gauging interest: rebirth of the socialist international

[Hereno]

i've received a lot of PMs from people since coming back to orbis in the last few months. many of them wanted to ask me about what SI was like, otherwise show appreciation for us, or to ask if i had any intention on reforming the socialist international.

when i formed si i did so hoping that the workers of the world would lend their talents and personalities to the alliance to help us stake out a unified left on orbis. while we got a lot of good people, we never and won't ever attract the trust fund kids with lots of free time and perhaps careers that they can use to give us a near-professional organization. no, our demographic, like that of bernie sanders, is the young, the intelligent, the downtrodden, and the maligned. we attract people who have been chewed up and spit out; who are of modest means, who want a new world and suffer from the pains of capitalism in our daily lives knowingly and with great frustration.

there were a few mistakes made last time around, and i intend to address those, should there be support for this idea. for one, we won't be using NSO's challenge system style of administration anymore. that was one of the biggest confusions and distractions for us, and it didn't do us a whole lot of good. also, at the time, i was going through a lot of psychological distress which made me difficult to work with internally and caused me to pull a bit of a stalin and take a bit too much control, to the detriment of those who were willing to put in the time and effort, and ultimately also to myself, as i ended up having to do just about everything in order for it to get done "right". while i have talked extensively about us being a stalinist alliance that used a non-worker-friendly style of government, this was mostly bullshit. while i did originally intend to just milk all the members for money and continually pile it into our upper tier, simply put, i'm just not mean enough to actually do that. those of you who were members back in the day will remember our extensive development programs that offered 6 free cities and hundreds of thousands of dollars to our lower tier every week to boost you up with the rest of us - and this was back when 1k score was the top tier. we paved the way by implementing a lot of programs that have since been stolen or copied by other alliances. we were a damn good alliance and i'm proud of our legacy of being hated and spit on by the people who we will burn in the revolution.

workers of the world, nobody will ever lead us to socialism - if they could, we could be led right back out. this is the lesson we were taught not only by eugene debs, who i am paraphrasing, but by the whole of the soviet union, which eventually was dismantled piecemeal and sold out to the "communists" who ran it, one of whom was putin, a former kgb officer himself. if we want a good socialist alliance, we're going to have to work harder than everybody else, with less resources, time to spend, and ability to maneuver politically. we will by necessity need to be accommodating of some of society's most vulnerable people in order to be who we say we are. it will not be easy. but if you guys want it to happen, i'm willing to lend some of my free time, the name and graphics of the alliance, and also the trust that can be put in me as the first founder of SI, as well as a well-known radical leftist.

this thread is just to gauge interest - post, PM me, whatever, i don't care. now that the socialist worker's front is gone, there is no large radical leftist alliance anymore. if you guys want there to be one, let me know, and we'll set up a channel and discuss this seriously. if not, oh well. i'm doing this on a whim, like most of the things i do. i'm really not even attached to the name socialist international - it might be better if we went with something like "orbisian commune" (those of you who remember the terran commune will giggle at this) or just "the worker's international". what we become is mainly up to who is actually willing to put their pixels where their mouth is - i don't intend to lead this. i don't have the time or the desire to be an alliance leader. but i am willing to help make this happen if there are some of you who actually do want to do just that.
 

Edited April 10, 2016 by Hereno

[Jodo]

Good luck?

[Hereno]

Good luck?

 

thanks homie

 

even though this announcement really isn't for you guys

 

i just know there are a lot of commies who i don't know personally and if they're interested they can hmu rather than me going around PMing all the old comrades

[Franz Von Dietrich]

I actually would be interested in this, yes. Someone here needs to counter the amount of Stormfront presence on this site.

[Andrezj Kolarov]

Hereno you are so dumb it's painful. The reason that there needs to be a professional revolutionary group to lead the working class is because the workers themselves are know you actually working to provide for themselves and their families, so they don't have the time to devote all their time to running a political organization. Yes the workers can be led off the right path by these same people, that's why the party leadership itself needs to have periodical verification purges to find out if members meet the minimum requirements of being a revolutionary communist and aren't bourgeois infiltrators or careerists. Class struggle occurs everywhere in society, including inside communist parties and organizations.

