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celebratedrecluse wrote

yeah it was predictable but sad how a lot of the people galvanized by chapo and bernard have kind of melted away or given up. It was a huge disillusioning moment once again, giant waste of time and effort, and made radical people in general look foolish and out-of-touch.

i'm sure there are some small wins and infrastructure which survived that disaster, but USA seems toast now

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IchDieneNiemandem wrote

But also alot of people have been further radicalised by the failure of bernie which is an upside I guess. A decent number of people have completely given up on electorialism

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celebratedrecluse wrote

Sure, everyone will have their own reaction, and I don't really know what's going on in US right now. plus it's a big country. but i feel confident that there are some people who didn't just give up on electoralism, they gave up on everything related to engaging with the world and went into isolation and private life.

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ChaosRocket wrote (edited )

Kind of makes me want to give up on everything to be honest. I mean if we can’t get even get enough people to vote for a socdem how would we possibly get enough people to be willing to fight and die for a socialist revolution? It’s hard to see any realistic path forward.

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FeastingOnDubs OP wrote

The path forward is fomenting enough unrest at home that bourgeois imperialism is put on the backburner. I mean, before covid and these riots they were gearing up to go to war with somebody (Iran, China, Russia, etc.). Without the global south to exploit and even greater wealth concentration, America will be ripe for revolution.

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celebratedrecluse wrote

in your country, it is in fact not easy to vote, especially if you are young and of colour. Look at the Georgia, USA primary.

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Brooklyn_we_blow_hard wrote

Bernie was a nice man but he also wasn't the smoothest political operator. A more politically savvy candidate could have won, I think. Not to say there is any hope in change through electoralsim lol

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flipshod wrote (edited )

Except the left knew that even if Bernie had won, the fight would just be beginning.

So now the fight is still just beginning, but the question is which party we want in power while we fight.

There's a difference between voting and pinning all our hopes on electoralism.

Even Lenin was in favor of using electoralism as one of the tools in the fight for revolution.

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TTemp wrote (edited )

Lenin was definitely not in favor of electoralism in the way you're talking about here though

Iirc, Lenin's thoughts on participating in bourgeois elections was never to actually hold office (that isn't going to happen), but to use it as a signal boost for organizing outside of electoralism.

Lenin would have definitely had some choice words to say about the menshevik Bernie

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flipshod wrote (edited )

You are right, but in the general sense he was practical and took advantages where he found them. And we have to think in the general sense because our circumstances are so different.

There's a quote of his, and I'm not sure if it's from his work or Trotsky (who quoted him a lot) where he's talking about cooperating with Kerensky and he says he'd balance his rifle on K's shoulder to aim at the tsar and then next aim it at him.

I think that's where we find ourselves now. Use the election to get rid of Trump and then work on getting rid of the Dems.

Edit: And I'm not suggesting that we pour scarce resources into it. Just if you are in a swing state, vote and maybe bring a friend. It does no harm but is also good for the working class esp the most oppressed.

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TTemp wrote

You make a decent point comrade

With that in mind, I will fucking never (ever ever ever ever) vote for a ra(p/c)ist fucking wretch like Joe Biden. Call me dogmatic if you must, but it ain't happenin capn.

I did vote for Bernie in the primary and would've in the general too given the chance for exactly the reasons you state above though.

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celebratedrecluse wrote

I agree with the first part, however your last two thesis I question.

Electoralism saps energy. There are many people now in USA and UK who have burnt out after spending all their time canvassing and phonebanking for candidates who lost historically. Some radicalized, but most gave up.

Lenin is not a good example for using electoralism as a tool for the fight in the revolution, the NEP was another thing he did. He literally brought back capitalism during an invasion by capitalist powers because central planning fucked up the entire socioeconomic ecosystem. After his death, you got Stalin and the recriminalization of queer people, then the cuban missile crisis, and the state capitalist regime that produced CIA Gorbachev and the world-historic destruction of former USSR peoples' standard of living. So where was the win there? Overall, while the USSR was somewhat of an incremental improvement in certain aspects on the feudal system, it was still a profoundly unequal and self-destructive statist regime.

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flipshod wrote

I agree with you except I think that now that we (US) has been shown that we can't break into the Dem party, all efforts beyond simply voting have been given up.

As to using Lenin, I'm normally the person trying to explain why he's a bad example for myriad reasons. I used his example only because it carries weight in this crowd. I guess to differentiate between people who have "read theory" and the rest. (and I don't even think reading "theory" means at all what it meant back then for the cause.)

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celebratedrecluse wrote

The other efforts have not been entirely given up, for example burning police stations is now becoming more common in your country. I can think of two cities where this has happened, and a third where the police station was taken over and turned into a squat for a few weeks. And I'm not even from there, perhaps you can find more.

Sure, that makes sense.

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