Online Party Discipline?
Online Party Discipline?
Hello comrades, I read a comment on a post either on lemmygrad or hexbear talking about how most discourse happening was of poor quality and indicative of a lack of genuine leftist groups in the imperial core. Basically if there were patty's with some teeth they would enforce party discipline and education and that would lead to higher quality discourse online.
I also read some of Lenins2ndcat's comments which were very patient when they were interacting with users from other communities.
Is there anyway to work on like, an online party discipline? Or like having users who are very good at discussing with libs have a more concerted approach to their interactions? It really seems that much of us are often too aggressive and meme-y and as fun as that is it really isn't productive.
I get that this isn't how praxis or anything happens, it seems more like the way we engage could be more productive and fruitful in the long term and considerations like this might go a long way.
TL;DR Planned economy but for memeposting
It really seems that much of us are often too aggressive and meme-y and as fun as that is it really isn't productive.
I don't agree. I like it here.
You have a 2 month old account here with 13 comments, you are manifestly not leading the charge on engaging liberals "productively and fruitfully". Why don't you engage liberals in the way you recommend?
This is the second post like this from a low activity account, and it honestly is starting to feel like wrecker shit to suck the fun out of the grad.
I like the culture here. The admins are also aggressive and meme-y sometimes. I like that too. I would not be here without that.
If I understand correctly you don't want the culture to change due to the sentimental value you ascribe to it. I wouldn't want to alienate the existing members of the community and that was not my intention. I appreciate how clear you were in your disagreement.
I'll try to show what I meant in response to this comment. There are a few points here which I will make explicit and argue against explicitly for clarity. I hope it makes it easier for us to come to an understanding.
Argument
P1: you are manifestly not leading the charge on engaging liberals “productively and fruitfully”.
P2: Why don’t you engage liberals in the way you recommend?
P3: This is the second post like this from a low activity account
P4: I like the culture here.
P5: The admins are also aggressive and meme-y sometimes.
P6: I like that too. I would not be here without that.
C: and it honestly is starting to feel like wrecker shit to suck the fun out of the grad.
Examination
If I did not get the points or conclusion correct please let me know.
You made an inductive claim in P1 stating that as someone without a history of engaging in quality discourse I have not provided evidence of this being a valid strategy, either because I presume as someone who has not engaged in it I cannot know the effectiveness of what I claim perhaps due to some idealistic notion. There is some knowledge conferred through experience which I do not have and which I may have if I had engaged in the way I mentioned. The other point I see is that there is a degree of authority I lack as someone who does not have this experience which could be deferred to if I at least did engage even if it was not done "productively and fruitfully".
For P2 I think this is the stronger charge, you question my actions as not lining up with what I espoused. If this was such a great method why not engage in it? There are several reasons why this may not be the case but they would require being open-minded and considerate of options which are non-typical. As you said I am new, at least this account is, I have been doing my best to learn, observe, and lurk, prior to making any comments or engagements. I did not think I had even a base level of understanding until now where I think I have met some threshold. The other, I may be able to, as a seeming outsider, to give a useful perspective from a different standpoint as I have not subsumed the specific tendencies in this community. The weakness here comes from you not knowing where I come from or what my strengths might be. This is definitely less of an argument based on the content but rather closer (but I would not say it is) an attack or questioning of character and authority.
In the case of P3 the frequency of this type of post brings into question its validity. I do not think this is particularly important but perhaps it is because you have been a member for a while and the recent uptick is notable.
P4 and P6 are similar, these are emotive claims about your sentimental value towards the community and the norms and customs you have become accustomed to. Any change to this would presumably want to be avoided as it would necessitate change in the behaviour in existing members and what made this community, going so far as to push away the members which made this community what it is. This is disastrous as change could mean a cessation of what made this community as it is and there is little guarantee that some future evolution of this community would maintain what made the community initially great to you.
P5 This is an appeal to authority, perhaps there must be some good reason the admins behave in the way they do. The other is that though it works for them, it is something non-admins can attempt to emulate. This could be modus operandi which works for admins but not others.
C The current mood and environment of the community is starting to sour and turn you and potentially others away from the community. I mentioned why this could be an issue in my response to P4 and P6, as well it causes discomfort towards you and perhaps others.
Response
I'll put my response as clearly as I can below.
1 Change in communities always occurs. Members of communities always adjust. There is a rate of change and rate of adjustment which can be made so as not to alienate existing members and also develop the community towards some goal. Explicitly monitoring and modifying these rates is useful as opposed to in-explicitly or organically.
2 There is always some goal for some community, it may be vague, it may be better represented as multiple points, but the set contained is the goal.
3 Working towards a goal is beneficial for the belongingness of members of the community and it can mitigate any alienation or issues with change.
4 The feelings or sentiment members have is important, and can be accommodated through open and regular dialogue. This is true besides notions I am advocating for.
5 There is a way which members of the community can engage which develops their argumentation and theoretical knowledge which is preferable or better than it currently is. This is true generally and certainly not for all.
6 Engaging in such a way is an extension of the beliefs and values of the community.
C We should at least attempt to do something different even if it seems unviable. As scientific thinkers we cannot determine in advance what will happen and experiments are necessary. The costs and the benefits must considered, but it should not be avoided for fear of potential harm. We use models to determine what may happen, as materialists we know what we think is provisional and not the same as the material world.
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk
This isnt polite discussion, this is debate pervert behavior. Seek Marx and cleanse yourself of that foul demon
Basically if there were patty’s with some teeth they would enforce party discipline and education and that would lead to higher quality discourse online.
