I see it, it’ll take a while for me to read through it. I’ll respond in a single reply, because I don’t want to get signals crossed, so I will likely be oversimplifying things for the sake of keeping it within a single comment reply to your 3. I don’t want you to take this as dismissal of your effort, but instead a desire to communicate effectively if you wish to continue. Thank you.

Why do you think a violent revolution would result in a worker-controlled socialist society? It seems it would just result in a society dominated by whoever controls the revolution, its resources, and distribution systems.

There are two fundamentals I need to hammer home here, so that you can best understand my position.

The first is the Marxist understanding of the state. The state is not a neutral body to be wielded by whatever individuals happen to work as administrators, but instead is created by the base of society, the economy, and dictated by the class that owns the commanding heights of the economy. In any class society, there are two dominant, diametrically opposed classes that form the primary class struggle, in capitalism, that’s the working class and capitalist class. The capitalist class presently controls the commanding heights and the state.

The second is the Leninist understanding of revolutionary strategy. A revolution requires, in Lenin’s understanding, the following 3 conditions:

1. A theoretically correct, disciplined, mass revolutionary socialist party trusted by the rest of the working class
2. A millitant, politically educated working class
3. A crisis within capitalism that leads the capitalist class unable to rule as it could before, and the working class unable to live as they were before.

The first condition is why I always suggest organizing with a political party. Without an educated and disciplined cadre that takes under their study and practice the science of revolution, there can be no way to spread this knowledge to the rest of the working class. Class consciousness does not form spontaneously, at most it is limited to trade unionism, not an interconnected socialist struggle.

The second condition is why socialists spend so much time trying to agitate among the people and bring them to theory. I personally, as part of my party responsibilities, have to touch grass and cold open with people about revolutionary socialism. It’s uncomfortable at first, but people generally respond more positively than you’d first think. I also made an introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list, which a comrade is running a reading circle for over on Hexbear. You should take a look at it and see the kind of discussion that goes on.

The third condition is made inevitable by the structure of capitalism itself. You seem to broadly agree with it, except you still seem to think social democracy can save capitalism, up until it collapses and spontaneously turns into socialism without any organization for it, believing capitalist organization to be a swap for socialist organization. This is naive.

And the thing you gloss over is that that’s precisely what tends to happen in so-called “communist” revolutions. I put communist in quotes because I know that’s not true communism. But Stalin and Mao were both authoritarian dictators who centralized resources under their personal control, maintained dominance and hierarchy through their personality cults, and caused millions of deaths and widespread suffering throughout the regions under their control. To say nothing of the surveillance states they used to maintain their hold on power.

You’re correct on one thing: what I advocate is precisely what has happened in socialist countries, and that’s why I wish to replicate their strategy and adapt it for the conditions of the US. You are, however, trapped in Red Scare ideology masked as “common sense.” The “common sense” of any society is the ideology of the ruling class. Sometimes this is benign, like the sky being blue. Sometimes this is insidious, like the reflexively ingrained propaganda reinforced by books, Hollywood, academia, and other capitalist-controlled institutions meant to demonize existing socialism.

Stalin and Mao are both beloved in Russia and China accordingly. This is not because Russians and Chinese are lesser able to think critically, nor is it due to a chauvanist idea of brainwashing. It’s instead because, under them, life expectancies doubled. Society was, counter to your point, democratized at mass as compared to Tsarism and semi-feudal society. Did you know, for example, that students often were able to pick their teachers in the Soviet Union? That children were treated not as subjects, but as active participants in society that need to actually practice self-governance in order to be equipped to run the kind of society socialism is?

That’s not to say they never made mistakes. Socialism exists in the real world, as do its real leaders. But the myth that they slaughtered millions of people like maniacal dictators is not correct. Famine from underdeveloped agriculture and mismanagement is not the same as directly engineering the slaughter of entire peoples a la Hitler and Churchill. Their names have been drug through the mud in the west because they stood to recreate society in a new form.

In both the USSR and PRC, it was the working class that took power. Not the capitalist class, and not the aristocracy. These incredible achievements in education, literacy, life expectancy, infant mortality, equality of opportunity, the liberation of oppressed nations, all came from working class power. Not something commanded from above, but pushed from below and guided by the organized working class, the communist party.

