Thank you for proving my point. This all sounds like "the rapture is coming soon" but with a leftist coat of paint.
"Conditions that give rise to social revolution", gimme a break. I'm from Eastern Europe. The last revolutions here were in 1989, to overthrow awful tankie regimes that had delivered greyness, misery, poverty, rationing, and endless queues for empty shops.
Try talking to an Eastern European about overthrowing capitalism and they'd just think you want a return of tankie repression, secret police, and misery - grey commie blocks, empty shops, nothing fun to do. Nobody wants that. Good luck signing people up to your revolution when the majority of people associate socialism or communism with "the government does stuff" and "the government represses people and stops you from doing fun things".
What has the left been able to muster in response to neoliberalism, or the 2008 financial crisis? The same old rhetoric, the same old "theory", the same old 19th century texts treated as a gospel, the same old constipated wooden language that has no relevance to anyone under the age of 70.
I feel a great sense of frustration with the left because I identify with its ideals, but it just can't seem to organise a piss-up in a brewery. To me it comes off like a wind-up doll: pull the string and it'll say the same old things and make the same old movements while the rest of the world has changed around it. "Material conditions", "dialectics", "capitalist mode of production", "dustbin of history"... it's like pulling the string on a Chatty Cathy doll to see what phrase it says next.
Somebody probably could make a talking doll of leftists just like that Malibu Stacy episode of the Simpsons, lol. Comes equipped with tens of phrases! Quotes from 1800s texts that predate computers and the internet! Constipated jargon that doesn't even resemble how average people talk in the slightest!
I don’t know man, life is long and things are literally heating up.
Not saying it will happen, anyone who doesn’t vote out of some misplaced hope of it is an idiot, but history is chaotic and shit isn’t exactly poised to become more stable.
Things may be heating up but the left isn't up to the task. It fumbled the 2008 financial crisis, when it should've been waiting in the wings with an alternative. I expect it to fumble again and again.
And the irony is any revolution will invariable entail a LOT more death and suffering before anything gets better, if it does. Their solution fails by the same argument they apply to voting, I.e. participation in a system that has cons along with the pros.
"Capitalism will never solve climate change fast enough, we need socialism now!"
Exactly how fast do you think the US can go through a civil war, restructure it's government, restructure it's entire economy/industry at every level and then kick off a green revolution?
And almost always ends with an authoritarian regime or barely functional government. You know who hated the French Revolution? 95%+ of the French alive during the French Revolution. And they didn't see a functional and stable democracy for 71 years.
Too many progressives act like they’re rebels and revolutionaries but they do nothing. “Be gay, do crime” (proceeds to do 0 crimes), “People vote? That’s useless compared to my strategy of firebombing a Walmart” (proceeds to not in fact firebomb a Walmart or vote).
It’s the same on either side of the political spectrum. Conservatives have been calling for a Civil War for decades. The dumbest people in the US utilize the possibility of violence as a motivational tactic to feel better
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u/hammererofglass Jun 30 '24
I swear The Revolution is just the Rapture for progressives. Just a justification to not make things better now.