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6 Jan, 6 tweets, 2 min read
For years, Liberals, left-Liberals (“progressive” Social Democrats), and baby Leftists have looked at us as too “radical” or “unrealistic.”

Now it is becoming more clear to many that things are going to get more and more “radical” and “surreal,” whether they want them to or not.
Anyone who has studied 20th-century German history knows *exactly* what is happening right now.

Anyone who has studied events all throughout Latin America within the last century knows *exactly* what is happening right now.

Not only is it not shocking...

It has been predicted.
Get with the program.

The program is #DualPower.

It’s not just one thing. It’s not just one tool.

It’s every tool in the toolkit.

And it’s grounded in principles of cooperation, communalism, direct democracy, consensus, prefigurative politics, internationalism, and much more.
Explore our program.

Help develop it.

Build on it.

Anything.

But we have to get moving.

#DualPower

Something else to keep in mind:

We need to begin taking notes from what has transpired within Syria within the last decade or so, and specifically with the Rojava project; many lessons to be learned from what has taken place here, particularly for Black Americans / New Afrikans.
“Practical Projects for Building the Autonomous Administration: ROJAVA” is a recent book release that provides a very succinct (but strong) overview on this topic.

The dynamics explored in it have parallels with dynamics we could be observing within the U.S. in the coming years. Image

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More from @BlackSocialists

Black Socialists in America Profile picture
26 Dec 20
Informal hierarchies will develop in movements for systems change, but there should be zero tolerance for attempts to gatekeep in these movements.

Be skeptical of those taking on “organizer” or “activist” as an identity under broader organization and then expressing entitlement.
True social revolution is the culmination of many different social processes that are catalyzed as a result of many different actions in many different places. Not all of these social processes are catalyzed through actions tied to people or forces grounded in Left values either.
There are also many areas in which people must move in order to help others self-organize and cooperate; there is no one space to “organize,” and no one network through which people develop new social relations.

No one person or group can have a monopoly on new social relations.
Read 7 tweets
Black Socialists in America Profile picture
27 Nov 20
Something that must be understood:

The term “dual power” was coined by Lenin in 1917, but most of the core conceptual underpinnings for this term were spoken to by Proudhon in 1851, over half a century earlier (please see here: panarchy.org/proudhon/econo…).

This is worth unpacking.
Let’s start with Lenin’s first use of the term in 1917 (see here: marxists.org/archive/lenin/…) when he began to observe workers self-organizing + self-governing, cultivating power that ran parallel to the power of the Russian Provisional Government set up after Nicholas II abdicated.
While Lenin emphasized characteristics of the soviets and their use of power that we’d certainly admire today, this was, for him, ultimately contextualized around the idea of this power being used to develop state power (as opposed to making the state obsolete and destroying it).
Read 12 tweets
Black Socialists in America Profile picture
21 Nov 20
Please stop using “Communism” as a synonym for centralized economic planning under State Capitalism (aka “authoritarian Social Democracy”).

As people all across the political spectrum (Left or otherwise) continue to do this, they render the term/concept even more useless.
Communism is good.

No, it is not what exists or has existed in most of the territories most of the world points to and calls “Communist.” And no, just because a political entity paints itself red and calls itself “Communist” does not make it good (same for any other Left label).
A communist society is a classless, moneyless, stateless, post-scarcity society where the means of production are democratically controlled by the community for the benefit of all.

Wage labor is non-existent, and production is planned for human needs, rather than private profit.
Read 5 tweets
Black Socialists in America Profile picture
6 Nov 20
“If the end result of a working-class revolution in the United States is the continued domination of non-white people by white ‘revolutionary leaders’ and a Left-wing [white supremacist] government, then we will make another revolution...”

– Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin
Read the entire thread that the tweet below is from.

There are multiple things being conflated and misunderstood on this topic:

1) Race and ethnicity are not the same thing, although they are both socially constructed.

2) There is a distinction to be made between nationhood and nation-state when discussing the term “nationalism.”
Read 11 tweets
Black Socialists in America Profile picture
30 Oct 20
Don’t stop talking about Armenia.
Armenians feel alone in this moment.

Kurds felt alone this time last year.

For them, the common enemy is the Turkish nation-state.

For oppressed folks worldwide, there are even more common enemies.

That’s why our fight must begin with global poor and working-class solidarity.
We *need* to build a new, militant, internationalist force that is united in a politics of transcendence.

A force united in moving to transcend capitalist relations.

A force united in moving to transcend the nation-state model.

A force united in moving to transcend patriarchy.
Read 4 tweets
Black Socialists in America Profile picture
23 Oct 20
Politicians claiming to be “Left” should be ditching the political theater, uniting to meet poor and working-class people where they’re at, and developing bottom-up, municipalist strategies with communities (in communities) in the lead-up to an international, #DualPower movement.
Entryism is not working. The inherent structure of the Democratic Party does not allow for anyone elected to be held accountable. New political vehicles and forums must be created, but they must be grounded in community and direct (or “liquid”) democracy.

blacksocialists.us/news/jackson-p…
Instead of just coloring inside the lines of the terms “representative democracy” has set for the present, “Left” politicians should instead be looking around and working in coalitions to plant grassroots seeds for the direct democracy of the future.

Anything less is Liberalism.
Read 6 tweets

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