Was it meeting other comrades, or going to a big demo? Or somehow feeling like you were being useful to the movement itself?
When I got what it actually is (learning past the revisionist takes) and truly understanding that it’s inevitable. Like the whole “I might not see it in my lifetime, but historical forces…”
I read a memoir of a long passed local communist and she ended her book with exactly these thoughts. I remind myself of that anytime I start feeling doomer.
Seeing a huge communist flag draped in front of a Lockheed Martin factory, with a Palestinian man addressing the crowd and giving a powerful speech.
I guess the biggest bloomer moment would be when I first visited a couple AES countries at the start of this year, while on my way to lib island. It was amazing to finally be in a place where Communism wasn’t a fringe ideology maligned by seemingly everyone, where there wasn’t part of me that felt crazy because of it. But more than that, the very fact that I was in a place where Socialism was actively being built made me feel optimistic.
Which countries, if you don’t mind sharing?
China, Laos and (only after having already started my studies in lib island) Vietnam. In China, I was in Shaanxi, Hunan and Guangxi (as well as Yunnan to go to Laos but I got sick so I didn’t even see much of Kunming, and Taiwan since that is where I’m studying this semester). I plan on seeing much more of China later on since I’ll study in Shanghai from next year onwards.
Hey congrats on studying in Taiwan regardless. Yeah, kind of libby but I’ve heard a lot of cool things about it.
Yes it’s pretty cool over here, the people are friendly, the food is great and I have made some progress with my mandarin. However I’m kind of glad I didn’t take any of the classes related to the PRC, since I’ve heard from other people that these classes in particular are riddled with brainworms; the classes that I took, at least, are only just as much brainwormed as those back in France. Also it’s kind of funny how many people like Trump here.
Studying and learning the reality of what happened everywhere socialism took hold - higher life expectancies, better working conditions, advances in minority rights, the toppling of hierarchies and the empowering of ordinary workers. I had had it drilled into my head by liberal capitalist media that any attempt to revolutionize society was doomed to failure and tyranny, that our current system with its war and genocide and homelessness and poverty and bigotry and unchecked environmental destruction was all anyone could ever hope for, inevitable human nature. Studying socialist history opened my eyes to the kind of world we can have if we fight and win.
I won’t deny that that second “if” is a big one. I certainly don’t expect us to overthrow global capital in my lifetime. But the possibility alone is enough to give me something liberal capitalism never could - real hope.
I certainly don’t expect us to overthrow global capital in my lifetime.
Imagine if we did though.
I was laying in a field under some trees in a very beautiful part of the world after a very long hike. Just laying there and thinking (about communism obviously). At one point something in my mind just clicked, and I realized how inevitable it truly is. I already had read the idea in theory and knew it to be true, but my mind just started to believe it 120%. It felt like how I imagine enlightenment to be. Anytime I feel some doomer now, I remember that feeling of knowing with every bone in my body that we will win and we will win soon.
But premature or overdue, the revolution – the locomotive of history – and with it the communist society, of necessity asserts itself, and is carried through by the workers themselves, for the previous course of history has created a condition which permits of no other solution, because that solution is identical with the present life necessities of the majority of mankind.
And the proletarian revolution, while it changes the world, will not neglect to educate the astonished “educators.”
What’s a bloomer moment?
Bloomer is the opposite of doomer, so bloomer moment is something like realizing everything is going to be fine, stuff like that
Oh. I wish I had that realisation but the world just seems to be getting worse and worse. I feel it’s going to be more of a Ready Player One situation, where just a few trillionaires own everything and the rest of us are crammed into the stacks.
I grew up in and used to live in a smallish city in the Southern US. Many years ago, I found a local socialist party and it was the first time I had ever spoken to a room of people who understood the words I was using and mostly agreed with me. I was ~30 at the time (much older now) and there were only about 10 people, some of them baby leftists, but I can still remember that feeling of belonging.
I’m autistic and back then I was still unaware, but it was a big deal for me to feel understood without explaining myself 10 different ways. I was holding back tears during the first meeting I went to. Things quickly fizzled out for a lot of reasons and I eventually moved away, but just knowing I had comrades in a place and time where I thought I was completely alone helped me get through a lot of hard times.
I’d say I’m still pretty pessimistic and certainly fit doomer more than bloomer; however, that moment pushed me into a lot of activism since then
A long road trip that ended on a mountainside with people who practice a commitment to each other and to the erasure of capitalist relations. There’s a feeling I got that my life was already bound together with each and every one of the people there, whom I had never met before. That they were all special and valuable to me in ways I wasn’t yet aware of. When this kind of comradeship exists, you kind of feel it in the air.
This has happened to me twice. And though the communes we erected were very limited either in numbers or in duration, it was a taste of the free life that I want to have.
Meeting organised communists in South Asia set me in motion to organise where I live, witnessing a general strike, and enjoying the day reading, while the hotelier moaned about communists
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