Interesting lower level stuff about lfi, fascinatnig that they have an app to do local stuff and how they came up with it i wonder what anarchists think about that part of the lower rungs of lfi
(missed varn vlog for a time, this is a month ago)
infuziSporg [e/em/eir] - 4w
I've listened to the first half so far.
There are just a few minutes where they discuss "action groups" and how they enable LFI as a party to have a presence in various other organizations and movements, and being informed by them without being controlled by them. This is what they mean by "instead of the traditional party form, we have the movement form, which is a gaseous network* based on observations of how all these revolts actually happen". It seems very close to the anarchist model of affinity groups, which has always been left intentionally vague.
*This is one of many turns of phrase that perked my ears up, it's very much the way my breed of anarchist communists will speak. Several other phrases, publishing collectives, and specific people mentioned confirm this ideological closeness to me.
Other things I like:
Make radical demands (like calling for a constituent assembly to make a 6th Republic) and lead with these demands, this conflict leverages disengagement and apathy from people who had written off politics as irrelevant or distant. This is one part of having a surface party and also a diffuse base of support.
Talking about how LFI is not dogmatically horizontalist, but horizontal in practice. This probably also largely comes from on-the-ground experience.
"No one seems to have an answer for the lack of socialist revolutions post-1992, we the Unbowed have an explanation". I mean, sure, there are Venezuela and Nepal, but these have been stalled or reversed to date. Sticking to the theory underlying the revolutions 75+ years ago is not going to be as helpful; on top of that we need more recent material that takes the very relevant and instructive history of the 20th-21st century into account, and also the developments in the social sciences which are a lot more mature now then they were in 1920.
Assessing the proletariat (industrial workers) as less central because of modern capitalism and "how capitalism affects our lives". However, Wallace doesn't take the logical next step of tracing how most people (especially in the West, but also worldwide due to capitalist messaging) find their identity on the consumption end rather than on the production end; production is obfuscated but consumption is personal. He also doesn't make any classification of how no matter what "stage of societal development ~(saying this for the sake of argument, I don't believe in linearity of stages)~ we are in", you can quantify financially whether someone is overall on the exploiting side or on the exploited side across their lifetime. He just says "the People... who live like you and have the same struggles as you".
3
plinky [he/him] - 4w
tbh, that manufacturing workers part always bothers me (with varn specifically, other leftists overestimate it share), logistics workers were very frequently forefronts of what people call general strikes, especially in russia (and usa) (ports for germany during 1918-19), why just dismiss manufacturing as only 10-15% and not add logistics into it as intrinsic part of make stuff -> consuming stuff, c-m-c. (one of course, should subtract roughly 2-5% workers involved in military procurement, which in case of usa might make you joker laugh)
(also i haven't heard particular care about "wot if bernard arnault just hires 10k french legion goons and guns your assembly down", which while paranoid, doesn't seem that paranoid on the scale of their proposals)
but yeah, the group structure seems like very resilient way to maintain cadre combined with minimal program which dismisses people over disagreements, and just avoiding labels with such a program i find fine + local groups gives people things to do
2
infuziSporg [e/em/eir] - 4w
Industrial workers is my wording. Wallace's wording is "the proletariat, as opposed to the peasants, the artisans, the petit bourgeoisie" and possibly the lumpenproletariat. He then talks about "the urban[ized] urbanites" as the people who live where the action is, and implies that this is everywhere because every place (in the métropole at least) has qualities of a city.
This brings up at least two necessary modifications to the classical Marxist theory, one about the revolutionary program dissolving the distinctions between town and country (they go into a tangent about Bordiga because Varn seems to nitpick that point), and one about the revolutionary agency of the lumpenproletariat, which has doubtlessly played a role in revolutionary French politics since 1789.
With the city/countryside distinction there is obviously the capitalist synthesis of the exurbs, which socialists need a counter to (I've got one up my sleeve, ask me about it). WRT logistics, that is absolutely a part of their understanding, even a central one, note the occupations of the roundabouts by the Gilets Jaunes. The GJ is the foremost of many insurgent moments in the West that LFI and its theory are calibrated around, and I think these are much more useful than 1917 Petrograd or 1933 Wuhan.
i haven't heard particular care about "wot if bernard arnault just hires 10k french legion goons and guns your assembly down"
This is equally a problem for all revolutionary approaches. Moreover, this question is easily turned around: what if Jeff Bezos drone strikes your general secretary and other core leadership in their homes? Decapitation attacks will cripple a traditional vanguard party; that's why Israel focuses on them so much, and why rebel groups have a necessity to make themselves decapitation-proof (to "be like water", one might say). At any rate, it is much more of an outrage to gun down an assembly than it is to assassinate a few rebels. And in fact, the strategy of osmosis (mentioned several times in the interview) is something that does address this.
