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?
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?