*16th century guy voice*
If the capitalist utopia was going to happen, it would have happened in Venice… but it failed… and it failed in Genoa… and Ragusa…but you think you and your dork friends are gonna be alive for the end of Hapsburg rule in the Netherlands? lol
If the Socialist utopia was going to happen, it would’ve happen in Russia… but it failed… and it failed in Venezuela… and China….but you think you and ur dork friends are gonna be alive for the end of America? lol
The literal pope of the Catholic Church is way better on Palestine than one of the most leftist members of congress and supposed “socialist firebrand”. Hard to not feel like the left is totally cooked in the US
Socialists in congress have one foot in acting as a pro-worker opposition to Dems, and one foot in as loyal soldiers of the Biden agenda. Which means any oppositional posture is totally disarmed. A disgusting betrayal of elemental principles by all except
@RashidaTlaib
today
Harris choosing Walz as a running mate has shown the world that DSA and our allies on the left are a force that cannot be ignored. Through collective action, DSA and the US left more broadly have made it clear that change is needed. DSA members organized in our workplaces and
Universal militia service is the only democratic alternative to bourgeois armies and police. This is a core programmatic point of the democratic left from Machiavelli up through Bolshevism, in the original program of the British Labour Party, and the current Swiss model
is it time for us to have this discourse? who’s ready to hear the marxist case that wealth does not come from imperialist extraction (it’s actually the exploitation of the working class)
This wasn’t just “denouncing socialism” it was an extremely rabid and reactionary anti communist resolution. That a majority would support something like this should start to break illusions that Democrats can be allies of socialists
45% of the Democratic caucus voted against the anti-socialism resolution, so I think the takeaway is more that the Democratic Party is what we make of it
Hilarious that the NYT is alleging the new PM of Slovakia is far right and similar to Orban because he pledged to end arm shipments to Ukraine. Turns out he’s head of a left social democratic party
Watching the left rationalize these types of delusions really is like watching someone struggle with an abusive relationship or an addiction. I’m sorry but this is totally idiotic. President Harris will send billions to Netanyahu
Couple points: 🧵
1) regardless of the tactics used here it’s incumbent on the whole left to defend our own against the state’s repressive apparatuses, just as French socialists defended anarchist terrorists or as the left in this country defended Sacco & Vanzetti. The starting
This morning,
@MerrimackPD
swiftly acted to put an immediate stop to these individuals committing felonies at
@ElbitSystemsLtd
. These individuals published video recordings of their crimes in Merrimack on a Pro-Palestine handle on X. Thank you, MPD and Elbit for all you do.
Both wife and I are in tears as
@AOC
speaks, what an inspiring leader -- old enough to remember it was impossible for a socialist firebrand to be a keynote speaker at the DNC -- and to own patriotism as she must
I think reformism in our time comes from a belief that proletarian revolution is fundamentally impossible in the US. But the reality is our entire legal order is breaking down and permanently empowering the most reactionary minority. There will never ever be another ‘progressive’
Stalin was a dogshit wartime leader and the red army heroically defeated fascism despite and not because of him. It’s amazing how so-called marxists can bend over backwards to defend a conspiracy theorist version of history 80 years after the fact
There is no solution that does not end in a single state. The reality is it already exists as a regime of ethnic terror and military occupation. It’s either that or a binational, secular, and democratic state with right of return and equal citizenship.
The labor bureaucrat/professional NGO activist/Alinskyite community organizer model of the Left that typified the left wing of the Obama coalition that was dominant in 1988-2008 needs to be decisively broken with and thrown into the dust bin of history
If I was to abandon marxism for whatever seemed pragmatic and most likely to succeed, being a third world left bourgeois developmentalist has way better prospects than liberalism
The “squad” name reflects exactly what it is, a branding clique rather than a serious political fraction. I hope the others are getting a good chewing-out by Rashida right now. DSA needs to get serious and ambitious about its strategy and expectations for electeds
This is so dumb. Who cares if marx was marginal in academia? He was a revolutionary who was denied a professorship, exiled from three countries, and oriented his work towards autodidacts and organic proletarian intellectuals
New article (co-authored with Michael Makovi) at the Journal of Political Economy.
We show that Karl Marx was a largely rejected & peripheral figure in academic circles prior to 1917. He only gained mainstream cache after the Russian Revolution of 1917.
A lesser man would have done way worse in his situation. There was no basis in the bureaucracy for the democratic reform he wanted, stuck between hardliners and oligarchs-in-waiting. Probably one of the more tragic figures of our times, fit for one of Shakespeare’s histories. RIP
311-112-1: House votes to send $60B in aid to Ukraine, including replenishing the U.S. weapons stockpile previously depleted by the war.
More Democrats (210) voted for the GOP bill than Republicans (101).