 

When Stalin was in charge of the Bolshevik Party verification purges were the norm, after his death you got Khrushchev who said that the class struggle was over because socialism was established, and he relaxed verification of party members, former bourgeois and landowners, nationalists, liberals were all let inside the party because Khrushchev wanted "national unity". That was what led to the road of capitalism and eventually to the rise of Gorbachev.

 

EDIT: This also occurred outside the USSR, I mean how do you think racist nationalists like Slobodan Milošević got into the highest ranks of the Yugoslav Communist Party?

Edited April 10, 2016 by Andrezj Kolarov

[Big Brother]

We may have our disagreements but I would like to proclaim my support for this possible endeavor. Orbis needs a strong and reliable leftist alliance, and I'd be tempted to join such an alliance myself.

[Hereno]

Hereno you are so dumb it's painful. The reason that there needs to be a professional revolutionary group to lead the working class is because the workers themselves are know you actually working to provide for themselves and their families, so they don't have the time to devote all their time to running a political organization. Yes the workers can be led off the right path by these same people, that's why the party leadership itself needs to have periodical verification purges to find out if members meet the minimum requirements of being a revolutionary communist and aren't bourgeois infiltrators or careerists. Class struggle occurs everywhere in society, including inside communist parties and organizations.

 

When Stalin was in charge of the Bolshevik Party verification purges were the norm, after his death you got Khrushchev who said that the class struggle was over because socialism was established, and he relaxed verification of party members, former bourgeois and landowners, nationalists, liberals were all let inside the party because Khrushchev wanted "national unity". That was what led to the road of capitalism and eventually to the rise of Gorbachev.

 

EDIT: This also occurred outside the USSR, I mean how do you think racist nationalists like Slobodan Milošević got into the Yugoslav Communist Party?

 

You say you want a professional revolutionary class... but you don't want careerists...

 

Hmm...

 

What do you think Marx meant when he said, "Workers of the World, Unite!"? Do you think he meant "workers of the world, get behind this vanguard party of bourgeois intellectuals who will lead you to socialism"? Because that's what Lenin was... and Stalin was a bank robber. Neither were of the working class. There was hardly any working class in Russia to speak of to begin with. And by definition, politicians are not workers. They don't produce anything. The idea of a political class divorced from the working class is as abhorrent as the idea of an armed force divorced from the working class. What you want is socialism in name only; the state capitalism of the USSR was just that and Lenin admitted as much when he took a further step back from it with the NEP; as though they weren't already calling for a union of peasants and proletarians in recognition of the fact that the economy was largely agrarian to begin with. You want to use force to establish freedom which is in itself a rejection of freedom. Your ideology is a giant contradiction. But I'm dumb?

[Andrezj Kolarov]

 

You say you want a professional revolutionary class... but you don't want careerists...

Group or strata, not class. A class is defined by it's relationship to the means of production. Also there isn't any contradiction, people can be dedicated ideological committed revolutionaries, it's just that you need to verify thoroughly to remove careerists.

 

 

What do you think Marx meant when he said, "Workers of the World, Unite!"? Do you think he meant "workers of the world, get behind this vanguard party of bourgeois intellectuals who will lead you to socialism"?

 

You throw around words without understanding them. Firstly, "bourgeois intellectuals", who is advocating a political leadership made up of capitalists? Are you saying there's communist parties out there who have a property requirement for sitting on the Central Committee? (well there might be a de-facto one in China). Bourgeois isn't a nasty word we throw around at enemies, it's a specific term with a specific meaning.

 

What we're talking about is accepting reality, just sitting around and hoping the working mass around the world become magically politically class conscious is insanity, and a path to failure. Without political vanguard organizations working to educate and organize the masses on a single party line, they will remain politically apathetic and will probably never understand communism and how it can improve their condition. You idealize "the workers" as if they are perfect in every way just because they're exploited and oppressed, I've seen this "glorification of poverty" before.

