cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/8485777

Burn all US politicians amerikkkaqin-shi-huangdi-fireball

Americans acting like their duoparty system is democratic
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[–] 9 points 5 months ago (4 children)
  • [+] -8 points 5 months ago (4 children)
  • [–] 8 points 5 months ago*

    You are misinterpreting Lenin's work enormously. What Lenin is describing is fronting working class parties in bourgeois elections, like what PSL is doing, not working within bourgeois parties in bourgeois elections. This is abundantly clear if you read Lenin, Lenin's central thesis is that the working classes need their own, united party, and that said party needs to combine legal and illegal work to grow. The DNC is not a communist, socialist, or even vaguely anti-imperialist organization, it's an imperialist party representing capital alone.

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  • [–] 12 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    I have read it. And either you're just cynically referencing an argument you haven't read yourself, or you're missing two key points of what Lenin's saying there. First, he's not talking about voting for 'the lesser of two evils' he's talking about voting for an explicitly socialist party with revolutionary politics. And the point of doing that isn't to do democratic socialism, it's to demonstrate to the masses the conflict between liberal democracy and actual liberatory politics. The ruling class would never allow a peaceful surrender of their power so a truly socialist party would be stymied and sabotaged by all methods, dirty and illegal included.

    What you're arguing has nothing to do with what Lenin's arguing in that link.

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  • [+] -9 points 5 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] 10 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

    Insofar as the proletariat is invested in the system, you must use that system.

    This is just bowing to sponteneity. The party's role is to raise the consciousness of the proletariat to their level, not to remain where the working classes are at. That's the purpose of political parties, to organize and create proletarian intellectuals as a counter to bourgeois intellectuals. Otherwise the proletariat stays at the level of trade union consciousness if it has no means to see the political struggle as a whole.

    Stop dragging Lenin through the mud to justify supporting imperialists. Lenin's point was never to just follow along with whatever is popular among the proletariat without analyzing if it's achievable or not, it was to raise them to correct praxis.

    Want to uphold Lenin? Start with an analysis of class, what's the class makeup of the US Empire? Largely labor aristocrats, whose spoils have been eroding for decades. The petite bourgeoisie is solidly in the MAGA camp, and big tech capitalists have merged with the big finance capitalists as imperialism is decaying. The people are largely disillusioned in the electoral process. Settler-colonialism is still a primary contradiction internally.

    What is to be done? Build up a party like PSL, that upholds indigenous rights and is trying to unite the proletariat at the front lines of every major struggle, both domestic and anti-imperialist.

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