Seems pretty tasteless to call something “harm reduction” when it literally involves supporting the person making a genocide possible. Imagine being a person who lost their entire family in Palestine to torture and starvation and reading this post.
You’d prefer the party that got Roe v Wade overturned then? Cause not voting Dems is being fine with whatever happens. And no, no silly revolution is gonna happen that will save you. Get out of dreamland now and accept this shitty choice put before you and just do the bare minimum at least.
Pretty bold of you to bring up Roe V Wade as an example of why we need more democrats. Roe V Wade was one of the best examples of democrats effortlessly orienting liberals with the democratic party by sitting on their hands for years as the threat of having abortion rights taken away become more and more clear. The democrats could have codified it, but they didn’t because they knew that abortion rights were one of their main avenues to muster up enthusiasm and support for their party. By letting Roe V Wade get eviscerated, the democrats secured support from oblivious liberals for years to come.
“Vote for us, or you’ll lose abortion rights! (as the democrats do jack shit to protect the right)”. The democrats would rather lose than shift left, and that revelation becomes terrifying when the issue comes down to genocide.
The same is true for Trump. The man that liberals get into such a tizzy about was literally propped up by the democrats in order to orient liberals and centrists with the democratic party. By propping up Trump, democrats have coerced liberals into writing a blank check and offering blind support to whoever isn’t the republican. And now we’ve seen the logical conclusion of this strategy: liberals supporting genocide since at least genocide isn’t as bad as orange man.
The point is never that we need more democrats. The point is always that we need fewer Republicans. Democrats refuse to make things better, but they typically block things from getting worse, which is a better starting point than anything the GOP would give us.
So please, organize, protest, do whatever activism you can do, but on voting day take the little bit of time and effort to block Republicans from undoing all that hard work, even if it means voting strategically for a pile of shit.
The left will always be fighting against the administration to some extent, and through voting we get to pick our enemy, and the dems are going to be an easier fight and on fewer fronts.
There are things you can do outside of voting for one shit party. You could vote for a different party for example, push for voting reform, protest, bomb military installations and other guerrilla tactics, go and help people directly, make propaganda, etc. In my own country that just had a local election more seats were won by the lib dems (normally a minority party) than the conservatives who are the party currently in charge.
Revolutions don’t happen because people like you don’t want them to happen. That and because people fall for pro-government propaganda.
The other things are not related to voting. Do all those things you want to do, but voting takes 30m and almost zero effort. If you can manage to do those other things, you can and should vote as well. The effort to outcome ratio is much higher, even though the outcome is fairly small. The effort is essentially zero.
I have not forgotten. Like I said, it’s like a version of the trolley problem. The trolley is going to run over 100 people, but you can pull the lever and it’ll only hit 1. Not pulling the lever is a choice and you’re complicit in that choice. It doesn’t matter if you took action or not, the choice is made. Not voting against the person who said he wants the genocide to be scaled up makes you complicit if they get elected.
Peoples feeling are being manipulated and they’re being told not voting makes them not complicit. It does not though. It does not remove the fact they made a choice to not take an action they could have taken. They should be made to feel like not voting is the choice that it is and they should use their choice to ensure as good a possible outcomes happens as they can. The trolls from the right are ensuring they are made to feel bad about preventing them from gaining power, so they can take over. This will not be a good outcome, and people should be afraid and ashamed if they allow that.
Also it’s not 30 minutes. It requires registering to vote whenever you move address, and for you to actually be in the country. Then there is setting reminders it’s election day, which requires watching the news to know there is an election.
Being in the country doesn’t take effort. It’s only true or not. (Also, mail in voting is allowed for people outside the country I believe. I know military personnel stationed outside the US still vote.)
Sure, you need to register, but you can do that at the DMV when you get/renew your drivers license. Yeah, if you don’t drive then it’s extra effort, though still not much.
Updating your location when you move can be done online or through the mail I believe.
Also obviously you need to know an election is happening. How the hell would you not know that though? Either you’re politically motivated and actually want change, in which case you almost certainly know when an election is happening even if you’re not participating for whatever stupid reason, or you aren’t politically motivated, in which case I’m not talking about them.
I am not an American. We don’t have a DMV. Why the heck would vehicles and elections be organised in the same place? It takes actual time to register here (up to several months).
Unless it’s a general election people don’t take that much notice, and it’s hard to find out about one when people only talk about American elections online and you also aren’t always in the country.
It’s pretty weird that you hold up the fucking lib Dems as your party of radical revolution.
The fact of the matter is that we are never going to get a radical left government, regardless of the voting system. Unless you’re spending time in an ivory tower of academia, you will know that the majority of people in this country are centrists of some flavour. Corbyn got massacred at the polls, and he was Labour leader. Going back you’ve got Foot.
The best we’ve ever had it is when Atlee, an ex army major who practically ran the home war effort, couched left wing reforms (foundation of the welfare state, nationalisation of coal and rail) as nationalistic. That’s how we get these things through. You’re never going to change the minds of British people by bombing.
If you’re of an anarchist mindset, then it’s far more beneficial to vote for harm reduction one day per four years, and organise in parallel outside that
I am not holding them up as a revolutionary party. All I was saying is they are becoming more popular than a current majority party. I am trying to make the point that voting for a traditionally minority party isn’t always fruitless.
