I’d say it’s both. It’s not impossible to have a perfect grasp of theory without proletarianization and suffering, and it’s not impossible to have a clear grasp of what needs to be done and why without theory. However, for the vast majority, you must have theory and practice. Theory is a tool that makes practice easier and more effective, it identifies the sources of problems and tells you how to think about solving them. To avoid theory is a mistake, that’s fighting a terrible and great enemy while handcuffed or blindfolded. Not impossible, but unnecessarily difficult.
If you don’t learn the lessons our predecessors gave us and spent their lives figuring out and testing, do you really care?
The screenshot isn’t even talking about theory vs practice. The real life non-theory “practice” they recommend is simply being on the receiving end of booj state violence, starvation, being overworked, etc. This is not the same as organizing a strike, organizing a party, going to protests, and other stuff that actually is practice. That suffering may help one embed themself into a community or workplace they want to organize and motivate them to destroy capitalism, but it hasn’t prevented many oppressed people becoming anticommunists regardless (see the other thread on this post about poor Brazilian gig workers still ending up as Bolsanaro supporting chuds).
I agree, I was just trying to address a more charitable reading of it that is less detached from reality IMO. It would probably have been better to acknowledge that in my comment though.
To quote Vijay Prashad paraphrasing Marx: Those who seek to change the world understand it better.
Every cadre should be a theorist, and every theorist should be a cadre; this separation between the proles who actually go and experience reality and the “theorists” who describe it while being alienated from it is bound to go nowhere. You need to have the workers educated in political theory, and you need to have the theorists close to the ground where they can experience history unfolding.
Exactly.
this sucks, pure anti intellectualism, if this were true the whole world would be red by now
I don’t think the intention was to lessen the importance of theory, but it does read that way
If any of that was remotely true, every poor person on earth would be a communist, obviously that’s not the case
If the theory of anti-theory is not true in practice then of what use is the theory?
This is just romanticizing suffering for purpose of anti-intellectualism. Nobody is capable of contextualizing all they go through let alone formulate that into a coherent worldview without prior cumulative analysis and knowledge. Even those who believe they do like this romanticization do so because they had some prior familiarity with the ideas, probably through second-hand knowledge, to relate it to theory or communism.
“Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement”
-Guy who actually led the first successful communist revolution
There are plenty of people who misread Marx, either willingfully or not, and become opportunists. Almost nobody truly understands the methods, requirements, and goals of Marxism without reading him though.
I think what would be more accurate is to say that studying Marx (or any theorists) alone doesn’t give one the willpower to truly commit to being a communist. This helps explain the issue in the western left as a labor aristocracy with an understanding of class dynamics. There are many well read people who can emulate the aesthetics, language, and cultural relics of communism history but when push comes to shove, they aren’t truly committed to destroying the system they benefit from.
Poverty and oppression alone obviously doesn’t produce Communist thought, if it did we would already be living under Communism.
Revolutionary consciousness isn’t spontaneous! Empiricist, subjectivist, and cannot see the world beyond their own nose. Scientific socialism was brought to, and fused with, the workers’ movement–a cursory reading of Lenin would tell you that. Y’all are backwards as fuck.
My boy Engels can get no love
Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play
This is just plain wrong, in my view. You don’t learn Communism; you learn to hate life itself, instead of the terrible system in which your shitty life happens.
The impoverished Brazilian gig worker delivering food to rich people while riding a motorcycle with Bolsonaro stickers begs to differ. I see this guy all the time. He struggles to feed his family (because communists are making groceries more expensive), he wants more police brutality (against other people), he wants followers of certain religions (not his) arrested, he says he works 18 hour days and life is tough but he works hard (and you’re a lazy crybaby if you don’t want to do it too).
Sure, Marx explains why his life is miserable, but there’s plenty of other people willing to offer misleading but more immediately compelling explanations and these are all very appealing to somebody who was born and raised immersed in anticommunist propaganda.
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i think the part that i hate the most about this is that when they can finally afford something, its a big achievement (“conquista!”) only working to the bone can bring.
The truly Brazilian vibes of “Foi Deus que me deu” (God gave this to me) sticker slapped onto the rear window of a shitty banged up car
communism is really obvious if you think about reality for like 10 seconds
If that were the case, I’d expect there to be a lot more communists.
people are just way stupider and uninteresting than you think
Nah, not about people being stupid. The propaganda apparatus is omnipresent and STRONG, it’s been perfected over centuries, and it accompanies us from birth to death.
idk what to tell you. I was a dumb teenager, then when I hit my early 20s I started seeing everything from a zoomed out perspective (instead of working within a framework)
I thought about the job market and saw that either A) everyone gets equal B) the lowest tier gets pushed into homelessness and then prison forever and ever as long as it’s gradual enough that everyone isn’t unemployed all at once
Communism isn’t when everyone gets equal, it’s just a system in which there aren’t two classes, with one owning the capital and the other having to sell their labor power as a commodity while being exploited.
Misanthropy and socialism don’t go well together IMO. My desires of social justice and betterment of living standards for everyone aren’t that compatible with misanthropy, at least in my opinion. What makes you a socialist then?
