Guess what? Other forms of organizing and protest will also be opposed. And we should still do them.
If a movement is real and serious that organizing to vote in primaries is really not a big deal. Blue no matter who is really just a last resort and if you don’t want to then you should at least spoil your ballot.
PS anything you consider more effective than voting can still be done btw. Change is not an all or nothing (tho given the mindset around many here they should not be surprised when they really do keep getting nothing)
I think you’re misunderstanding freagle’s point. The point isn’t that voting will be opposed, it’s that even if socialists won, they still cannot replace the system block by block into socialism. The state machinery itself is not neutral and system-indepentent, it’s developed and shaped specifically for the economic base that it reinforces. A socialist cannot use a capitalist state to create a socialist base and then a socialist state. That’s the critique.
Within that context, the solution is revolution. The point isn’t that refusing to vote will do anything, it’s that focusing so hard on elections within the context of a capitalist state redirects people’s attention from organizing efforts to the electoral process. It’s the actual worker organizing in parties, unions, and social organizations that unite the working classes and allow it to exert pressure. It’s how every major social reform has happened, and how every revolution has succeeded.
Basically, we should get organized, because that’s the actual only path forward. If someone decides to vote, but still dedicates their actual time for organizing, they are doing far more than someone who only votes.
And we should vote anyway. If your movement cannot be bothered to take an evening to do something that easy, even to spoil the ballot, it isn’t that serious or credible.
And I don’t disagree. Further elections don’t distract from this, but people who cannot be bothered to register to vote and act on it are also not going to have courage to strike which takes more effort and has the possibility to turn violent.
Voting is a form of being organized and a small proof of willingness to action. Just so you know.
Parties like PSL run candidates to advertise their platform and recruit. Considering the DNC and GOP are both pro-capitalist parties, it isn’t spoiling the ballot, it’s putting socialism on the ballot. The DSA, for all of my criticisms of them, are genuinely trying to decide whether or not to break from the democrats, and if they do they’d be far more effective. By tying workers to the DNC, or your party to the DNC, you deflate action.
Voting is not organizing. You do not have to do anything to vote other than cast the vote. Organizing is far more than that, it involves actually materially contributing to an organization, be it party building, education, unionizing, protesting, cop watching, free breakfast programs like the Black Panthers, the clinics PTB runs in Belgium, etc. Trying to tie voting to organizing is part of the deflationary effort I mentioned, because people confuse voting for organizing and see it as a “pass.”
Organizing takes a lot of effort, but is worthwhile.
True
Also true. And from my interactions with
.mltypes they won’t do either. How could they if they drag their feet at something so basic, yet expect me to believe they will grab a rifle when things get heated?Same thing when you have that attitude around voting.
The bulk of your comment is a character attack with no actual relevance to the points brought up (nor any way to prove or disprove). The actual division is your belief that if someone does not vote, they will not act. I think that’s a more interesting topic. The biggest bloc of voting-eligible citizens is the non-voter bloc in the US, and that’s because a huge chunk of people correctly recognize that voting won’t change much.
From the standpoint of organizing for socialism, what is to be done with this? Parties like the PSL do run candidates, but again, it’s explicitly to advertise their platform and to recruit. They don’t shame people for not voting, they appeal to the fact that many people are disaffected by capitalism and don’t see a way out.
The DSA is struggling between a clean or dirty break with the DNC. Their entire platform, at present, is reformist, and depends on elections. They therefore do try to get people to vote, but they have a sizable wing that is revolutionary, and de facto treats it as the same way PSL does, for advertising. The big difference therefore for these socialists is the belief that the bigger tent of DSA is better than the more correct and disciplined but smaller PSL.
The idea that there is a simplistic “voting is harm” take is a strawman. We don’t actually disagree on much, except that you seem to be intent on attacking a position that does not in reality exist. The actual position brought forward is that our efforts should be focused on organizing, not electoralism, and treating voting like it’s equal or greater in importance than organizing is a waste of effort. Not that we should waste effort in preventing people from voting, nobody does that.
And they are also not marching in the streets.
And its a good idea. Like I’ve said before, voting is still part of organizing.
Okay. And?
It seems to me that you are very narrow minded about organizing and being able to do more than one thing. Is your community garden going to demolish the system? No. Its too small. Still I would not say its a waste of time. It is still a form of organizing and people taking action. Not all of us have access to one btw. Access to a ballot is still more accessible and we should vote as left as we can. If you are really that hung up on the DNC you can spoil your ballot on the general election day. Also did you know the ballot has more than just the presidential race?
Correct, the people are not marching in the streets because the working class party has not yet educated, agitated, and organized at the scale necessary, and because we are not yet at a crisis point at which people naturally take to the streets, like the BLM protests were. Crisis points happen all the time, what is important is taking them from opposition to one part of the system to the system itself. That’s the job of the socialist party.
I’m aware that you can do more than one thing. As an organizer, I know that resources are extremely limited. The point isn’t to dissuade people from voting, but to persuade people to get organized and to correctly identify capitalism as the problem, not this or that politician. That’s why the idea that I am arguing against voting is flawed, I’m against treating voting like the primary means of political change, considering it cannot actually bring the necessary change about.
That’s my issue with this meme, the strawman it makes. You aren’t arguing against an actual position, but are framing it as though it’s the position the majority of revolutionary socialists have. We don’t actually disagree on much here.
Sure does not seem that way taking a stroll around
.ml.I’m aware that you see it that way, I don’t. Considering there’s no way to prove or disprove this, I tried to focus on actual political parties like the PSL and DSA, and their approach.