 

I mean what has your political line ever accomplished Hereno? The basis of Marxism is practice, so what huge political movements which have accomplished real things for the conditions of the workers? You can say the USSR devolved into capitalism, which is true, but it was still the world's first constitutionally socialist state which survived for some 80 years despite constant attacks and encirclement by the capitalist powers, including a Civil War and two World Wars.

 

Because that's what Lenin was... and Stalin was a bank robber. Neither were of the working class. There was hardly any working class in Russia to speak of to begin with. And by definition, politicians are not workers. They don't produce anything.

 

Firstly, that doesn't change anything, as long as they are ideologically committed and understand the economic relations in capitalist society. Are you saying someone cannot understand capitalism without themselves experiencing it? Most workers in the world today are completely ignorant of the way they are exploited and their relations to the means of production.

 

Of course education of the workers is key, but how does education occur? You can't expect the bourgeois education system to teach the workers about communism, nor can you expect millions of workers over the world to come to communist doctrine by chance through the internet or libraries (especially when you consider that most workers don't have access to the internet and don't have the time for such extensive research). You need leaders to introduce the working masses to communist theory, that doesn't mean these people are "elitses", the opposite in-fact, they exist to selflessly serve the people.

 

Secondly, politicians do work, they produce intellectual products. Just because their labor is mental instead of menial doesn't mean they don't work, the human brain is an organ of the body the same as arms and legs. Marx himself said that the abolition of the distinction between mental and physical labor is prerequisite for communism. Also, in the capitalist system, the intellectual means of production (the press, book production, publishing, etc) are owned by the capitalists, which does make intellectual workers genuine proletarians.

 

The idea of a political class divorced from the working class is as abhorrent as the idea of an armed force divorced from the working class.

 

There is no such thing as a "political class" because politicians are a part of administrative/bureaucratic strata, the politicians do not own the means of production.

 

What you want is socialism in name only; the state capitalism of the USSR

 

Socialism is state/public ownership of industry and equality of labor, nothing more, stop trying to over-complicate basic concepts. The reason the USSR became capitalist was because it gave up on class struggle and let the bourgeois take over the party.

 

was just that and Lenin admitted as much when he took a further step back from it with the NEP;

 

NEP was necessary at the time because of the lack of any working class or industry after the Civil War. And even so, the NEP developed the kulak class which ended up causing a terrible lot of problems and had to be destroyed by Stalin as a prerequisite for socialism in the countryside (ie turning private farms into collective farms).

Edited April 10, 2016 by Andrezj Kolarov

[Andrezj Kolarov]

The problem Hereno is that you make faulty distinctions, ie "the capitalism system has politicians and bureaucrats so therefore politicians/bureaucrats are bad! Abolish politicians/bureaucrats!", the reason the political strata exists is because it works, even in a socialist system an administrative/bureaucratic strata is needed to distribute scarce resources, plan the economy, control credit and banking, administrate the police/army/prisons, print currency and salaries, etc etc.

 

Does that mean the administrative/bureaucratic strata MUST BE unresponsive, elitist, and detached from the common people? No, there can be rules and laws in place to make is accountable.

[Foltest]

"The Left is too busy fighting itself to do anything else"

[Rozalia]

I have to agree with Andrezj Kolarov. The idea that you can just give the globalists everything they want because one day the workers will rise up, ignoring everything that divides them, throw out the rich overlords, and we will all then live in a utopia is as Andrezj Kolarov puts it, insanity. You're free to disagree naturally, but I don't see sense in the other viewpoint. 

 

What is needed is as said, a vanguard, a party with a leader who can with the help of the people defeat and overthrow the globalists. Without that the people will simply mill around and the enemies of the people will take everything.

 

"The Left is too busy fighting itself to do anything else"

 

Not quite, there are a range of views in all things so you could say that about most things. I suppose you could say there are three big groups. You got your "centrists" who are left wing in name only, who see surrender to the elite as being "grown up" and "sane", a group that helps no one ultimately. You got those who reject the elite completely... but believe in many of the major things the elite want, many of which will make their vision of what the future should be impossible (you can't have Socialism/Communism/or whatever else if you flood the country and make everyone the same). You then have those who have some sense and reject the elite's ideas and do not believe that comprises should be made with the enemies of the people. Ultimately only the first group is seen as sane, the other two are just "loonies". The second because they believe in a fantasy, and the third because they're a threat if they gain traction. 

