Articulating and Organizing the Social Body with Asad Haider | Cosmopod

tags : [[political party]] [[organizing]]

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[[Alain Badiou]] said that because [[state socialism]] wasn’t able to achieve [[communism]] it should no longer be considered emancipatory

Badiou says that what’s missing from popular movements is a positive visiion (i.e. a communist horizon)

Before [[Lenin]], politics was considered to have occurred under specific social conditions, rather than political parties making such conditions

After the [[Bolsheviks]] took power in [[1917]], the party gradually became less revolutionary - The task of carrying out the revolution fell onto civil society organizations, such as the [[Proletkult]] - The [[soviets]] eventually became transmission belts to the party after the revolution

[[Cuba]] has civil society organizations that are separate from the official communist party

[[Cultural revolution]] is something that can only go on for so long before people get tired and want life to go back to normal

Political parties should be able to carry on past the phase of insurrection where people are getting burnt out and tired

Political organizations must be flexible to change, as the masses are ahead of the organizations (as we’re seeing with the [[George Floyd protests]])

A worthwhile workers party needs the trust of the people, otherwise it won’t go anywhere

[[Mutual aid]] and [[electoralism]] should not be seen as exclusive political actions but tactics that a broader socialist movement could use

Emancipation is only emancipatory if everyone is free

The struggle against racism is also a class struggle, and the class struggle should be a struggle against racism. In the last 50 years or so, these struggles have been co-opted

A party should assume that the masses are capable of learning things for themselves. Our task as the “intellectual vanguard” is to “bring people the good news of communism”, but we should not condescend people