2
plinky [he/him] - 4w
oh i don't mind too much their form of talking-head leadership/diffuse cell network, you still need people to talk as they mention themselves.
vanguard party typical answer is defection, but i don't think in the eras before remote assassinations and military disparity was so total, like people with guns vs people with guns+artillery is very different from people with guns vs people with starlink guided heavy-drones. and that's ignoring that wealth disparity is also very lopsided, where for 0.1% of your wealth you can terrorize small defenseless city without casualties. i'm not saying ml have better answer, they don't, but i wonder if they thought about it themselves.
i also wonder what french service jobs are like tbh, do they have large consulting/lawyers/finance bros slice of working people (it's like 15% in usa or some crazy shit)
2
infuziSporg [e/em/eir] - 4w
Defection as in fleeing the country and disconnecting your leadership from the on-the-ground reality? TBH I would be fully on board with a vanguard party as long as they recognized "leadership" as a bourgeois concept and split it into its component skills/proficiencies/focuses/functions; this would make the party a lot more flexible and resilient, lessen power struggles, and lower the potential benefit of blackmailing or otherwise compromising key individuals.
It's also worth saying that the cost-benefit analysis for killing off everyday people is very strained, while the CBA for Luigi-style shit is very fruitful. If you know where someone is and you can surprise them, they're not going to be able to wear body armor all the time. This dynamic heavily favors the socialists against the capitalists, because we can operate without chokepoints- we can "be like water, my friend".
I can answer the question about the "services" sector in Western Europe. Throughout the imperial core, especially original EU countries, you see a very similar trend. I don't know exactly how big the FIRE sectors are but it's not a night-and-day difference compared to the USA.
2
plinky [he/him] - 4w
defection from military ranks.
but there is slight wrinkle in services talked as a whole: nursing and elderly care is services, which is typically what explains their gargantuan expansion everywhere (coupled with multi generational family home disintegration/women integration into workforce). the managers and fire+tech sectors don't seem that big from outside in europe, they are still industry heavy.
but maybe my question is mainly this, who is like average central parisian urbanite? struggling nurse or finance bro?
2
infuziSporg [e/em/eir] - 4w
In Paris the central arrondissements are generally where the wealthy live and also where most of the desirable workplaces are, and the peripheral ones are more economically deprived and are also where immigrants are typically relegated to. It's been a while since I went to France though, and a lot of my knowledge is secondhand.
2
plinky [he/him] - 4w
i have somewhat involved question (cause of time, although they do have transcript, right in the website): for @DivineChaos100@hexbear.net, do you figure this (tactics described, not politics themselves, obv) is completely compatible with something like anarchism (the relevant org part is in first hour, latter parts are contemporary bullshit mainly)? cause like on the face of it i can't see why not, yet i have not seen anarchists raving about lfi, ever. (sorry, nakoichi is not here:( and i don't know other anarchist comrades, but obv not require an answer
2
DivineChaos100 [none/use name] - 4w
Oooh let me get back to this on the weeksnd, unfortunately i have a "real" job now so have less time to listen/read stuff
plinky in podcasts
The People's Era: How France Unbowed Reimagines Leftist Politics - Varn Vlog
https://varnvlog.buzzsprout.com/1777565/episodes/17542974-the-people-s-era-how-france-unbowed-reimagines-leftist-politicsInteresting lower level stuff about lfi, fascinatnig that they have an app to do local stuff and how they came up with it
i wonder what anarchists think about that part of the lower rungs of lfi
(missed varn vlog for a time, this is a month ago)
I've listened to the first half so far.
There are just a few minutes where they discuss "action groups" and how they enable LFI as a party to have a presence in various other organizations and movements, and being informed by them without being controlled by them. This is what they mean by "instead of the traditional party form, we have the movement form, which is a gaseous network* based on observations of how all these revolts actually happen". It seems very close to the anarchist model of affinity groups, which has always been left intentionally vague.
*This is one of many turns of phrase that perked my ears up, it's very much the way my breed of anarchist communists will speak. Several other phrases, publishing collectives, and specific people mentioned confirm this ideological closeness to me.
Other things I like:
Make radical demands (like calling for a constituent assembly to make a 6th Republic) and lead with these demands, this conflict leverages disengagement and apathy from people who had written off politics as irrelevant or distant. This is one part of having a surface party and also a diffuse base of support.
Talking about how LFI is not dogmatically horizontalist, but horizontal in practice. This probably also largely comes from on-the-ground experience.
"No one seems to have an answer for the lack of socialist revolutions post-1992, we the Unbowed have an explanation". I mean, sure, there are Venezuela and Nepal, but these have been stalled or reversed to date. Sticking to the theory underlying the revolutions 75+ years ago is not going to be as helpful; on top of that we need more recent material that takes the very relevant and instructive history of the 20th-21st century into account, and also the developments in the social sciences which are a lot more mature now then they were in 1920.