The fact of the matter is that we are never going to get a radical left government, regardless of the voting system. Unless you’re spending time in an ivory tower of academia, you will know that the majority of people in this country are centrists of some flavour. Corbyn got massacred at the polls, and he was Labour leader. Going back you’ve got Foot.
My comment was aimed at Americans who don’t want to vote for the democrats. Not at labour voters in the UK. I am not against voting for labour. If I am still here at the time of the general election I will probably be voting for them or for the Green party. I wasn’t able to vote in the current election as I wasn’t in the country and also wasn’t on the electoral register for the area I would be living in if I was.
I don’t think I qualify as an anarchist. Though I do like some anarchist ideas. I personally don’t understand politics well enough to have an exact position with certainly like some people seem to. I am somewhat of a fan of socialist market economy, but I don’t think you can truly know if something does or doesn’t work until you actually try it.
I have read some theory and I do know those are the main two currents. Doesn’t mean I know enough about them or politics in general to choose either them or something else. Most of the books people actually recommend are ancient and hard to understand even if they are relevant. We have actually spoken about politics before somewhere if I remember correctly.
Fair enough; I got the wrong end of the stick. I apologise.
I think the best case for the argument is also around in the UK, which is that reform UK (which, for those abroad, is our resident right wing nutjob party) has put electoral pressure on the party and pulled them to the right, and the same thing has happened with the greens on the left.
That being said, I think the best time to cast that vote is during local elections (or MEPs back when we were still in Europe) where there’s something closer to proportional representation, or when you don’t live in a swing seat. For those in the US who are in safe republican seats, I’d agree that 3rd party is a pretty good way to get your voice heard. In knife edge places, I’d argue for tactical voting, but equally it’s not my country.
WRT anarchism: it’s a philosophy I think we should implement a lot of concepts from (mutual aid, parallel organisation). The reason I mentioned it was that some have the view that we shouldn’t vote full stop; I am of the view that voting is not the be all and end all – vote tactically, be that for harm reduction if your vote is likely to count significantly, or third party if it won’t, and then go and advocate for your causes in the other days of the four year election cycle.
Yeah I’ve only actually been able to vote once. Missed one (forgot which day) and was out of the country for another. I wouldn’t have left for as long if I actually knew there was an election, but that’s hard to know when you don’t watch the news. Plus moving around a bunch means I am rarely actually on an electoral register to vote.
We need to change the United States into a socialist country with unimpeded majority rule before it is too late. Our only chance to do that is by delaying the fascist takeover for another four years. The United States becoming a christo-fascist dictatorship would be disastrous for everyone not just the US. Authoritarian dictatorships would start carving up the world into spheres of influence. Millions of people would die from dictators enacting genocide and ethnic cleansing in their spheres of influence.
The Democrats are not going to get us out of this, but we need time to convince people that socialism is the answer to our economic problems. We are going to have to elect socialist politicians. We need our democracy, as flawed as it is, in order to do that.
You might be interested in reading Socialism: Utopian and Scientific by Engels. Ideas take hold in a population based on their material conditions, not by “convincing them.” This was tried numerous times in the past, all of them abject failures.
Yes, convincing people that Socialism is good is a good thing to do, but that isn’t going to be what makes or breaks the movement.
In the US, people are attempting grass roots movements to enact progressive change. To do this we need as many people to vote as possible for the most progressive candidates available to correct for the overrepresentation of Republicans. To get more people to vote for progressives we have to convince them that progressive and socialist ideas have merit.
Convincing people is essential to the modern progressive movement. This is because living under neoliberalism inherently conditions people to reject systemic change to political and economic systems and thus by extension they are conditioned to reject socialism. If you’ve ever talked to people in person about socialism you’ve undoubtedly heard the phrase “socialism doesn’t work” without any supporting evidence or maybe a reference to the Soviet Union collapsing.
This is what socialist theory gets wrong. A person’s material conditions do not suddenly make them a socialist or any other ideologue. Ideas have to be internalized and adopted one at a time by a person. All a person’s material conditions do is make a person look for answers to their problems. On their own, a person attempts to solve their problems with the tools they’ve been given by the system they live under. In the case of the US, that system is neoliberalism. They work three jobs, work overtime, work themselves sick even. I’ve heard people quoted as saying something along the lines of, “I did everything I was supposed to.” As in they played by what they thought were the rules of capitalism and don’t realize that the extraction of their wealth is the goal of the system.
Fascists understand this need to educate people. They rush to exploit desperate people who are losing everything under capitalism. They present them with their ideas, primarily that some out-group is the source of their problems. They blast the airwaves with propaganda to brainwash people by trapping them in information silos. They get out the vote to advance fascists causes. This is how the fascist movement, that has existed since the 30’s in America, has been growing in America since Regan.
Neoliberalism makes people desperate enough that they will try anything, especially fascism when presented with it. It’s easy for people to think other people dying is the answer to their problems. When in fact our future depends on us adopting better economic and political ideas. Also, neoliberalism tends to obsess over civility politics and a strict adherence to law and order. Thus even people who aren’t fascists themselves don’t balk at the totalitarian and/or authoritarian nature of the fascist regime they end up in. They either won’t notice the difference or if they do assume it was a natural correction to what our society is ‘supposed to be’. While living in a neoliberal society, people end up thinking that either the systems they live under can’t be changed or even that they shouldn’t be changed. Rather than convincing people to change the system, the fascists convince people to remove other people. Thus they bypass people’s acquired resistance to societal change. No where in this, do people naturally internalize and adopt socialist ideas. People who believe in progressive and socialist ideas have to get these ideas in front of people’s eyes so that they have a chance to mull them over.
