It is never about winning the election. Or voting in a third party.
What the radical left are doing is sitting out in protest of a broken system. Over here in the UK we had the lowest voter any living generation would have witnessed. The reason why is we are disenfranchised and won’t support the elites.
This is the kindling of a revolution.
Anyone who doesn’t understand this should school themselves on historic materialism. No amount of wining will change how large swafts of people react to their material condition.
There has never, ever been anything approaching a protest that starts with the words “sitting out”.
In a sense you’re right, but it seems like a lot of people participating in this discussion may have a misunderstanding of the history of disagreements about electoralism on the revolutionary left.
Historically, some members of the left don’t want to waste time and resources participating in electoralism that could be spent doing other things that contribute to the revolution that will happen when the Bourgeois electoral system inevitably collapses.
Others want to participate to signal the point when that collapse has inevitably occurred because the corruption will have become blatantly obvious.
Personally, I don’t think just going in and voting counts as the kind of participation that theory is describing (that is, running in elections, participating in campaigns, etc.)
On the other hand, it has also become blatantly obvious to me, personally, at this point that on a national level my vote just doesn’t count. My vote is dictated by the capitalist class owned and controlled media telling everyone which states will vote which way. The puppet politicians aren’t vying for popular support, they’re vying for oligarch support and the media they control to sway that population. It’s voter manipulation on an unbelievable scale that sounds like a conspiracy theory, but I can’t ignore that it has become blatantly obvious to me that the system is rigged by the capitalist class, and participation in it (at higher levels) is pointless.
when the Bourgeois electoral system inevitably collapses.
What you guys don’t get is that when the electoral system eventually collapses it will be far too late, and any chance of your revolution ever happening will be long gone.
Just so I understand, you’d rather wait around until the complete collapse of society rather than take five minutes to go vote, is that right? Because what, a democrat might accidently get elected and give you healthcare, but he might get some money from a corporation or something to do it so fuck that, right?
You understand that if things ever got bad enough for the system to collapse it would not be a communist paradise that arises from the ashes, right?
I seriously don’t understand you people. This is like chopping your whole hand off because your fingernails need trimming.
Edit: also, it has already collapsed. That should have been evident in the 2016 primaries.
You don’t actually own anything of value, like a house or a car, I take it.
Just so I understand, you’d rather wait around until the complete collapse of society rather than take five minutes to go vote, is that right?
Given this response, I’m guessing you read less than a paragraph in to my original response and decided you needed to wield your superior intellect and values and produce a “gotcha” response while not actually understanding what you were reading.
You don’t actually own anything of value, like a house or a car, I take it.
I own a relatively large house and multiple cars. I have a wife and a dog and a daughter and a granddaughter. I have lots of completely unnecessary consumer goods. Likely I’m more well off than you. Just because I can play and succeed in the capitalist game doesn’t mean I don’t recognize it for the oppressive system that it is and sympathize with the people that didn’t get as lucky as me.
You so badly want to pounce you have to build a straw man to dislike instead of trying to understand a perspective different from your own. You are a petty person.
Given this response, I’m guessing you read less than a paragraph in to my original response and decided you needed to wield your superior intellect and values and produce a “gotcha” response while not actually understanding what you were reading.
Couldn’t think of a witty comeback, huh?
I own a relatively large house and multiple cars. I have a wife and a dog and a daughter and a granddaughter.
You obviously don’t seem to care about the kind of country they grow up in, since you’re too lazy to do the absolute minimum required to prevent them from growing up in a fascist hellhole.
You so badly want to pounce you have to build a straw man to dislike instead of trying to understand a perspective different from your own. You are a petty person.
All I’m saying is that fascism is here, which side are you on? Because if you’re just going to sit this one out, then you’re on the side of the fascists.
I’m not speaking for the person you’re replying to, nor do I necessarily approve of the actions of what I’m about to share, but I certainly know someone who doesn’t vote but does go to rallies and very often writes/calls their representative and senators. (Though I do think they voted this election cycle for Harris, which was extremely rare for them.)
I’m not questioning the value of non-electoral political action. That is just as - if not more - important. Get involved. Use your voice. Donate. Rally. Please.
I am only challenging this naive idea that “not voting” = “protesting”. You cannot protest by staying home. You cannot protest by sitting out. Not voting isn’t action, it’s inaction and no revolution will ever, ever start with inaction.
The Montgomery bus boycott didn’t start with sitting out. It started with Rosa Parks sitting in.
Not to mention the easily understood fact that an economic boycott - one which causes direct material consequences - has absolutely no relation to some sort of “political boycott”, which causes zero consequences against anyone in power.
