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Should I vote? (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml
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Should I vote Republican to slow down full blown let it all hang out fascism because I don't want to vote Democrat? I am trying to hack a machine that just needs recycled. What a dusty old thing. I have had it with both. The more both parties go at each other the greater the odds of a environment ripe with revolutionary potential. Like I know things are only going to get worse. Has anyone else thought of being a obstructionist? Like some how I am removed from the material conditions. Voting reminds me of the plaform at 3:10.

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[–] 6 points 3 months ago (10 children)

I would posit that for many in Europe and America voting has not once addressed a single major grievance. What would you say of those who do not vote as it has never proven a real avenue for systemic change in the West and instead organise outside the system? Do they have the right to have their grievances heard?

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (9 children)

    I don’t accept the premise that voting has never led to change.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago (7 children)

    You can not accept it all you please and yet under the western capitalist system it remains true.

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  • [–] -2 points 3 months ago (6 children)

    [citation needed]

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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago (5 children)

    Women’s suffrage, the abolition of (chattel) slavery (as the Americans Thirteenth Amendment explicitly preserved involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime, laying the basis for coerced prison labour and the modern prison-industrial complex), the eight-hour working day, the weekend, the dismantling of Jim Crow and legal segregation, the defeat of apartheid in South Africa, partial Irish independence from the British Empire, and universal local-government suffrage and civil rights for the Catholic and nationalist population of Northern Ireland and more. None of these things were voted into existence but won through struggle. Voting under liberal democracy has not once been a real driver of meaningful systemic change.

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  • [–] 0 points 3 months ago* (4 children)

    You're citing examples of other forms of redress, not disproving the effectiveness of voting. I never claimed voting was the only (or even the most effective) form of redress, only that it is one.

    Don't bother responding, you have nothing of value to offer other than your absurd soapbox.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    How about you name 1 (just one) systemic change won through voting under liberal democracy. (Oh wait you can't because it's never happened).

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  • [–] -1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

    Are you under the impression that the only way things happen is by direct vote on the issue? Nearly everything you cite is a result of the elected officials in power. Put there by the voters.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 months ago

    you can't even name one, lmao. pathetic bluemaga. voting is bread and circus bro, keep telling yourself that you can eventually vote shit out with your wallet. meanwhile, we in the third world keep getting FUCKED by either of any possible party that gets elected in the bürgerreich because all of them represent the international bourgeoisie.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago

    Nearly everything you cite is a result of the elected officials in power.

    Not a single thing I cited did came into existence because people voted for them. They arose because the economic base required a particular political, legal and ideological superstructure to reproduce the prevailing class relations. Their abolition was likewise not the product of voting, but of massive class struggle outside the system: militant trade unions, abolitionists, suffragettes, the NAACP, the Black Panthers, the IRA, the ANC (Umkhonto weSizwe), and countless other organised movements that made the existing conditions impossible to maintain.

    Are you under the impression that the only way things happen is by direct vote on the issue?

    No. What I am “under the impression of” is that voting under liberal democracy has not once provided a real avenue for systemic change. Using voting status as a gauge of whose political views should be taken seriously is therefore idiotic.

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