[Saru]

I will fund you and lead you to socialism.

[Clarke]

[Sabcat]

Wow, someone said "class conscious". !@#$ing retard

[Thalmor]

I actually would be interested in this, yes. Someone here needs to counter the amount of Stormfront presence on this site.

 

The leftists on Politics and War have been way more pretentious and unnecessarily agitating than their right leaning counterparts have been- both in-game and on the forums.

 

If anything, there needs to be an alliance centered on traditionalist ideas to balance out the Comintern presence this site.

[Rozalia]

The leftists on Politics and War have been way more pretentious and unnecessarily agitating than their right leaning counterparts have been- both in-game and on the forums.

 

If anything, there needs to be an alliance centered on traditionalist ideas to balance out the Comintern presence this site.

 

Thalmor is correct in that the leftists have been more vocal and present then those rightists. Reminds me of the Trump supporters are thugs angle when the only group sending thugs to disrupt and silence is the leftists who Bernie refuses to disavow. 

[Spooner]

I'd be happy to have another farm-alliance back in this game, yes.

 

(As an aside, this game's mechanics don't really make roleplaying as "socialist"/"fascist"/"capitalist" very meaningful)

[Sabcat]

I'd be happy to have another farm-alliance back in this game, yes.

 

(As an aside, this game's mechanics don't really make roleplaying as "socialist"/"fascist"/"capitalist" very meaningful)

 

Reality doesn't make being a Leninist very meaningful but it doesn't stop people.

[Hereno]

Group or strata, not class. A class is defined by it's relationship to the means of production. Also there isn't any contradiction, people can be dedicated ideological committed revolutionaries, it's just that you need to verify thoroughly to remove careerists.

 

You throw around words without understanding them. Firstly, "bourgeois intellectuals", who is advocating a political leadership made up of capitalists? Are you saying there's communist parties out there who have a property requirement for sitting on the Central Committee? (well there might be a de-facto one in China). Bourgeois isn't a nasty word we throw around at enemies, it's a specific term with a specific meaning.

 

What we're talking about is accepting reality, just sitting around and hoping the working mass around the world become magically politically class conscious is insanity, and a path to failure. Without political vanguard organizations working to educate and organize the masses on a single party line, they will remain politically apathetic and will probably never understand communism and how it can improve their condition. You idealize "the workers" as if they are perfect in every way just because they're exploited and oppressed, I've seen this "glorification of poverty" before.

 

I mean what has your political line ever accomplished Hereno? The basis of Marxism is practice, so what huge political movements which have accomplished real things for the conditions of the workers? You can say the USSR devolved into capitalism, which is true, but it was still the world's first constitutionally socialist state which survived for some 80 years despite constant attacks and encirclement by the capitalist powers, including a Civil War and two World Wars.

 

Firstly, that doesn't change anything, as long as they are ideologically committed and understand the economic relations in capitalist society. Are you saying someone cannot understand capitalism without themselves experiencing it? Most workers in the world today are completely ignorant of the way they are exploited and their relations to the means of production.

 

Of course education of the workers is key, but how does education occur? You can't expect the bourgeois education system to teach the workers about communism, nor can you expect millions of workers over the world to come to communist doctrine by chance through the internet or libraries (especially when you consider that most workers don't have access to the internet and don't have the time for such extensive research). You need leaders to introduce the working masses to communist theory, that doesn't mean these people are "elitses", the opposite in-fact, they exist to selflessly serve the people.

 

Secondly, politicians do work, they produce intellectual products. Just because their labor is mental instead of menial doesn't mean they don't work, the human brain is an organ of the body the same as arms and legs. Marx himself said that the abolition of the distinction between mental and physical labor is prerequisite for communism. Also, in the capitalist system, the intellectual means of production (the press, book production, publishing, etc) are owned by the capitalists, which does make intellectual workers genuine proletarians.

 

There is no such thing as a "political class" because politicians are a part of administrative/bureaucratic strata, the politicians do not own the means of production.