Hell democracy is measured by political votes, a nation with low voter turn out are considered non democratic.
Yes? Congratulations, you are therefore contributing to our continued democratic decline.
This same argument can be used with electoral protest. It would be disingenuous to say none voting in protest materialised from nothing.
Yes? Congratulations, you are therefore contributing to our continued democratic decline.
I don’t see your point. If people aren’t voting then that is a symptom and not a cause. I think also a nuanced lens helps with this. People not voting isn’t binary. some knowingly protest, some are seeing the slow encroachment of inequality and just couldn’t care less which leader will continue to fuck them over.
Not voting is absolutely both a symptom and a cause. How do you think we got here, if not by voting for the people who won the elections for the past century, and by not voting for the people who lost the elections?
This is not a good counterexample. A boycott has immediate financial consequences for the boycotted company/industry. No such pressure is generated by sitting out an election.
In fact, a central strategy of the right wing in the United States is to reduce overall voter turnout, which is achieved either by restricting access to voting or by discouraging voter participation. By sitting out the vote you did exactly what the right wing wanted you to do.
Oh, I’m missing the point, of course, sending the disadvantaged to their deaths by a reactionary fascist regime is a small detail when you have the Upcoming Revolution™.
I mean, it’s been Upcoming™ for decades now, but THIS time, with no organization, it’ll happen; definitely, you guys! THIS time the blood of minorities will sanctify your efforts!
The genocidaires will make every move of any revolutionary more difficult and more costly by their control over the levers of power. It would have cost you next to nothing to help avert a genocide. And allowing the genocide will gain the revolution nothing.
And yet, here it is, ushered in primarily by the apathy of the American electorate; an apathy embraced and celebrated by would-be revolutionaries.
News flash: you were going to be sacrificed by the corporations anyway. Voting blue or red legitimizes the system, so if anything, you’re the one elongating the struggle.
Voting blue or red legitimizes the system, so if anything, you’re the one elongating the struggle.
“Elongating the struggle”? What, do you want minorities to kill ourselves as fast as we can and get it over with, in the hopes that once we’re dead, that tragedy will Inspire The Masses to give you your deeply desired revolution?
And you don’t think this is already happening. Look at our prison systems, the wars we fund, the number of homeless people on our streets. Things are rotten to the core and good for you in your unbridled support of neo-librisism but I’m out, I will be active in meaningful political action at demos, door to door but I won’t be pointing fingers playing this sad blame game you guys enjoy so dearly. Keep towing the line and see where you end up.
And portraying this as me killing disadvantage people is so fucking rotten you should be ashamed. I know what its like to be homeless. How it feels for the education system to fail. The brutality of job security. The none existent programmes for mental health in the UK.
But again keep towing the line that allows this broken system to produce fascism.
Ultra-privileged shite. Jesus fucking Christ. Sorry that the lives of minorities aren’t worth anything to you, I know posing online with your buddies is much more important.
Yeah, if your response to looking at the Trump administration’s openly declared desires and, even now, a fucking WEEK into this hell, already-passed executive orders, is to declare “Well this was already happening”, there’s not much to fucking talk about. Some of us are going to have our already-hard lives get significantly worse, and quite possibly end.
Every fucking day is a struggle, and seeing people who proclaim themselves as allies of the disadvantaged help flush what little we have down the fucking shitter? And then say that it doesn’t matter?
There’s not a lot to be said except that it’s ultra-privileged shite.
Why don’t you do something about it? I see lots of your posts. Mostly memes or the interesting history pics but you aren’t a revolutionary, I can’t imagine you canvassing, attending demos, mutual aid, building union power.
Prove me wrong.
But for now, you come off as a neo-libral happy with the status quo from the previous party.
You are missing the point, voting in a party that has been moving slowly right isn’t a way to fix it.
Most of us are well aware voting them in wasn’t going to fix the core problems of the United States.
However, most of us are also well aware that voting them out is making the core problems worse. One need only apply a blindfold and throw a dart at any of the executive decisions made over the last week to find incontrovertible evidence of that.
Accelerationism is nothing but supporting facism. There is no magical moment where fascists run a nation into the ground, the system collapses, and somehow you get to decide what happens after.
What comes after can be just as bad - if not worse - than what came before. And you will do nothing - less than nothing - to stop it by choosing not to vote.
I don’t believe in accelerationism either, the USSR went from shit to worse with no sign of changing. But I recognise that fascism is on the rise, and no amount of finger pointing will stop it. People need to radicalise and actually do something. Voting won’t fix the ruin that is the neo liberal project and the debt its forced us into.
