testing different tactics then adjusting your efforts based on the results is the right approach

Again, this is the right line in theory, but the practice of how this is actually being done matters a lot. I have not seen this “test” and its recorded results and if it was linked to here, I missed it, so I cannot at this time comment on the specifics of whether it makes any sense. What I can say is that in science, a single experiment does not constitute sufficient evidence to generalize about an entire practice under varying conditions.

Furthermore, it is important in this kind of political practice to ask why something was or wasn’t effective, not just if it was. My nonexistent capability to hit a home run in baseball does not constitute evidence as to how capable all human beings are at doing so. Babe Ruth’s capability to hit a home run while blindfolded in a hurricane does not constitute generalized evidence as to how many home runs Babe Ruth can hit under average baseball conditions. The context and conditions matter. That’s why we say we can’t just take the model of one AES state and plop it onto another country with different conditions and expect it to work exactly the same way. Maybe I’m preaching to the choir on that point, I don’t know, but I emphasize it because generalizing about a whole practice based on one test is not only not scientific in the more general sense of science, it’s not in fitting with communist dialectical theory and practice. Yet from what I’ve read, as alleged, CPUSA extrapolated from one test that mutual aid is not effective and is pushing that as a line for the entire party. For all I know, the people conducting the “test” just suck at relationship building and teaching, and so they gained nothing other than performing charity from their “test”. Without a clue as to why it wasn’t effective in whatever metrics they used to measure its effectiveness, what is there to learn from it?

To adjust, you need to know why something didn’t work, not just the plain fact that it didn’t. If I attempt to walk forward and the handle of a bag I’m holding gets snagged on something, I would rightly be thought a fool to conclude that one should never carry a bag if they want to be able to walk. On the other hand, if I recognize that holding in such a way the handle can trail behind me and get caught on things out of view is causing problems, they I can adjust the way in which I hold it.

Anti-communists when a capitalist acts like a capitalist: “That’s just corruption, not real capitalism. And if it is capitalism, that’s just human nature, so we can’t do anything about it.”

Anti-communists when a “communist” or “socialist” doesn’t act like a communist: “Why aren’t communists personally taking credit for what this person/party did and using it as reason to be ashamed of communism as a whole and never want anything to do with it.”

Side note, IIRC Parenti talks about this in Blackshirts and Reds. Not about Pol Pot specifically, but about the phenomenon of fascists using similar rhetoric to communists to garner popular support. But notably, they did not support people materially with bottom up power the way the communists did/do; the opposite, in fact. So it matters a lot to look at the practice of what a “communist” group is doing, not just what they have as an ideological line.

Meanwhile in the US, George Jackson is really dead. MLK is really dead. Fred Hampton is really dead. Among countless other black and indigenous people, whether of a revolutionary bent or just regular people trying to keep their head down and continue to exist without being targeted by state-sanctioned violence.

This sounds like a nice excuse in a hypothetical vacuum void of evidence, but we’re talking about an org that is also, from what I’m reading, pushing a line of voting for Biden / democratic party in general. How exactly is backing a genocidal monster in a capitalist controlled political party supposed to be gaining political power? For an org called communist of all things?

I’m aware harm reduction is not intrinsically revolutionary organizing, but if an org is refusing harm reduction as not tactical and backing a major status quo genocidal capitalist party, what exactly are people supposed to see in that as revolutionary?

And this is part of why they can’t stand countries like China, who serve as a living example that a better world is possible and it’s not an inevitability of “human nature” for some people to have to suffer horribly. Countries like China who serve as examples that the US and its allies in imperialism aren’t tragically limited, but well-meaning governments - rather, they are parasitic systems that ignore solutions to suffering and write articles about how reducing suffering isn’t in the budget, vilifying and attacking anyone who attempts it.

Exactly! Effectiveness matters, but if you aren’t helping the masses and are being effective, then what exactly is your effectiveness going toward? Surely not the ones communists are supposed to be fighting for.

I don’t get it, do they think people are faking how much destruction the genocidal zionist settler state has done to Gaza? It’s not even a question of “would they”, they have done an apocalyptic amount of destruction. They didn’t need atomic bombs to do so.

I’m trying really hard not to paint them with an overly broad brush and am open to nuance on it, but if this is the kind of shit they can pull at the leadership level, then I don’t see much hope for them as an org. It comes across to me like the majority leadership views it as a vehicle for accruing dem votes that is meant to actually block anything further than that, rather than anything resembling a revolutionary org.

I remember when Trump being a pathological liar was an actual point of contrast with some of the major candidates he was up against, rather than a shared trait.

Well the first time the US launched nukes, wasn’t it the only nuclear-capable country? And that was before anyone had expectations about it or defenses in mind for it. The world is a lot different now in that way. If we look at how the US is doing in direct combat, it doesn’t look good, from everything I’ve read/seen recently. I don’t see why the US military’s capability to unleash hell with nukes would be dramatically different; they’d be facing obliteration level counter military efforts, if they can even get their nukes to launch in a competent manner in the first place. Not to mention how much the US is dependent on trade, so nuking large parts of the world could tear apart the bread and circuses in short order.

I mean, I’m not saying “view it as insignificant and don’t take it seriously,” but like, I’m skeptical of how their on paper doctrine type stuff would actually translate to reality.

I don’t understand how you come to the conclusion that such a read of it is disingenuous. It’s a publication called Business Insider from the western empire, an empire that has a history of war profiteering and putting short term thinking over long term. I could see a point that it’s foolish to think nobody in the western empire is trying to think strategically in the long term, but I would figure those are more the people in think tanks and backrooms, not writing pieces for a publication that sound like a pitch to investors.

