Shoot digital, print cheap n small on a canon selphy

There’s nothing inherent to libertarian socialism that makes it especially vulnerable to military opposition. It was just a fact of that particular political/military moment that multiple well-armed and well-financed enemies were highly motivated to destroy them. Any political system can be destroyed if you throw enough tanks at it! That said, the Spanish anarchist forces were known for being very effective and might have won if not for fascist support of their enemies and soviet desires to replace them with bolshevik communism. In Mexico, the Zapatistas are still around, have successfully fought off both cartel and state forces (working together!) in the past.

I’m glad you’re here for a real convo. Sorry if I came off as combative in the OP – I thought that by posting it in this topic that I’d be talking to socialists and that those socialists would already be on board with heavy left critiques of the american constitutional system. I don’t mean to condescend to liberals – shouldn’t have used “libs” I guess – but I think of them, in the US, as primarily just trying to get the democrats back into power and then mostly disengage. The most outspoken of them tend to have much more energy to fight universal healthcare and other the social democratic reforms of a Bernie Sanders rather than actually take aim at the capitalist, state, and other hierarchies making our lives worse. As a result, I don’t believe they can be effective against right wing and fascist elements in the US and feel the need to recruit them to the socialist and anarchist cause.

Glad to. Here are a few to start with:

• https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvwoHdNGq9wUbrwTZ2k8yXE5oABPBQ4NX Here is a playlist of videos covering a bunch of current and recent movements in Latin America. The Zapatistas are particularly awesome!
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAEhRRDvHHQ here’s a whole documentary about what life was like in anarchist parts of Spain between WW1 and WW2. This society was eventually destroyed militarily by a Nazi-supported right-wing dictatorship, rather than any internal weaknesses.
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makhnovshchina Makhnovist Ukraine did a similar thing and was similarly destroyed by various militaries (especially the bolsheviks) in Russia.

Turns out that authoritarians hate democracy!

Your smug, holier-than-thou tone makes me not want to engage with you beyond this comment and makes me wonder how much of a good-faith interaction we’re having. I’ll let you do the rest of the digging if you’re curious about libertarian forms of socialism! This is, after all, socialism@beehaw.org.

You and I can disagree about our minimum level of democracy, but how will we actually change society if we don’t change how the decisions are made in society?

For me, the most possible democracy is when the people affected by a given decision (and only those people) are the ones who make the decision in a way they consider fair (however fair is defined) and are empowered to do what they decided on.

If the same group of people instead choose, via 1 person = 1 vote, one or more among them to make the decision, it’s less democratic in my view, but at least they each had an equal vote.

If the same group of people instead choose, via any voting system that changes 1 person = 1 vote (e.g. x amount of votes for each parcel of land), one or more among them to make the decision, it is even less democratic, because they did not all have an equal vote due to variations in how many people live in each parcel of land.

The current US Constitutional system has us here, between the above example and the below one, because land parcels in large part determine relative voting power and then the electeds make appointments of further decision makers, such as the Supreme Court.

Zero democracy is when the person/people making the decisions are not chosen by the people affected by the decision and the people affected by it have zero say in the decision.

Trump has never won the popular vote. In fact, it’s very common for Presidents to get elected while losing the popular vote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presidential_elections_by_popular_vote_margin

I think socialists can and should focus the message on issues like healthcare for all, childcare for all, housing, etc., but in order to actually win and protect those gains, you need to have deep, direct democracy in which people have the time and ability to participate in the decision-making that affects their lives. The Consitution (and I would argue representative democracy in general) doesn’t provide that. I won’t go into all of it here, but there are socialist currents like communalism, libertarian socialism (nothing to do with right wing libertarians, they stole that word), and social ecology that discuss alternative decision-making systems.

The supreme court is 9 ppl appointed for life, so that’s antidemocratic. The Senate is 2 ppl per state regardless of population, that’s antidemocratic. Amendments need 3/4 of the States, not people, to go through, that’s antidemocratic. The federalist papers specifically discuss the desire to prevent the people (“the mob” they called us) from having much power.

those are not comments by me

You spent most of your message telling me what I was saying (and getting it 100% wrong)

I think you have me confused with someone else?

I love listening to 4-part interviews before I can take part in a conversation.

It’s what the post is about. Your question is addressed in the content of the post. I know you just wanna bang out a comment real quick and move on, but maybe the discussion would be meaningful if you at least listened to the shorter, 1-part interview.