Voting won’t fix the ruin that is the neo liberal project and the debt its forced us into.
Again, almost everyone knows that. For most “radicalized” people that are actually doing things, voting is openly acknowledged as a stalling tactic designed to give us more time to do what must be done for real change.
What exactly will not voting do? Who will face the consequences of not voting? Who will be helped? Who will be harmed? Do you honestly think the wealthy will be harmed by you not voting?
Not voting discredits the allusion of democracy. I’m all for voting within ones own interest. But I won’t treat someone with hostility for they’re choice.
I don’t believe I have treated you with hostility, but please forgive me if I have.
But I must ask - does “not voting” discredit the illusion of democracy? To who? How?
Do you think there is a meaningful number of people who currently believe the statement “American democracy is working” but would cease to believe that when faced with voter turnout statistics?
It takes 12% of a population to intact political change. So maybe. But no I don’t believe America has much class consciousness, the red scare still looms.
By doing so they’re allowing fascists to take over. Isn’t it in your best interest, as a leftist, to prevent the fascist take over of your country?
And before you say “The country is already run by fascists,” over here our immigration dept. is now starting to detain Native Americans. The president is deporting school children. Even other American citizens who aren’t white are being detained. That simply was not happening under the previous president.
Fascism is born from economic issues and tention usually created by rich people to move the blame. We have a labour party in place in the UK, Elon Musk has already involved himself in our politics. Reform uk is poling 25% and labour 26%. labour hasn’t even been in for half a year.
Fascism is battled in the streets and unions, historically this is what has happened.
Fascism can be seen as the endpoint of capitalism, when a system predicated on infinite growth hits the ceiling. While yes vote in your interest I wouldn’t depend on politicians to fix the systemic issue that is capitalism.
Edit for clarification: Reform UK are a nationalist party. Labour were a socialist party for workers, now they are liberals willing to sell whatever isn’t strapped down.
I struggle to see why it’s such a hard thing for people to do the absolute minimum required to prevent fascists from taking power.
Why is it like pulling teeth to get leftists to be civically engaged?
It is never about winning the election. Or voting in a third party.
What the radical left are doing is sitting out in protest of a broken system. Over here in the UK we had the lowest voter any living generation would have witnessed. The reason why is we are disenfranchised and won’t support the elites.
This is the kindling of a revolution.
Anyone who doesn’t understand this should school themselves on historic materialism. No amount of wining will change how large swafts of people react to their material condition.
There has never, ever been anything approaching a protest that starts with the words “sitting out”.
That’s not revolution, that’s apathy and disinterest. That’s what the people in power want.
Don’t sit out. Stand up. Do something. Or don’t. But don’t lie to yourself and others and say that sitting out of the problem makes it any better.
In a sense you’re right, but it seems like a lot of people participating in this discussion may have a misunderstanding of the history of disagreements about electoralism on the revolutionary left.
Historically, some members of the left don’t want to waste time and resources participating in electoralism that could be spent doing other things that contribute to the revolution that will happen when the Bourgeois electoral system inevitably collapses.
Others want to participate to signal the point when that collapse has inevitably occurred because the corruption will have become blatantly obvious.
Personally, I don’t think just going in and voting counts as the kind of participation that theory is describing (that is, running in elections, participating in campaigns, etc.)
On the other hand, it has also become blatantly obvious to me, personally, at this point that on a national level my vote just doesn’t count. My vote is dictated by the capitalist class owned and controlled media telling everyone which states will vote which way. The puppet politicians aren’t vying for popular support, they’re vying for oligarch support and the media they control to sway that population. It’s voter manipulation on an unbelievable scale that sounds like a conspiracy theory, but I can’t ignore that it has become blatantly obvious to me that the system is rigged by the capitalist class, and participation in it (at higher levels) is pointless.
What you guys don’t get is that when the electoral system eventually collapses it will be far too late, and any chance of your revolution ever happening will be long gone.
What do you think a revolution is if not a collapse of the previous system?
Edit: also, it has already collapsed. That should have been evident in the 2016 primaries.
Just so I understand, you’d rather wait around until the complete collapse of society rather than take five minutes to go vote, is that right? Because what, a democrat might accidently get elected and give you healthcare, but he might get some money from a corporation or something to do it so fuck that, right?
You understand that if things ever got bad enough for the system to collapse it would not be a communist paradise that arises from the ashes, right?
I seriously don’t understand you people. This is like chopping your whole hand off because your fingernails need trimming.
You don’t actually own anything of value, like a house or a car, I take it.