In any case, the idea that socialism must come from the collapse of the welfare state, with no organized group outside the system to take its place, is incredibly shortsighted. Not only does this perpetuate imperialism in the short term, which you did not counter in any way, but it also will collapse into barbarism. The organizing work done by socialists to practice for state power and train the working class on how to govern ourselves is so we can replace the capitalist state with a socialist one. We cannot simply recreate a capitalist state and hope it actually is a socialist one, the old one must be entirely replaced from the ground up with a new system.

Different modes of production correspond to different forms of state. This isn’t an accident, like liberal academics often believe it to be, but a necessity of how the state and economy reinforce each other.

I want you to take a step back and think. How much study of existing socialist states have you done? From whose perspective? How much socialist theory have you studied? From whose perspective? And how much analysis have you done based on this study of your own contemporary conditions? All 3 of these are critical to understanding how we go from here to socialism, which will necessarily also include liberation from settler-colonialism and land back for indigenous peoples. I am asking you to make the study of social change a priority, rather than a gut feeling.

I don’t necessarily need the USSR, I need a worker controlled society. I need socialism, where the commanding heights of the economy are socially controlled and the working class controls the state. This is incompatible with the Nordic model, which is essentially capitalist control of the state and commanding heights, but a large welfare net, one that comes from imperialism and unequal exchange. The high living standards in the Nordics come from the backs of global south labor.

What I want is worker liberation, and an end to the dictatorship of capital. If you stand against the workers of the world, including yourself, so that you can enjoy cushy safety nets taken from the backs of the global south, then you have far more in common with fascism than I ever could.

The fact that you do not even mention imperialism and unequal exchange while espousing the Nordic Model is precisely why we need to be serious and study socialism, rather than operate purely off of vibes and hopium. Revolutionary optimism is good, nonsense is bad.

Also, for what it’s worth, your jab at the USSR is unfounded, it was far more democratic than the Nordics are today.

The disconnect seems to me to be that I recognize and understand imperialism as a system capitalism necessarily evolves into, and that I see the state as a product of class struggle dependent on the mode of production and distribution. You see capitalism, ironically, as a static system that can be perpetuated forever (or at least for our lifetimes) as long as we simply vote to maintain social democrats, and do not factor in that this requires the moribund system of imperialism to go on for at least a while longer despite already being on its way out.

When you fight tooth and nail against the only group that can bring socialism, when capitalism collapses under its own weight you’ll only have barbarism. You’d rather oppose a transition to socialism and have barbarism necessarily take its place.

We both agree that there is no such thing as a static, unfixed, unmoving “thing.” Conditions are always changing. However, you seem to use this more as an excuse to believe anything is possible, a rejection of analysis rather than an affirmation of it. You have reductive reasoning.

Progressive candidates can absolutely beat liberal ones, sure. I never denied this. Where we disagree is the idea that they can translate this electorally defined power into hard power over the economy, the basis of society, in a way that goes against the very foundations of property relations within society without armed struggle and therefore revolution.

Can you logically prove this? Why do you think this will be the first time in history a ruling class has ever peacefully relinquished control they hold, control that lies outside of the realm of electoral politics? The question isn’t whether conditions are different, they absolutely are. The question is whether or not the parts that are the same do or do not influence what we have to work with today.

You operate off of the assumption that the state exists outside of the control of the base of society, the economy. You also say that revolution has “lower feasibility” than changing the mode of production through electoralism, but revolution has done so many times while reformism has never once. Where do you base your confidence?

It’s funny how wrong you are about that, but I’m not here to get into an intellectual dick-measuring contest with you.

It doesn’t matter why I think Allende was couped. Because this isn’t Allende.

And this is exactly why you have not learned from history. Do you think that you have a solid chance of surviving jumping off Hoover Dam without a parachute, just because today is not the same as the times when people did before? As I said, of course this isn’t the exact same, but this necessarily requires proof that today is fundamentally different enough to no longer apply. We call this the difference between the generality and the particularity of a thing. Every thing has both general characteristics and particular ones, and you have not proven that the particular characteristics have changed to where the general no longer apply.

