I’m not like super educated on this but I’d say the big difference between this and something like organizing a strike or other similar actions is that with those actions you are approaching the working class directly and trying to educate and radicalize on a personal level, bringing in the participation of other workers rather than performing actions entirely separate from the working class, publishing a manifesto and relying on them disregarding gut feelings about violence/destruction to approach your manifesto on a good faith level and get radicalized from that.
Its definitely not a straight divide between self indulgent radicalism and using radical actions in the workplace to organize workers though, most cases need to be looked at a little closer and analysed. Tbh this case in particular I think suffers from not being destructive enough, if we are gonna look at the effects of it. Damaging a few power cables and publishing a manifesto will probably radiate more an aesthetic of young misguided rebels than a serious political action.
I agree, though i think you are assuming a lot by thinking the purpose of this action was to radicalize anyone through the manifesto. In fact i highly doubt that is the intention.
The strict Marxist idea would be that material conditions determine people’s revolutionary or reactionary nature, not radical education, nor some manifesto about an act of sabotage.
I don’t think radical education really works much at all to be honest. Material and social conditions radicalize people who have no Marxist education, and many bougie PMC losers can quote Marx to you all day long but would never actually try to change anything or engage in a revolution of the opportunity presented itself because if the class privilege they don’t want to lose.
The people who did this action were likely radicalized due to their lived conditions, and their manifesto is likely an attempt to reach out to others who have been similarly radicalized and tell them they are not alone. For many people, the time to act is now because they cannot stand to live in this world anymore without resisting capitalism. Regardless of whether you think you have the correct strategy of how, when, and what to do to create a successful communist revolution, until that plan starts to gain momentum and become a concrete hope for the hopeless, they will continue to act because the alternative to acting for them is likely suicide/heroin/alcoholism/etc.
there are millions of the oppressed who have always died waiting, and some who refuse to wait. Those people existed in pre-soviet Russia as well, and their un-strategic actions did not ultimately doom the revolution, and since the actions happened and the revolution happened, you could infer that they contributed somehow to that society taking that path.
I can’t fault those who act for acting even if it does not seem like it will be strategically helpful, because there is no powerful communist movement to give anyone any hope anyway. So you/we can think that we have all the perfect strategy and plan to get from here to communism, but until we can show people it can be implemented, i can’t blame people for not trusting that we know the correct path from here to communism. And to think that we do and condemn others who don’t listen to us is highly arrogant i think.
