luxury we can¶

Does my heart good to watch Trotskyists fight tooth and nail against the concept of materially providing for their community, calling it a "luxury we can't afford" and "just a way to feel warm and fuzzy."

Makes our job easier. 😌 "We can't get distracted with petty things like charity. We'll feed everyone by building a movement and winning revolution!"

Ok, and where does this movement come from, if not the people who need to be fed? Try telling those people "You'll eat when we win -- now join us!" We aren't in "competition" with the "revolutionaries" who think this way. The people we're fighting for -- the people we are -- are beneath their regard. They think "making sandwiches" is a waste of time because they aren't concerned with the people who need those sandwiches. They think of precarious populations as an addendum to the cause of revolution. A tangential beneficiary, but not a significant contingent of the movement, let alone its primary driver. They often even view "the lumpenproletariat" as an antagonistic force, a cesspool of reaction. They base this chauvinistic view, not on their own investigation, but on rote recitations of canonical scripture. To the extent that they have any firsthand dealings with the precariat, it comes in the form of trying their same old tactics on them: throwing papers in their faces. When their preaching is roundly rejected -- when people who can't afford a sandwich fail to buy their precious little newspapers -- they internalize that as proof that these people are a "lost cause." They can't conceive of why anyone WOULDN'T be swayed by diatribes and sermons. Sandwiches don't build revolution, because that targets hungry people, who aren't worth organizing. Hungry people aren't worth organizing, because they aren't swayed by literature, which is the best tactic. Literature is the best tactic because sandwiches don't build revolution. This is the circular logic of the trotskyists, whose lack of investigation and engagement with the most oppressed people is both caused by and contributes to their chauvinism. They can't break the cycle without breaking with dogma.

That's why their movements never materialize. At the end of the day, no, obviously revolution isn't built with sandwiches alone. It's built by the PEOPLE who need that support. People who will never listen to you, learn from you, trust you, and fight with you as long as you treat them as the afterthought you think they are.