed to expand and pack the courts, but has actively denounced the idea as “politicizing the courts” as if that ship isn’t already past the horizon. And has done fuck-all to stop the book-burnings, anti-LGBTQ laws, criminalizations of abortion, etc that are currently happening under a democrat president. They don’t care about any of us and never will, and it will continue to get worse under the duopoly).

The ruling class floating this “labor” party would itself cause the democrat party to split in half, with half hedging their bets and pouring into the ‘labor’ party and the farthest-right establishment remnants stopping pretending they’re anything else and joining the republicans. Which would then “democrat-ize” the “labor” party and alienate their left wing who were trying to escape those same people and interests into joining with the socialists. This is why I say throw weight behind a socialist 3rd party. Because then you actually have a growing counterweight pushing forward against this rupturing contradiction and highlighting how badly these people play politics, as the establishment and their bourgeois politicians are scrambling in retreat to reorient and reconstitute politically, having obviously grown so entrenched and corrupt and complacent they’ve forgotten how to play politics.

I’m under the impression that if Biden was truly unconditionally pro-Israel, that the conflict would be over by now in the most violent way.

He literally sidestepped around congress twice to shovel guns and bombs to them faster than even the bloodthirsty Zionists in Congress could — who were already themselves bipartisanly moving to do the same.

He 100% wanted Gazans wiped off the face of the earth before the elections hit. Don’t make yourself such an easy mark for the most despicable racketeers, murderers, and liars that billionaire and arms-dealer money can buy. These democrat politicians, just like their Republican colleagues who work for the same class of people, would disappear both of us and our entire families to one of the countless bipartisan CIA blacksite torture camps around the world before showing real humanity toward the working class and the victims of their imperialism. There is never any reason to defend them.

smh just because I was Hitler’s personal attaché doesn’t mean I agree with Hitler’s policies it wasn’t like I had the authority to make those decisions myself while I helped engage in the diplomatic and administrative duties to facilitate them

I’m writing PSL in regardless, even if they can’t win the state fight against their lawyers. Fuck the “Democrat party” thinking they can bully me into voting for their genocidal asses by sending out dark-money superPAC lawyer squads to directly kill democracy. They’re scared. It just shows how much of a paper tiger they are. They should be forced to change their name, this ain’t even bourgeois ‘democracy’ this is bullshit.

Everyone should vote third party (ideally PSL, and join them, but Greens in a strong state for it could prove savvy as well) and force a political reorientation if the democrat wing ever want power again. Since the democrats are proven incapable of doing anything but flying to the right (in some cases even further than Republicans, like on immigration), stifling/brow-beating dissenters and sending militarized pigs to crush protestors; workers have been and will continue jumping ship from their genocidal-ass Cheney-Reagan-ass party. And if we throw enough numbers and support behind third parties and especially socialists like the PSL, and reliably rob them of the margins they rely on to keep this charade of death going, they will be forced from ground-up to abandon their duopoly and reorient if they don’t want their liberal democracy to collapse and a whole lot more people to be radicalized into revolutionary politics. And even if they do bring about this reorientation, they’ll have to reorient and reconstitute in a chaotic political retreat from a rising left (which in of itself can only help the victims of imperialism) because they’ve grown so complacent they forgot how to play politics.

With visibly boosting third party numbers alongside other on-the-ground-work the PSL does continuing to pick up disillusioned workers from their base and the huge 35-50% section that doesn’t even vote because of how disaffected working people are by this ‘fascist-and-vampire’ show, the ruling class is going to have to realize they need float one of these kinds of concessionary reformist “labor” parties to try to capture all the working class people (who never held illusions about the Republicans either) being funneled to true left-wing and revolutionary parties. And that would sunder the democrats in two, with half joining the republicans (that they’ve all-but-done-already), and half flooding into that reformist labor party which, with sufficient agitation, would push the reformists’ own “left wing” into revolutionary disaffection due to it becoming “democrat-ized” by the same people they were trying to get away from. A sufficiently-supported PSL being in the midst of this would only benefit the socialist movement.