Not necessarily. Comrades that engage in actual praxis in RL mostly just don't care enough to engage in discussions online. I can certainly attest to that. Since I started organizing offline my interest in engaging with libs online has stopped almost entirely. It's time consuming, annoying, unpleasant and for the most part simply unproductive. 99% of people of any political affiliation do not engage in good-faith debate online - including me and most comrades here. The time I have for political activism is sparse and I can do more productive things with it than talk to a liberal who's just gonna reply with a sissy-pee social credit meme to a comment I took 30mins to write. RL discussions for the most part are much better in this regard, because the human component shines through much more and you tend to pre-select the people you engage with to a much larger extent. Getting into political discussions with people completely opposed to your view doesn't happen that much, whereas it is the standard online.
Is there anyway to work on like, an online party discipline?
For existing real-life parties going online maybe, but their energy is used much better elsewhere. For a bunch of randos like us? I don't think so tbh. We are not organized, there's no discipline, no organizational structure, no mechanisms to enforce things, no participation to come to conclusions and analysis.
I agree that communists in 2023 have to use the online space productively. Creating platforms like lemmygrad, producing content like podcasts, videos, articles, streams, etc is just much more worth-while (and even that's limited) and lends itself more to concerted efforts than discussions with dorky libs.
yeah I have to admit since my org is pretty dead in the summer I spend way too much time online lol
You seem to think minds are being changed in twitter comment sections or even on here. I think we should all know by now that’s not the case.
Besides that, anecdotally of course but whatever, before I started taking Marxism seriously and reading more I got yelled at by I can’t even estimate how many people who were a mixture of MLs, anarkiddies, whatever else. Some clown being mean to me, justified or not, had exactly zero impact on my willingness to learn more when the time came. If I’m being honest, my upbringing in the heart of capitalism had already put blinders on to Marxist ideas. They were simply wrong and anyone who believed in them was crazy/evil/stupid, take your pick. It’s not like some guy calling me a lib could lower the bar of consideration below zero, if that makes sense.
Anyway, the only way people are reliably going to come to embrace Marxist critiques of capitalism is if they find it when in a state of mind where they’re already receptive to it. If their material conditions are shit or becoming shit they’re going to be desperately seeking out the reason… I mean I wish I could say we all could help guide these desperate people to the light, but I just do not think that’s true. Sure, post an explanation when something happens that kind of boggles liberals’ brains. Maybe even post when the hogs are especially riled up over something. But overall it’s not going to penetrate deep enough.
Which of course goes to my last point which ties to your first thing. There isn’t just poor discussion from those of us who consider ourselves to be MLs and live in the imperial core… there is NO discussion because there is no real significant amount of us. I don’t think I’d even say 1% of the US have read and understand Capital. Or any other writings for that matter. It’s probably an insanely small amount. Which IS a problem because if you don’t have people who understand the ideology to teach those who won’t go learn on their own (not online, but in settings such as union meetings which is one of the reasons I do advocate for unionization even in the imperial core) then how the hell will you ever have a revolution much less one favorable to principles we’d like to see? You don’t, basically.
On the hand, and this gets a bit doomer/pessimistic so brace yourself, there will no socialist revolution within the imperial core. Not likely in our lifetimes. The way things are, and the way ideologies work, even if material conditions continue to plummet, and who the hell would expect otherwise?, people will become more and more radicalized… towards fascism. I wish it weren’t true, but the US state has all but assured it will happen either on purpose or by completely moronic and evil policies. Thry wiped out any even slightly leftist movements in the country repeatedly and barely or never touched the right wing. Add to that that fascism has no like real driving ideology or core principles. It can be molded to fit the individual racism and hatred of any given person or group. Socialism, done correctly, does require a base level of acceptance of certain principles. A politically uneducated mass of people with falling material conditions… what else is there to expect?
I know this probably comes off as inconsistent or schizophrenic. It does in my mind too. We’re simultaneously faced with the reality that we probably can’t really affect anything, but we must do something. So what do you do? Post nice essays on Twitter? I dunno, maybe. I’d say just about the only really consequential thing to be done is what I said earlier. Try to form or join a union for a profession you work in and find those workers who seem to share your mindset and see where they are in their political educational journey. Maybe you journey together further, I dunno. You could probably do this in other ways too just in the real life local community. The key though to this entire thing is the people you seek to educate in order to “convert” them have to trust you and not just like some sociopath shit where you manipulate them into it. But real, actual trust that you build through genuinely discussing things, helping people, whatever. Sounds like a lot of work. I know. It is. Way more than posting nicely online, for sure. But if you want to be doing something, short of going off and John Browning some shit or offing yourself (can’t recommend either of these), I don’t really know what else there is to be done. We’re just in a weird wait and see period of history right now it appears. The decline of the US and the western EU could take another century, who knows. I dunno. I’d just spend less time worrying about random libbed up, probably a Nazi dude on reddit being butthurt and more time worrying about focusing your power and energy where it can affect change and accepting that your power to do anything is damn near zero. Some people call that being a doomer. I’d call it being realistic.
Of course this is only one man’s opinion…
I disagree that content in places like this can't help change people's minds. The old /r/communism and /r/genzedong were an important part of dispelling anticommunist propaganda for me, and while deprogramming people doesn't have a lot of material significance by itself, at least part of the people who are convinced are going to end up doing praxis
If I hadn't found genzedong I might still be a vaushite.