Have you considered the existence of even stronger systems to stop you from changing the system from the outside?
The Democratic Party will never go full socialist, but it can be made to be social democratic as it has been before. It’s easier to organize real grassroots socialism under a social democratic regime than a fascist or neoliberal one. Actively advocating against electoralism is self-defeating. You should advocate instead for direct action and bottom-up organizing in conjunction with electoralism.
SOCDEMS are the catch all for disenfranchised liberals to keep them rounded up in electoralism that only aids the oligarchy. It gives them the illusion for a few years that any moment they will have a seat at the table. The system is operating exactly as designed and no amount of electoralism will change that
I don’t know, Mamdani seems to be pissing of the rich fucks too much to be a oligarchy plant to placate the masses. The way the establishment Dems look at all the social Dems with fear seems like a step in the right direction.
I’ve acknowledged and agree that there are hard limits to what electoralism can accomplish, but I disagree that it’s completely pointless. Electoralism can and has resulted in considerable improvements to the material conditions of vast swaths of working class people, and that can only be a good thing even if it does rob some energy from direct action movements. It’s a lot harder to organize when you’re working every waking moment and struggling to provide for yourself and others that depend on you, so winning concessions from the oligarchs actually helps a fair bit when you’re trying to reorganize society. Why does everyone insist on this false binary between electoralism and direct action when the obvious play is to thoughtfully divide your energy between both?
I don’t know, Mamdani seems to be pissing of the rich fucks too much to be a oligarchy plant to placate the masses. The way the establishment Dems look at all the social Dems with fear seems like a step in the right direction.
Mamdani is a proponent of democratic socialism, which is distinctly different from social democracy.
The difference - in theory - is social democracy preserves private property (and therefore capitalism) while democratic socialism does not. Has Mamdani abolished private property in New York City, or does he plan to before his term as mayor ends? If not, then there is no practical difference between a social democrat and a democratic socialist in our current context except perhaps in the vision that is offered. The fact is that reorganizing a capitalist society to be socialist is not possible by electoral means alone; doing so requires that workers organize to seize the means of production for themselves independently of the state. An elected official that is truly committed to a democratic socialist vision may support workers in their efforts to do so, but there’s nothing they can do on their own to make it happen. Mamdani might truly believe in a democratic socialist vision, but what he is practicing as mayor is social democracy and nothing more because that is what is feasible for an elected official to accomplish. Even a vanguardist revolution cannot accomplish more without the people organizing on their own (and historically I would argue that they haven’t sufficiently done so, resulting in AES being social democracies at best, and autocratic state capitalist regimes at worst).
We are succeeding at changing the democratic party. It is the way forward.
In their first ever election for governor in WI the DSA only lost the primary by .4%. That’s like how many votes Gary Johnson got when the libertarians tried to run for president. Insane progress for such a short amount of time.
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The events happening right now have happened numerous times through our history, and it always ends the same. With the oligarchy still entrenched in government and power
Nothing stays the same forever, the Russian revolution ultimately failed, but people have given up on the dream
Yeah, seems inevitable really. Even after the French Revolution (a darling event of lemmy) it just meant other people got to be rich elites.
Yep.
All it takes is an SA claim (no evidence required), a mean tweet, or a snake emoji.
You will be swift boated.
Communist party of Germany:
Under the leadership of Ernst Thälmann, from 1925 the party became thoroughly Marxist-Leninist and more loyal to the politics of the Soviet Union, and from 1928 it was largely influenced and funded by the Comintern.
Under Thälmann’s leadership the party directed most of its attacks against the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), which it regarded as its main adversary and referred to as “social fascists”. This position held that social democracy, particularly the SPD, was objectively a variant of fascism – ‘social fascism’ – because it supposedly upheld capitalism while providing a façade of workers’ representation, considering all other parties in the Weimar Republic to be “fascists”.
The KPD was banned in the Weimar Republic one day after the Nazi Party emerged triumphant in the German elections in 1933.
Keep making things easy for the Nazis, surely your turn will come next after millions of people die
The SPD worked with the Nazi party to kill communist organizers. The SPD carried through their goals of getting Hindenburg elected, who then gave Hitler the reins. The KPD was correct in identifying the SPD as social fascist, as the SPD aided with murdering labor organizers and indirectly gave Hitler Germany.
And what is your solution for one bad party and one worse party in a first past the post system? Just leave the bad party as it is? A third party splitting the vote and handing a win to the worse party? Being smug and not doing anything? Being smug and saying “the revolution will fix everything” and also doing nothing? It seems like you are being smug and trying to convince other people to do nothing too.