And that’s the best option for the imperialist ruling class to try to stay ahead of the rising independent left parties like the PSL, is breaking apart their own duopoly-of-exploiters under pressure of us throwing our weight behind rupturing these already bursting-at-the-seams contradictions. It isn’t about “winning” like the liberals try to hand-wring about — bourgeois democracy is a farce and always has been. It’s about breaking their entrenched structures apart with a hammer and scattering its pieces with a sickle and make them show they still know how to play politics. And we can all tell they don’t. They have been showing us every day how inept and scared they are.

Shitty billionaire

ah but you repeat yourself

Sees the USA doing what it’s always done, which we’ve known since COINTELPRO and Snowden’s whistleblowing

“THIS IS LIKE CHINA!!!”

it’s notable how you “your side” is allowed to be a wide system of dispassionate material interests and power structures involved in seeking to overcome contradictions against its interests in callous yet rational competition; while the “other side” is a single cartoon comic book villain singlehandedly doing ‘all the bad things’ on an irrational whim for reasons of ‘vanity and cruelty’ I guess. And its people and their interests and opinions from the rural poor to the college liberal to the oligarch capitalist to the Prime Minister are only relevant to pity or otherwise also one-dimensionally criticize. I hope you analyze the ways in which you are conditioned toward orientalism and myopic essentializing that serves your own “side’s” imperialism by not recognizing and erasing the realities of other nations as just as complex and multifaceted as yours.

You’re carrying a colonial outlook to distill such a huge and diverse country with a massive population of its 150 different ethnic/national people groups and 20+ autonomous republics and all its various economic interests and players and political trends and history as in Russia to an idealist child’s comic book picture of one man’s “megalomania”. As the west not-so-coincidentally concocts this exact image for every country it tries to overthrow or attack, distilling them to ‘one crazy irrational madman dictator who only knows force’ and erasing the material existence and interests of the nation and its constituent classes and peoples and the history and context from which these things all arose as they exist. Which is very convenient then for “your side” to make it into whatever it wants.

Do you know what the Duma’s structure and role is, its party and factional makeup is and has been, what their members’ stances has been on topics like Ukraine since 2014, and what actions Putin has taken in accordance or against what they’ve been pushing for? Do you think its existence is just for show? You’ll be surprised on some points and maybe dig deeper. To really have true understanding of a country you’d have to also dig into the historical, social, political, and economic realities, trends, and topics in the country — and the contradictions, struggles, and syntheses between them over the years; and go past just 2014 to root these trends in their relevant circumstances experiences, struggles, transition periods, etc. from which they all arrived in their present form, on both a structural and people level. Optimally bolstered by some culture studies and language.

But learning about the RF’s federal governmental structure, and the Duma, and then the differences between the statements and actions of the Duma vs the Russian President’s statements and actions since 2014 is a starting point to start chipping away at this cartoon caricature notion you have, which is not rooted in reality. For any country on the planet. And you know this about your own country, but don’t extend the same humanity and respect toward other countries. It’s a very US American thing. Maybe if you don’t have the language skills you can also machine translate some stuff that they say themselves in their statements and speeches and congresses rather than dubbed 8 second snippets followed by 10 minutes of punditry on CNN too. And that’s just politics — history and economy is important too. And never forget about the people on the ground. In who they actually are, not who you’ve decided they are, or your media has told you they are.

1. That’s not what entryism is. Entryism isn’t “voting democrat candidates who support xyz in primaries.” Entryism is infiltrating an organization’s membership with communists(or what have you), with the intent to change the basic proportional makeup of its membership ranks, and so change its interior political composition, and so its exterior action.