112 Republicans voted “no,” while Rep. Dan Meuser (R-PA) voted “present.”
Important to have a spine in the face of a united onslaught from our enemies rather than cede ground to their narratives. Sad that some chapters are posting revisions or apologies for standing with Palestine. Our standard should be how history will judge us, not the ruling class
The insane pressure on dsa electeds to bend their back and renounce the organization for its anti apartheid stance is why we need to prepare everyone we send in with the idea they are operating “in the enemy camp” and to act accordingly
I don’t get why people get mad about jacobin publishing entry-level basic propaganda articles. Yes this is obvious to someone who’s already a socialist, but that’s not who its intended audience is
For all her talk about changing society, Meghan Markle is mostly interested in promoting herself as an aspirational figure of the enlightened liberal ruling class on her new podcast.
I watched this for the first time only a few months ago and have been thinking about it daily since 10/7. If you haven’t seen Battle of Algiers you should really give it a watch. Really incredible film
I just opened a series on Netflix called "3 Body Problem".
This is an extremely accurate depiction of Cultural Revolution, in Beijing, in 1966.
The Left today wants this more desperately than you could ever imagine.
Watch it.
I welcome the decision of the Colorado Supreme Court.
The former white supremacist-in-chief has no place near the Oval Office, or any office for that matter.
Any political organization will have a political left and right—it shouldn’t be seen as a commentary on which is correct. For example I strongly sympathize with the right wing of the early Comintern. There are many things the dsa left can learn from its right who are extremely
It makes me sad that some are using left/right-wing framing against comrades like me who organize alongside them. The right and left of US politics want fundamentally different things; in DSA we share a vision for an end to capitalism, we just differ on how best to get there.
We really should just be eating popcorn while watching the Democrat party fuck itself on a world historic level—something that was entirely predictable conservatively at least a year ago. Anyone who is surprised that AOC is defending Biden has not been paying attention, anyone
The founding Plenary Committee of the American Communist Party signed the Party Declaration in Chicago, Illinois on July 21st, 2024.
Currently, hundreds of Communists are in the process of being officially incorporated.
#AmericanCommunistParty
Openly organizing for your ultraleft cult within DSA is an expellable offense. Entryism is forbidden by our by-laws. Disagreeing with ultraleft positions on things is *not* an expellable offense in a democratic socialist organization.
Early 1900s Social Democrats saw accepting posts in the cabinet of a capitalist government as a capitulation to the bourgeoisie and disparagingly referred to it as “ministerial socialism”. In the 21st century, Communists are well to the right of where socdems were in 1900
On the left is the CPUSA 2036 symbol. On the right is the old CPUSA symbol. We will push for the left version to become the official symbol and erase the right one.
Cornel West just invoked the historical Communist movement and the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie in the event that Bernie Sanders is hosting. Love these moments
If you're a communist, you're not a republican. You're anti-monarchist, but republicanism is a longing for a specific bourgeois constitutional arrangement that is not ours.
Hearing the nyc bowman endorsement questionnaire says nothing about BDS, iron dome, etc. I don’t know how you can put something like that forward and think you’re doing something healthy for the organization
This is mostly very good but I find it rather sectarian and cowardly to only associate with JVP and If Not Now and not touch Palestinian groups with a ten foot pole and walk back any association w the NYC March just because someone made a problematic comment.
The whole idea that the average ‘paper member’ has no brain and loves everything AOC has ever done is weird. DSA is a catchall place for the radical left in the US. I know a few and they were mortified when I explained the iron dome situation etc. my experience won’t be universal
Agree with Trotsky’s politics or not, here he lays out the only principled Marxist response to the idea of a bourgeois regime outlawing political parties:
Finkelstein to an audience of UMass students tonight (paraphrasing): Nat Turner was a religious fanatic who ordered his comrades to kill all whites. Open up the pages of The Liberator. Did William Lloyd Garrison condemn the Nat Turner Rebellion?
A lot of the criticism of CPUSA has been off the mark imo. Paying someone a small salary or having a hadash guy speak is not a scandal. Holding millions of dollars in real estate to use as a personal retirement fund, hand selecting convention delegates, and Democrat tailism is
Never in my life did I think I would see a DSA comrade (and a leading comrade in an ascendant DSA caucus, at that) referring to the Bolsheviks as part of the "democratic Left."
How far this org has strayed from its roots.