We need to reach out to people by taking advantage of the Internet 2.0, social media, which is not something that was available in the 20th century. We need to convince people that fascism is a self-destructive ideology. That neoliberalism, in a vacuum, inevitably leads to fascism because of the societal and material conditions it imposes. People double down on what they know and make a more extreme and worse version of it, instead of radically changing it. And that socialism is the answer to people’s economic problems.
-Electoralism is nice, but has historically been extremely ineffective. This is because the parties in power will be the ones that can best raise funds from the people with the most money.
-Yes, I have spoken with many people about Socialism, I am familiar.
-See, this is exactly why you need to read theory. No, Socialism does not say that people magically gain Socialist ideas based on their material conditions, but that they are susceptible to them. That’s why the US has a vast amount of reactionaries, the US is an Imperialist state super-exploiting the third world for super-profits, creating a labor aristocracy.
Please, read theory. You are clearly well-intentioned, but you don’t actually understand societal mechanics and thus have a Utopian mindset. You’re again confidently incorrect.
This is certainly a defensible position, yes. I’m just not so sure we’re going to avoid the christo-fascist dictatorship with the Democrats. They forever capitulate to our christo-fascist party, and they themselves are authoritarian at heart. Just look at the White House and its support for genocide, border fascism, subjugation of protestors, defending of an inequitable hierarchical economic system that relies on forced labor, and those are just the first examples that come to mind
I think the Democrats are not a great political party. I’m registered independent. They are the only mainstream political party for pursuing progressive change that we have at the moment. We have to take our chances with the Democrats because it’s the clearest path to a better future that we have.
We do need to adopt socialist policies as a country in addition to that though. If we stick with neoliberalism then we are going to keep having this problem. The fascist movement will inevitably grow as the wealth disparity gets worse in the US. People are going to be looking for solutions to their problems, but neoliberalism inherently denies them the tools to fix the systemic issues they face. Neoliberals cling to civility politics and value property over justice for people to name a few. Fascism will provide them with easy, but incorrect, solutions in the form of out-groups to hate. The answer to our problems is socialism, but we need time to convince people.
I know it’s a long shot, because people are effectively conditioned from living in a neoliberal society to reject socialism without any evidence. But we have to try. The only way this gets better is convincing people that socialist ideas have merit while neoliberal and fascist ideas do not. People’s lives depend on nations developing and maintaining inclusive political and economic institutions. We are going to need to have this ideological reckoning at some point, so we might as well have it sooner rather than later.
Trying and then failing presents the same consequences as not trying. So we might as well do it now.
This sounds like you want to implement social changes within the existing system. This is the lie of progressives and radlibs. It will never work. We need to dissolve the United States of America. There is nothing here worth salvaging, save the people.
This sounds like you want to implement social changes within the existing system. This is the lie of progressives and radlibs. It will never work.
No, I want to radically change the system. Doing that of course involves using the system. We need to move from liberal democracy to social democracy. And our democracy must be fixed to have majority rule. It can work, but nothing is guaranteed. This is no different than how a revolution can succeed, but has no guaranteed outcome. As long as we have a democracy we might as well use it.
We need to dissolve the United States of America. There is nothing here worth salvaging, save the people.
Dissolving the US will result in the death of hundreds of millions of people. People have to eat. When societies collapse, their populations tank with them, because the people lose the state centralization they are dependent on to get basic necessities.
There is no saving the people without inclusive political and economic institutions. If we value people then we must fix the systems they depend on to live.
Social democracy is a farce. That’s exactly what I mean. It’s a fairy tale told by progressives and radlibs
Dissolving the US will result in the death of hundreds of millions of people. People have to eat. When societies collapse, their populations tank with them, because the people lose the state centralization they are dependent on to get basic necessities
Sounds like you desperately need to read some theory. This is some liberal shit
Edit: I see in your comment history you calling yourself a “progressive.” You’re lying now and saying leftist. I think you’re completely untrustworthy.
Which members of his cabinet are trying to cease funding of Israel and how?
Which ones are actively opposing border fascism?
Which ones want to defund the racist police?
Which ones want to replace the inherently destructive economic system?
Which members of his cabinet believe housing is a basic human right?
Which support the immediate release of all those wrongly incarcerated for unjust reasons such as drugs?
Which support the immediate cessation of our reliance on slave labor?
Which support the removal of the barriers to communists and anarchists becoming citizens?
There is nothing salvagable about the United States. When you say Biden’s cabinet is “pretty decent,” you’re doing so from a position of blind privilege. They may be good for certain demographics, but even though I’m living paycheck to paycheck, I’m still in the upper crust of this awful system. I’ve not seen one “pretty decent” person in Washington. The closest would be, say, people like Ilhan Omar, AOC, and Sanders, but even they are moderately right-wing and ultimately support a system that will forever oppress marginalized groups until it is forcibly removed.