2. Entryism is explicitly and categorically denounced by every serious ML as having proven historically and politically ineffective at best, and actively counterproductive and opportunist at worst and most common by far; and has been in explicit terms criticized as such for a century. Saying “Surely you’ve heard of entryism?” to Marxists is like saying “Surely you’ve heard of filling masks with lavender to keep away the miasma?” to an epidemiologist.

3. The point mentioned in #2 is by a factor of 100 extra true for an organization like the democratic party, which is (just like the Republican party) a monstrous behemoth of leagues of multi-generational dynastic establishment careerist ghouls, thieves, racketeers, and murderers from multi-billionaire elite university family empires; whose entire operations are financed, advised, organized, and run by and for the richest imperialists in the world, with uncountable streams of both open channel money and dark money from private billionaires, banks, industrial monopolies (fossil fuels, pharma, agribusiness, etc.), arms dealers, conglomerate Super PACS, shady Think-tanks and “NGOs,” and the Israel lobby. Obama’s cabinet was hand-picked by Citigroup. Biden has appointed all the most heinous neocons and war criminals he could find, even bringing back convicted massacrists like Elliot Abrams; and hiring the most corrupt people he could find, such as a Chevron lawyer who defended the destruction of the Amazon and poisoning of Indigenous people to head his Environmental executive. All while outflanking the Republicans on the right of many issues including immigration.

**

The Democrats actively benefit just like the Republicans from hyper-restricted 2-corporate-party system, proven by them, currently as we speak, sending out leagues of dark-money Super-PAC-financed lawyers to every state they can to try to purge 3rd parties off the ballots; actively killing democracy. This is their goal and interest, because it is the goal and interest of their donors. They have no interest in a different or better world and never will. Even someone as milquetoast as Bernie ran into endless smears and obstruction and undermining and got nowhere and has capitulated more and more to the right wing by hitching his boat to this circus. The liberal darlings “the squad” have each capitulated or even become active careerists and attack-dogs for the establishment imperialists against alternatives and progressives, barring Ilhan Omar who has faced endless shit and isolation even from the rest of that coward group of “progressive” dems, to say nothing of the establishment that actually runs the show with their army of equally-careerist factory-stamped liberal interns at their beck and call, pipelined from upscale colleges with PoliSci degrees to do whatever bidding they want.

The Democrats are not going to change for anyone but their donors and have proven it for decades; and they are structurally incapable of being budged internally toward anything remotely resembling democracy or socialism. Entryism to the democratic party is beyond a dead end. It would It would be more effective and principled to vote third party and continually elevate a working class party (Like the PSL) and visibly starve the democrats of votes for their failures and betrayals and making it known that is the reason; which would force a political reorientation of the democrats if they ever want power again. This necessary reorientation is impossible within the Democratic party structures, so the ruling class would have to figure out to desperately float a reformist “labor party” or “progressive party” to capture people being funneled to the PSL socialists, and this reformist party would receive an influx of the less-far-right careerist liberals from the Democrats fleeing to the new party “like rats from a sinking ship;” while the Republicans and remaining establishment Democrats proper inevitably join together in a coalition like David Lloyd George’s Conservative-Liberal coalition, or like Macron’s doing with the fascists in France. It’s not even much of a leap for them compared to the existent state of things — they’ve already been converging for decades and most of us have already come to feel the effects of it.

And this way by elevating the PSL, a real working class party who have a broader picture for revolutionary change than limiting to parliamentary dog-and-pony shows against the richest most evil people on the planet, you’re actually helping the ground-up elevation of meaningful on-the-ground working class politics which speak to the 35-50% who are so disillusioned and disenfranchised by the lies and corruption and bloodthirst of the corporate-imperialist duopoly-of-exploiters that they don’t even vote — and activating them into actual meaningful political movement-building and action with a revolutionary long-term perspective, while forcing the establishment’s hand to intercede how it can, highlighting the contradictions and failures of the system. Instead of finding new ways to capitulate to it (which are actually the same ways people have been capitulating to it for a century).

maybe if the US abolished the myopic hyper-consumptive sterile mediocrity that is goddamn LAWNS this would happen less.

