we're never getting change outside of third worldism bruh
source link: https://www.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/comments/1akcbol/if_the_revolution_comes_people_will_start_eating/
I too love to construct my worldview through word association.
I mean... eh? There's definitely a large community of people who just kinda post a lot about Leftism and then Fed-jacket anyone caught doing actual organizing. There's folks who try to do electoralism and completely fail at it, then fish around for this direct action stuff and come up empty, then just get burned out and go terminally online (I say, staring directly into a mirror).
There's a certain Waiting For Godot thing going on with lots of self-proclaimed Leftists, where we just kinda sit around and debate as the world passes by, and we try to figure out if we're actually getting any closer to Leftism without really doing anything (or grasping what it is that we can do). There's a lot of fantasizing and wish-casting about what a Revolution might look like, without any serious effort being applied. And there's a lot of real honest to fucking god revolutionary struggle taking place completely outside our sensory range, such that we're consumed by despair.
So... I sympathize with this sentiment, at least somewhat. There's definitely a certain "Second Coming"-esque attitude towards the idea of Revolution, because its only described to us in the moment of its apotheosis. You get to read about 1917 as a thing that happens all of a sudden, rather than a culmination of half a century of building pressure blowing the lid off in an unexpected place. You get to read about the fucking First Coming as a thing that happens one day in a manger, rather than the cumulative pressure of centuries of Roman imperialism in the Levant.
I don't think the guy's strictly wrong. He's just phrased it like an asshole.
I'm also on team "I don't think this was the right phrasing but the fundamental idea is essentially correct." Like, I really can picture myself on both sides of this argument. I think that having a genuine belief in a "destined eventuality" of a revolution is important to counter capitalist realism, and it's really only in the last year or so that I feel like I've fully transcended that doomerism and believe in the very depths of my heart that capitalism will indeed be overthrown just like how feudalism and the slave empires were. So I think it's heartening when people talk about a revolution as if it's something that very much could happen rather than being caught in spirals of doomerism and pessimism, even if that speculation is imperfect and even has some liberal brainworms writhing around in there.
I also think that believing that a mythical revolution will save us is, more than anything else, simply ahistorical. Things are going to get worse before they get better. A LOT worse. Even once "the revolution" is occurring. Even for a number of years after "the revolution" has officially been won. It'll all be so much worse that the 2020s will be looked upon with fond nostalgia and mythologized as the "pre-war" times where things were simple and happy. And, most importantly, I feel like this idea of "The Revolution" being something almost divinely created and bestowed upon us, rather than actively fought for with the death and sacrifice of thousands, perhaps even millions of people, leads to a big fracture with the idea of putting in effort towards The Revolution. How many Tumblr and Reddit radlibs are actively cheering on Hamas and Hezbollah (and, god forbid, Iran - the object of so much scorn over the last few years due to all the "my people yearn to be free, let's overthrow the patriarchal and women-hating regime of Iran!" propaganda and color revolution attempts). I would bet that most of them are currently dejectedly commenting about how much the situation in Gaza sucks and how it's all doomed, while the Resistance continues its incredible fighting and is bringing Israel to its knees. The Resistance are working towards the revolution, but not The Revolution, and so they cannot be supported.
kinda incoherent further notes
I have trouble ascribing any particular blame for this tendency or making moral judgements, though. Making a comparison between socialism and religious belief only leads to the second question of "Okay, why is it bad to have a religious belief in an eventual blissful reward for all the earthly suffering?" And I can't really answer that. It's not "bad", it's a coping mechanism, as the "opiate of the masses" quote demonstrates. Not the "cope" sort of coping mechanism, either - every human alive has to have a coping mechanism (even if at a subconscious level) to remain functional in daily life. You can call yourself a nihilist all you want - when you're done with the daydreaming or philosophizing about the utter cosmic pointlessness of life, you then go do the laundry and go make lunch - very pointless activities in the grand scale of even your country, let alone the Earth or the Universe - rather than lying prone on the floor until you die of thirst.
Ultimately I have a fairly deterministic view of life and human society and all that. While I was anxious for a few years of my life about the seeming utter impotence of, say, the Western left and its organizations, and how we're spiralling towards fascism and climate hell, I'm not really anxious about that anymore. The beliefs and actions of people aren't really determined by what is told to them; "We've gotta stop climate change! We have to do socialism NOW! If we don't then the planet is toast and billions might die!" They're determined by their immediate conditions and surroundings. As conditions become more dire, the revolutionary potential of people correspondingly increases - the mistake is misjudging how bad things have to get before enough people decide that the cost of rebelling against the system is worth it. A naive leftist will look at every headline of "Thing gets worse!" and go "Please, NOW things have to be bad enough! There's not much more that capitalism and the empire can take!" But there is a lot more it can take. A few ten thousand more dire article headlines like that over the next couple decades and we might be getting somewhere.
So, a belief that the course of history is bending towards communism, sooner or later, is my coping mechanism. Previously I thought that "Everything will be okay in the end - if it's not okay, it's not the end," was a stupid, naive quote that belongs alongside a dozen other inspirational quotes on some imageboard, but I guess that's now my guiding star, who'd have thunk it. It's why I can really empathize with the radlibs on tumblr and reddit who talk about how "Oh, when The Revolution happens, we can have all these cool things, like..." And when they inevitably talk about how the USSR or current-day China is a totalitarian nightmare and we need to democratically vote in socialism but until then we just have to vote for Biden, etc etc, I now realize that their ideology and material conditions just need a little more time in the oven to cook. They aren't doomed to be radlib morons with no sense of strategy forever - the difficulties of the future will harden them into the revolutionary communists of this generation and future ones. If not, then the poorer nations will overthrow the system from the outside, and those radlibs will die mad in the ruins of Western cities. Communism is coming, love it or hate it.
