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From The (In)Effective Altruism Diaries: The Case Of Centi-Millionaire Marxist
You possibly already heard about James Cox Chambers Jr.
He is character that would be laughed at and rejected outright in any creative writing class as crude, primitive and unfunny caricature of leftist written by hate filled right wing bigot.
And he is real.
Descendant of long line of distinguished WASP's. As close to hereditary aristocracy as you can get in today's world. Wikipedia article of your own is now what noble title used to be.
(Yes, pure Anglo Saxon ancestry, no documented Jewish ancestors, if you are looking for this thing, you can be disappointed)
Who is, since early age, dedicated Marxist devoted to fighting for revolutionary cause.
Now, his means are not negligible. 250M hard bourgeois bucks is nothing to sneer at.
Distinguished revolutionaries in the past used cash with great efficiency as weapon to hasten the demise of capitalist world.
Comrade Cox-Chambers is not one of them. In 30 years of struggle, he really achieved nothing much worth showing. The Berkshire Communists, The Berkshire People's Gym, The Butterfly Collective etc. are not up there with The Sealed Train.
Neither are Dakota pipeline protests or Cop City protests.
At least the Georgia commune members had some fun, while it lasted.
This shows once again weakness of premise of effective altruism and 80,000 hours movement that money alone is sufficient to change the world. It is not specific to communism/leftism, many cases of right wing money wasted in even more pointless way.
Now, if you are inclined to laugh at the outgroup, show how would you do better. Your homework, your hypothetical scenario for today is:
You are given 250M in USD.
Your mission is to promote COMMUNISM. Not some petty bourgeois hippy nonsense, but real, scientific and authentic Marx-Lenin-Stalin thought.
How would you get the greatest bang for the buck, how would you most efficiently use capitalist cash to bring forward glorious communist future?
Show your work. Best entries will be rewarded with eternal revolutionary glory and virtual Stalin Golden Prize.
Picture this: January 6th but the protestors bring guns and launch a real coup.
$250 M is peanuts in terms of 'marketing campaigns' but it is a lot of guns and ammo. Obviously you'd need to wait for a good time, during some kind of major crisis when govt authority is weakened. But then you drive in with your comrades and do some shooting and see how it goes from there. If opposition is limpwristed, divided and feckless enough maybe you can get away with it.
Marxism-Leninism is an ideology of shooting, not theory. The Vanguard Party and democratic centralism ideas are almost overtly anti-theorycel. Vanguardism means 'we know better than the plebs how the country should be run and we're going to take over forcefully', democratic centralism means 'shut up and obey the Party Line'.
If you let people vote all you get is democratic socialism not ML. Nobody is going to vote to lose their SUVs and WFH lazygirl jobs. You don't give them the chance to vote, not if you want ML. Nobody ever voted in a communist regime that did real communism (collectivization and nationalization communism), bullets are the way to go.
90% of this is 'waiting for the right time' though. Being lucky is also very important.
Do you imagine you could have gotten the human capital present on January 6th to carry guns, let alone use them, in the Capitol? It's one thing to convince ten thousand people to go protests at the Capitol. Doesn't take much to get 10% of them riled up and caught in peer pressure to
stormpeacefully walk in the door.But carrying rifles, towards the sound of (even friendly) gunfire? No way you can do that with random normies. You need to indoctrinate them, train them, and establish a chain of command. This is, of course, the point where you pull every single fed in a 100 mile radius, and now your chances of even getting onto the Capitol grounds go way down, if they don't flat out raid you while you wait for your timing.
Do you really think it would be? I can't imagine a crisis so severe that it would stop attack helicopter to be there within the hour. At which point you either reveal that the vanguard already has infiltrated the armed forces (realistically, all branches and the DC National Guard, because they all have bases close by), or... I guess you can play hard ball and bring out your hostages and guys with MANPADS while assets from the single USM base you've infiltrated start bombing all the other bases in the area?
There's just no way, right? You'd need an overwhelming majority of the (local) armed forces on your side before you even start.
It really depends on it being the 'right time', delegitimization of traditional authorities and persuading a good chunk of the military to join up with the People. The US security forces have certain leftist leanings and maybe the upper officer class too.
Maybe drones democratize combat power such that you can take on any reactionary forces that move in too quickly...
I don't think this plan is desirable or workable really. But how else are you supposed to bring back a dead ideology like Marxism-Leninism?
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