chapotraphouse

The Chilean socialist movement that brought Allende to power worked because they had Party offices in the community where members of the community could go and socialize as well as learn! There are lots of stories of people who met their first dates at the party community centers, and so the social pressure forced people to become more based to fit in.

I have a long comment history of ripping into Evangelical Christianity. Sometimes I feel like I rail against it more than anyone on this site. I have a million issues with American Christianity that still get me angry when I think about them even though I left the religion almost a decade ago.

BUT… when I think about the time I spent with various young adult church groups or Bible studies, I still have a lot of fond memories. Or even going further back to when I was a kid, my small little church had a pretty healthy social life that I do think made a positive impact in my life. Churches understand that and they’re pretty good at it. All that social stuff you mentioned really does matter. We are so alienated and disconnected from each other. To be able to offer a salve for that I think will help draw people to the org as well as help meet those social needs we all have.

dating within an org is only a problem when more influential members date less influential members, the representative of a local chapter probably shouldn't start dating one of their members, it creates an imbalance of power, this isn't limited to socialist orgs though, it applies to any organisational structure.

it's the sex pest problem, unfortunately. a lot of the women I know in local organizing circles - including myself - have been SAed by other organizers (usually dudes). I don't personally have a problem with dating in organizing circles but I know others do.

Each orgs chapter has an average of like 20 active people, that's why it always devolves into a sex cult in the US

Figure out the communist and communist-aligned groups in your area, get on their mailing lists, turn out to do the things they ask of you sometimes. Try to make a compromise between good politics, successfully doing things in the real world, and being a larger org. Find out which orgs meet those criteria by going to their things. Once you're sure which org(s) are good, ask them how you can get more involved.

An org is just a group of people that do work together and have a name. It might be a political party, it might be a group focused on a specific thing that approaches it from a socialist perspective, it might just be four people trying to figure out what they want to do but they know it should be socialist.

You join one by talking to people and asking them if you can join.

Joining a political organization that fights for better rights. In this context, a socialist org/party working towards building a socialist nation

Good job!

Sucks living here 'cause all the bourgeois freaks from Ottawa are spilling out here to get the cheaper real estate while bringing their equally awful shitlib politics. So it's them and freakish Canadian QAnoner types.

Just because people were illiterate or had low literacy levels doesn't mean they didn't engage in theory though. This is also why vanguardism was so important to historical revolutions.

But you only need one comrade who can read for a classroom sized group of people (or larger) to be able to learn and discuss theory.

Part of what Mao did so successfully was to convey complex ideas in theory in very simple to understand language. In fact, he was so effective in doing this that most of his writings manage to cross a vast linguistic gap in a very nimble way.

Theory isn't the be-all and end-all, of course. But a party or the masses without theory is like a ship without a rudder.

Those trying to build up the socialist movement early on were all heavy readers though. They need to be. Most of us live in a country where the movement is in the infantile stages

If a revolution does ever come to America, 99% of participants will have never read a single communist book, yea

Back then, it would've been, like, the one guy at the factory who knows how to read, reading things to fellow workers, right? So reading theory would've been to a large degree a social activity back then, whereas now it's often a pretty lonely activity. Even if you aren't just reading alone, but are doing a book club or something... a book club isn't quite the same when it's 12 people from around the world on Discord, compared to when it's 12 people in the room with you. And even if you're going through the effort of making the information you learn more accessible to others, making an audiobook for the consumption of countless anonymous people online isn't quite the same as reading something to someone in person; nor is translating a work and publishing it online quite the same as actually going through the effort of making a translation in paper and giving it to someone.

Basically what I'm getting at is that "theory" can and should be praxis in itself, and this is achieved by changing the ways we interact with and think of "theory". That is, sharing information can itself be a productive, creative, and social activity grounded in our immediate surroundings, that builds the networks and skills to make us good revolutionaries, rather than just giving us explanations of why the world's kinda messed up so that we can debate with internet strangers to prove who's more well-read.