Europe's political situation becomes more volatile as the economy deteriorates, while political initiative remains with the Left

tumadre124 · 1 month

Laughing at rape? You have issues.

socialistme · 1 month

Working class commuters are the power structure now?

thepinkmask · 1 month

Real general strikes actually involve the participation of the majority of the 99%. Your impatience with the current state of struggle today will create more obstacles to deepening struggle in the years to come.

thepinkmask · 1 month

If you aren't trying to win over the majority of the 99%, then you're embarking down a dead end. Substituting the actions of a minority for the power of the working class majority has been tried and has failed many times.

thepinkmask · 1 month

We need to put our hands upon the levers of the machine, but we need to do so in a way that encourages and emboldens more people to do so. An action that forcibly keeps thousands of working class people from their jobs when they have not yet been convinced of the need to strike (or do not think it's possible) will set back the movement rather than advance it.

thepinkmask · 1 month

Worker support or not, shutting down the bridge will forcibly keep thousands of working class people from their jobs. This is not a tactic that will generate broader sympathy for the movement, and the support from GG bridge unions doesn't change this fact.

Boglioni · 1 month

*there's

RedPlebiscite · 1 month

The argument of the article is not that we should not try different tactics. It is that we should debate out and carry out those tactics in a collective fashion, rather than just having everyone "do their own thing."

zawamark · 2 months

Tens of thousands? Yes. Millions? No.

zawamark · 2 months

You make numerous assumptions here. The first assumption is that this is mostly a workers' revolt/democratic uprising. This is not entirely true since most members of the Syrian National Council and the Free Syrian Army are Salafists or members of the Muslim Brotherhood. They are funded and armed by Qatar, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia. There are true, democratic protestors but they are not using violence. Assad is allowing them to protest and is not using the military against them. He already passed the reforms they demanded and 89% of the people voted in favor of the new Constitution.

The uprising has diverse political tendencies within it. The SNC is notable for being the LEAST representative of the grassroots forces of the uprising -- and its repeated invitation of foreign intervention is a big part of the reason for its marginalization within Syria.

Second, most Syrians actually support Assad.

That Assad has significant support cannot be contested, but this is a ridiculous exaggeration of that support.

On March 15, millions of people took to the streets of Damascus and Aleppo defending the government.

According to... the Assad government.

A poll was also done by Qatar that shows majority support for Assad (Qatar certainly isn't pro-government).

A public opinion poll is probably one of the worst means of trying to assess support for Assad during conditions of revolutionary upsurge and nascent civil war. It's telling that Assad supporters choose to look at this "evidence" rather than the mass movement against Assad.

zawamark · 2 months

The headline evinces a brain-dead line of reasoning. We can be certain imperial powers will always try to meddle in the affairs of other countries and deflect or contain popular uprisings, and the revelations of this article are completely unsurpising.

US attempts to coopt the uprising do not take away Syrian workers' right to revolt against a bourgeois and despotic regime, however. It's inconceivable that any popular uprising could take place in Syria without there being a threat of deflection by imperialism. The challenge is for the Syrian Left to maintain an anti-imperialist position within the uprising.

Or is zawamark suggesting that Syrians can never revolt against their oppressors?

We need working class internationalism, not "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" reasoning which is ultimately reactionary.

RedPlebiscite · 2 months

Individuals are perfectly capable of being bad people all on their own.

Individuals are the product of their societies.

Increased diversity drives increased corporate profits, greater civic engagement, and greater income equality. The system benefits from racial equality.

Racism is the key tool of the US ruling class to divide working class people. Moreover it's perfectly possible for a handful of people of color to succeed while the majority remain victims of institutional racism.

Revolution_rnt · 2 months

The base of Assad's support is not the working class, but the merchant middle class in Aleppo and Damascus. All Syrian cities other than Aleppo & Damascus are in open revolt against the regime, and there have been substantial protests in Damascus and Aleppo as well. It's the middle and capitalist class bases of the regime that haven't split yet. This, combined with the Assad regime's support from Russia and China, which don't want Western Europe to further expand its influence in the region, provide the key to understanding the revolution's stall.

socialistme

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