this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2024
618 points (100.0% liked)

196

16412 readers
1166 users here now

Be sure to follow the rule before you head out.

Rule: You must post before you leave.

^other^ ^rules^

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

I've been seeing a lot of anti-voting sentiment going around. Can't believe I have to say this, but you need to vote. Not only is there more to the election than just the president. (State policy, Senate, house), but not voting is not an act of protest. C'mon guys

(page 2) 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

If you are against both dominants in a two-party system, vote for the party more likely to win, so that the margin would become bigger, the winning party would split and the losing party would have unpredictable change.

I'm in the second world, just thinking.

In the US this seems to have already happened once, in the 50s.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago

I stand with Israeli and Palestinian civilians, all of whom are victims of Hamas and the Netanyahu regime.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago

“The Republican and Democratic parties, or, to be more exact, the Republican-Democratic party, represent the capitalist class in the class struggle. They are the political wings of the capitalist system and such differences as arise between them relate to spoils and not to principles.

With either of those parties in power one thing is always certain and that is that the capitalist class is in the saddle and the working class under the saddle.

Under the administration of both these parties the means of production are private property, production is carried forward for capitalist profit purely, markets are glutted and industry paralyzed, workingmen become tramps and criminals while injunctions, soldiers and riot guns are brought into action to preserve ‘law and order’ in the chaotic carnival of capitalistic anarchy.

Deny it as may the cunning capitalists who are clear-sighted enough to perceive it, or ignore it as may the torpid workers who are too blind and unthinking to see it, the struggle in which we are engaged today is a class struggle, and as the toiling millions come to see and understand it and rally to the political standard of their class, they will drive all capitalist parties

of whatever name into the same party, and the class struggle will then be so clearly revealed that the hosts of labor will find their true place in the conflict and strike the united and decisive blow that will destroy slavery and achieve their full and final emancipation.” - Eugene V. Debs

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago (5 children)

if voting changed shit it would have been made illegal. don't legitimize slavery by acts of expressing gratitude for being able to pick your masters.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 7 months ago

Most brain-dead take right here

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago (1 children)

They are, especially in the south. Or did you sleep in on 1/6? Express your democratic right, or loose it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

in this day and age, there is no progressive wing of the bourgeoisie. Revolutionary communists fight for a workers’ government and do not give any support to any capitalist party or politician. (...) However, mass dissatisfaction with the Democrats does not mean a majority of Americans are right-wing reactionaries. On the contrary, most people merely want stability, good jobs and wages, and a safe and healthy place to raise a family. But this simply isn’t possible for everyone under capitalism. The exploitation of wage-labor by capital and the relentless drive for profits precludes this. As an arch-capitalist himself, Trump can’t square the circle either, and he is merely filling the political vacuum in a temporary and distorted way. If reelected, those workers attracted by his poisonous bravado will eventually realize that no American president can magically wave their problems away.

https://socialistrevolution.org/election-2024-why-genocide-joe-and-trumps-system-has-to-go/

Evil is evil and lesser evilism is a disgusting idea.

And when it comes to Trump, just as Hegel put it, historical necessity is often expressed through accident. Donald Trump is a giant, catastrophic accident for the capitalist class.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 7 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

The people of USA succesfully beat two tyrannical systems in 18th and 19th century so why wouldn't they now if the current state of things deteriorates in that direction. And so did the Russians who have lived under the tsarist tyranny. Or the people oppressed by the colonial regimes who have not attained their independence as a gesture of good will. Or Cubans overthrowing Batista. Or Chileans ousting Pinochet. Or South Africans overthrowing the apartheid.

All of that required militancy. Polite pleas are not a language tyrants understand. But, by extension, blind faith in electoralism has failed when the KPD failed to respond with proper militancy to the Reichstag fire decree in 1933. The militancy must be proactive. One should not be deluded that a "progressive" government will welcome with open arms any advanced, massive expression of social anger any more than a reactionary one would. See France where it is basic street knowledge to wear at least a solid fucking helmet with plexiglass visor to any protest if you don't want to say, lose an eye under the oh-so-benevolvent rule of the liberal Macron.

