Zorro [he/him]

You might be selling your friend short. Not everyone needs to understand all the works of former revolutionaries. The communist movement has many facets and requires all kinds of people with different skill sets and life experience.

One reason why some people might find it difficult to understand the concepts in ML literature, is because they find it difficult to envision it put in practice. This is why, for those people, it is beneficial to get some practical experience before diving further into the literature. Once they experience hang-ups in their own organizing, they might find help in some of the literature that directly relates to their hang-ups.

I won’t say that communists shouldn’t strive to always continue their education, but if someone does not grasp the words that they’re reading, then they must try something else. My biggest critique on communists reading lists is that they do not offer practical advice on how to start organizing, so many communists read all the books without putting the words to practice because they’re not sure how. Most organizing is local, and thus depends on location and existing local structures.

Here’s a few ways someone could get started on gaining practical organizing experience:

• Talk with people you come across, try to understand their grievances, their relation to capital and how they perceive their relation to capital.
• join any sort of political organisation that does more than just reading, and switch organisations if you feel like it fits you better. It can be climate justice, indigenous justice, international solidarity, a more general socialist organisation, a renters union/collective, neighbourhood mutual aid, whatever exists in your area and fits your vibes.
• join a union and become an active member
• unionise your workplace
• form a renters union

Some of these options are more intimidating than others. Some will be more directly involved with revolutionary struggle than others. The main goal is that one gets to experience the economical, social and political landscapes and the way in which class struggle shapes those landscapes.

I’m not making any moral judgements. I care about ending the suffering that came from this war, and I think your analysis is based on wishful thinking and fantasy stories that you have been told about Ukraine and NATO. There’s too much for me to dissect to continue this conversation.

I don’t think it’s possible to look at the Russia-Ukraine war without considering the role of NATO. I care about ending this war which is devastating to working class people. I don’t think it’s a truthful analysis to say that Russia is just a big bully here who holds all the cards. If you look at Russia’s actions, most escalations on Russia’s side have been a reaction to actions from NATO. To think that more escalation from NATO will lead to a quicker end to the war is contrary to this historic pattern. Russia sees NATO as an existential threat, so it has a lot of motivation to keep fighting Ukraine to prevent NATO from spreading further to Russia’s border. NATO’s actions, to increase aggression towards Russia, only increase Russia’s motivation to keep fighting. If NATO were to pull back from Ukraine, make concessions to Russia that it will not expand further, and will allow Russia to trade and collaborate with European countries, then Russia has very little incentive to keep fighting Ukraine because they no longer see an existential threat. For Ukrainians it is devastating to be in the middle in this conflict, while not having any influence on the course of the war. But it’s a reality that I cannot change. All I can do is pressure my own government to work towards peace instead of continued aggression.

Judging by your comments, you might like hexbear, lemmygrad or one of the non-liberal anarchist instances (I don’t remember which ones are good).

You are allowed to call death to Nazis on hexbear