Bruh there are a multitude of issues that the cabinet handles. As much as what’s happening in Palestine is abhorrent, there are in fact other important things happening everywhere all the time. If you look at only one single issue, then you are blind to a great many things. And if you neglect the fact that one side would also handle that particular issue with even more bloodlust, then you’re just not a serious person.
This is downplaying a genocide, and it’s really cold and gross to refer to a fucking genocide as “one single issue”
Pretty easy not to fund a genocide, eh? Just … do fucking nothing, and you’ve succeeded
You liberals love to act like it’s such a high bar to clear to just not commit atrocities, and it’s absolutely appalling
Not to mention that I listed a whole slew of atrocities Democrats are complicit in, and those are just off the top of my kinda tired brain. “One single issue” my ass
Oh my mistake, the party that capitulates unceasingly to the christo-fascist party and in some cases even extends their fascist policies (more immigrants deported under Biden than under Trump, etc.) is absolutely so much different than the christo-fascist party itself! We should be very grateful for all they’ve done for us
Yeah, luckily not voting and Trump getting elected that person wouldn’t be thinking of their lost family. They wouldn’t be thinking about anything for that matter, as they’d be fucking dead. Trump has demonstrated his support for expanding the conflict and finishing the job. It is absolutely better for that person who lost their family to not be dead.
And yeah, it sucks but so do so many other things we have to choose in life. Cleaning up shit from a pet isn’t fun, but sometimes it needs to be done. Sometimes we also need to choose the president that’s not going to do as much damage. You have to get your hands dirty.
Not voting shouldn’t keep your conscience clean. Its like the trolley problem. 100 people on one track, one on the other. You can choose to pull the lever or not. Not pulling it is still a choice. There’s no option where you aren’t complicit because you could have done something.
Also, there’s no need to call me “idiot,” and being honest it’s quite ableist
Funny how liberals are always calling leftists things like “idiot” – really shows their complete disdain for anyone to the left of Reagan. I’ve had liberal Democrats straight-up gloat that they don’t care what leftists think. Mask. Fucking. Off.
Dude, I’m an anarchist. Don’t kid yourself that you’re the only real leftist because you tell people not to vote. Just fuck off with that shit.
Idiot also isn’t really ableist. It isn’t the medical term it used to be. It’s to call someone stupid, which was either willful or not. I don’t know. It feels more like prupsoeful misrepresentation of what I wrote, or you didn’t even try to understand it, because even the most impaired person almost certainly could.
Yeah, because only neiberals say to vote! Only a true leftist would be self-defeating! /s
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels stated in The Communist Manifesto and later works that “the first step in the revolution by the working class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle for democracy” and universal suffrage, being “one of the first and most important tasks of the militant proletariat”. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_in_Marxism)
There is something to be said for the idea that you only have two choices, although that is a matter of fact because of the “[c]onstitution…which makes it appear as though every vote were lost that is cast for a candidate not put up by one of the two governing parties.” (Engels to Frederick Adolph Sorge, December 2, 1893, in Marx and Engels on the United States (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1979), p. 333.) We need to change how this works, but that needs to be done through a grassroots movement for local level elections at first. This requires voting and participation.
A revolution almost certainly isn’t happening, and it’s not going to go the way you want. If it were to happen, it’d be bloody and brutal and you wouldn’t enjoy it. Also, it’s not exactly guaranteed that the leftists win. If anything, I’d bet against it because the other imperialist nations wouldn’t want that to happen.
Ok but what else are we going to do? What can we do to stop the genocide? Are we in favor of dismantling the system that made this happen, or are we ok with it?
Protest, take direct action, whatever you want. Get organized with some other groups. There are plenty. (Edit: nothing you do is going to stop this genocide though. It’s far too late, though we can decrease the harm that is done.)
Telling people not to take an action isn’t helpful. You always see people (who say they’re leftist, although some are certainly right wing trolls) saying not to vote, and they never advocate for doing other things. How about protest, but also vote? Why would anyone advocate for not doing something? The only reason I can think of us to get their guy elected instead.
If your contribution is saying to do less, fuck off. If you’re saying to do more then welcome. You may actually help.
Yes, a million times this. Voting is just one small part of what we must do to fight for a better future. Giving up is not an option, there is far too much at stake. Vote, protest, occupy, run for office, take direct action, organize, and create a better world for the people who come after us. Solidarity forever.
They can’t think of any other options for political change other than voting. In that way american indoctrination has worked wonders for the ruling elite.
I wish it were /s, but I don’t think so
Seems pretty tasteless to call something “harm reduction” when it literally involves supporting the person making a genocide possible. Imagine being a person who lost their entire family in Palestine to torture and starvation and reading this post.
You’d prefer the party that got Roe v Wade overturned then? Cause not voting Dems is being fine with whatever happens. And no, no silly revolution is gonna happen that will save you. Get out of dreamland now and accept this shitty choice put before you and just do the bare minimum at least.
You won’t get through to him, he’s way too deep in dreamland. Just check his history.
Oh hi, I think you meant to reply to this person, because I didn’t say any of that horseshit you’re arguing against
Removed by mod
k
Pretty bold of you to bring up Roe V Wade as an example of why we need more democrats. Roe V Wade was one of the best examples of democrats effortlessly orienting liberals with the democratic party by sitting on their hands for years as the threat of having abortion rights taken away become more and more clear. The democrats could have codified it, but they didn’t because they knew that abortion rights were one of their main avenues to muster up enthusiasm and support for their party. By letting Roe V Wade get eviscerated, the democrats secured support from oblivious liberals for years to come.
