a liberal conception¶

The people in those orgs are ideologically regimented under a liberal conception of organizational aims and methods. Although the broader working class is fed a diet of hegemonic liberalism, they have not constructed an intentional political project which reifies it. https://t.co/IE3DBAFif6 It's the difference between trying to teach a random person about heliocentrism and trying to convince an entire college of the Ptolemeic system that their model is flawed. They believe they have studied correctly and found The Truth, and that you are a crank. You could perhaps peel off a DSA-er or two in isolation, but the organization as a whole is not some ideological blank slate, as it might appear. It has a potent, hegemonic culture that drags its members into liberalism for the sake of "unity." It preaches high-minded ideals of "democracy" and "open debate," but uses methods that toggle between social pressure and "hypocritical" censure to quash divergence from the liberal mindset. Many a radical have found themselves fuming at the apparent contradiction, where the more radical aims they know should be pursued keep getting marginalized. "Democratic debate" somehow doesn't seem to be elevating correct ideas -- just hegemonic ones. That's the flaw of "petty democracy." If people are not educated, or they are educated in a counter-revolutionary way, their democratic will reflects only the liberal backdrop in which they began their political journey. They then democratically elect to maintain that liberalism. This paradox is, of course, unseated by material interest. Among oppressed peoples, the need for radicalization constantly becomes more pressing. People who are barely struggling to survive, whose class instincts place them in direct opposition to the liberal status quo. Contrast this with DSA, which caters primarily to people whose class instincts line up with the liberal order (whether they realize it or not), and attempts to "radicalize" them into fighting for a softer, more equitable imperialism. The horizon for radicalism is truncated. Class instincts CAN be overcome, of course. The petty bourgeoisie, when faced with the looming threat of proletarianization, can choose to either entrench themselves further into protecting the extractive system, or they can commit class suicide, and be of service to revolution. The same is true for any oppressor-oppressed class relation, including the modern labor aristocracy. It's a particularly prominent dynamic among those being nudged toward the precipice of class failure, such as the imperial worker whose wages cannot keep pace with inflation. The role of the so-called "organized left" is to capture those people and convince them to fight to prop up the system driving them to the brink. To fight for wage increases and expanded social programs, to run the treadmill faster, and grind the imperial subject to grist. This is not an environment in which true radicalization can ever take place. You are fighting to convince people of tactics that run counter to the actual project for which the organization is built. They will not be convinced; they would need to abandon that project. If they will ever be convinced of anything, it will be in the form of joining an organization with an explicitly revolutionary framework, built by those who are already struggling to survive, and have no allegiance to or fear of the liberal regime.