Also pretty psychopathically callous comments by the blue-maga liberals here. As if Texas is only petty-bourgeois MAGA-craka Qanon suburbanites rather than also having an equal amount of Latinos and a 10% Black population (3.5 million) and almost a hundred-thousand Indigenous. There are more of the minority-groups that liberals pretend to care about (while doing everything to support their oppressors) in Texas than probably anywhere in their yuppie yankee states. Never tell me that Liberals care about the working class.

his own dumb ass thinking it’s 1890 (or that he can make it 1890 again). I know it’s easy to forget in the 24-hour media circus and liberal hand-wringing over his sleazy and reactionary attitudes and him being an ‘existential threat to “democracy”’ or whatever, but he is in actuality a remarkably stupid man. A shining dunce. He probably just watched a documentary on the early history of the US steel industry while half-asleep and connected it with his impulsive half-knowledge of trade and currency politics in his very big very good brain (the best brain, maybe, a lot of people are saying it).

Based on other things he’s said he probably actually thinks this kind of ‘protectionist’ policy and talk is not only totally grounded in any kind of contemporary reality, but is a ‘win-win’. “either these countries get so scared of losing our valuable markets and ‘deals’ that they bend the knee, or I tariff everything which will definitely bring manufacturing back to the states and everyone gets jobs and america is great again! ART OF THE DEAL!”

That’s the cool part about the struggle against capitalism: Workers’ labor and consciousness of how it is used and and withheld is the single most powerful tool within this locus of control, as said labor is the very foundation of the economic system. And the most cost-and-time-effective and reliable acts within this locus to reasonably change circumstances such as better pay and conditions are also the most effective ways of challenging capital itself, like unionizing and organizing direct action with a wider group to support you and together shoulder the burden and the associated risks of daring to raise your head against your masters.

It works double as a prime tool for furthering class-consciousness and class-solidarity (which capitalists already have with each other when push comes to shove). Which then makes continuance of this, and the spreading of this knowledge, capability, inspiration to other shops even easier. From experience, this costs much less time, effort, and spirit, and is much better at solidifying and maintaining better conditions (and not just for yourself but for everyone), than hurling yourself individually into the carousel-blender of endless additional gig work while everyone else is also made to do that individually, forever, in isolation from each other and utter hope-death, which helps this all perpetuate itself.

I’ve seen it happen where just the mere fact of a union vote being filed and date set results in an instant pay raise among discussion from bosses of “We’re a family though! This will put others between us and things won’t stay friendly! MUH OPEN-DOOR POLICY!! BUT WHAT ABOUT UNION DUES!?!” Granted, I’ve also seen it where bosses just close down that shop-branch and reopen elsewhere (sometimes under a new name to avoid legal ramifications for blatant union-busting) because they’re so disgustingly rich and so scared of other branches catching wind and joining in, that it is deemed less costly than simply recognizing the will of their workers. So there is risk to be considered, hence the need to build awareness and solidarity among a wider organized group and in your community (and definitely also other branches/departments of your company, but with the care that it’s harder to know who to trust in the early stages than among direct coworkers. Punishment for union-advocacy may be illegal, that doesn’t mean the bosses won’t try to find ways to do it if they don’t think you’ve the support to make them pay for it).

But the defeatist and false, purely bourgeois-implanted notion that the only thing within one’s locus of control as a worker is to sell yourself HARDER and make capitalists RICHER in the race-to-the-bottom death-spiral of moribund capitalism is exactly how things get this bad and continue to for working people and oneself. Workers are in reality much more powerful (and more numerous) than the capitalists who require us. That is why they need us to think we have no other or better option, and poison the well to have us perpetuate our own and each others’ defeatism and compliance.

in short: Solidarity Forever

And it’s written in buzzfeed listicle format! Engels truly ahead of his time.