Why are you constantly backing witch-hunting smears against critics of Zionism? What actual evidence is there of anti semitism? “Everything before the word ‘but’ is bullshit”
Columbia’s crackdown is obviously a violation of rights to free speech and makes no one safer, but fact remains that much of the Palestine organizing being done at Columbia was and still is antisemitic
Idk or care what this is about but surely 75k followers makes something a ‘large left account’. I think this is problematic because rather than the left building our own, serious and professional proletarian mass media, we’re leaving it up to random individuals who are more
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: we need a coherent theory not of ‘fascism’ which was a particular response to the crisis of the proletarian revolution but of ceasarism/bonapartism *generally* not tied to a specific conjuncture
Henry Kissinger, Amerikaans diplomaat en staatsman, is dood. Als ROOD vieren wij deze dag. Kissinger was één van de grootste oorlogscriminelen van de 20ste eeuw. Socialisten kunnen niet onverschillig staan tegenover de misdaden van deze massamoordenaar. (1/12)
“but putin isn’t a communist” have you considered that the national bourgeoise can play a historically progressive role in the struggle against colonialism & monopoly capitalism?
Who could have predicted that a wave of disgusting antisemitism (real) would erupt from right wing conspiracy theorists and not from left wing antizionists 🙄
Any system with a presidency is merely an elected monarchy. Abolish the presidency, abolish the senate, abolish the right of judicial review. All power concentrated in the hands of the people’s representatives. That’s been the program for democracy for 500 years
I believe the NPC is making a mistake. Not that it would be bad to fold BDS into IC necessarily, or that they shouldn’t have the authority to do so. Rather we shouldn’t set a precedent against the right of committees to publish criticism
“Gaining power” “building power” I honestly want to know what liberal socialists think power is? Do we want the type of power that Bernie Sanders earned in the Biden admin? Or do we want to fundamentally change the political system in this country?
Andrew Callaghan on CNN: "Even CNN competes for views by running constant 24hr news cycles based upon fear, division, outrage & panic, probably like to sell ads."
Don Lemon: "I don't agree with what you're saying."
One fundamental error of the 2nd International was a belief in the “irresistible forward march” of socialism which led to confusion and disorganization when a major setback was faced. In the 21st century, we inherit the opposite problem stemming from the defeat of the 20th C…
Biden’s decision to be walk the picket line seems to me to be more a result of a strategic reorientation of the Democratic Party to better incorporate labor that occurred in 2020 than it is a result of labor’s “strength” (or even militancy)
This is a bad example because Kennedy literally invaded Cuba and Nixon normalized relations with China, but the point of class independent politics isn’t about the individual pragmatic balance sheet of each individual administration. Obama was a terrible pres. but cooled tensions
So the people behind the pro-Israel Brownshirt fascist auxiliary at UCLA, who fired explosives into the encampment, (“best jews for truth”) raised 100k on GFM. Is this the usual Israel astroturf project or does it have some grassroots kahanist element too? Something to watch
Pretty easy rule of thumb to follow:
- stick to principles and don’t sell out queer ppl to make colonized nationalists etc more comfortable
- stick to principles and don’t sell out victims of imperialism because you think it’ll make the ruling class give you a green new deal
The unequivocal inability of DSA to have an independent influence on national politics is extremely concerning. We could be agitating for FORC, instead we’re ambiguously campaigning for Harris/Newsome etc
Sign on to tell the Democratic Party's leadership that it's time to call it:
Withdraw Biden.
Reject Fascism.
We need a candidate that can beat the rise of the right—someone who stands with working people & will take a morally clear anti-war stance.
👉
AOC: "We do negotiate, but what we don't do is bring them publicly in order to empower not just Rs but the fascist flank of the R Party"... this is effectively *hiding the socialist critique of bourgeois politics from the entire working class*. It is the political strategy of
@delk
the only thing wsb controls is sentiment, and it’s uncoordinated. Will be both historic and satisfying to see Wall Street get fucked at the expense of the average person for once
I think a lot of people before this convention thought of mug as theoryheads but our goal is actually to make every dsa member a genuine worker-intellectual. We focus on politics, history, and strategy over abstract *theory* particularly because the practice of past generations
Again, nobody wants to lay off staff, but if you’re working in a socialist organization the long term political goals should be priority
#1
. Empowering ELECTED LEADERSHIP is the best way to do this. The bureaucracy should serve the members, not the other way around
@escargotpro_
@NickTagliaferro
I don’t think that this has anything to do with any personal political courage or conviction on Biden’s part but rather the DP apparatus actually taking the threat of the right seriously whereas there was more of a shared vision of politics at the top prior to Trump
Another day, another failure for Twitter to reinstate the account of the DSA International Committee. Mindboggling to see cheerleading of the suppression of the anti war movement on the Left
My grandma (who I was named after) died this morning. She’s basically the reason I ended up as a professional musician, she also set aside a portion of her schoolteacher’s pension every month to help send me to college. Thankful that she lived a long life and had a peaceful death
@meagankday
Not sure organized democratic mass politics is totally counterposed to terrorism. Also not clear to me that attacks on civilians were part of the plan rather than a result of a combination of the spontaneous energy of ppl breaching walls & IDF friendly/indiscriminate fire