Dimmer06

I have noticed an interesting dynamic with Platner's campaign, that his core base are middle aged people who have been political hacks most of their lives and young people who are going to forget who he is before the election. Younger people who are actually plugged in don't seem to like him all that much. I think that's why DSA hasn't come out for him as of yet.

Idk why anyone pretends that every Democrat over sixty (which is probably a majority of Dems in this ancient state) isn't going to vote for Collins anyways. They've supported her for the last 25 years and they will continue to do so until she has ascended as the lich queen.

Maine primaries are next spring I think. Maybe next June? The general election is in 11 months

HR was 40 minutes late to the anti-union meeting they were hosting lmao.

I'm pretty sure the whole point of Marxism is that vibes aren't real, they're just the shadows of material relationships. Hegel said three spirits drove history. Marx retorted that it was the forces and relations of production that drove history. The materialst positions that every feeling, every idea, every "superstructure" can be broken down to a physical process that can be studied, quantified, and possibly changed.

And we see that in politics too. When people successfully organize it isn't for abstract concepts. It's for concrete goals. We might use abstract terms like "freedom" or "justice" but anyone actually looking to change things has concrete ideas about what needs to be changed to achieve those goals. Oftentimes words representing abstract ideas obscure the concrete goals of a political movement and mislead the masses which is why Marxists don't like "idealism".

Dinner tonight was vegan bacon cheeseburgers with lightlife bacon and impossible burgers and they tasted pretty good.

I don't prefer making (faux)meat-forward meals but I do occasionally and I don't look down on them. I don't think the meat substitutes are that unhealthy (almost certainly healthier than what they're replacing) but they're expensive and I genuinely enjoy cooking with veggies, beans, tofu, etc. more than just a burger or whatever. I never liked the concept of a chunk of meat being the centerpiece with some sides or vegetables scattered throughout when most food has so much potential flavor. I love that veganism really challenges that dynamic, forcing the chef to create meals that integrate ingredients rather than isolate them.

"Mass unionization" would be closer to what I'm describing but the point is that some absurdly large majority of working people in the US say they like unions and are not members of one which has nothing to do with the NLRB or employers and everything to do with how the major unions choose to organize and admit members. Without those pro-union workers organizing and learning through union struggle we will never have the basis for an actual workers party because the average worker will remain ideologically incoherent and socially fragmented. Only through an actual organized and lively labor movement raising the average consciousness of the workers could a workers party actually sustain itself and carry out its work.

Labor organizing truly is everything. For some reason the US left us obsessed with the concept of a "labor" or "workers" party when only a tiny portion of the US working class are even covered by CBAs, let alone active members of their unions. If we ever wish to see working class interests expressed in US politics than it should be obvious that the workers must be organized as workers (not as communities, affinity groups, political groups, tenants etc. though there is still value in those organizations). Even where CBAs do not exist and NLRB elections and contracts aren't really viable we should be organizing groups of workers to improve their conditions where they spend most of their lives - at work. Until this happens it doesn't matter how many Mamdanis get elected, we'll never have even a modicum of power.

Idk or care who Ossé is but SMC are some of the worst people in DSA so I'd take whatever they say with a grain of salt.

Mamdani not following DSA line should be humiliating for the entire organization.

"Vanguard" comes from the military term describing a force that leads the charge in an offensive in an effort to smash a hole in the enemy's lines so that the soldiers behind the vanguard can flood in. It usually consists of the most disciplined, best armed, and most skilled soldiers.

Lenin (as well as Marx and Engels to a lesser extent) saw in their study of revolution that the proletariat could spontaneously do immense damage to a regime if the conditions were right, but without ideological, organizational, and military leadership they could never bring about a revolution in which they seized power. This proved to be true in the 1905 Russian Revolution. Lenin realized that Marxist party needed to provide those forms of leadership to the working classes if a revolution were to ever come about and in 1917 the Russian workers and peasants, led by the Bolshevik vanguard, brought about that revolution.

There are no "downsides" to vanguardism in the sense that some other method is advantageous because no other method has ever worked and there is no indication another method ever would work. Even leftist organizations that proclaim themselves as "anti-vanguardist" are usually fulfilling the role of a vanguard as they are better organized and usually better armed (at least with ideology) than the masses.

This doesn't mean one can simply proclaim themselves the vanguard and bring about the revolution though. The vanguard must be well organized and armed both with weapons and ideology. It must be disciplined. It must have deep roots in the broadest swaths of society and they must look to the vanguard for political leadership in times of crisis. If the vanguard is too radical in action or agitation it risks isolating itself from the masses. If it fails to lead the masses and instead tails behind them they will run wild without leadership.

The question the left broadly should be asking is not "why the vanguard" but "how to be the vanguard".

Good statement. It is imperitive to stress the point that working people must actually struggle for the reforms Mamdami or any other candidate run on and that it cannot be left to politicians to make them happen (because they simply will not be able to).