this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2024
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[–] jordanlund@lemmy.world 11 points 11 hours ago (2 children)

On the ballot in 19 states totalling 220 electoral college votes.

Who wants to tell them you need 270 to win?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballot_access_in_the_2024_United_States_presidential_election

[–] Grebes@sh.itjust.works 13 points 11 hours ago (3 children)

In case others need to hear this, please don’t vote third party. Even to start a revolution or whatever. It’s an incredibly privileged position to be able to endanger LGBTQ, immigrants, and women’s rights because you want to send a message. Vote Dem and back ranked choice or you may get the revolution the other way.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 hour ago

It's an incredibly privledged position to intentionally decide to sacrifice Palestinians and support a genocidal regime, one that is failing to assist the rights of queer people, women, and immigrants, and one that is failing to adequately address climate change, and is working towards World War 3.

back ranked choice

  1. Would not fix the problem that candidates are filtered and preselected
  2. Will never pass at meaningful numbers
  3. Neither party wants RCV
[–] MegaUltraChicken@lemmy.world 3 points 10 hours ago (3 children)

I just don't understand why we can't start the exact same revolution these people want during the primaries. It would make much more sense to win over/capture the party and then push that platform in the general. You get real power to get actual shit done without risking fascism by letting the GOP win due to the spoiler effect.

If someone can make the "revolution is necessary" argument, that should be a perfectly acceptable plan. I think they just want complete collapse so they can try and rebuild, which is complete psychopathic nonsense.

[–] TheOubliette@lemmy.ml 3 points 6 hours ago

I just don't understand why we can't start the exact same revolution these people want during the primaries.

Revolution does not follow the electoral cycle. PSL is constantly doing work. This is just a vehicle for reaching those who do not understand politics beyond electoralism and to raise the correct position that both capitalist parties create and maintain our oppression.

There is not going to be a revolutionary movement that begins work during a primary and then has completed the revolution at its end. Revolutionary work requires building organizations over years and decades.

It would make much more sense to win over/capture the party and then push that platform in the general.

The party will never allow that lmao. Every attempt to work within the most viable party for this, the Democrats, has resulted in them changing their own rules. Just see how it worked out for the members of the DSA who took over in Nevada.

You get real power to get actual shit done without risking fascism by letting the GOP win due to the spoiler effect.

Biden and Harris are just as fascistic as Trump. They are nationalists committing genocide scapegoating immigrants and people overseas and pumping huge sums of money into cops' funds in response to uprisings over racial policing and racial oppression. They are just polite about it and use the right euphemisms.

Their policies are, in fact, the main driver of an ascendant right. Their policies degrade conditions and the response to them and fail to address the scapegoating that marginalization provides.

If someone can make the "revolution is necessary" argument, that should be a perfectly acceptable plan.

Of course it is necessary. You think the capitalists will just let you vote them out of power?

I think they just want complete collapse so they can try and rebuild, which is complete psychopathic nonsense.

Please do less bullshit guessing and actually learn about this topic.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 6 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

I just don't understand why we can't start the exact same revolution these people want during the primaries.

Are you suggesting a revolution is done within the bounds of the electoral system?

It would make much more sense to win over/capture the party and then push that platform in the general

  1. You can't "capture" or "win over" parties like that, the electoral system is a filter.

  2. You can't change a party's platform in the general with some grand prayer or anything, they will do what they need to to satisfy their donors.

You get real power to get actual shit done

No, you don't.

If someone can make the "revolution is necessary" argument, that should be a perfectly acceptable plan. I think they just want complete collapse so they can try and rebuild, which is complete psychopathic nonsense.

You're right, that is nonsense, please read leftist theory and talk to actual leftists. Nobody wants to rebuild from collapse.

[–] MegaUltraChicken@lemmy.world 3 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Are you suggesting a revolution is done within the bounds of the electoral system?

Third party candidates and their supporters sure seem to.