You’re stating that the US state is fundamentally unique among all states in history, not merely a particular state but one that has practically nothing in common that we can look to for analysis. That’s hardly a justified view, which is why I have asked either for your analysis on Allende, or your proof that the US is significantly different enough to throw that out. You provided neither, and just restated your hypothesis.

Contrary to what you say, the path is absolutely clear for revolution: organize the working class, and raise the level of political development of the working class. We cannot stumble blindly ahead on vibes, as you insist, but instead must take a scientific study of history, and apply analysis to our conditions today, rather than a stance of historical nihilism.

The capitalist class is already in control. The MAGA wing of the capitalist class couping the Democrat wing of the capitalist class isn’t a revolution, but a coup. A revolution implies a transformation in the class that dictates society, not any change in leadership.

It sounds like you’ve had your nose so buried in textbooks for so long that you can’t read the current situation, because you’re projecting what you’ve learned about prior situations in different times and different places.

I’d say you’re guilty of the reverse. You have not learned from history, and because of that you cannot see how the problems of today are connected. Of course there are differences, but you have not demonstrated why these differences add up to an entirely new situation divorced from history. For example, why do you believe Allende was couped? You have not answered this, but it’s core to the following point:

If we want to make the capitalist class subservient to the state, we need to elect a progressive government. That is the only way out of this mess.

You have not grasped the situation at all. Capitalists are not subservient to the state, the state is subservient to capitalists. This is not because the individuals in the state are personally handpicked by the capitalist class, but instead because whoever controls the commanding heights of the economy controls the state. A progressive government has no means by which to appropriate the commanding heights of the economy, this requires worker revolution.

You can try to convince people otherwise, but when they have similar questions to those I have asked you, and you cannot respond except by restating your hypothesis in different ways, then they will abandon your frame of view and seek those who can answer their questions. That’s why Marxism-Leninism is seeing a resurgence around the world.

And yes, I am proud of myself for putting my time and money into studying socialism and organizing and educating the working class. Why wouldn’t I be? All you’re doing is disarming the working class and making us prey to the fascists with no ability to resist when they inevitably use their control of the commanding heights to overturn any progressive government antidemocratically.

The capitalist class is already in control. A counterrevolution in the US would be the slaveocracy taking power once again, or a socialist replacement for the US being retaken by capitalists.

The reason the capitalist class doesn’t implement martial law is because it breeds resentment and resistence towards the system. The electoral system is a revolutionary pressure valve, the capitalist class uses it to give workers the illusion of democracy without actually being beholden to the working class. The bourgeois democratic shell is the most stable defense of capitalism that presently exists, fascism is a system for emergencies when this no longer works in favor of capitalism. The fascist button is in the hands of capitalists, not the state.

If the entire state is controlled by a progressive party, that does not translate to working class control. The capitalist class controls the commanding heights of the economy, and therefore the state is subservient to the capitalist class. This is my central point. Why do you believe Allende was couped? The long line of reformist progressives getting nakedly overthrown by their domestic capitalist class because they have not actually confronted the ownership of capital in their economy isn’t a series of flukes, but the rule.

We have never not been able to use the system the way its designed. The problem is that the way its designed is as a selection for which wing of the capitalist class gets to dominate society, not a way for the working class to direct society. The fact that the working class is not in control has not been challenged by the recent midterms.

There’s still a chance we can use it for the good by working within it.

I do not see why you believe this. Every time socialism has been implemented through largely peaceful means, such as Allende in Chile, the capitalist class oversteps the boundaries of legality to directly sieze the state, because they already own the economy and can do so at will. How do you grapple with this without revolution?

And no, revolution isn’t something you just do, it requires an organized working class, a mass socialist revolutionary party of trained cadre, and a crisis in the capitalist class. That’s how you make a revolution, by advancing the former while awaiting the latter, which is made inevitable by capitalism.

They would love to implement martial law. They’ve threatened to, they’ve tried to, but they can’t. Don’t give them the pretext. Not as long as the electoral results are respected, and the duly-elected governments are seated as mandated by the constitution.