“Vote for us, or you’ll lose abortion rights! (as the democrats do jack shit to protect the right)”. The democrats would rather lose than shift left, and that revelation becomes terrifying when the issue comes down to genocide.
The same is true for Trump. The man that liberals get into such a tizzy about was literally propped up by the democrats in order to orient liberals and centrists with the democratic party. By propping up Trump, democrats have coerced liberals into writing a blank check and offering blind support to whoever isn’t the republican. And now we’ve seen the logical conclusion of this strategy: liberals supporting genocide since at least genocide isn’t as bad as orange man.
The point is never that we need more democrats. The point is always that we need fewer Republicans. Democrats refuse to make things better, but they typically block things from getting worse, which is a better starting point than anything the GOP would give us.
So please, organize, protest, do whatever activism you can do, but on voting day take the little bit of time and effort to block Republicans from undoing all that hard work, even if it means voting strategically for a pile of shit.
The left will always be fighting against the administration to some extent, and through voting we get to pick our enemy, and the dems are going to be an easier fight and on fewer fronts.
There are things you can do outside of voting for one shit party. You could vote for a different party for example, push for voting reform, protest, bomb military installations and other guerrilla tactics, go and help people directly, make propaganda, etc. In my own country that just had a local election more seats were won by the lib dems (normally a minority party) than the conservatives who are the party currently in charge.
Revolutions don’t happen because people like you don’t want them to happen. That and because people fall for pro-government propaganda.
Not in the US you can’t. It’s basically the same as not voting. You can argue that it’s in favour of republicans, even.
Okay what about the other things I just said?
The other things are not related to voting. Do all those things you want to do, but voting takes 30m and almost zero effort. If you can manage to do those other things, you can and should vote as well. The effort to outcome ratio is much higher, even though the outcome is fairly small. The effort is essentially zero.
Voting for someone who supports genocide is understandably something people don’t want to do. Or have you forgotten the point of this conversation?
I have not forgotten. Like I said, it’s like a version of the trolley problem. The trolley is going to run over 100 people, but you can pull the lever and it’ll only hit 1. Not pulling the lever is a choice and you’re complicit in that choice. It doesn’t matter if you took action or not, the choice is made. Not voting against the person who said he wants the genocide to be scaled up makes you complicit if they get elected.
Peoples feeling are being manipulated and they’re being told not voting makes them not complicit. It does not though. It does not remove the fact they made a choice to not take an action they could have taken. They should be made to feel like not voting is the choice that it is and they should use their choice to ensure as good a possible outcomes happens as they can. The trolls from the right are ensuring they are made to feel bad about preventing them from gaining power, so they can take over. This will not be a good outcome, and people should be afraid and ashamed if they allow that.
Also it’s not 30 minutes. It requires registering to vote whenever you move address, and for you to actually be in the country. Then there is setting reminders it’s election day, which requires watching the news to know there is an election.
Being in the country doesn’t take effort. It’s only true or not. (Also, mail in voting is allowed for people outside the country I believe. I know military personnel stationed outside the US still vote.)
Sure, you need to register, but you can do that at the DMV when you get/renew your drivers license. Yeah, if you don’t drive then it’s extra effort, though still not much.
Updating your location when you move can be done online or through the mail I believe.
Also obviously you need to know an election is happening. How the hell would you not know that though? Either you’re politically motivated and actually want change, in which case you almost certainly know when an election is happening even if you’re not participating for whatever stupid reason, or you aren’t politically motivated, in which case I’m not talking about them.
I am not an American. We don’t have a DMV. Why the heck would vehicles and elections be organised in the same place? It takes actual time to register here (up to several months).
Unless it’s a general election people don’t take that much notice, and it’s hard to find out about one when people only talk about American elections online and you also aren’t always in the country.
It’s pretty weird that you hold up the fucking lib Dems as your party of radical revolution.
The fact of the matter is that we are never going to get a radical left government, regardless of the voting system. Unless you’re spending time in an ivory tower of academia, you will know that the majority of people in this country are centrists of some flavour. Corbyn got massacred at the polls, and he was Labour leader. Going back you’ve got Foot.
The best we’ve ever had it is when Atlee, an ex army major who practically ran the home war effort, couched left wing reforms (foundation of the welfare state, nationalisation of coal and rail) as nationalistic. That’s how we get these things through. You’re never going to change the minds of British people by bombing.
If you’re of an anarchist mindset, then it’s far more beneficial to vote for harm reduction one day per four years, and organise in parallel outside that
I am not holding them up as a revolutionary party. All I was saying is they are becoming more popular than a current majority party. I am trying to make the point that voting for a traditionally minority party isn’t always fruitless.
My comment was aimed at Americans who don’t want to vote for the democrats. Not at labour voters in the UK. I am not against voting for labour. If I am still here at the time of the general election I will probably be voting for them or for the Green party. I wasn’t able to vote in the current election as I wasn’t in the country and also wasn’t on the electoral register for the area I would be living in if I was.