You can't "capture" or "win over" parties like that, the electoral system is a filter

There hasn't been large ideological shifts within the 2 major parties? Are you serious? I will provide you an example: look at the GOP. The past several decades right wing radicals have focused on capturing local elections and statehouses, it has been wildly successful for them and has allowed these people to completely capture the party and expel pretty much any opposition. Capturing a party is absolutely in the table, we literally have historical examples with these same parties.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml -1 points 2 hours ago

Third party candidates and their supporters sure seem to.

They don't.

There hasn't been large ideological shifts within the 2 major parties? Are you serious? I will provide you an example: look at the GOP. The past several decades right wing radicals have focused on capturing local elections and statehouses, it has been wildly successful for them and has allowed these people to completely capture the party and expel pretty much any opposition. Capturing a party is absolutely in the table, we literally have historical examples with these same parties.

Why has the GOP (and DNC) gone further right? Random radicals? No. Fascism is Capitalism in decline, it's an inevitability that the establishment parties would move towards it.

[–] Repelle@lemmy.world 2 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

If you want to change the system and think you can do it from within, the primaries are the time. If you don’t think you can do it from within, do it from without and have your revolution on the streets—dont spoil the candidate that more closely aligns with your views.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 2 points 23 minutes ago

If you don’t think you can do it from within, do it from without and have your revolution on the streets—dont spoil the candidate that more closely aligns with your views.

Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans more closely align with Marxist views, both are so far removed that it isn't a spoiler.

[–] TheOubliette@lemmy.ml 0 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Don't vote for genociders. It is an incredibly privileged position to vote for someone genociding an entire people as if it is just a normal election year.

And don't kid yourself on what Dems will do. They don't actually fight for any of that particularly hard because they know you will vote for them anyways, even I'd they commit genocide. In fact, the thing to do if you care about others' welfare is to demonstrate that you are not an automatic lever pull, that you require real concessions. Otherwise you are just a cheerleader for their entire program indefinitely, and that includes genocide.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 1 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Do you think they are running because they expect to win? Are you familiar at all with the Marxist view of Electoralism?

[–] jordanlund@lemmy.world 11 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

They aren't going to end capitalism if they don't win.

The best they can hope to do is take votes away from Harris ensuring a Trump win, which is 180° the opposite of their message.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml -2 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (2 children)

So no, you aren't familiar with the Marxist stance on Electoralism. For reference, they are Marxists.

No, they do not need to win the election to end Capitalism. Participation in bourgeois elections is to delegitimize the system (such as pointing out Dem/Rep collusion to kick them off the balot in Georgia), and advertise their platform.

Marxists believe revolution is necessary and electoralism is a sham.

[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 6 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

That sounds like a way to get a lot of people killed and end up worse than how you started.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 0 points 11 hours ago (2 children)

Historically, Marxist revolutions have dramatically improved conditions.

[–] Grebes@sh.itjust.works 3 points 11 hours ago (2 children)

Happy to hear more info here

[–] TheOubliette@lemmy.ml 4 points 6 hours ago

The vast majority of every poverty alleviation statistic for the last 50 years has been China.

Generally speaking, third world countries do not advance without tackling the worldwide capitalist system. This is because it is set up to enrich international corporations largely seated in the heart of first world countries, particularly the US, and can only sustain itself through the maintenance of profits acquired through exploitation of those third world countries. Unequal exchange, forcing international business-friendly labor laws on them, preventing them from building up their own industries so they must import necessities, structuring their economies around whatever the imperial core needs (lithium, oil, an underpaid service industry), forcing them into situations where they have a ton of dollars and therefore must import using them, etc etc.

Under this scenario, conditions in these countries regularly degrade. Poverty and a lack of infrastructure, low wages, and the necessity of a pro-international-capitalist government means petty autocracy around the basics of life. High unemployment, rates, few prospects, a brain drain, and eventually internal violence via black markets, the associated organized crime, the government, and those who correctly recognize the problem and attempt to directly combat it (fighters for national liberation, socialists, etc). Things are not good and they rarely get better, quite the opposite. They shift according to whims far outside their control at virtually any level, as they are enslaved by capital right down to their national government. Resistance movements rise up for simple things like insigenous rights, land rights, etc, and the federal government suppresses them with far greater violence.

