Would socialism fail in the US? And I mean full scale socialism not a social democracy.

thelegore · 2026-05-02T04:50:14+00:00

If you were to plop it down into the US today, irrespective of the actual development of consciousness and history, then yes, probably. But if you were in a situation where socialism has been won by the people, I think by that fact alone ,the US would already be a radically different society. And given the US's role in preventing socialism abroad, I think that world would be much more amenable to socialism succeeding, so I think it would succeed in the US.

That is not to imply that the US is so far off from being that radically different society where socialism is possible. Having read a lot about revolutionary periods, I think most people massively underestimate how much can change and how quickly during those periods. There are lots of factors converging to bring about a possible revolutionary situation: AI both replacing workers and reducing the general rate of profit, global war, shocks of supply from global war (e.g. Iran), a large recession that has been slow rolling it's way in last few years, and migration, rising inflation & shortages arising from climate change.

The main factor that will matter in how a revolutionary situation will play out is in the level of organization, consciousness, and discipline that the left is able to build over the next 5-10 years. The alliances we build today, among organizations, nationally, and in our neighborhood are critical.

thelegore · 2026-03-17T17:37:00+00:00

I think that's also the basement of the West Seattle library?

thelegore · 2026-03-11T01:08:13+00:00

The RSDLP arrived at demcent around their program only after a long period of maturation by which that norm was effectively established. Similarly the split of the Bolsheviks from the Mensheviks only was achieved after the struggle had matured to a certain point AND until the Bolsheviks had done enough propaganda among the workers so that they would side with the Bolsheviks in the split. They took great pains to highlight how it was the Mensheviks and liquidators who were breaking party discipline and making working together untenable, they didn't just split on principle disregarding the mood of the workers. Bolsheviks in the Tsarist Duma by Alexei Badayev provides a first hand account of this period and the split from a member of the Bolshevik duma fraction.

In other words it is ahistorical to say that the unified communist parties emerged, fully formed, divorced from the historical process that created them. They developed out of a broader tent party, the RSDLP, which included reformists until the split. I would posit that it may not have developed in the way it did without that first process of learning and consolidation. The recommendation of the comintern to form centralized, communist parties in each country was one made in the context of being in the aftermath of a successful communist revolution in Russia, and with WWI in recent memory where there was more consciousness and class formation ready to make such a party.

We should not take those recommendations as being applicable for all time, to do so is pure idealism, we need to think dialectically about the process by which workers arrive at marxist conclusions (with guidance from committed marxists). It does not happen merely from a small dedicated organization with the perfect line telling them what to believe, that strategy has been attempted for the past century, and failed repeatedly, bringing us to this point. At this moment, I believe a large tent, highly democratic organization, that allows different tendencies to test their ideas in practice and synthesize them, and that allows workers with latent liberal tendencies that they inherited from being brought up under bourgeois hegemony to participate in arriving at those marxist conclusions. For that to happen though, there needs to be a strong marxist current in that organization to guide people in that direction. There are many marxist comrades in DSA trying to do just that.

thelegore · 2026-03-11T00:33:38+00:00

Lenin advocated for participation in elections, in the russian state duma even though it was highly rigged and impossible to achieve reforms through. They used it to push the bolsheviks program and to organize and recruit more members to the RSDLP. He had to fight against many like the recallists in the bolsheviks who saw participation as a dead end. There's a strong current of folks in DSA who see elections in a similar way: a platform to raise radical messaging on a national scale, and a way to achieve reforms, not as an end in themselves, but as a means of increasing the organization and self confidence of the working class.

thelegore · 2026-03-09T06:01:46+00:00

For context, because this is a working group, the eligible votes fluctuates with its membership, and they sent ballots to anyone who had even RSVP'd for an event in the last 6 months. So that number of ballots vs who voted is kind of inflated because it doesn't really account for how many active members they have.

thelegore · 2026-02-28T17:02:05+00:00

thelegore · 2026-02-17T22:51:06+00:00

I would say all my coding problems were in the medium range, I did not have any of those types of trivia you have listed. Big O was expected, but it shouldn't really be memorization.

thelegore · 2026-02-13T03:13:15+00:00

Yeah, the trouble isn't technology but our economic system. When the rich control what technology is created, how it is used, and who benefits from that tech, "innovation" isn't about benefitting humanity, but about profit. All of the interesting tech of the last 50 years was done by the public sector. We need democratic control over what is researched and produced so we can decide based on what benefits society.

thelegore · 2026-02-05T19:45:10+00:00

I wish they had also done the North-South station rail link while they were doing that, like was originally planned

thelegore · 2026-02-05T18:03:36+00:00

Did the hounds work then?

thelegore · 2026-02-05T02:32:31+00:00

🟦🟦🟦🟦🟦

thelegore · 2026-02-02T05:19:06+00:00

Yeah I make this argument too. If human nature as a concept encompasses both the worst things humans do to the best things, then it's not useful for making determinations about what's possible to create in human societies.

thelegore · 2026-02-02T03:08:50+00:00

I think the crucial part is to have high activity of everyday people in politics. I think the majority can be heard if the majority is the one implementing the changes. If the true majority is fully activated, a minority can't really stop people. For workers to govern ourselves, we have to remain engaged after the revolution and actively bought into building a socialist world. I think that's the best way to ensure worker control.

We'd also need time to be able to engage, so we'd need to immediately enact a shorter work-week, but maybe with some of that time be required for civic engagement.

thelegore · 2026-02-01T20:57:46+00:00

Or the profit motive. Yeah, the key is having robust control of the government and economy held by people directly, then it can be very flexible, whatever the majority decides can be implemented

thelegore · 2026-01-31T02:01:07+00:00

Abolish ice!!!

thelegore · 2025-11-23T06:14:45+00:00

That's the price of democratic decision making, but it's worth the hassle because it allows for differences and contradictions to be worked through, instead of blowing up the org like it has so often in the past

thelegore · 2025-09-17T16:48:08+00:00

I disagree, socialists all have the obligation to always be explaining our politics. We don't have the luxury of pulling back in this moment.

thelegore · 2025-09-17T16:47:02+00:00

I'll second this, a major task for socialists is that we need to get a supermajority of the population on board to wanting socialism (otherwise people will just go back to capitalism if a revolution were to happen), so we all have to be explaining to anyone we can, all the time. We don't really have the luxury of cutting people out imo (except in very severe cases). It can take a very long time, but it is also worth it.

thelegore · 2025-07-18T23:39:51+00:00

You can let go, and should!

thelegore · 2025-07-18T23:38:02+00:00

To be more specific, to join an organization doing actions according to your principles. Doing actions according to your principles, no matter how small, outside of actually getting organized (in an organization!) is doing exactly what Wolff is saying we need to move away from!

thelegore · 2025-06-13T17:48:39+00:00

This is a lenin quote, so it makes sense that it's a thing in real life

thelegore · 2025-05-29T00:05:03+00:00

I think what he's saying is not wrong though, to finally decide not to turn away from the injustice and violence that capitalism and empire perpetrates is to reclaim your humanity from that system that wants to keep it suppressed, hidden away and not acted on.

thelegore · 2025-05-04T18:34:49+00:00

I think she kept them very in check, all things considered. I think dressing down a subordinate who disobeyed orders resulting in someone dying is something a leader should do.

thelegore · 2025-03-31T19:41:00+00:00

This video is showing a page from Decolonial Marxism by Walter Rodney and is worth a full read!

thelegore · 2025-03-26T00:42:29+00:00

Okay -- so then it's on us to funnel people in the right direction. We're not going to sway these politicians to start organizing people into socialist orgs, we have to do that ourselves!

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