I don’t think I qualify as an anarchist. Though I do like some anarchist ideas. I personally don’t understand politics well enough to have an exact position with certainly like some people seem to. I am somewhat of a fan of socialist market economy, but I don’t think you can truly know if something does or doesn’t work until you actually try it.
I think you’d benefit from reading Leftist theory. Marxism and Anarchism are the two largest overall currents in leftist theory.
I have read some theory and I do know those are the main two currents. Doesn’t mean I know enough about them or politics in general to choose either them or something else. Most of the books people actually recommend are ancient and hard to understand even if they are relevant. We have actually spoken about politics before somewhere if I remember correctly.
It’s certainly possible! I comment quite a lot and try to encourage people to read more theory.
Is there anything keeping you from “picking” a current, or anything you wish you knew more about, specifically?
Fair enough; I got the wrong end of the stick. I apologise.
I think the best case for the argument is also around in the UK, which is that reform UK (which, for those abroad, is our resident right wing nutjob party) has put electoral pressure on the party and pulled them to the right, and the same thing has happened with the greens on the left.
That being said, I think the best time to cast that vote is during local elections (or MEPs back when we were still in Europe) where there’s something closer to proportional representation, or when you don’t live in a swing seat. For those in the US who are in safe republican seats, I’d agree that 3rd party is a pretty good way to get your voice heard. In knife edge places, I’d argue for tactical voting, but equally it’s not my country.
WRT anarchism: it’s a philosophy I think we should implement a lot of concepts from (mutual aid, parallel organisation). The reason I mentioned it was that some have the view that we shouldn’t vote full stop; I am of the view that voting is not the be all and end all – vote tactically, be that for harm reduction if your vote is likely to count significantly, or third party if it won’t, and then go and advocate for your causes in the other days of the four year election cycle.
Yeah I’ve only actually been able to vote once. Missed one (forgot which day) and was out of the country for another. I wouldn’t have left for as long if I actually knew there was an election, but that’s hard to know when you don’t watch the news. Plus moving around a bunch means I am rarely actually on an electoral register to vote.
Voting for the Green Party is the bare minimum. Voting for Democrats or Republicans is capitulation.
I’m thinking about the people who could lose their lives and families because there is something that can be done about that.
I’m not sure voting will do anything about that
We have a full-blown fascist party and a right-wing liberal party that has shown itself willing to capitulate in every way to said party
Directly or indirectly, Project 2025 is coming, it seems
The United States needs to cease to exist before it’s too late
We need to change the United States into a socialist country with unimpeded majority rule before it is too late. Our only chance to do that is by delaying the fascist takeover for another four years. The United States becoming a christo-fascist dictatorship would be disastrous for everyone not just the US. Authoritarian dictatorships would start carving up the world into spheres of influence. Millions of people would die from dictators enacting genocide and ethnic cleansing in their spheres of influence.
I don’t think that voting for the same two parties is going to change that. Those two parties got us into this; they aren’t going to get us out.
The Democrats are not going to get us out of this, but we need time to convince people that socialism is the answer to our economic problems. We are going to have to elect socialist politicians. We need our democracy, as flawed as it is, in order to do that.
You might be interested in reading Socialism: Utopian and Scientific by Engels. Ideas take hold in a population based on their material conditions, not by “convincing them.” This was tried numerous times in the past, all of them abject failures.
Yes, convincing people that Socialism is good is a good thing to do, but that isn’t going to be what makes or breaks the movement.
In the US, people are attempting grass roots movements to enact progressive change. To do this we need as many people to vote as possible for the most progressive candidates available to correct for the overrepresentation of Republicans. To get more people to vote for progressives we have to convince them that progressive and socialist ideas have merit.
Convincing people is essential to the modern progressive movement. This is because living under neoliberalism inherently conditions people to reject systemic change to political and economic systems and thus by extension they are conditioned to reject socialism. If you’ve ever talked to people in person about socialism you’ve undoubtedly heard the phrase “socialism doesn’t work” without any supporting evidence or maybe a reference to the Soviet Union collapsing.
This is what socialist theory gets wrong. A person’s material conditions do not suddenly make them a socialist or any other ideologue. Ideas have to be internalized and adopted one at a time by a person. All a person’s material conditions do is make a person look for answers to their problems. On their own, a person attempts to solve their problems with the tools they’ve been given by the system they live under. In the case of the US, that system is neoliberalism. They work three jobs, work overtime, work themselves sick even. I’ve heard people quoted as saying something along the lines of, “I did everything I was supposed to.” As in they played by what they thought were the rules of capitalism and don’t realize that the extraction of their wealth is the goal of the system.
Fascists understand this need to educate people. They rush to exploit desperate people who are losing everything under capitalism. They present them with their ideas, primarily that some out-group is the source of their problems. They blast the airwaves with propaganda to brainwash people by trapping them in information silos. They get out the vote to advance fascists causes. This is how the fascist movement, that has existed since the 30’s in America, has been growing in America since Regan.
