[Thread] I took a break from Twitter for my mental health and because my personal life took a nose dive (yet again), but since re-joining I can't help but notice nothing has changed. Essentially socialist/communist Twitter is people screaming into the void.
People are angry that X politician did X shit thing, and then say they shouldn't have. And obvs those politicians are usually Lab. And I get it, things are fucking bleak, we live in a shitty world and society that says you can't have your needs met unless you make some cunt money
Things shouldn't be this way, and you're right to be angry, but at the same time, and if I'm speaking frankly, I'm fucking sick of seeing the same discourse repeated over and over again. There are people on this site who fetishize 'dialectics'.
They'll tell you not to think in binaries, and frankly, when they say that, I think they're talking out of their arse. Sometimes it is perfectly acceptable to think in binaries, and this is one of those times. At the moment we're faced with a simple choice.
You either use the power that you have - and you have a lot! - and you build that power amongst your community, your colleagues and your house mates, or you don't. You either outsource organising, or do it yourself. There's no point getting worked up over Labour politicians.
They're politicians, they're never going to help you when push comes to shove, there are a few which are sound, and I'd happily have them throw their weight behind a campaign or organising drive than not. But if your grand strategy is to somehow take over Labour, you're deluded.
Workers and renters have colossal amounts of power, its why companies hire union busting consultants and lobby the government to pass anti-strike laws, because they're shit scared we may actually use that power. Is organising easy? No.
Will you win every dispute? No. But don't tell me that we need Labour, or any party, to win for us, because its utter nonsense. The struggles of unions like UVW, IWGB and CAIWU have shown, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the lowest paid workers have buckets of power.
The struggles of Acorn and LRU members show the same with renters. The question is whether we're going to use it. Are we going to go out into our communities, workplaces and build that power?
At the moment it seems not, it seems that people are still going to continue to piss in the wind. You can personally make a huge difference by simply speaking to your colleagues, your housemates or people in your community.
You can gauge what they want, what they'll mobilise around, and you can win, and you can win fucking big. People will sometimes tell you that you can do the LP struggle and grassroots organising. And for a select few professional activists, maybe that's true.
But for the vast majority of us, we simply don't have the time. The society we live in is literally built on robbing us of that time. Time for laughter, time for joy, time to relax and time to find out who we are and what we want to do with our lives.
So when push comes to shove, we're faced with a choice of where our time is best spent, and if you believe it is in fighting for 'power' in a party which could not give two shits about you, fair play, crack on. That's your choice.
But I find it bizzare when there are organisations out there who have shown, time & time again, what can be done, and that they're willing to go all the way to get the job done, that you wouldn't spend your time building power, and hopefully, a better world, with them.
And to be clear, this isn't to fetishize a select few unions. There are problems with all unions, but what makes these ones different is precisely their emphasise on centring the voices of their members. Which isn't to say they're perfect because no union is.
Nor is to say that you won't have a struggle on your hands fighting the bureaucracy of the larger unions, because you will. But in order to fight that bureaucracy, you need to organise as renters and workers, you need to take control of your power.
Because Labour or any other party really isn't going to do it for you, so maybe stop hoping they will.
You can follow @KaneShaw16.
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