Aaron Bushnell had a gun pointed at him as he died.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago (1 children)

stagnant wages, no real influence on the politics because the Overton's window is so narrow and all major parties filled with out of touch millionaires and also just because the political system does not really benefit a common person in a meaningful way, the cost of living and debt crisis, needing to join the military for basic public services, creeping corporate censorship and oligopolization creating a generation of dependent, depressed people with growing self-censorship instinct?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Ok but none of this is slavery. I wouldn't even call it indentured servitude. There's a million miles between things sucking and being literally enslaved

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Yeah I mean police brutality exists and although a peaceful revolution would be preferable to adventurist bloodshed, we must reckon with the high odds of the powers that be not giving up their power to "the mob" peacefully, this bears no comparison to the rampant abuse of the rural south before the Second American Revolution. But still for real emancipation I believe a third revolution is needed, first the colonial rule, then chattel slavery and now the oligarchic, imperialist capitalism need to go. The continued existence of the previous two was an impendance to the proper development of the United States (the latter two also a humanitarian tragedy, first directly, the latter indirectly*) while nowadays it is also and probably even more importantly, not just anymore due to the climate crisis but also due to hawkish foreign policies being on the rise – a threat to the continued existence of humanity.

* I think I get your point. We used to have that buffer called the middle class that for decades ensured some relative social peace and fostered some faith in the American dream because some people were able to advance socioeconomically. But we are the first generation to actually have a worse standard of living than our parents, so all of that is crumbling. I used to be a software developer but the absolute shitshow that has been the 4-month long failed job hunt in the current state of the market forced me to become a food delivery driver. It all feels so disempowering when you feel your efforts amount to nothing. And I believe it's not just me. Lots of young people have been scammed into wasting their time and money pursuing degrees that produced no ROI for them. I now really think I should've trained to become an electrician or other deficient, decently paying blue-collar vocation but now if I don't find at least a support/admin job in IT soon it will be another couple years of debt and uncertainty and feeling easily replaceable, cheated out of future after being promised an irrationally exaggerated market value.

But I feel like again, I'm not alone in this sentiment and soon we'll see another wave of people training for highly demanded blue collar jobs, the market will saturate and some people will again end up feeling duped into another Ponzi scheme with their livelihoods. Because capitalism is a permanent crisis of overproduction, chaos and speculation, a dog eat dog world

inb4 Ayn Rand's "Anthem"

I don't really care about getting rich. I actually care about my craft and believe everyone should be able to do what they are passionate about without the fear of hunger, not receiving healthcare or homelessness. Most commercial software development is just as wasteful as marketing anyway.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

Incredible how the majority of their comments come at hrs when most Americans are in bed..

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Also I hope the Russian government is overthrown by it's people and that the right to the self determination of the myriad of ethnic groups of Russia is actually honored instead of them being used as a cannon fodder to oppress another nation.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (2 children)

I live in Russia. First, that won't happen soon, it's a bad situation with apathy, fragmentation and decay. Second, that myriad of ethnic groups is by geographic distribution mostly unable to secede as states with clearly defined borders. Third, where they can (say, North Caucasus), they depend on central financing to not be terribly poor (and they are still very poor).

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

but election rigging in post-Soviet Russia was actually started by the CIA to not let the communists get back to power in 1996 elections. Which is actually yet another proof that what is needed in any country really is a revolution and actual thorough democratization of every aspect of social and economic life possible, instead of neo-aristocratic electoralism. And that to that goal, a party able to lead a way towards it is needed (instead of trying to work within those that actually just prop up the system and will actively fight back when that is challenged (look up SJ Voralberg case in Austria as the most recent example, or even more glaringly, CPRF purging anti-war faction or the Blairite hostile takeover in Labour a couple years ago)), which was sadly lacking in Russia in the 90s as well as today.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments
view more: ‹ prev next ›