• SoyViking [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    6 days ago

    You’re giving the liberals too much credit by saying they admit that electoralism has never worked.

    The liberal position is not only that electoralism works but that it is the only thing that works.

    • Dessalines@lemmy.mlOP
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      6 days ago

      True. After years of letdowns, some might accept that electoralism is a rigged game, but then the next generation completely forgets everything.

      And for all of them, the socialist road is demonized and kept hidden, so no alternative seems possible.

    • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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      6 days ago

      There’s a split in liberalism, between true believers and those disillusioned but who can’t see a way out. I believe the latter are more common these days, and are the target of the meme. The cure is organizing and reading theory, becoming a leftist in the process, but right now they still cling to faux-progressivism and electoralism.

  • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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    6 days ago

    The great lie of liberal democracy is the idealist notion that literally anything can be voted in if enough people vote for it, and that this will have political supremacy over those in power. This analysis puts the state outside of class struggle, above it, and not as the mutually reinforcing superstructural aspect of society. The role of the state is to reinforce the base, ie the mode of production, and it does so through propagating ruling class ideology (ie, liberalism), and through a monopoly of violence.

    Electoralism is a sham. The lessons of the failures of electoralism scar the global south, the coup against comrade Allende taught us all too well. The state is not outside or above class struggle, but is mired in it. Without replacing the bourgeois state with a socialist, proletarian one, the ready-made levers for reinforcing the bourgeois mode of production will cause a reversion. The Paris Commune was the first such example of this failure in action, and it has happened again, such as with the coup against Allende and the installment of Pinochet.

    What is there to do, then? Organize. Build up parallel structures that take the place of existing capitalist mechanisms. Join a party, read theory, and solidify the politically advanced of the working class under one united banner. Build a dedication to the people, defend and platform the indigenous, colonized, queer, disabled, marginalized communities, and unite the broad working class. It is through organization and revolution that we can actually move on into a better world.

    If anyone reading wants a place to start with theory, I made an introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list, aimed at absolute beginners. Give it a look!

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      Without replacing the bourgeois state with a socialist, proletarian one, the ready-made levers for reinforcing the bourgeois mode of production will cause a reversion. The Paris Commune was the first such example of this failure in action.

      The Soviet Union was one of the latest. Yeltsin taking office, failing to get his way, and then shelling parliament into surrender being the most prominent example of the failures of electoralism, even in an ostensibly proletarian state.

      Gaza also a great instance of the wages of strict electoralism. You rally your people behind a more militant political body (Hamas in 2006) and the end result is your heavily armed neighbors using the results of an election as causa belli. Hell, the American Civil War is another great example, what with a Southern coup government rising up after a Presidential election defeat.

      It is through organization and revolution that we can actually move on into a better world.

      It gives us a fighting chance, at least. But it is also hard, painful, and requiring enormous self-sacrifice particularly among the early adopters.

  • 🍉 Albert 🍉@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    keep in mind that Socrates might not have been as nice as you think, his students ended up doing a coup and their government collapsed in 8 months, their reign was so violent that ended in about the death of 10% of Athens. The tyrants run away amd they put Socrates on trial, and in his defense, Socrates refused to denounce his disciplines and just said it was a whitch hunt because they are mad that he is smarter than everyone else.

    So, Socrates might have been more of a Reactionary grifter like Peterson than a wise kind humble man.

  • bobbyfiend@lemmy.ml
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    3 days ago

    Ie this take sometimes but I don’t know what the alternatives are. When you win your revolution, what system will you put in place?

    ITT I’ve seen “random elections”, and plenty of people saying “socialism”, plus someone (I hope) is thinking “anarchism”, but how is it managed? What takes the place of elections for public office?

  • RindoGang@lemmygrad.ml
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    5 days ago

    Liberals mocked Antifa for not voting, saying left extremists turn right eventually

    I hate liberals man.

  • ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml
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    6 days ago

    In bourgeois ‘democracy’, electoralism serves to legitimize and perpetuate the interests of the ruling class. Should laborers become the ruling class, I don’t have a problem with it doing the same.

