Comments on: Battle Lines

By: Simon

Simon — Fri, 12 Apr 2024 01:29:11 +0000

This is a good article and it’s important for people to be thinking about this topic all the time. I think that an important missing piece is the relativeness of the AIB labels and their dependence on the real actions of people and groups. For this reason it’s always best to include examples either hypothetical or historical of AIB positions, groups, and people. I think characterizing democrats as intermediate and members of marxist groups as advanced wholesale may give the wrong impression about the relativeness and the dependence on action. There are a large number of non-Marxists who are democrats and are very active in their real actions on behalf of progressive politics or trade unionism. I would characterize these as advanced workers who need to be won to Marxism, an important task, more important than welding together the intermediate “socialists” who take no real action on behalf of progressive politics no matter what beliefs they hold in their heart.in this way we can also divorce AIB and class labels form just being moral judgements. Good article and one I hope people use in their organizing by taking time to considering the class and level of advancement of those they organize with and against. We consider this in every meeting in the organization I’m in.

By: Simon

Simon — Fri, 12 Apr 2024 01:27:27 +0000

By: We Must Intensify the Struggle – The Red Clarion

We Must Intensify the Struggle – The Red Clarion — Sun, 07 Apr 2024 23:23:49 +0000

[…] through the concentrated power of our class — and our class-allies — can we stand against the enemy class and against the enemy state. Alone or unorganized, we are […]

By: Cde-Editor Katsfoter

Cde-Editor Katsfoter — Sat, 06 Apr 2024 09:46:03 +0000

In reply to Hazel. DSA is such a big tent organization that it can house both legitimately revolutionary and counter-revolutionary streams. Organizing WITHIN DSA is organizing amongst the advanced workers. Obviously it can never, itself, become the vanguard party, but there is work to be done INSIDE of it, forming organizations (see, for instance, our article Organize! for what we mean here). Those organizations can then exit the DSA itself and join the core of the vanguard when it begins to coalesce (see Tasks and Goals). Many of our affiliates and some of our Press Workers are members of DSA with just this understanding.

By: Hazel

Hazel — Sat, 06 Apr 2024 04:28:46 +0000

In many articles here, DSA is briefly mentioned, like “[The advanced elements] are by and large contained in organizations like the DSA, but are also locked up in CPUSA, PSL, etc,” but then later on, there’s a good deal of time spend talking about how to relate to CPUSA and PSL, and criticizing them in various ways, but then DSA is usually not mentioned in that part. What do you think about how to relate to DSA?

I’m a DSA member, and I think it’s a little different from the others, at least from what I’ve heard about them. It seems like the rank and file have a higher degree of ability to influence the organizations’ direction than the others. On the other hand, I would guess that the rank and file themselves are less developed on average (and that’s before getting into the stuff with us having so many paper members)

We often tend towards opportunism with electoral politics (DSA-LA endorsing Nithya Raman, etc), but I think the problem there isn’t exactly unaccountable leadership, but rather widespread disagreement on whether that situation is a problem, and if so, what specifically should be done about it, as well as general organizational inertia. Basically, I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on DSA.