If there is a part of the article you think especially demonstrates sincere long term thinking, feel free to quote it and I will look at it. Calling a read of this that syncs right up with the chronic observable tendencies of the western empire “disingenuous” is odd to me, to say the least. Reductive, maybe, but disingenuous?

Bronk said that “it’s so much cheaper and easier” to invest now in the capabilities to deter Russia than it is “to actually invest in the forces capable of fighting an extended war for six months, a year, two years.”

This is the important part, isn’t it. “Invest more money, but don’t worry about the long term, just hand over the cash, the short term is what matters here.”

Ask him if he’d find it badass if a group of people targeted your family, enslaved them, humiliated them, maimed or murdered anyone in your family who opposed them, created entire media apparatus to convince anyone beyond them and your family that your family is a bunch of savages who need domination in order to “civilize” you, recruited members from your family who were desperate for a way out to work against your family and for them in order to further embed the control over you, slowly eliminate your family to replace them with outsiders and/or force your family to adopt the group’s language and culture through threat of violence. And to top it off, do this over the course of entire generations of your family and take credit for anything your family produced as the product of the group’s “great men” geniuses.

First, I want to say, well written.

Second, to this thought:

I have no idea why the liberals are wasting saliva defending the actions of this man or trying to garner him any sympathy.

I think it goes back to what Kwame Ture points out in The Pitfalls of Liberalism: https://redsails.org/the-pitfalls-of-liberalism/

Most societies in the West are not opposed to violence. The oppressor is only opposed to violence when the oppressed talks about using violence against the oppressor. Then the question of violence is raised as the incorrect means to attain one’s ends. Witness, for example, that Britain, France, and the United States have time and time again armed black people to fight their enemies for them. France armed Senegalese in World War II, Britain of course armed Africa and the West Indies, and the United States always armed the Africans living in the United States. But that is only to fight against their enemy, and the question of violence is never raised. The only time the United States or England or France will become concerned about the question of violence is when the people whom they armed to kill their enemies will pick up those arms against them.

“Bully returns home, tells mom it was traumatizing when victim fought back.”

Friendly reminder that even the CIA thought Stalin wasn’t a dictator: https://archive.org/details/cia-rdp-80-00810-a-006000360009-0_202404/mode/2up

Even in Stalin’s time there was collective leadership. The Western idea of a dictator within the Communist setup is exaggerated. Misunderstandings on that subject are caused by lack of comprehension of the real nature and organization of the Communist power structure. Stalin, although holding wide powers, was merely the captain of a team and it seems obvious that Khrushchev will be the new captain.

When I wrote the other comment, I did not have any info on collateral damage and the reactions of the crowd in the clip I saw didn’t seem to suggest evidence of any. If there is indeed a death as a result, then certainly that point doesn’t hold.

I don’t know, to some extent this take on it sounds like victim-blaming to me. Not that I’m saying you intend it that way, but like… “best possible outcome of this [because…] the fascist bandit armies would come out in droves [if he died]” seems like kind of a lose-lose situation for people to be in. If Trump is alive and kicking, he can win the presidency and continue to foment stochastic terrorism by riling up his base with more and more violent rhetoric, while also potentially instituting policies meant to harm his political faction opponents. If he’s not, they commit terrorism on his behalf.

I know it doesn’t all start and end with Trump (far from it and there’s plenty to be said about how fascist and imperialist the US already is under Biden and previous presidents before him and Trump) but from the standpoint of the kind of base Trump is the center of gravity for, him further riling it up or being a martyr both seem like bad outcomes to me in different ways. The “far-right” doesn’t need an excuse to do violence and already has been (I mean, the Jan 6 thing happened long before this). What they do need is power to be able to carry out what they want to do as more than random acts of terror and Trump represents a means of them getting that in some way. Though he is of course far from the only one in their circles willing to go there. He’s just currently the most charismatic and the center of gravity for pushing it.

I’ll try to remember to if I can find it. Web searching has indeed become a pain. I tried to do some just now, but didn’t have much luck. Through a link in one article, I came upon one source that is vaguely related to what we’re talking about, but not really on the point of specifically combining product and community. It’s also sort of a shallow summary and may be stuff you’ve already heard of: https://www.businessinsider.com/birth-of-consumer-culture-2013-2

These quotes from it specifically stand out to me:

“We must shift America from a needs, to a desires culture,” wrote Paul Mazur of Lehman Brothers. “People must be trained to desire, to want new things even before the old had been entirely consumed. We must shape a new mentality in America. Man’s desires must overshadow his needs.”

Bernays shattered the taboo against women smoking by persuading a group of debutantes to light up at a parade — an event he leaked to the media ahead of time with the phrase “Torches Of Freedom” — thereby linking smoking with challenging male authority.

But, this isn’t really the specificity of intent I thought I had found something on before. Maybe I confused someone extrapolating intent from outcomes in the past, or it’s just out there in the mass of the internet somewhere and is hard to find.

I’m wondering about the ‘staged’ explanation too. Points in favor of that I’ve come across from others or can think of:

• Who insists on stopping to do a fist pump to the crowd after being shot at? Yeah, he’s a narcissist, but still, wouldn’t fight or flight kick in and he’d want to get out of there?

• He has some history with fake wrestling, right? I’m not sure to what extent off-hand, but the fact he does means he’s not a stranger to “faking” things.

• The seeming lack of collateral damage if it was a real shooter. That someone would have the discipline of aim to only graze him, but not cause any other damage to anyone. I’m not sure on the logistics of this myself, but it’s something I heard that I’m paraphrasing from someone else.