I’ve been thinking about my own struggles with revolutionary optimism a bit lately and thought it would be interesting to get other’s takes on the matter. I wish i could say im optimistic through thick and thin but, like most of us i assume, i bounce between “its so fucking over” and “we’re so fucking back” all the time. Since internalizing that “its so fucking over” is just useless defeatism ive been found it easier to continue on but it still effects me ofc.
Curious to see what others think.
If I was a communist in any prior generation, some apocalyptic scenario would be facing me. Revolution would seem inevitable and impossible even before Marx. But I believe in science because it’s correct even if it can’t yet cure whatever disease or injury will kill me. It’s the least-wrong belief system for changing the world and I can’t turn my brain off once I’m aware of it. I believe in Marxism because it’s the least-wrong way I’ve found to understand philosophy and my own conditions. If the world is reduced to ashes because of the things I’m against, and this is the best way to understand the things I’m against, then I’ll plant wildflowers in those ashes because it’s the right thing to do.
If revolution happens tomorrow it won’t stop contradictions or my instinctive hatred of them. It will just give me a new set of them to rebel against and new tools. Revolutionary optimism comes from purifying your hate until you can utilise it.
Revolutionary optimism comes from purifying your hate until you can utilise it.
this is a really interesting idea. How does one purify their hate into something useful? My gut assumption would be through organizing and reading theory but thats the answer to like 90% of leftist questions so it feels like a cop out, or at the least very surface level
The kind of leftist I trust the least is someone who tells you to read less. We should always try to learn as much as possible about everything relevant to where you see your political potential. If this is the scientisation of philosophy and the philosophisation of science, purifying your hate comes from learning as much as you can and testing it against observation. You can only effectively organise around the correct thing and you can only know the correct thing when you can formally differentiate it from everything else as intersectionally as possible.
I’m an eco-Marxist and my strength is blending social and natural sciences in practical ways. I took a job that lets me challenge urban greenspace, reading as much as I can about all of the elements of that as I can. Now I have a specific mission with specific goals, can fight it on multiple levels, and I’m in with both local orgs and a local workforce that deals with the issues I’m most passionate about. Organising around those issues is easier than it was when I was just as angry but aimless. I could argue against lawns all day but not detail the radical alternatives and do the work to demonstrate them for others to radicalise from. There’s optimism in that decades from now, a year from now, and day-to-day from constantly radicalising myself in new ways academically/practically/socially.
I can’t do shit about Wall Street, but I couldn’t do shit about starvation if I was born a French peasant instead. What I can’t channel with Marx I accept with Camus’ Myth of Sisyphus.
Ultra-based, I appreciate the insight comrade, thank you
The power imbalanced had been skewed massively in favour of the US our e tire lives.
Now that the US is on the ropes, there is a lot more hope.
They won’t have the resources to purge pur leaders and overthrow successful socialist governments - then it’s a snowball from there.
change will always come, and things like the Bolshevik rise to power are exceedingly rare, but they do happen.
I struggle to stay optimistic that I will get outcomes I like. I often feel like leftists in America are losing the thread. This is possibly a “me” problem, but when I listen to people who are leftist and also politically active where I am, I hear a lot of shit that I really think has no business coming out of the mouth of anybody fighting for liberation or a more equitable world.
I struggle a lot with that stuff. I worry it’s just black-pilled nonsense. Like the left has had a boot on its head for a long, long, long time in the US, and the feeling of “fuck it, let’s just go for broke” and start pushing things the average person would either laugh at or recoil in horror at.
But I keep my optimism because I get to see people who are ride or die for other human beings, who want revolution, who act with their hearts full of compassion and love, and in that is my hope.
Those folks are my canary. If everyone is shitty and doomer brained all the time, i’m out of there. If we are doing things that are compromised by irrational or hateful motivations, i’m out of there.
But so often it’s just some of the kindest people you’ll ever meet, getting vicious on behalf of the marginalized, and yeah… i just remember that’s where my heart is.
I zoom out. Temporary setbacks are unfortunately unavoidable, but the long path to progress is positive. Pay attention to the fall in imperialism and the rise in the global south, we will win eventually.
Revolution is inevitable but unlikely in the imperial core and its closest vassals without more militant organizing. Revolutions elsewhere will always be twisted into “authoritarian narco-state dictatorship with satanic pedophile characteristics” and our perfect little imperial subjects will always back their genocidal leaders in “bringing democracy to the third world”. The majority of the people in the US hate the war on Iran but only because it’s making their lives harder and the government didn’t manufacturer enough consent. There is no class consciousness or solidarity with the oppressed outside of the true leftists™ and libs on the path to becoming leftists, which are a vanishingly small percentage of the population.
There is no class consciousness or solidarity with the oppressed outside of the true leftists™ and libs on the path to becoming leftists, which are a vanishingly small percentage of the population.