  •   We are sometimes inclined, I think unwisely, to treat democracy and dictatorship as two mutually exclusive terms, when in actual fact they may often represent two aspects of the same system of government. For example, if we turn to the Encyclopedia Britannica, to the article dealing with “Democracy,” we read: “Democracy is that form of government in which the people rules itself, either directly, as in the small city-states of Greece, or through representatives.”
      But the same writer goes on to say this: “All the people in the city-state did not have the right to participate in government, but only those who were citizens, in the legal and original sense. Outside this charmed circle of the privileged were the slaves, who had no voice whatever in the making of the laws under which they toiled. They had no political and hardly any civil rights; they were not ‘people.’ Thus the democracy of the Greek city-state was in the strict sense no democracy at all.”
      The Greek city-state has been cited time and again by historians as the birthplace of democracy. And yet, on reading the Encyclopedia Britannica, we find that in fact this was a democracy only for a “charmed circle of the privileged,” while the slaves, who did the work of the community, “had no voice whatever in the making of the laws under which they toiled.”
      The classical example of democracy was, then, a democracy only for certain people. For others, for those who did the hard work of the community, it was a dictatorship. At the very birthplace of democracy itself we find that democracy and dictatorship went hand in hand as two aspects of the same political system. To refer to the “democracy” of the Greek city-state without saying for whom this democracy existed is misleading. To describe the democracy of the Greek city-state without pointing out that it could only exist as a result of the toil of the slaves who “had no political and hardly any civil rights” falsifies the real history of the origin of democracy.
      Democracy, then, from its origin, has not precluded the simultaneous existence of dictatorship. The essential question which must be asked, when social systems appear to include elements both of democracy and dictatorship, is, “for whom is there democracy?” and “over whom is there a dictatorship?”

    —Pat Sloan, in the Introduction to Soviet Democracy

    • ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml
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      6 days ago

      Two more quirks of Athenian democracy: Only males were allowed to vote, and soldiers, mostly lower class salarymen, couldn’t vote if they were in service.

  • AssortedBiscuits [they/them]@hexbear.net
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    6 days ago

    Communal society: Electoralism is cringe.

    Slave society: Electoralism is cringe.

    Feudal society: Electoralism is cringe.

    Liberal society: noooooo, electoral democracy portents the end of history elections are based nooooo

    Socialist society: Electoralism is cringe.

    Communist society: Electoralism is cringe.

  • taiyang@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    Seeing CA propositions get rigged with misinformation and tricky language suggests to me that direct democracy might also not work without proper safeguards.

  • sodium_nitride [she/her, any]@hexbear.net
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    6 days ago

    At the end of the day, the electoral system is a contest of strength between 2 or more cults of personality. This is more prevalent in some countries than other, but the very basic aspect of representative “democracy”, aka elections (selecting a person to rule) basically boils down to giving a few people the power to make decisions for everybody else. It’s dictatorial by nature.

  • VoxAliorum@lemmy.ml
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    5 days ago

    I really like the idea of randomly elected representatives. Sure, they will try to better their situation for afterwards but with enough corruption control (which is probably easier to implement), this will only ensure that they support their kind of workers a bit more than the rest.

    • agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works
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      6 days ago

      On the contrary, voting helps install your enemy of choice. I’d rather fight Democrats than Republicans, and I vote accordingly. Actual progress requires non-electoral action, but electoral action makes that fight more favorable.

      • daydrinkingchickadee@lemmy.ml
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        6 days ago

        You wanna pick and choose between all the different flavors of suck go right ahead. I’m not wasting my time voting for these idiots.

          • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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            5 days ago

            There’s no actual evidence that the DNC treats leftists any differently. Both parties did the Red Scare, both parties root out communists, both parties bomb and sanction socialist countries.

          • daydrinkingchickadee@lemmy.ml
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            5 days ago

            Oh yeah, I’m totally making things harder for everybody else 🙄

            “We’re on the same side” my ass. Fuck the Democrats.

            • agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works
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              5 days ago

              Yes, because everything is easier for the left when Republicans are in power 🙄. I swear, it’s going to be easier to radicalize liberals than to convince you lot to stop shooting yourselves in the foot. Have fun circle jerking over your ideological purity, I guess. We’ll be over here actually trying to make things better, if you feel like helping.

                • agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works
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                  5 days ago

                  Uh, are you feeling okay? What you just posted is devastating to your point. I’m saying to try to keep the ratchet on the stationary stage line enough to actually push left, you’re saying “Lol just let it spin right”. This is so incredibly stupid, what idiot thought that the ratchet effect supports such a stupid argument? I feel like I’m in a room full of toddlers shouting nonsense catchphrases.