One of the basic points in your statement is that the action that I and my associates have taken in Birmingham is untimely. Some have asked: “Why didn’t you give the new city administration time to act?” The only answer that I can give to this query is that the new Birmingham administration must be prodded about as much as the outgoing one, before it will act. We are sadly mistaken if we feel that the election of Albert Boutwell as mayor will bring the millennium to Birmingham. While Mr. Boutwell is a much more gentle person than Mr. Connor, they are both segregationists, dedicated to maintenance of the status quo. I have hope that Mr. Boutwell will be reasonable enough to see the futility of massive resistance to desegregation. But he will not see this without pressure from devotees of civil rights. My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.
We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was “well timed” in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant “Never.” We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.”
We do. Some people only seem to_notice_ around election times. I wonder why that is?
Alternately, I’ve been told, “now’s not the time,” in on and off season, by the same people who said the same thing in the other season. So when is the time? Next Nevuary?
Why should we expect the democrats to have a successful election, let alone a strong mandate? Part of why they lost 2024 was because they failed to meaningfully appeal to anyone.
I believe it was made worse by this administration.
And that belief is based on nothing but blind faith to the democratic party. You’re a genocide apologist; perfectly happy to downplay genocide when it’s your team doing it.
“Tepid”
You’re absolutely disgusting. As bad as any Maga chud
“Tepid” is debatable. The problem here is capitalism, and the moribund status of the imperialist stage of capitalism. Swapping out the rudder doesn’t patch the holes, nor can the holes be patched. Even with the DNC in charge, the US Empire will continue to slowly decay until it collapses or revolutionaries succeed in establishing socialism. This is assuming no republican ever wins again.
No, I’m not an accelerationist. I both don’t believe what you claim, nor is that even what accelerationism is. I am a communist, I seek and organize for socialist revolution, which both has occurred in history and is a practical necessity.
I do not believe making the world worse is a path to socialism. I believe that capitalism regularly runs into crisis, which frequently expands the scale of each successive crisis, and that at these points the masses of the people can take matters into their own hands and establish a socialist society if they are sufficiently educated, class conscious, and organized.
Accelerationism is entirely different. The accelerationist view is that we should expedite this crisis by supporting the biggest, most effective capitalists, so that concentration of capital accelerates most efficiently, bringing about the collapse of capitalism sooner. The accelerationist doesn’t want to elect Republicans and sabotage socialists, the accelerationist wants to support the Democrats as the more effective and stable stewards of imperialism.
I support neither the Republicans or Democrats. I support workers organizing outside of the electoral system, employing the time-tested revolutionary strategy I outlined above. I’m a communist.
The time to made this cry is ahead of primaries. Everyone coming out of the woodwork complaining about how the Dems are just as bad right before the general election are plants trying to sleep us from voting the GOP out.
Fuck them. Vote Democrat in the general, and make the party more progressive in the primaries. Voting third party or refusing to vote just supports the GOP.
Never forget that if just 1% of the Nader voters had voted for Gore instead in Florida, George W Bush would never have been President.
You cannot implement socialism through reformism. This is a dead-end. Marxists are not GOP plants for consistently advocating for revolutionary means over the well-established failures of reformism.
So trying to vote in supporters of socialism is a waste of time? Note they explicitly mentioned primaries.
What precisely do you propose, and if not voting, then why bother getting all energized during election season when the only outcome of voting doesn’t matter is voter suppression?
If your primary means of political engagement is through the electoral system, then yes, it’s a waste of valuable organizing energy. Socialist parties should run candidates to advertise their platform and recruit, not as an actual way of getting change.
I propose what Marxists have proposed since the beginning: revolutionary organizing. This is a constant process that doesn’t depend on the electoral cycle, it’s more that those that only really tune into politics around election season don’t notice it as much until election season. You can go back into my comment history, and I have been enormously consistent with what I have said, and when I have said it.
The actual revolutionary strategy is to educate the working classes on political theory and history, struggle alongside them in the realm of unionizing, indigenous sovereignty, strikes, and in so doing build up a worker party capable of leading revolution whenever capitalism hits crisis points.
Taking a few hours twice in an election cycle to cast a vote is not some intolerable wast of organizing energy.
It’s at least worth a try to influence the elections and candidates.
“It’s not possible to reform so don’t even try” is a stupidly bad take. It seems accelerationist, that you hope for a civilization wide disaster that would leave hundreds of millions desperate in hopes that it will at least open up the path to some non-democratic result which you somehow hope will be your desired result as opposed to a myriad of competing interests that is likely to institute any number of even worse results.
First, I don’t really give a shit if people vote or not. My issue isn’t with the few hours people spend on election day, it’s with the days, weeks, months, even years spent on electoral campaigns, canvassing, and overall redirecting the problems people are already identifying with capitalism into elections. This creates a pressure valve, where people sit complicit for a few years at a time, perhaps agitating here or there to vote blue. It’s an enormous waste of time at this scale for socialists to be doing this.
Second, that’s not accelerationism. Acceletationism is the belief that we should support the most stable and competent stewards of imperialism and capitalists, so that capital concentrates at a faster rate and collapses sooner. This means that the Democrats, as the party where profits and stock market growth are generally higher, are the actual accelerationist candidate. Accelerationism isn’t deliberately blowing up the system by voting for Republicans, nor is revolution accelerationism.
The fact is, capitalism systemically results in crisis about once a decade. This is built into capitalism, it’s how it functions, and each time the biggest capitalists come out with far more of the capital than they had before as the smaller capitalists die off or are acquired. To prepare for crisis is not to expedite it, we need to get organized in anticipation of something we already know happens. Here’s a handy chart:
We need to build up that organized revolutionary core, and educate and agitate amongst the masses to bring about revolution. Not redirect their attention towards the DNC as their sole means of political life.