Given this response, I’m guessing you read less than a paragraph in to my original response and decided you needed to wield your superior intellect and values and produce a “gotcha” response while not actually understanding what you were reading.
I own a relatively large house and multiple cars. I have a wife and a dog and a daughter and a granddaughter. I have lots of completely unnecessary consumer goods. Likely I’m more well off than you. Just because I can play and succeed in the capitalist game doesn’t mean I don’t recognize it for the oppressive system that it is and sympathize with the people that didn’t get as lucky as me.
You so badly want to pounce you have to build a straw man to dislike instead of trying to understand a perspective different from your own. You are a petty person.
Couldn’t think of a witty comeback, huh?
You obviously don’t seem to care about the kind of country they grow up in, since you’re too lazy to do the absolute minimum required to prevent them from growing up in a fascist hellhole.
All I’m saying is that fascism is here, which side are you on? Because if you’re just going to sit this one out, then you’re on the side of the fascists.
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This is a great point. I am a paying member of the SP. I attend major demos across the southwest. Currently building housing unions in my city.
Voting in neo-librisism I won’t do.
You’re not engaging with the challenge to your original statement.
You don’t protest by sitting out. So what are you doing?
I’m not speaking for the person you’re replying to, nor do I necessarily approve of the actions of what I’m about to share, but I certainly know someone who doesn’t vote but does go to rallies and very often writes/calls their representative and senators. (Though I do think they voted this election cycle for Harris, which was extremely rare for them.)
I’m not questioning the value of non-electoral political action. That is just as - if not more - important. Get involved. Use your voice. Donate. Rally. Please.
I am only challenging this naive idea that “not voting” = “protesting”. You cannot protest by staying home. You cannot protest by sitting out. Not voting isn’t action, it’s inaction and no revolution will ever, ever start with inaction.
Very fair point.
Sitting out has definitely been a form of protest. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgomery_bus_boycott
Hell democracy is measured by political votes, a nation with low voter turn out are considered non democratic.
The Montgomery bus boycott didn’t start with sitting out. It started with Rosa Parks sitting in.
Not to mention the easily understood fact that an economic boycott - one which causes direct material consequences - has absolutely no relation to some sort of “political boycott”, which causes zero consequences against anyone in power.
Yes? Congratulations, you are therefore contributing to our continued democratic decline.
This same argument can be used with electoral protest. It would be disingenuous to say none voting in protest materialised from nothing.
I don’t see your point. If people aren’t voting then that is a symptom and not a cause. I think also a nuanced lens helps with this. People not voting isn’t binary. some knowingly protest, some are seeing the slow encroachment of inequality and just couldn’t care less which leader will continue to fuck them over.
Not voting is absolutely both a symptom and a cause. How do you think we got here, if not by voting for the people who won the elections for the past century, and by not voting for the people who lost the elections?
The reason the Republicans won is that billionaires are funding campaign, popularism is on the rise, class consciousness is low.
This is not a good counterexample. A boycott has immediate financial consequences for the boycotted company/industry. No such pressure is generated by sitting out an election.
In fact, a central strategy of the right wing in the United States is to reduce overall voter turnout, which is achieved either by restricting access to voting or by discouraging voter participation. By sitting out the vote you did exactly what the right wing wanted you to do.
Yeah, we get it, you won’t vote against fascism and genocide. You’re too pure for that.
Let the suffering of minorities sanctify your cause.
Scratch a liberal a fascist bleeds.
“Letting people be genocided is bad” is apparently a liberal take now, and liberalism is, of course, fascism.
How curious.
Thank you for admitting it. Many of us poors and minorities will die, but that is a sacrifice you are oh-so-nobly willing to make.
You are missing the point, voting in a party that has been moving slowly right isn’t a way to fix it.
Oh, I’m missing the point, of course, sending the disadvantaged to their deaths by a reactionary fascist regime is a small detail when you have the Upcoming Revolution™.
I mean, it’s been Upcoming™ for decades now, but THIS time, with no organization, it’ll happen; definitely, you guys! THIS time the blood of minorities will sanctify your efforts!
The genocidaires will make every move of any revolutionary more difficult and more costly by their control over the levers of power. It would have cost you next to nothing to help avert a genocide. And allowing the genocide will gain the revolution nothing.
And yet, here it is, ushered in primarily by the apathy of the American electorate; an apathy embraced and celebrated by would-be revolutionaries.
News flash: you were going to be sacrificed by the corporations anyway. Voting blue or red legitimizes the system, so if anything, you’re the one elongating the struggle.
“Elongating the struggle”? What, do you want minorities to kill ourselves as fast as we can and get it over with, in the hopes that once we’re dead, that tragedy will Inspire The Masses to give you your deeply desired revolution?