People in the west are ignorant in general on anything geopolitical but from the response I’ve seen to Luigi and Kirk, many people are accepting of militant action against the reactionaries and billionaires, but everyone is afraid to admit it outloud because of our national security panipticon. My boss who is the model “progressive” lib, a Kamala Harris, Ukraine fan, has said that Nazis need to be shot, and calls Republicans nazis. Another coworker when talking about the first attempt at Trump said “they should both be shot really” referring to Biden.
It’s true they don’t have solidarity with the Global South and regurgitate all the state’s lines about most of the US’ rivals, but they know that ICE is murdering people, that right-wingers want to put us in camps, and they know the establishment dems aren’t doing anything to stop it. Tax the rich, eat the rich, general sentiment of “us vs the rich” is prevalent, which isn’t exactly proper Marxist class consciousness but I don’t think they are that far off, and if a proper proletarian revolution kicked off I believe there would be more supporters than we would expect.
In my country I’ve been in “its so fucking over” for a long while now, but I do get some “we’re so fucking back” for other countries thankfully. My people disappoint me, but I’m feeling some relief looking at the Albanians rising up for 7 days in a row to defend their nature from
and 
“investments”Tempered optimism. I don’t think of it as “we’re so fucking back” I think of it as “decades are happening.”
deleted by creator
something is going to give way, that’s fairly obvious but it’s a pretty indeterminate notion. impossible to predict where or when. e.g. marx thought germany would do it and didn’t think russians were in a position, lenin didn’t think he’d live to see it, etc. and considering how burgerlanders are it might be much much worse before it gets any better.
whether anything will happen where i live on a timeframe rapid enough to change my life? almost certainly not. people here won’t even mask and i haven’t spoken to any of them in a few years.
there is certainly something romantic about fighting knowing you wont see the results in your life, and that is very motivating…but it can feel equally devastating
yeah it’s really hard to do anything when you can’t measure its effect.
A cursory reading of history, even just recent, makes it undeniable that revolutionary change is inevitable. Just ask any old person about that: they will all tell you that the world that the world they inhabited in their youth no longer exists. So the change is going to happen: the question is just what it will be.
What gives me a lot of revolutionary optimism is that I think we are actually at a unique place in human history: there are a hell of a lot more people around than ever before, more well educated than ever before. More people than ever before are thinking about how to build a better future.
“I guess you could say we believe it because it’s impossible. It’s our way of saying we refuse to accept that the world has to remain… like this…”
i really need to get this game down. Ive tried playing it a few times cause it sounds so fucking good but i just end up dying cause i looked at a puddle or something
I almost put it down forever the first time when I died sitting in a chair lol
Is there like, a trick, or something that clicks or anything to makes the game easier? I’ve picked it up maybe 4 separate times and always drop it after one/a series of deaths to things that literally cannot kill IRL hahaha
I don’t remember. I think you just kind of have to keep up your stamina / health up, but there’s probably something else I’m not remembering lol.
Revolution is inevitable (it will happen in the future)
Revolution is impossible (it’s not happening right now)
I gradually chip away at it. Every seed of doubt in capitalism planted in the mind of another now has the potential to bloom as a great big radicalized communist tree in the future.
People are terribly stubborn about beliefs and realizations.
When does it truly reach critical mass? Who the hell actually knows.
I keep my optimism up because I keep noticing people around me saying slightly more leftist things over time. Little by little, it comes. And one day, it will suddenly appear fully formed.
They will “have always believed it” but only because we were telling them.
Sometimes I get a fart that feels both inevitable and impossible
Oh I know those. They usually happen right before I shart!
deleted by creator
I would be quite optimistic IF it weren’t for the environmental situation. I am entirely convinced that even if the entire world started doing literally everything they could to ameliorate the climate disaster, the death toll would still be in the billions. Instead we’re doing dick all. If we haven’t actually kicked off the sixth mass extinction event (which would 100% end our species), we’ll eventually leave capitalism behind us, but in the ashes of the world that we’re currently busily burning down, will it be succeeded by socialism? I dunno.
Doubt I’ll see it. Shit is really, really bad.
I have a lot of hope for the world. The period of uncontested imperial domination of the planet that started after the fall of the Soviet Union has ended. In 2016, Russia waging open war on western interests in Europe seemed unthinkable. In 2022 what Iran is doing right now seemed unthinkable too. Not only did history not end, but it is gaining more and more momentum towards ending the west’s centuries long reign of terror.
In contrast, things are grim in my own region. We are living through the era of blackest reaction that Stalin predicted would happen after the fall of the Soviet Union. It’s exhausting but I’m doing my best. I want communism to win and I know that scientifically it will be either that or extincition and that’s enough to keep me going.
I think it’s crucial for those of us in the Global North to accept that we are not the revolutionary vanguard of the planet and that’s okay, we are still valid and there is a place for us in the better world of the future regardless. History does not revolve solely around us and the oppressed majority of the world is fully capable of liberating itself without waiting for white saviors to have a revolution in the imperial core. The brainworms of eurocentric history run deep and we need to actively fight to rid ourselves of them so that we can engage in uncompromising solidarity with the Global South in their struggle. Any socialist movement in the Global North that is willing to compromise on anti-imperialism will eventually end up as the moderate wing of white supremacy.
