This article explains what organizing is and where some of the confusion in terms comes from: https://clarion.unity-struggle-unity.org/2024-06-06-what-is-organizing/
I also like gramsci's essay here on building the institutions that will replace the bourgeois state: https://redsails.org/democrazia-operaia/
The revolution does not occur in a vacuum. How will you acquire weapons, how will you occupy an area, how will you feed yourself, where will you live, how will you communicate with others, what happens if core members get caught, how will you sniff out reactionaries, how will you explain your goals to the people, the list of questions to answer goes on.
What it means for Marxists to organize is to create a group of revolutionaries that can answer these questions. Strikes are just one way to make your voice heard, nothing is guaranteed.
Bro, we talked about this. Think of organization of people like organizing a workspace or document. It makes it easier to get stuff done. Think of “an organization” as in a charity or group for self governance. Organization for communism means bringing people together, directing resources to provide for them, and using mass mobilization to win power. The goal is to create a government in waiting like the Soviets that can take over.
It means joining or making a group, then working with that group to advance common goals. A lot of the specifics depend on your opinions (which political party, if any, to join, whether adventurism is okay, etc.), but unionization for example is generally a kind of organizing that most people support.
Striking and fighting are just a very small part of that, a lot if it is about getting other people to join your group, or somehow convincing people that you are in the right (or, bleh, electoralism (hecking DSA)).
Unionise, strikes, mutual aid, and other forms of collective action that leverage the power of a group of people to their benefit.
Fights though? Where did you get that from?
People’s Army
Community defense isn't about "doing fights" and nearly anything else you might mean is just adventurism (bad)
Wait, isn't the point of creating a people's army to fight on a revolution?
We need infrastructure, General. Making a revolutionary army is the job of communist party, not militia adventurists or larpers. Jumping to "revolutionary" violence is putting the cart before the horse. If you want to shoot guns, join an SRA branch or whatever. If you feel like your only use is killing people, seek counseling.
Yes, but just getting a little group to do terrorism is counterproductive. What we need to do is support a ton of people with collective mechanisms so they will support “our” principled party that can lead them to victory over the bourgeois state.
When someone says "organize" without further elaboration or context regarding what they actually mean, they are saying: "I am either so immensely lazy that I refuse to give even the most basic directions to a receptive audience or else I'm a poser who doesn't know what they're talking about"
Eh, I'd say it is a point worth making to some people even in vague terms. When you're dealing with people who have been socialized to view everything through an individualist lens of "do your own thing and it will somehow change the world among enough people doing their own thing," the emphasis alone of arguing for organization can mean something.
You never are in a situation where you can say exactly one word and therefore must pick the imperative "Organize!", and yet all over the internet we see people saying remarkably little (imo because most of them don't even know what they mean and therefore can't explain it). A simple "get involved with a group of activists even if you need to make the group yourself" is much better and should clear up a substantial amount of OP's confusion.
There are platforms (like twitter) where every word counts. And the TL;DR thing on the internet is real. I don't think you can blanketly say that elaborating is always easy and therefore it's always ignorance if someone does not give the full spiel.
I said a sentence, not a full spiel. Literally "apes together strong" is probably a more useful political message than "Organize!"
"apes together strong" could be worse. People already know this. What they don't know is that it is possible and necessary to organise to realise that strength.
Taking the example of unions: people know that uniting with other workers should make them stronger—but then they get frustrated when they don't organise within it, when they treat it as an organisation that will work for them. They pay their dues and tell people, 'I joined the other apes but they keep letting me down. There's no rep and they don't do anything for me.'
Ok, but what context is that sentence in? If you said "get involved with a group of activists even if you need to make the group yourself" to a neo-nazi, you aren't really helping the communist cause, are you. You aren't with saying "organize" either, of course. But the point I'm trying to make is against overgeneralizing the context of what these things are being said in order to be dismissive about how people are presenting them and the knowledge they are implied to possess as a result.
I resisted saying it at first cause I didn't want it to come across as a snarky gotcha, but it seems relevant at this stage of our back and forth to point out that in your original post of dismissal, you did not in fact elaborate on what organizing means yourself. And within the back and forth so far, the furthest you have gotten is "get involved with a group of activists even if you need to make the group yourself." Which has no inherent anti-imperialist, working class, or communist connotation within it.
Ok, but what context is that sentence in? If you said "get involved with a group of activists even if you need to make the group yourself" to a neo-nazi, you aren't really helping the communist cause, are you.
Comrade, what the fuck are you talking about?
You aren't with saying "organize" either, of course. But
But nothing, it's just a dumb argument, I'm sorry. You say different things to different groups.
I resisted saying it at first cause I didn't want it to come across as a snarky gotcha, but
Your resisting was a good impulse and I wish you could have kept it up.
it seems relevant at this stage of our back and forth to point out that in your original post of dismissal, you did not in fact elaborate on what organizing means yourself. And within the back and forth so far, the furthest you have gotten is "get involved with a group of activists even if you need to make the group yourself." Which has no inherent anti-imperialist, working class, or communist connotation within it.
Ironically, you make the same error here. Telling some chud to "Organize!" isn't that useful. "Organize!" exhortations come after a transmission of ideas like "apes together strong" or "don't blame Mexicans for your boss fucking you" or whatever, because the standard formula is to make an argument about values or facts of the world or whatever and then conclude with a call to action. Add one (1) additional tweet to the chain if you need to in order to prevent that call to action from being a single word; it's really not that hard.
Ignore my above comment. I think we're on the same page.
It took another poster a sentence to describe some substantive meanings of organizing in a communist context; what you've failed to say once in post after post of self indulgent ranting. Get your mind out of the cycle of elitism and dunking, and take this seriously.
and take this seriously.
And you call me self-indulgent! More directly, it should be obvious to you that I wasn't trying to substantively explain what "organizing" consists of, anyone could tell from the first sentence of my initial (and in fact I talk about what it is and isn't under other comments in this very thread). I just wanted to talk about the problem of half-baked exhortations because both of our instances (admittedly mine much more than yours) have a problem with them. Is that bad? Do you have an "all top-level replies must be an answer to the post" type rule? It might be a problem with displaying across instances if that's the case.
I'm sort of at a loss at this point, so let me backtrack a bit. This is your original post:
When someone says “organize” without further elaboration or context regarding what they actually mean, they are saying: “I am either so immensely lazy that I refuse to give even the most basic directions to a receptive audience or else I’m a poser who doesn’t know what they’re talking about”
I approached this in my replies from a couple of different angles at first: 1) Opposition to individualism and the value of it. 2) The implication of ignorance and/or laziness and challenging that portrayal of others.
I'm willing to emphasize and admit I could have zeroed in on the 2nd one with more clarity and awareness in my initial reply, which I think is what bothered me most. But rhetorically, I was trying to challenge what read to me like binary thinking and projecting intent onto what may just be ineffective communication. Something which, ironically (or fittingly?) may be happening with us two here.
Like, have you talked to people who just say "organize"? Did you investigate and discover that they are posers or didn't want to bother to elaborate? Or is that an assumption you're making about why they're doing it? How do we get to the point of fixing that problem if we don't even know why people are doing it? I shouldn't have tried to excuse it as much as I did. I'm willing to agree it is a problem of a kind. But I don't think passing judgment on entire swaths of people without evidence is going to fix anything.
A place to ask questions of Lemmygrad's best and brightest