Neoliberalism makes people desperate enough that they will try anything, especially fascism when presented with it. It’s easy for people to think other people dying is the answer to their problems. When in fact our future depends on us adopting better economic and political ideas. Also, neoliberalism tends to obsess over civility politics and a strict adherence to law and order. Thus even people who aren’t fascists themselves don’t balk at the totalitarian and/or authoritarian nature of the fascist regime they end up in. They either won’t notice the difference or if they do assume it was a natural correction to what our society is ‘supposed to be’. While living in a neoliberal society, people end up thinking that either the systems they live under can’t be changed or even that they shouldn’t be changed. Rather than convincing people to change the system, the fascists convince people to remove other people. Thus they bypass people’s acquired resistance to societal change. No where in this, do people naturally internalize and adopt socialist ideas. People who believe in progressive and socialist ideas have to get these ideas in front of people’s eyes so that they have a chance to mull them over.
We need to reach out to people by taking advantage of the Internet 2.0, social media, which is not something that was available in the 20th century. We need to convince people that fascism is a self-destructive ideology. That neoliberalism, in a vacuum, inevitably leads to fascism because of the societal and material conditions it imposes. People double down on what they know and make a more extreme and worse version of it, instead of radically changing it. And that socialism is the answer to people’s economic problems.
-Electoralism is nice, but has historically been extremely ineffective. This is because the parties in power will be the ones that can best raise funds from the people with the most money.
-Yes, I have spoken with many people about Socialism, I am familiar.
-See, this is exactly why you need to read theory. No, Socialism does not say that people magically gain Socialist ideas based on their material conditions, but that they are susceptible to them. That’s why the US has a vast amount of reactionaries, the US is an Imperialist state super-exploiting the third world for super-profits, creating a labor aristocracy.
Please, read theory. You are clearly well-intentioned, but you don’t actually understand societal mechanics and thus have a Utopian mindset. You’re again confidently incorrect.
This is certainly a defensible position, yes. I’m just not so sure we’re going to avoid the christo-fascist dictatorship with the Democrats. They forever capitulate to our christo-fascist party, and they themselves are authoritarian at heart. Just look at the White House and its support for genocide, border fascism, subjugation of protestors, defending of an inequitable hierarchical economic system that relies on forced labor, and those are just the first examples that come to mind
I think the Democrats are not a great political party. I’m registered independent. They are the only mainstream political party for pursuing progressive change that we have at the moment. We have to take our chances with the Democrats because it’s the clearest path to a better future that we have.
We do need to adopt socialist policies as a country in addition to that though. If we stick with neoliberalism then we are going to keep having this problem. The fascist movement will inevitably grow as the wealth disparity gets worse in the US. People are going to be looking for solutions to their problems, but neoliberalism inherently denies them the tools to fix the systemic issues they face. Neoliberals cling to civility politics and value property over justice for people to name a few. Fascism will provide them with easy, but incorrect, solutions in the form of out-groups to hate. The answer to our problems is socialism, but we need time to convince people.
I know it’s a long shot, because people are effectively conditioned from living in a neoliberal society to reject socialism without any evidence. But we have to try. The only way this gets better is convincing people that socialist ideas have merit while neoliberal and fascist ideas do not. People’s lives depend on nations developing and maintaining inclusive political and economic institutions. We are going to need to have this ideological reckoning at some point, so we might as well have it sooner rather than later.
Trying and then failing presents the same consequences as not trying. So we might as well do it now.
This sounds like you want to implement social changes within the existing system. This is the lie of progressives and radlibs. It will never work. We need to dissolve the United States of America. There is nothing here worth salvaging, save the people.
No, I want to radically change the system. Doing that of course involves using the system. We need to move from liberal democracy to social democracy. And our democracy must be fixed to have majority rule. It can work, but nothing is guaranteed. This is no different than how a revolution can succeed, but has no guaranteed outcome. As long as we have a democracy we might as well use it.
Dissolving the US will result in the death of hundreds of millions of people. People have to eat. When societies collapse, their populations tank with them, because the people lose the state centralization they are dependent on to get basic necessities.
There is no saving the people without inclusive political and economic institutions. If we value people then we must fix the systems they depend on to live.
Social democracy is a farce. That’s exactly what I mean. It’s a fairy tale told by progressives and radlibs
Sounds like you desperately need to read some theory. This is some liberal shit
Edit: I see in your comment history you calling yourself a “progressive.” You’re lying now and saying leftist. I think you’re completely untrustworthy.
If the libs could read, they’d be furious with you right now 😂
I do get a lot of liberal anger sent right to my inbox
Sure wish they’d direct some of that rage toward the people who are killing us and our planet, but I suppose I’m an easier target lol
It’s not just about president, but also cabinet positions. And Bidens cabinet is pretty decent. Trumps cabinet is awful
Which members of his cabinet are trying to cease funding of Israel and how?
Which ones are actively opposing border fascism?
Which ones want to defund the racist police?
Which ones want to replace the inherently destructive economic system?
Which members of his cabinet believe housing is a basic human right?
Which support the immediate release of all those wrongly incarcerated for unjust reasons such as drugs?
Which support the immediate cessation of our reliance on slave labor?
Which support the removal of the barriers to communists and anarchists becoming citizens?
There is nothing salvagable about the United States. When you say Biden’s cabinet is “pretty decent,” you’re doing so from a position of blind privilege. They may be good for certain demographics, but even though I’m living paycheck to paycheck, I’m still in the upper crust of this awful system. I’ve not seen one “pretty decent” person in Washington. The closest would be, say, people like Ilhan Omar, AOC, and Sanders, but even they are moderately right-wing and ultimately support a system that will forever oppress marginalized groups until it is forcibly removed.