When organized anticapitalist forces win a revolution, they tend to work directly against the problems that fomented the revolution. They address issues of land rights, abolish systems like feudal relationships and the most heinous capital relations, invest in public education, utilities, housing, etc that were denies by their xapitalist comprador governments.

And the US responds. It attempts to destroy them, as it requires control over its vassal states to maintain its position at the top of a conveyor belt moving their resources and other labor products over to itself. Much of what you see that is negative in countries run by socialists is of that particular legacy. The US killed 20% of the population in North Korea and tried to isolate it so it spawned Juche. After the fall of the USSR, its primary trading partner, the US unleashed a massive series of sanctions, attempting to starve the country of everything needed to run it. The meme of a starving, poor North Korean is from the poverty created by fuel and food from sanctions. You until the late 80s North Korea regularly outperformed South Korea. This playbook has repeated many times. Those countries that can both carry out the initial revolution and then defend it against attack do much better than the alternative offered to them.

You might be thinking, "hey, but what about Japan or Taiwan or Estonia? They are doing okay." This is true, though you should keep in mind that they have been propped up in order to act as forward bases against targets of US Empire, namely Russia and China. And they are reigned in and will be subjugated as soon as it is seen as more beneficial than not for US interests. Japan experienced this in the 90s when the US created a massive recession for them.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 3 points 10 hours ago

You'd have to be a bit silly to think the Tsarist regime was better for Russia, the nationalist Kuomintang for China, the fascist slaver Batista for Cuba, etc.

[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 0 points 10 hours ago (3 children)

I went to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_revolution and clicked on the most recent successful entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nepalese_Civil_War

The civil war was characterized by numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity, including summary executions, massacres, purges, kidnappings, and mass rapes. It resulted in the deaths of over 17,000 people, including civilians, insurgents, and army and police personnel; and the internal displacement of hundreds of thousands of people, mostly throughout rural Nepal.

That's not great.

[–] TheOubliette@lemmy.ml 4 points 6 hours ago

Who did the killings? What are the numbers on social violence, social murder, in the previous status quo? The capitaliat status quo is one of poverty and disposession, hard lives and early deaths due to a lack of infrastructure, safety in workplaces, poor nutrition and healthcare, environmental degradation, etc.

That violence is intentionally maintained by the capitalist order, it is violence done to every working person, but particularly those in the global south like Nepal. Include it in your calculations. Watch it dwarf those numbers.

[–] metaStatic@kbin.earth 2 points 10 hours ago

Survivorship bias, after we murdered everyone that was having a bad time everyone was having a great time.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 2 points 10 hours ago

You'll notice that the government did far more of the killing than the Communist revolutionaries. And, like I said, metrics are improving since overthrowing the previous regime.

[–] jordanlund@lemmy.world 2 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

They do need to win an election to end capitalism, because they have no power unless they win.

They can literally do absolutely nothing to accomplish their goal unless they win, but then since they mathematically can't win either, all they can do is yell impotently into the void.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 0 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (1 children)

Which part of "revolution is necessary and electoralism is a sham" was difficult for you?

[–] jordanlund@lemmy.world -2 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

They aren't running for a revolution, if they were, they wouldn't be on the ballot for an election.

It's all performative nonsense.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 2 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

I'll just copy and paste my earlier explanation, hope it makes sense for you this time:

Participation in bourgeois elections is to delegitimize the system (such as pointing out Dem/Rep collusion to kick them off the balot in Georgia), and advertise their platform.

Marxists believe revolution is necessary and electoralism is a sham.

[–] jordanlund@lemmy.world -1 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

If they want a revolution, they would revolt.