They absolutely can implement martial law at any time. They do not need pretext to do so, that just helps them save face. The state is not a neutral body, it’s something that co-evolves along with the mode of production, and therefore rests upon the property relations therein.

You’re fully capable of answering that question without rejecting me because of who I am.

Why are you framing seeking change outside of the electoral system as “giving up?” If you’re going to fight until your dying breath for change, then why pin it all on a strategy that has never worked, and completely reject what has? Nobody is arguing for giving up.

If she was actually running on a popular program, she would have won even with the electoral college. She lost because she alienated the people, it really isn’t difficult to be better than Trump.

She would have won the electoral college if she won more states, which she would have done if she wasn’t an establishment Democrat but actually had a popular platform.

3 is as you said, too many. The party should be tarred and feathered because of many things, including their support of the genocide in Palestine and Cuba, and the fact that billionaires own the Democrats. A working class solution is needed.

Why do you weirdos hate socialists so much that you conflate us with reactionary Zionists? It’s horrendously bad-faith, I stand at the polar opposite of her views. She backs the genocide Biden helped facilitate!

Odd to use a misogynistic term paired with a genocidal war criminal as a response after you tried to defame me by lying about my stances.

Again, never used an LLM for any comment I have made, ever.

I never told people not to vote. I told people that reformism will never establish socialism, and that socialism is necessary. The Democrats winning is not a victory for the working class, it’s a defeat of the Republican wing of the capitalist class. Framing this as a working class victory is shortsighted. The democrats will never and can never put the power in the people’s hands, which is why socialism is necessary.

I’ll talk about anything with anyone when asked. I don’t know why you think I only push back on accusations of LLM use, I push back on all manner of bullshit accusations. “Triggered,” “tankie bot,” “it,” you keep dehumanizing me and using rhetoric straight from Gamer-Gate. You have not once proven LLM use in any capacity.

The truth is that I actually care a lot. That’s it, it’s as simple as that. I care a lot about advancing the cause of socialism, and if that causes you to despise me, then I can only hope one day you cease this reactionary pipeline you have yourself on. Socialism is necessary, and whether you like it or not, we either advance to it or will descend into barbarism. There’s no middle path in the long run.

Your insistence that we should fight the socialists at every opportunity, rather than the capitalist class, will leave us in a moment where the crisis of capitalism hits, and there’s no built-up organization to stop it, just like Germany in the 1930s.

If only. Without revolution, the limits of the capitalist state is social democracy, ie welfare capitalism, which can improve conditions in the short term but does not address the systemic problems of capitalism itself. A mass socialist party and mass class consciousness are both necessary for revolution, along with crisis within the capitalist system. You can directly support the first two by getting involved with a socialist party. Both Freedom Road Socialist Organization and the Party for Socialism and Liberation have two tiers of membership, general membership which is low commitment in time and money, and cadre membership, which requires significant time and money. See which is more active near you (almost certainly PSL, but varies), and consider joining the general membership!

Educate!

Agitate!

Organize!

I have never, ever, used an LLM to write any of my comments. Not a single time. My entire account is good-faith, I am a socialist organizer that spends time and money each and every week fighting against the billionaires that control the United States. Billionaires control both the Democrats and Republicans. Different billionaires, sure, but billionaires nonetheless. My solution is never to “let republicans win.” As I have stated, my solution is to replace the capitalist system with an entirely new system, through revolutionary means, which requires creating a mass revolutionary socialist party.

I do not work for billionaires. I do not work for the Democrats nor the Republicans. You have no argument against the necessity to create a mass revolutionary socialist party, nor the necessity of socialism itself, so you attack my personal character baselessly. In doing so, you rely on dehumanization. This is nakedly reactionary behavior, even if you think yourself progressive. And no, I will not fuck off, because online comments pale in comparison to getting yelled at in person, intimidated by cops, and the regular shit that comes with actually putting my skin on the line to fight for a better world.

You’re fully capable of being an honest person and arguing against socialism and revolution without relying on dehumanization and character assassination. I believe that because I believe all working people can come to understand the necessity of socialism and the means to get there. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t spend so much time organizing for it.