Oops I think I mentally ascribed a frame of bad faith and total rejection of communism in the Tumblr post that doesn't actually exist. Thank you for the reframe.
I agree that there's certainly something there. Like a sense that the project is so unbelievably overwhelming that it seems uncertain what action would even help, so people console themselves with waiting and bystanding.
I actually prefer tumblr posters over most cos their takes are hilarious bad not depressing bad. For example:
Wild that changing the words in a sentence can change the meaning.
except that socialism offers concrete solutions to real world problems whereas religion offers pie in the sky promises which is the actual origin of the fucking phrase
Excellent song, though the title hasn't aged too well.
Christians believe in a heavenly afterlife overseen by a benevolent god. Leftists believe humans, removed from exploitative relationships, can create a better world that puts people over profit. I, an idiot, can't see a difference between these things
Every person dreaming of a better world is exactly the same in every way, you fool, you absolute buffoon.
Lol this reminds me of some bullshit I saw on the Vaush sub today. Some guy claiming that he watched tons of "normie news" and how it shows that leftist are "completely disconnected from reality" cuz we aren't always as familiar with the legal frameworks of the US government as policy wonks.
I was like, dude what fucking "normie news" are you watching? Neither Fox nor CNN really gets into the minutia of policy making, it's 90% current events and culture war shit. Yeah some 17 year old TilToker ain't gonna know as much as a lawyer, but honestly leftist sources I follow probably do an overall better job of getting into the finer details of legal policy than fucking Rachel Maddow. Clearly you just came up with this shit to have another excuse to complain about the left that you hate but nevertheless want to consider yourself a part of.
when mad libs do mad libs
if there was a revolution leftists would eat anyone who can afford an apartment by themselves
who would they be paying? all the landlords would be dead, L- 
Those lifestyle choices?
Being a landlord and slaughtering Palestinians
Hard to do but they're wrong on both counts. Even evangelical Christians attempt to make progress.
Communists also want to condemn ~~infidels~~ fascists, send ~~non-believers~~ anti-communist militants to ~~hell~~ the Gulag, they also hate ~~blasephemouslords~~ landlords
i always forget there are people like this on tumblr because everyone i follow is cool
It's so weird to stumble across a right winger on tumblr. Like baby what are you doing here.
real 'Demons are the same as Angels' energy
been gradually seeing a lot of the whole "DAE le horseshoe theory but for radical leftists and evangelicals" talking point being spread in radlib spaces in the last few months, so im willing to bet that some libtube talking head debate bro said it a few times in some video or something
So I'm not in a communist party but I have attended some open meetings. Interestingly, not once were celibacy, single-bedroom apartment dwellers, banana consumption, and whether or not straight people should use the term "partner" were brought up. So I can assure you that these are just things people like to debate on the Internet for fun and rarely affect IRL organizing.
Deeply unsatisfied that nobody in my local org has ever handed me a picture of a pig pooping on its balls.
Surely someone must have at least once brought up the issue of the outdoor cat?
Yeah this person doesn’t seem like a full on reactionary, and they have a pride flag in their PFP, so unless they’re a radlib (possible if not likely), this seems like a solid critique of the sort of heaven-like futurism many leftists have
The madlib is more or less what we say about ultras. We call them utopians who refuse to accept anything short of complete heaven on earth.
Nah, he has a point. I think a non zero part of my highly binary thinking comes from my early childhood education into evangelical protestantism
These examples are nonsense but the v*lcel police shit absolutely is just repackaged puritan sex panic
I will defend the volcel vanguard with my dying breath. It's nice to have a space online where things don't have to instantly be terminally horny.
There is a puritanical strain of leftism though which can be pretty cringe.
I don't get this volcel business. Is there like a level of irony to it I'm somehow not online enough to get
It's to keep the space normal and non-horny so people (especially women, trans comrades, etc) don't feel weirded out and have sex pests in their DMs constantly. It evolved into a running gag, because that's the most effective way to make sure people actually stick to it in terminally online spaces.
It also neatly avoids the many problems that crop up when you want to have horny comms (cumms)
But the idea that non-horny is normal is, itself, a relic of puritanism. Keeping out sex pests is one thing, but it also keeps out good posts like @autismdragon@hexbear.net 's posts of cute anime girls and boys which keep getting removed.
Nah there are way too many sex pests in the Western left so our spaces must be stripped of personal sexualization. There is the entire rest of the internet / social club world to be horny in.
So those things are the same because they both fit into the same sentence structure of "Noun verb subordinating conjuncture subordinate clause."
I like to drink ~~iced water~~ hot coffee on a ~~hot~~ cold day. Hot and cold are the same temperature because drinking iced water sure does sound an awful like like drinking hot coffee. Horseshoe theory confirmed.
Missed that we both have ancient tomes we believe hold the answers to all worldly problems (capital / bible) but neither of us ever actually bother to read them
There's a lot to be said about socialism, as an ideology, functionally mimicing religion. It is both a way of both precieving the world and making moral judgements. A completely isolated socialist without any grounding theory would behave as described. But is that real Socialism? Is Seventh Day Adventism real Christianity?
Imagine going on a website in order to look at a different website. What a group of freaks.
wanting [Good Things] and disliking [Bad Things] is basically the same thing as Evangelical Christianity, you redfash tankie meanie-heads!
It's the dunk tank.
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