I’m reposting a comment I made to open up a broader discussion now that it looks like Burgerland is about to go full McCarthy again…
So what are we supposed to do? If elections are useless and lead to state violence, and organizing leads to state violence, and doing nothing just means the Fascists win by default… I hear the doom-and-gloom but we need solutions. How did the Bosheviks survive? Heck, how did left organizers survive the McCarthy era?
I don’t want to die on their terms.
I also don’t want to regret my life when I look back on what I could have done.
IDK… I feel like we’re in a sort of “checkmate” situation. Fascists have figured it all out and there doesn’t appear to be a path forward for the left that doesn’t end in tragedy. OTOH the kinds of fascist death squad actions that are “expected” for impoverished “third world” countries will yield a very different reaction in the core of Capitalism. Instability in burgerland affects the whole world and the entire non-China global economy can crumble if people went on strike en-masse.
Regardless of what you want to call it, can we assume that Bosheviks were harassed and persecuted by the ruling class before they were successful? Hopefully some historians can share how they were able to survive under those pressures.
Of course, but the repression apparatus of the Ochrana, the White Army etc. is also entirely different in scope than what the USA wield today. Materially, there are almost no similarities. If you pick something as vastly different as the fight against Tzarist Russia because the Bolsheviks are most sympathetic to you as an ML, you will end up LARPing.
Sure, I get that the conditions aren’t the same and maybe not similar enough to be worth examining. Maybe the Black Panther Party is a better example? Although they and BLM (before it was taken over by libs) could be a more relevant topic to cover.