They aren't. They're running, poorly, in an election, where they will be 100% ineffectual and their message, if it's heard at all, completely forgotten.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

"Capitalism itself cannot be reformed. Its supreme law and driving force is the maximization of profit. The only force capable of putting an end to this criminal system is the organized working class. Capitalism cannot be voted out of power—it will take a revolution. The capitalist class will stop at nothing to prevent or overturn reforms by repressing, misdirecting or quelling any form of popular rebellion. Without a complete uprooting of the system that causes all the problems workers and oppressed peoples face, exploitation and oppression will still exist. The capitalist state will continue to rule. Capitalism is a failed system that, in its insatiable appetite for ever greater profits, threatens global ecological destruction on an unprecedented scale, with workers and oppressed people bearing the disproportionate burden of the environmental disaster. More than at any other time, it is the working class that holds the future for humanity. For the people and planet to live, capitalism must go. The Party for Socialism and Liberation is dedicated to building a revolutionary workers’ party in the United States. A party that can unite the multinational U.S. working class is an essential and irreplaceable element in the struggle for socialism."

Taken right from their very public PSL Party Platform online. You clearly are entirely unfamiliar with Marxism and PSL, why act like you know more than you do? I can make theory recommendations if you want, but don't pretend to know what PSL's goals and methods are without even reading the party platform, that's silly.

[–] delirious_owl@discuss.online 4 points 9 hours ago

Where's the article?

[–] jimmydoreisalefty@lemmy.world 10 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

This is just a picture.

Quick search...

Here are the main points form their program:

END CAPITALISM BEFORE IT ENDS US

  1. Seize the Biggest 100 Corporations, Create A New Economy for the People
  2. Overthrow the Dictatorship of the Rich -- Build a Democracy That Serves the Working Class
  3. End the Rule of Money and Lock Up the Corrupt Elite
  4. End All U.S. Aid to Apartheid Israel. End the Genocide and Free Palestine
  5. Cut the Military Budget by 90% -- Peace, Not War with China & Russia!
  6. End the War on Black America!
  7. Defend Women's Rights, Full Equality for LGBTQ People
  8. Save the Planet from Capitalism^[[1] https://votesocialist2024.com/our-program]
[–] LowleeKun@feddit.org 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (1 children)

I am loving it apart from the stance on china and russia. The is U.S. is at peace with russia and china. In the meanwhile the two countries eye their neighbours in order to seize up as much land as they can. Russia already started seizing land of a sovereign nation. Or do these people believe that russia is "anti-capitalist"? Do not get me wrong, i am also in favor of cutting military budget but this is something that needs to happen globally or will simply mean that some countries are free to bully others (which, fair enough, the U.S. tended to do a lot).

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 26 minutes ago)

I am loving it apart from the stance on china and russia.

For clarity, they have the consensus stance among Marxists, which is in line with the rest of their platform as Marxist-Leninists.

The is U.S. is at peace with russia and china.

Not quite. The U.S. is constantly hostile to Russia ever since it threw off the Western financial monopolists who looted the USSR's former state assets, and the US has become increasingly hostile with China ever since it became increasingly clear that China was never going to become a free-market paradise for the West to loot like they did the Russian Federation, to the point of preparing for war with the PRC by 2027.

In the meanwhile the two countries eye their neighbours in order to seize up as much land as they can

That's certainly the western view the media would have you believe, though it's worth noting that China especially has been incredibly peaceful since its founding, while the US has been at near constant war. It's largely projection and manufacturing consent for said war with China.

Russia already started seizing land of a sovereign nation. Or do these people believe that russia is "anti-capitalist"?

Russia is 100% a right-wing Capitalist nightmare, but in throwing off predatory Western Finance it is more nationalist, and stands against Imperialism as Marxists understand it (specifically a form of international monopolist Capitalism based on extraction).

Do not get me wrong, i am also in favor of cutting military budget but this is something that needs to happen globally or will simply mean that some countries are free to bully others (which, fair enough, the U.S. tended to do a lot).

The US is the number 1 bully because it is the largest Imperialist power in the world, hence the current genocide in Palestine through its vassel Israel.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 5 points 11 hours ago