There is no choice for most people. Your vote is worthless nationally. Blue and Red MAGA do not give a fuck about you or me.
If you have a DSA candidate, vote for them.
But you still have power locally, as Minneapolis and Chicago have shown strongly this year.
one thing than can be done peacefully that will make a LOAD of difference is ranked choice voting! it’s used in 47 cities and opens the door for 3rd parties to actually get votes without risking Republicans taking majority.
Here’s a 1 minute YouTube video that explains the basics of how it works https://youtu.be/5ZoFjaTSvQY
Lovely! I would adore it if we could get ranked choice voting in. Unfortunately, right now we don’t have it. Getting it would require electoral power. Which brings us back to my first comment. It is an unfortunate situation
Even if ranked choice voting were to be won, it still would not be able to change the nature of the bourgeois dictatorship, it would just allow for more choice between bourgeois parties.
Real talk, if you don’t think that ranked choice voting would help the matter what do you think might? I suspect the answer is no, but do you think there is any voting system that would escape this plight? Is democracy not a viable option and if so what would be a better system?
Voting is great in systems where the working classes actually have some degree of control. Democracy isn’t the problem, it’s what’s presented as democracy within the boundaries of capitalist dictatorship. Electoralism cannot change this dictatorship.
Ranked choice is by far the worst option out of every alternative system. It literally is only better than a single other system… first past the post.
We should be going for, at minimum, Approval Voting. If we really want a proper system then 3-2-1 and STAR are both vastly superior and combat every known measure that bad actors can take to influence an election.
Organizing for revolution isn’t doing nothing. You’ve made a strawman of the only path that actually allows for forward movement.
So much forward momentum! Just a few more decades I’m sure!
Jokes aside I’d love to see a left wing revolution in my country but it just doesn’t seem like it is going to happen any time soon.
Frankly, I think the best way to make it happen is through electoral politics. Getting people to vote also gets them organized and influences them in favor of revolution. Also having governmental power can produce materially better conditions; less repressive police state, more favorable judges, making the economy better so people can organize instead of work a second job, etc.
The point is that just “organizing for revolution” is just being smug and not doing anything. I’m standing by what I said.
No liberalism
Voting isn’t organizing. Voting is engaging directly with the bourgeois state apparatus on its own terms, purely through bourgeois parties. Organizing requires on-the-ground movements, party building, unionizing, striking, and more. The idea that funneling people into a narrow bourgeois framework prepares people for overthrowing said framework is absurd.
Organizing for revolution is a lot of work, it requires educating yourself and others, building up a party apparatus, building up internal logistics and mechanisms for getting people aligned. It’s like herding cats, it’s incredibly difficult work, and is often thankless.
And what is your solution for one bad party and one worse party in a first past the post system?
mexico was also stuck in this situation and now they have president shienbaum because they did actual protests instead “no kings” pep rallies.
Great stuff! I agree that the no kings rallies are not doing enough. I don’t quite see how any of this is contradictory to coopting the less bad political party though.
A post explaining that you cannot coopt the party including a meme explaining that you cannot coopt a party should make it pretty clear that you cannot coopt the party
And I shared this example to show that you don’t have to bother coopting the party; the party will come to you if you start protesting the same way Americans did in the 1960’s & 70’s.
It worked it in back then and Mexico shows that it still worked in 2017.
And learning how to do it is as easy as watching historical tv footage of the civil right protesters physically assaulting the police and causing property damage and wo permission or watch videos of the Mexicans doing the same thing on social media … assuming that Ellison hasn’t already purged them from TikTok’s libraries. Lol
A third party splitting the vote
The solution is a fourth party. Split the votes of both parties.
Even better: Nowadays predictions are solid. Campaign for the third party but retreat from the election unless it is going to be a win.
Splitting the vote is liberal myth that only exists in their head. This implies that if there were no 3rd party candidates on the ballot, we would vote for your neoliberal war hawk fascists, we would not.
This only benefits fascists
fascists set up the system to benefit themselves
How so? Trying to change the nature of a bourgeois state from within is dangerous to forward progress, which requires revolution.
Fascists benefit fascists
Then by your own words, you are fascist.
Liberals wouldn’t know what a fascist was if it was forced on them without a primary.
Cool story. Got any other blanket statements you apply blindly? I’m guessing you’re full a blind spots that need to remain lest your ego crumble.
Fascists getting testy