Re-establish the system that got us here in the first place? The status quo before Trump… in which Trump got elected twice? I wonder if, once balance is restored, you’ll say “now’s not the time to question things” again because “our people” are in power?

I’m not saying the point is to make questioning the Constitution the most important leftist platform. I’m saying that the protest moment we have here is an opportunity. The Democratic Party wants to use the opportunity to get people to vote Democrat in elections and nothing more. It’s fine to vote that way, but it just creates the opportunity for the next charismatic “outsider” figure to arise after we’ve had a Dem administration again. My point is that the left needs to offer a real alternative to the failing constitutional system and to the dictatorship the right is offering.

What’s the link between the corruption of the current day (citizens united, ICE, MAGA) and the constitution? What would you want to replace it in order to solve any of those problems?

It’s in the interviews in the OP! Nothing but knee-jerk reactions here.

I dunno y’all, maybe just listen to the interviews?

It’d be a message without content. All it says is “shit is bad!” and everyone already knows that. Maybe post about new and interesting ways to organize?

Yup, it’s the cylinder shape above the ball

Nothing wrong with voting, or running for low-level offices especially if you can take the right-wing pressure off your local library or school board. But we’ve seen with Bernie in 2016, with attempts to primary The Squad and other even slightly center-left Democrats in Congress (and if AOC runs for president, we’ll see it again), that the Democratic party organizations, national and local, will largely come together against any leftist candidate. They have been tacking right for several elections now, for decades since Reagan, and I think it’s about time we learn the lesson that electoral pressure isn’t effective on them at this point. They know that we have no choice but to vote for them because the Republican party is so monstrous, so why on earth would they suddenly let a bunch of leftists spoil that?

Tenant unions work. They will get your plumbing fixed, your heating fixed, and can even (eventually) make your landlord sell the building to a tenant co-op. What if multiple tenant unions organize together? You can really make things happen. The real estate lobby is a huge part of what is screwing us over, so why not fight back directly instead of trying to elect someone who somehow has the superhuman ideological purity to be immune to the RE lobby’s propaganda?

Direct action gets the goods. The civil rights movement wasn’t just marching, speeches, and voting – it was disruptive! It had boycotts, sit-ins, and the Black Panthers. The 5-day, 40-hour work week (and the entire New Deal) wasn’t won by “getting our candidates in office”, it was won by strikes and labor actions, supported by towns and municipalities’ worth of people. Our indigenous water protectors, forest defenders, and other formations have stopped pipelines from being built and actually prevented ecological destruction.

It’s electoralism that takes too long.

The Democratic party would love to turn this movement into nothing more than a “vote blue!” movement. We all know that we need to turn to more effective alternatives than that, that we need to stop and abolish ICE & cop cities, form tenant unions against the landlords eating our paychecks, and so much more.

Use these protests as a chance to connect with groups that are on the same page, even if it’s at a local level. Make connections, meet neighbors, refuse to be policed by so-called “protest leaders”, look for opportunities for direct action (but not near the protests)

A one day boycott is meaningless to companies of that size. You would need a massive, long term boycott with specific demands of these businesses.

I think mine was gentoo, waaaay back in the day. It didn’t go great lol.

I’m loving opensuse rn though!

Some people simply like to be contrarian and troll online communities, including leftist ones. Or they’re doing it out of anger or despair or low self esteem (or they’re paid to by a government lol). Good modding, that has the tools, time, and numbers to do a good job, may be an answer to that side of it.

Otherwise, I think being involved with local irl groups doing things and then posting report backs is going to be a less-theoretical form of posting. I’d hope that would lead to more productive and inspiring discussions.

Thanks for your post!

It’s a Triumph Gabriele-e. I love this machine.

Yes, I’m much more wary of corporate invasions of privacy than the odd looky-loo peering over my shoulder. There are ways of keeping your data away from prying eyes – see Selfhosted – but the brain-to-hand-to-mechanical machine (or pen) feeling is more satisfying, permanent, and tangible.

I would never trust a billionaire to do anything for us. If he doesn’t just carve out an exception for only people like himself at first, he’ll still lobby to have new restrictions on sharing if they threaten his business model.

It’ll end up being a back-and-forth between him and the IP companies, so if he has enough leverage, they’ll just find a way to give him what he wants without doing so for regular folks.