And you don’t think this is already happening. Look at our prison systems, the wars we fund, the number of homeless people on our streets. Things are rotten to the core and good for you in your unbridled support of neo-librisism but I’m out, I will be active in meaningful political action at demos, door to door but I won’t be pointing fingers playing this sad blame game you guys enjoy so dearly. Keep towing the line and see where you end up.
And portraying this as me killing disadvantage people is so fucking rotten you should be ashamed. I know what its like to be homeless. How it feels for the education system to fail. The brutality of job security. The none existent programmes for mental health in the UK.
But again keep towing the line that allows this broken system to produce fascism.
Ultra-privileged shite. Jesus fucking Christ. Sorry that the lives of minorities aren’t worth anything to you, I know posing online with your buddies is much more important.
Not a lot to work with Pug.
Yeah, if your response to looking at the Trump administration’s openly declared desires and, even now, a fucking WEEK into this hell, already-passed executive orders, is to declare “Well this was already happening”, there’s not much to fucking talk about. Some of us are going to have our already-hard lives get significantly worse, and quite possibly end.
Every fucking day is a struggle, and seeing people who proclaim themselves as allies of the disadvantaged help flush what little we have down the fucking shitter? And then say that it doesn’t matter?
There’s not a lot to be said except that it’s ultra-privileged shite.
Why don’t you do something about it? I see lots of your posts. Mostly memes or the interesting history pics but you aren’t a revolutionary, I can’t imagine you canvassing, attending demos, mutual aid, building union power.
Prove me wrong.
But for now, you come off as a neo-libral happy with the status quo from the previous party.
Most of us are well aware voting them in wasn’t going to fix the core problems of the United States.
However, most of us are also well aware that voting them out is making the core problems worse. One need only apply a blindfold and throw a dart at any of the executive decisions made over the last week to find incontrovertible evidence of that.
Accelerationism is nothing but supporting facism. There is no magical moment where fascists run a nation into the ground, the system collapses, and somehow you get to decide what happens after.
What comes after can be just as bad - if not worse - than what came before. And you will do nothing - less than nothing - to stop it by choosing not to vote.
I don’t believe in accelerationism either, the USSR went from shit to worse with no sign of changing. But I recognise that fascism is on the rise, and no amount of finger pointing will stop it. People need to radicalise and actually do something. Voting won’t fix the ruin that is the neo liberal project and the debt its forced us into.
Again, almost everyone knows that. For most “radicalized” people that are actually doing things, voting is openly acknowledged as a stalling tactic designed to give us more time to do what must be done for real change.
What exactly will not voting do? Who will face the consequences of not voting? Who will be helped? Who will be harmed? Do you honestly think the wealthy will be harmed by you not voting?
Not voting discredits the allusion of democracy. I’m all for voting within ones own interest. But I won’t treat someone with hostility for they’re choice.
I don’t believe I have treated you with hostility, but please forgive me if I have.
But I must ask - does “not voting” discredit the illusion of democracy? To who? How?
Do you think there is a meaningful number of people who currently believe the statement “American democracy is working” but would cease to believe that when faced with voter turnout statistics?
It takes 12% of a population to intact political change. So maybe. But no I don’t believe America has much class consciousness, the red scare still looms.
By doing so they’re allowing fascists to take over. Isn’t it in your best interest, as a leftist, to prevent the fascist take over of your country?
And before you say “The country is already run by fascists,” over here our immigration dept. is now starting to detain Native Americans. The president is deporting school children. Even other American citizens who aren’t white are being detained. That simply was not happening under the previous president.
Fascism is born from economic issues and tention usually created by rich people to move the blame. We have a labour party in place in the UK, Elon Musk has already involved himself in our politics. Reform uk is poling 25% and labour 26%. labour hasn’t even been in for half a year.
Fascism is battled in the streets and unions, historically this is what has happened.
Fascism can be seen as the endpoint of capitalism, when a system predicated on infinite growth hits the ceiling. While yes vote in your interest I wouldn’t depend on politicians to fix the systemic issue that is capitalism.
Edit for clarification: Reform UK are a nationalist party. Labour were a socialist party for workers, now they are liberals willing to sell whatever isn’t strapped down.
None of this changes the fact that by not voting against the fascists, you’re doing nothing to prevent them from taking control of the government.
I struggle to see a direction capitalism can go after topping out.
I struggle to see why it’s such a hard thing for people to do the absolute minimum required to prevent fascists from taking power. Why is it like pulling teeth to get leftists to be civically engaged?