FearMeAndDecay comments on It’s time to block reckless AI IPOs and tax billionaires: We cannot let the billionaire class take unprecedented risks with our future.

[–] FearMeAndDecay@literature.cafe 5 points 1 week ago (1 child)

You cannot act like voting does nothing after Brazil

There is a revolution happening in the usa, its just not a violent revolution. We've got openly socialist candidates beating corporate dems in the primaries and poised to beat their republican opposition tomorrow. We've got Mamdani showing the country that politicians can get things done and make your life better; the only thing stopping them is lack of effort 99% of the time. Grassroots campaigns are winning or leading in polls despite being outspent like 12/1. There are so many people working everyday to make change happen in this country and they're succeeding and improving people's lives piece by piece

We do not want a violent revolution. You may imagine a violent revolution as the people taking up arms, marching against the dictator and oligarchs, taking them out, taking back power, and establishing a good democratic government. Historically, this is not what happens. Historically, violent revolutions tend to turn neighbor against neighbor and result in a lot of regular people getting killed and a new authoritarian regime being created. Now look, I don't really like trump supporters but I don't want them to die. I don't want anyone to die. I want this country to take care of its people, even the people that vote against their own interests just to harm others

Change is happening. We've got so many reasons to be optimistic and so much work left to do. So start with voting tomorrow and then get involved at the local level. See the change for yourself

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[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 1 point 6 days ago

There are two problems, here.

The first is that Brazil's election was between soveriegnty and vassalization. The US election will maintain imperialism, will maintain capitalism, will maintain settler-colonialism, will maintain the genocides on Palestine and Cuba, and more. Neither mainstream party fundamentally challenges the dynamic. Brazil on the other hand was fighting between BRICS, and US subjugation. Not socialism, not capitalism, but their place in the world economy, which did change.

The second is that you cannot reform capitalism into socialism, not even if you elect people that genuinely want socialism. The capitalist state is not a neutral entity distinct from the economy, but the part of the overall system made to maintain it. Even if you elected every single self-described socialist, you still would need revolution in order to smash and replace the capitalist state with a worker state.

We don't want revolution. We need one anyways. If we could do this peacefully, then Marxists would all be reformists, but to believe in reformism is to reject how we understand capitalism and the state, how class struggle functions, the entire underlying thesis for socialism to begin with. The good news is that every socialist revolution that has solidified worker power has managed to dramatically uplift the lives of the working class. A better world is possible, and our predecessors showed us how.

If we cling to reformism, this will at most leave us with social democracy, which quickly turns to fascism during crisis of profitability. It will maintain imperialism, as is intrinsic to the monopoly stage of capitalism. It will continue to prevent the working class from actually having power.

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