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Why do they care what you want after they’re elected? It’s not like you can recall them before the next election. You’ve got politics backwards.
Why would they listen to you after they win?
Obviously, they wouldn’t. That’s why they desperately beg you to wait.
2008 called to remind you of what happened.
We do. Some people only seem to_notice_ around election times. I wonder why that is?
Alternately, I’ve been told, “now’s not the time,” in on and off season, by the same people who said the same thing in the other season. So when is the time? Next Nevuary?
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And there’s always an excuse for every now.
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Well do you. I’m not you.
Why should we expect the democrats to have a successful election, let alone a strong mandate? Part of why they lost 2024 was because they failed to meaningfully appeal to anyone.
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Was the Gaza genocide tepid, to you?
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And that belief is based on nothing but blind faith to the democratic party. You’re a genocide apologist; perfectly happy to downplay genocide when it’s your team doing it.
“Tepid”
You’re absolutely disgusting. As bad as any Maga chud
How did they make the genocide worse?
“Tepid” is debatable. The problem here is capitalism, and the moribund status of the imperialist stage of capitalism. Swapping out the rudder doesn’t patch the holes, nor can the holes be patched. Even with the DNC in charge, the US Empire will continue to slowly decay until it collapses or revolutionaries succeed in establishing socialism. This is assuming no republican ever wins again.
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Hows that incrementalism working out for you? The slow, unnoticeable march to the right.
No, I’m not an accelerationist. I both don’t believe what you claim, nor is that even what accelerationism is. I am a communist, I seek and organize for socialist revolution, which both has occurred in history and is a practical necessity.
I do not believe making the world worse is a path to socialism. I believe that capitalism regularly runs into crisis, which frequently expands the scale of each successive crisis, and that at these points the masses of the people can take matters into their own hands and establish a socialist society if they are sufficiently educated, class conscious, and organized.
Accelerationism is entirely different. The accelerationist view is that we should expedite this crisis by supporting the biggest, most effective capitalists, so that concentration of capital accelerates most efficiently, bringing about the collapse of capitalism sooner. The accelerationist doesn’t want to elect Republicans and sabotage socialists, the accelerationist wants to support the Democrats as the more effective and stable stewards of imperialism.
I support neither the Republicans or Democrats. I support workers organizing outside of the electoral system, employing the time-tested revolutionary strategy I outlined above. I’m a communist.
The time to made this cry is ahead of primaries. Everyone coming out of the woodwork complaining about how the Dems are just as bad right before the general election are plants trying to sleep us from voting the GOP out.
Fuck them. Vote Democrat in the general, and make the party more progressive in the primaries. Voting third party or refusing to vote just supports the GOP.
Never forget that if just 1% of the Nader voters had voted for Gore instead in Florida, George W Bush would never have been President.
You cannot implement socialism through reformism. This is a dead-end. Marxists are not GOP plants for consistently advocating for revolutionary means over the well-established failures of reformism.
So trying to vote in supporters of socialism is a waste of time? Note they explicitly mentioned primaries.
What precisely do you propose, and if not voting, then why bother getting all energized during election season when the only outcome of voting doesn’t matter is voter suppression?
If your primary means of political engagement is through the electoral system, then yes, it’s a waste of valuable organizing energy. Socialist parties should run candidates to advertise their platform and recruit, not as an actual way of getting change.
I propose what Marxists have proposed since the beginning: revolutionary organizing. This is a constant process that doesn’t depend on the electoral cycle, it’s more that those that only really tune into politics around election season don’t notice it as much until election season. You can go back into my comment history, and I have been enormously consistent with what I have said, and when I have said it.
The actual revolutionary strategy is to educate the working classes on political theory and history, struggle alongside them in the realm of unionizing, indigenous sovereignty, strikes, and in so doing build up a worker party capable of leading revolution whenever capitalism hits crisis points.
Taking a few hours twice in an election cycle to cast a vote is not some intolerable wast of organizing energy.
It’s at least worth a try to influence the elections and candidates.
“It’s not possible to reform so don’t even try” is a stupidly bad take. It seems accelerationist, that you hope for a civilization wide disaster that would leave hundreds of millions desperate in hopes that it will at least open up the path to some non-democratic result which you somehow hope will be your desired result as opposed to a myriad of competing interests that is likely to institute any number of even worse results.
There are several things wrong with this.
First, I don’t really give a shit if people vote or not. My issue isn’t with the few hours people spend on election day, it’s with the days, weeks, months, even years spent on electoral campaigns, canvassing, and overall redirecting the problems people are already identifying with capitalism into elections. This creates a pressure valve, where people sit complicit for a few years at a time, perhaps agitating here or there to vote blue. It’s an enormous waste of time at this scale for socialists to be doing this.
Second, that’s not accelerationism. Acceletationism is the belief that we should support the most stable and competent stewards of imperialism and capitalists, so that capital concentrates at a faster rate and collapses sooner. This means that the Democrats, as the party where profits and stock market growth are generally higher, are the actual accelerationist candidate. Accelerationism isn’t deliberately blowing up the system by voting for Republicans, nor is revolution accelerationism.
The fact is, capitalism systemically results in crisis about once a decade. This is built into capitalism, it’s how it functions, and each time the biggest capitalists come out with far more of the capital than they had before as the smaller capitalists die off or are acquired. To prepare for crisis is not to expedite it, we need to get organized in anticipation of something we already know happens. Here’s a handy chart:
We need to build up that organized revolutionary core, and educate and agitate amongst the masses to bring about revolution. Not redirect their attention towards the DNC as their sole means of political life.