Assessing the proletariat (industrial workers) as less central because of modern capitalism and "how capitalism affects our lives". However, Wallace doesn't take the logical next step of tracing how most people (especially in the West, but also worldwide due to capitalist messaging) find their identity on the consumption end rather than on the production end; production is obfuscated but consumption is personal. He also doesn't make any classification of how no matter what "stage of societal development ~(saying this for the sake of argument, I don't believe in linearity of stages)~ we are in", you can quantify financially whether someone is overall on the exploiting side or on the exploited side across their lifetime. He just says "the People... who live like you and have the same struggles as you".
tbh, that manufacturing workers part always bothers me (with varn specifically, other leftists overestimate it share), logistics workers were very frequently forefronts of what people call general strikes, especially in russia (and usa) (ports for germany during 1918-19), why just dismiss manufacturing as only 10-15% and not add logistics into it as intrinsic part of make stuff -> consuming stuff, c-m-c. (one of course, should subtract roughly 2-5% workers involved in military procurement, which in case of usa might make you joker laugh)
(also i haven't heard particular care about "wot if bernard arnault just hires 10k french legion goons and guns your assembly down", which while paranoid, doesn't seem that paranoid on the scale of their proposals)
but yeah, the group structure seems like very resilient way to maintain cadre combined with minimal program which dismisses people over disagreements, and just avoiding labels with such a program i find fine + local groups gives people things to do
Industrial workers is my wording. Wallace's wording is "the proletariat, as opposed to the peasants, the artisans, the petit bourgeoisie" and possibly the lumpenproletariat. He then talks about "the urban[ized] urbanites" as the people who live where the action is, and implies that this is everywhere because every place (in the métropole at least) has qualities of a city.
This brings up at least two necessary modifications to the classical Marxist theory, one about the revolutionary program dissolving the distinctions between town and country (they go into a tangent about Bordiga because Varn seems to nitpick that point), and one about the revolutionary agency of the lumpenproletariat, which has doubtlessly played a role in revolutionary French politics since 1789.
With the city/countryside distinction there is obviously the capitalist synthesis of the exurbs, which socialists need a counter to (I've got one up my sleeve, ask me about it). WRT logistics, that is absolutely a part of their understanding, even a central one, note the occupations of the roundabouts by the Gilets Jaunes. The GJ is the foremost of many insurgent moments in the West that LFI and its theory are calibrated around, and I think these are much more useful than 1917 Petrograd or 1933 Wuhan.
This is equally a problem for all revolutionary approaches. Moreover, this question is easily turned around: what if Jeff Bezos drone strikes your general secretary and other core leadership in their homes? Decapitation attacks will cripple a traditional vanguard party; that's why Israel focuses on them so much, and why rebel groups have a necessity to make themselves decapitation-proof (to "be like water", one might say). At any rate, it is much more of an outrage to gun down an assembly than it is to assassinate a few rebels. And in fact, the strategy of osmosis (mentioned several times in the interview) is something that does address this.
oh i don't mind too much their form of talking-head leadership/diffuse cell network, you still need people to talk as they mention themselves.
vanguard party typical answer is defection, but i don't think in the eras before remote assassinations and military disparity was so total, like people with guns vs people with guns+artillery is very different from people with guns vs people with starlink guided heavy-drones. and that's ignoring that wealth disparity is also very lopsided, where for 0.1% of your wealth you can terrorize small defenseless city without casualties. i'm not saying ml have better answer, they don't, but i wonder if they thought about it themselves.
i also wonder what french service jobs are like tbh, do they have large consulting/lawyers/finance bros slice of working people (it's like 15% in usa or some crazy shit)
Defection as in fleeing the country and disconnecting your leadership from the on-the-ground reality? TBH I would be fully on board with a vanguard party as long as they recognized "leadership" as a bourgeois concept and split it into its component skills/proficiencies/focuses/functions; this would make the party a lot more flexible and resilient, lessen power struggles, and lower the potential benefit of blackmailing or otherwise compromising key individuals.
It's also worth saying that the cost-benefit analysis for killing off everyday people is very strained, while the CBA for Luigi-style shit is very fruitful. If you know where someone is and you can surprise them, they're not going to be able to wear body armor all the time. This dynamic heavily favors the socialists against the capitalists, because we can operate without chokepoints- we can "be like water, my friend".
I can answer the question about the "services" sector in Western Europe. Throughout the imperial core, especially original EU countries, you see a very similar trend. I don't know exactly how big the FIRE sectors are but it's not a night-and-day difference compared to the USA.
defection from military ranks.
but there is slight wrinkle in services talked as a whole: nursing and elderly care is services, which is typically what explains their gargantuan expansion everywhere (coupled with multi generational family home disintegration/women integration into workforce). the managers and fire+tech sectors don't seem that big from outside in europe, they are still industry heavy.
but maybe my question is mainly this, who is like average central parisian urbanite? struggling nurse or finance bro?
In Paris the central arrondissements are generally where the wealthy live and also where most of the desirable workplaces are, and the peripheral ones are more economically deprived and are also where immigrants are typically relegated to. It's been a while since I went to France though, and a lot of my knowledge is secondhand.
i have somewhat involved question (cause of time, although they do have transcript, right in the website): for @DivineChaos100@hexbear.net, do you figure this (tactics described, not politics themselves, obv) is completely compatible with something like anarchism (the relevant org part is in first hour, latter parts are contemporary bullshit mainly)? cause like on the face of it i can't see why not, yet i have not seen anarchists raving about lfi, ever. (sorry, nakoichi is not here:( and i don't know other anarchist comrades, but obv not require an answer
Oooh let me get back to this on the weeksnd, unfortunately i have a "real" job now so have less time to listen/read stuff