Bruh there are a multitude of issues that the cabinet handles. As much as what’s happening in Palestine is abhorrent, there are in fact other important things happening everywhere all the time. If you look at only one single issue, then you are blind to a great many things. And if you neglect the fact that one side would also handle that particular issue with even more bloodlust, then you’re just not a serious person.
This is downplaying a genocide, and it’s really cold and gross to refer to a fucking genocide as “one single issue”
Pretty easy not to fund a genocide, eh? Just … do fucking nothing, and you’ve succeeded
You liberals love to act like it’s such a high bar to clear to just not commit atrocities, and it’s absolutely appalling
Not to mention that I listed a whole slew of atrocities Democrats are complicit in, and those are just off the top of my kinda tired brain. “One single issue” my ass
You can either choose to give a little support to the better part of our awful system in our awful world
Or you can stay in your fantasy land where the 2 parties are absolutely identical and your Itty bitty push back is more effective
Oh my mistake, the party that capitulates unceasingly to the christo-fascist party and in some cases even extends their fascist policies (more immigrants deported under Biden than under Trump, etc.) is absolutely so much different than the christo-fascist party itself! We should be very grateful for all they’ve done for us
Yeah, luckily not voting and Trump getting elected that person wouldn’t be thinking of their lost family. They wouldn’t be thinking about anything for that matter, as they’d be fucking dead. Trump has demonstrated his support for expanding the conflict and finishing the job. It is absolutely better for that person who lost their family to not be dead.
“Luckily”???
Luckily was sarcastic you idiot.
And yeah, it sucks but so do so many other things we have to choose in life. Cleaning up shit from a pet isn’t fun, but sometimes it needs to be done. Sometimes we also need to choose the president that’s not going to do as much damage. You have to get your hands dirty.
Not voting shouldn’t keep your conscience clean. Its like the trolley problem. 100 people on one track, one on the other. You can choose to pull the lever or not. Not pulling it is still a choice. There’s no option where you aren’t complicit because you could have done something.
Also, there’s no need to call me “idiot,” and being honest it’s quite ableist
Funny how liberals are always calling leftists things like “idiot” – really shows their complete disdain for anyone to the left of Reagan. I’ve had liberal Democrats straight-up gloat that they don’t care what leftists think. Mask. Fucking. Off.
Dude, I’m an anarchist. Don’t kid yourself that you’re the only real leftist because you tell people not to vote. Just fuck off with that shit.
Idiot also isn’t really ableist. It isn’t the medical term it used to be. It’s to call someone stupid, which was either willful or not. I don’t know. It feels more like prupsoeful misrepresentation of what I wrote, or you didn’t even try to understand it, because even the most impaired person almost certainly could.
Totally an “anarchist” who relentlessly echoes pro-state neoliberal propaganda and insults anyone who doesn’t accept it. Mhm surrrrrre you are
Yeah, because only neiberals say to vote! Only a true leftist would be self-defeating! /s
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels stated in The Communist Manifesto and later works that “the first step in the revolution by the working class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle for democracy” and universal suffrage, being “one of the first and most important tasks of the militant proletariat”. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_in_Marxism)
There is something to be said for the idea that you only have two choices, although that is a matter of fact because of the “[c]onstitution…which makes it appear as though every vote were lost that is cast for a candidate not put up by one of the two governing parties.” (Engels to Frederick Adolph Sorge, December 2, 1893, in Marx and Engels on the United States (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1979), p. 333.) We need to change how this works, but that needs to be done through a grassroots movement for local level elections at first. This requires voting and participation.
A revolution almost certainly isn’t happening, and it’s not going to go the way you want. If it were to happen, it’d be bloody and brutal and you wouldn’t enjoy it. Also, it’s not exactly guaranteed that the leftists win. If anything, I’d bet against it because the other imperialist nations wouldn’t want that to happen.
Good thing we’re off to a great start showing unity by calling allies “idiots” and discarding the lives of Palestinians and immigrants
Solidarity means if they harm one of us, it harms us all. What they do to Palestinians, they do to me.
I’d say the same about immigrants except I’ve actually had family deported under his fascist ass
If voting is best, so be it, but fuck right off with being so callous as to refer to it as “harm reduction”
Ok but what else are we going to do? What can we do to stop the genocide? Are we in favor of dismantling the system that made this happen, or are we ok with it?
Protest, take direct action, whatever you want. Get organized with some other groups. There are plenty. (Edit: nothing you do is going to stop this genocide though. It’s far too late, though we can decrease the harm that is done.)
Telling people not to take an action isn’t helpful. You always see people (who say they’re leftist, although some are certainly right wing trolls) saying not to vote, and they never advocate for doing other things. How about protest, but also vote? Why would anyone advocate for not doing something? The only reason I can think of us to get their guy elected instead.
If your contribution is saying to do less, fuck off. If you’re saying to do more then welcome. You may actually help.
Yes, a million times this. Voting is just one small part of what we must do to fight for a better future. Giving up is not an option, there is far too much at stake. Vote, protest, occupy, run for office, take direct action, organize, and create a better world for the people who come after us. Solidarity forever.
They can’t think of any other options for political change other than voting. In that way american indoctrination has worked wonders for the ruling elite.