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.
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
Yes, but we will meet them in battle nonetheless.
Also, we win improvements sometimes. Less child labor now than in the 1800s at least.
So they got rid of child labor and instituted conditions to create weaker unions that won those protections so that it wouldn’t happen again
Yeah, seems inevitable really. Even after the French Revolution (a darling event of lemmy) it just meant other people got to be rich elites.
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.
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
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’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?
