Welcome one and all to the weekly discussion thread, the time tested and honored tradition of our group. I am sorry however due to renovations on the GZD cabin, we must hold this discussion thread outside, I sincerely hope this does not cause anyone an inconvenience
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this just lmfao.
There’s some sort of constant anger caused by turning communist that I can’t really seem to deal with. I feel like I can’t always channel it into positive energy for organizing and it sometimes burns me out.
Municipality elections will be in three weeks and we have a good chance of winning in my city. Polls have us at 25% of the votes. So even though organizing feels painfully slow, we do have the figures to show us it is working.
I’m also worried about winning the election and getting in a possible position of power.
My main reason is that we will never get >50% and we will have to form a coalition with socdems, greens and possibly christian democrats at best. I’ve voiced my concerns about this on several occasions but I never got a clear answer for the tactics behind a coalition like that. I’m all for building a party and I understand that in this system we need to make concessions. But it’s another thing to ask your marxist members to defend electoral politics and possible bad takes you will have when governing. The point I’m trying to make is that I’m not wanting to become the thing we are currently fighting against. And the party’s vagueness isn’t helping with that.
Another thing I’m concerned about is the naivety when it comes to defending yourself against counter attacks from the neolibs and the far right. And I don’t mean just through the media either. We are talking about the second largest city in the country which is the home to the second largest port in Europe and the second largest port for petrochemical production/transportation in the world. It is an absolutely crucial city in terms of global supply chains. There is no way in hell our capitalist class and those of other countries are going to let a marxist party govern a city like that. And while I’m sure we can put up a good fight against media campaigns against us, I’m still a bit worried things might get out of hand, possibly even physical seeing how the far right already has militias ready to go.
What about “parallel” organizing? There are other means of building political power the party could focus on or support. Union organizing, tenants unions, strikes, protests, etc. Building power outside the government could help create the pressure needed to push changes within it.
Indeed, I think a party should have both a parliamentary and an extraparliamentary wing that can strengthen and control eachother. As long as the party is involved in the streets revisionism at the parliamentary level is less likely. Just look at Graz in Austria, where the communist party is governing together with Greens and SocDems and they still have a lot of support and still stay true to their ideals.
I’m feeling upset by how few people care about what’s happening in Lebanon
Take a look at my babies:
I am contemplating publishing more articles about Finland during the Fascist era. I think that we get really annoyed when generic antisocialists suddenly suspend their ‘antifascist’ pretensions to defend Finland’s negotiations and collaborations with Europe’s Fascist empires, and seeing what it is that they’re unintentionally(?) defending should be pretty embarrassing for them.
