this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2023
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That's a fair point, but... Well, that's what the Leninist party organization is for. To forge this revolutionary spirit on the advanced members of the working classes and then spreading this through the class.
It will not come naturally. Class consciousness doesn't come from nowhere. We can't complain that there isn't class consciousness without actually building organizations to foment it. We need more Lenin in this conversation.
Edit:
Sorry for editing but this is an important point. As Marxists we shouldn't rely on idealism but on the material conditions for something to happen, right?
This discourse "people aren't ready for the hardships of revolution" is idealist. It pressuposes that metaphysical conditions and ideas ("being ready for the revolution") are the movers of history. As Marxists that's not what we believe. We believe that material conditions are the movers of history.
So we ask ourselves: what material conditions make people apt for revolutionary action? And we work to bring about those conditions.
That's the Leninism in "Marxism-Leninism"!!!! That's one of the great contribution of Lenin (not the only one, of course): the first steps on the theory of revolutionary organization.
That's what frustrates me about the phrase in the title. We have a lot of past theory and practice to apply for that problem. Granted: I didn't listen to the podcast. Maybe that's what he talks about later. But I think the phrase as it's written is a disservice.
Thank you for clarifying your analysis. I recognise that I haven't automatically seen the vanguardist aspect of the matter, it is right that the vanguard party will be the one teaching the ways of the revolution.
However we still need to address why is there no credible vanguard parties in the imperial core. My bet is that imperialism allow for the fragmentation of the working class by virtue of not having any more industry, as well as a lifestyle that is depressing and precarious rather than physically violent, and a political system that can orchestrate a spectacle of democracy.
All of these are material factors, it's not about the metaphysical state of the proletariat, it's their material relality created by imperialist extraction.
But of course you're also right to mention that there is a Eurocentric tendency in saying "people aren't ready" without mentioning that only imperial core workers are in that state
100% agreed, comrade.
That's where we can converge. Thank you.