 

Socialism is state/public ownership of industry and equality of labor, nothing more, stop trying to over-complicate basic concepts. The reason the USSR became capitalist was because it gave up on class struggle and let the bourgeois take over the party.

 

NEP was necessary at the time because of the lack of any working class or industry after the Civil War. And even so, the NEP developed the kulak class which ended up causing a terrible lot of problems and had to be destroyed by Stalin as a prerequisite for socialism in the countryside (ie turning private farms into collective farms).

You don't see any reason as to why the workers movement should be led by workers themselves? You don't see any contradiction between hating "careerists" but wanting people to make their career being a revolutionary?

 

YOU are advocating a political leadership made up of capitalists. The working class does not need the wealthy of capitalist society to lead them into socialism - we control everything, we run everything, we have all the power. What is needed is for people to realize this and then use that power to force our society to be run in favor of the everyone who does everything. We do not need a political class - how the !@#$ do you plan on having a stateless, classless society with a political class because "it works"? Lenin was from the !@#$ bourgeois class. He was smart but he was not a worker. He killed workers. They massacred the anarchists in the Ukraine twice over - first after betraying them after using them to crush the whites, and then again when Stalin decided to starve them all to death under the guise of them being kulaks. Speaking of which, the kulak class did exist before the revolution - https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1903/rp/2.htm#v06zz99h-367- this is your hero Vladimir Lenin mentioning the kulak class by name in 1903. You could not be more wrong if you were trying. The NEP was necessary because, point blank, the people weren't workers who wanted communism. The bolsheviks got rid of the democratically elected congress and decided to force socialism on people who didn't even know what the hell it meant, but in reality, it was just state capitalism, as Lenin himself actually straight up told us. Or are you going to, as a Stalinist, who himself we know Lenin did not want to get in charge of the USSR, again going to go against Lenin as a self-described "Marxist-Leninist"?! What a bunch of !@#$ rubbish.

 

Let me ask you this - why would a state educate people on how to make the state stop existing? Why would a political class that exists apart from the working class voluntarily give up its power? You talk about "accepting reality" but you have no idea what reality even is if you think that capitalist productive relations are natural and necessary. You are not a worker, you look down on the working class as stupid fools who need Great Men to lead them into socialism. You are not on our side. You look down on us from outside. No, it is not required to be a proletarian to understand and support communism - Marx was the son of a politician, and he was largely financed by Engels who was himself a bourgeois intellectual. But they also fought with the working class and developed historical materialism. I do not reject Lenin solely on the basis of him not being a proletarian - it is not out of reach of my mind to understand that people outside of the working class are able to recognize why it might be in their best interests, if only because they believe in a certain way, but not necessarily always because of that, to support the communist movement. But what you need to recognize is that a group of bourgeois intellectuals who are only in that position because they benefit from exploiting the very workers they claim to represent is NOT NECESSARY WHATSOEVER for the workers themselves to come to an understanding of their material conditions and then work to change them in their own interests. The working class is not stupid. Many people in the working class might disagree with us, and I use that term lightly, on political theory, but that does not make them dumb or incapable of coming to understand what is in their best interests, and I see no reason why they need leaders from outside of the class to make that happen. No, those leaders need the working class, as they are leeches by definition, just like the union bosses we have now who make six figure salaries to sell out the workers they claim to represent. I defend the USSR quite frequently on these forums and elsewhere but I, unlike you, am willing to give a serious critique of it before Khrushchev came to power, because I am not attached to the idea of Lenin and Stalin as deities that are somehow above me.

Edited April 10, 2016 by Hereno

[Hereno]

The problem Hereno is that you make faulty distinctions, ie "the capitalism system has politicians and bureaucrats so therefore politicians/bureaucrats are bad! Abolish politicians/bureaucrats!", the reason the political strata exists is because it works, even in a socialist system an administrative/bureaucratic strata is needed to distribute scarce resources, plan the economy, control credit and banking, administrate the police/army/prisons, print currency and salaries, etc etc.

