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Your lesser evil over 50 years has grown to an uncontrollably large evil (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 month ago by to c/latestagecapitalism@lemmy.world
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[–] 5 points 1 month ago* (10 children)

The point is that revolution is necessary

It's been necessary for decades... But revolution is a bloody nightmare that lays the groundwork for rebuilding. You are still going to need a government after the revolution and I'm yet to see any actual tangible plan for what that is that somehow precludes voting right now... It's literally a form you fill out once or twice every four years.

At the risk of painting with too broad a brush, does this rhetoric not means that a lot of leftists have got one foot in the past looking at historic revolutions and one foot in the future dreaming of a revolution to come? And what do you think that means they're doing to the present?

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  • [–] 0 points 1 month ago (9 children)

    Revolution isn't a thing you do, it's something you organize for and prepare for when crisis turns to revolution. That's the primary focus of leftist action, not voting. Voting vs. organizing for revolution is kinda like building a sand castle vs. testing and studying rocketry if your goal is to get to the moon. Sand castles aren't really hurting anything, but they aren't helping either, so it's more important to actually work on what matters.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 month ago* (8 children)

    Right, so where’s the damn rocket, then?

    Accusing people of wasting time voting is a privilege reserved for those who aren’t affected by election outcomes… But people are in fact dead.

    Most of the people building those sandcastles you’re so quick to trivialise will not in fact have seats on the Rocket.

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  • [–] -1 points 1 month ago (7 children)

    No, and this is where the metaphor falls apart, because a revolution needs to be a mass movement. Not a coup. To put so much focus on voting is a privledge reserved for those not actively crushed by the system, at home or abroad.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 month ago (6 children)

    You're right, it is a privilege...

    So is having food on the table.

    Thing is, if you decline those things, those people will still be crushed and starving, and you'll just have an empty stomach yourself and a slightly more shit government.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago (5 children)

    And if people say that the only way to get to the moon is building a giant sandcastle, and refuse to help building the rocket, then that makes it that much harder to put food on everyone's table, not just those not yet crushed.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 month ago (4 children)

    Who in this debate is arguing for voting instead of leftist action?

    I mean to say I really don't get why filling out that ballot once or twice every four years precludes leftist action altogether. It's really not one or the other.

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  • [–] -1 points 1 month ago (3 children)

    Nobody is making that argument either. The point is that liberals see the system as fundamentally reformable, and this is incorrect. This is a real group of people that believes lesser evil voting will somehow result in an eventually good system, that capitalism just needs to be reformed from within.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 month ago* (2 children)

    But that faulty logic doesn’t mean it’s wrong to endorse voting…

    Just because your opponent makes a fallacious argument doesn’t mean their actions are self evidently wrong… Voting could have still been used to prevent a lot of shit even it’s not going to “result in an eventually good system”. The system liberals want to reform ACTUALLY EXISTS.

    It’d be like refusing to get a job because capitalism is evil and workers are delusional and think they’re a few years from being millionaires and getting a job won’t “help the socialist revolution”. Yes it’s silly to think that working will make you a millionaire … but materially is still makes no sense to refuse to be employed under capitalism right now just for the principle, regardless of ideology.

    I assume you still have a day job when you’re not planning for the revolution, right? How are you paying for your placards?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago (1 child)

    I am explicitly arguing against reformism, and for revolution, which requires that people actually organize. If people assume that they just need to vote every once in a while and that that's all that's necessary, then revolution becomes much more difficult.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

    That’s not an argument for not voting, though. It’s an argument for voting not being the be all end all. That’s where you’re losing me.

    Probably most of the liberals you’re talking about struggle to engage with much else because they have work in the morning or they’ve entirely lost faith that the rocket is even coming… and it may well not be.

    Like I say, the US system has been “beyond reform” for a good few decades now but the revolution is no closer than it was 30 years ago. If anything, it only seems even further off…

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