 

Does that mean the administrative/bureaucratic strata MUST BE unresponsive, elitist, and detached from the common people? No, there can be rules and laws in place to make is accountable.

 

WE STAND FOR THE ABOLITION OF ALL CLASS DISTINCTIONS

 

HOW ARE YOU EVEN A COMMUNIST

 

here is an article from the guardian about careerist politicians - http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/17/parachuting-political-careerists-safe-seats-candidates

 

and this is from the paper who rails against both bernie sanders in favor of hillary clinton, and against jeremy corbyn like all the other capitalist !@#$

Edited April 10, 2016 by Hereno

[Ayayay]

Hereno, SI was utter trash. Your AA's growth was garbage and when TEst hit you you didn't even fight back, you just let them pound your infra away.

[Rozalia]

WE STAND FOR THE ABOLITION OF ALL CLASS DISTINCTIONS

 

HOW ARE YOU EVEN A COMMUNIST

 

here is an article from the guardian about careerist politicians - http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/17/parachuting-political-careerists-safe-seats-candidates

 

and this is from the paper who rails against both bernie sanders in favor of hillary clinton, and against jeremy corbyn like all the other capitalist !@#$

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_communism

 

They're a "Liberal" paper so why wouldn't they be for Hillary, against Corbyn, and other such things? They're about as left wing as David Cameron. It's funny because to Americans the Guardian is some ultra left wing rag, when the Guardian for months gave a very aggressive Trumplike treatment to Corbyn (still highly against him of course but they're too busy throwing everything they have at Trump now). I still remember the "Cabinet Controversy" of theirs for example where Cameron "promoted" women in his cabinet, but Corbyn who from what I recall had more women than men in his was anti women because they didn't get the "top spots", that he felt women couldn't lead or some garbage. Then him saying the proposal for women only train carriages is interesting and should be looked at showed how he sees women as lesser than men. Nasty guys. Dishonest people. Sad!

[Kurdanak]

Hereno, SI was utter trash. Your AA's growth was garbage and when TEst hit you you didn't even fight back, you just let them pound your infra away.

Context for newbies/trip down memory lane: https://politicsandwar.com/forums/index.php?/topic/3300-i-provided-the-logs-that-set-off-the-powderkeg-who-are-you-in-all-of-this/

[Hereno]

Hereno, SI was utter trash. Your AA's growth was garbage and when TEst hit you you didn't even fight back, you just let them pound your infra away.

 

when you get hit first in this game and you have no military to speak of in the first place, that's pretty much all you can do

 

like you can turn it into a trash-talking point all you want but the fact that i didn't have the time to sit and watch every aa in the game for military build-up on top of basically running an alliance 80% by myself doesn't mean a whole lot except that i'm right about what i identified our problems to be in the OP. apart from fox fire making us an alternate set of forums and providing images that sindorin ended up spending a few credits to get put into the game (and then he tried to get sheepy to take them back when him doing that didn't mean i handed over control of the AA to him), everything we did was basically entirely me by the end. VL helped some, too, that i remember. joe wasn't entirely inactive. aladeen was around. fraggle posted weird shit a few times before leaving... that was the extent of us doing work. if you don't believe me, ask pub - the whole reason we ended up going to EoS with the shit that i told him not to trust me with in the first place is because he didn't bother letting me know that i actually gave him a member mask which let him see 95% of our forums for like a week.

 

we didn't actively recruit whatsoever, either. all of our members came from people seeking us out and choosing to join us. everything we did happened in the first six months of the game, a ton of our guides were just outright stolen from other alliances, and we suffered from the common malady of all commie alliances - none of us really gave a shit about the game enough to actually play it. that's a lot of the reason for this thread, actually - to see if people who actually want to sit and do work for hours and hours on this game in a commie alliance, or if the desire to see us reform is mainly along the lines of mine.... "it would be nice but i'm not actually gonna bother because i'd rather just be a commie irl and not worry about working in a game"

 

point being, despite ALL OF THAT bullshit, we were still and remain cooler than TEst and sycophants like kurdanak, even after merging into arrgh!

Edited April 11, 2016 by Hereno

[Arthur James]

why not 100% taxation for common thing?