We're not going to convince anyone of anything if they think we're a joke, and there's no quicker way to make someone think you're a joke than to start talking about how you hope to achieve a revolutionary change with zero participation in electoral politics. That makes you sound like some right-wing militia LARPer who thinks a popular rebellion against the tyrant Joe Biden is just around the corner. It's the quickest way to poison the well with ordinary people -- they might still humor you, but in the back of their mind they're thinking "this guy's a crank."
You have to get the person you're trying to convince to take you seriously, and for the people we're trying to convince, elections are serious politics. In addition to the other good reasons to put effort into electoralism, that point is enough on its own.
There were tons of things that I read when I was a baby leftist that I thought were batshit crazy. But hearing them made me start to investigate them, and on a lot of those things after investigating them, I came around to that way of thinking. If those writers had coddled me and worried more about seeming valid to their propagandized reader, then I never would have progressed or developed my understanding of the world.
Other reasons to not champion electoralism include:
When you use your influence to steer people back into the current political system, when that system inevitably doesn't work, you lose a bunch of those people too - they got burned out doing something that could not possibly work, and now they are not available to move on to the real work of organizing and fighting.
The only way to actually make change is outside of the political system, and any effort directed into the system will just be recouped or redirected. You should be funneling out anyone who is even possibly questioning things, not send them back in.
There are ways to talk about electoralism that don't make you a crank, just like there are ways to talk about capitalism or communism without coming off as a complete crank.
If your only goal is to pander to the lowest common denominator, you will literally never get anywhere.
You're right that hearing things that sound crazy leads some people to look into them, but I don't think that strategy works as well or as quickly as you might think. Leftists have been saying those things for decades, yet the left in the U.S. remains small. To me, that looks like a strategy that works great on some people (you and me) but falls flat with most. And we need a strategy with mass appeal -- that's not pandering to the lowest common denominator, that's a prerequisite for any mass movement.
When you use your influence to steer people back into the current political system
I don't think we should steer people into the current political system -- as in, into electoral politics and nothing else. I think the best approach is to look at any possible way of moving the ball forward and pursue as many of those as possible, dividing our efforts according to whichever produces the best results (and electoral politics have at least pipelined a bunch of people to here and other openly-left spaces). It's electoralism AND everything else, not OR everything else. This is the easiest way to talk about electoralism (and raise issues with it, and present alternatives to it) without sounding like a crank.
The only way to actually make change is outside of the political system
But at some point we need to either take over the system from within or tear it apart from the outside. The latter is at least as unlikely as the former, and if the latter winds up being the only possible path forward it'll help to have people who know the machine so they know where to stick a wrench in it. Besides, absent completely rebuilding society from the ground up -- likely impossible -- it'll help to have people who can bring working knowledge of what came before.
I hear what you're saying, a mass movement is what everyone wants. I don't think that's how you get there, at least not a mass movement that has revolutionary potential.
If you want a mass movement, the easiest way to get there is to go where the masses are and create a message that they will understand and can easily support.
If you want a mass movement that has revolutionary potential, you stick the flag in the ground and call people to you. You do it with resolve and courage, you don't go half way in between the masses and you, or anywhere except where it should go.
The potential of people to see and come to your revolutionary thinking is dependent on their consciousness and the way to build consciousness is through a combination of revolutionary theory, programs for the people, and the heightening of the contradictions of capital and the state.
You cannot take over the system from the inside. It must be destroyed, root and branch from the outside, and something else built in it's place, in which case, knowing the current system is a hindrance to building that potential future, not a bonus.
You want more people to come to a class consciousness or revolutionary consciousness? Do the work of organizing, teaching, and insurrection. As more people see the current system as broken, or are willing to think that there may be a better way, more will be willing to engage in and investigate things that they would have at some point called crazy.
If you want a mass movement that has revolutionary potential, you stick the flag in the ground and call people to you.
I see the theoretical appeal of this, but it's been tried for a long time in the U.S., and it hasn't worked. I'll support groups that keep trying it, but it doesn't make sense to put all of our eggs in that particular basket. We know we can build a mass movement in the electoral arena around baby leftist stuff like Medicare for All, and we know there's a pipeline from that to "The USSR Was Cool And Good, Actually." That's far too promising to abandon.
As for the feasibility of taking over the system from the inside, we really don't know what is or isn't possible, because to date no one has built a socialist government in the imperial core (or at best you have a sample size of one, depending on what you think of Imperial Russia). But we've seen leftists come to power through elections in the imperial periphery (look at South America), and we've seen leftists (or at least baby leftists) win elections in the U.S. (including higher and higher offices at more local levels). Again, that strikes me as far too promising to abandon.
We're not going to convince anyone of anything if they think we're a joke, and there's no quicker way to make someone think you're a joke than to start talking about how you hope to achieve a revolutionary change with zero participation in electoral politics. That makes you sound like some right-wing militia LARPer who thinks a popular rebellion against the tyrant Joe Biden is just around the corner. It's the quickest way to poison the well with ordinary people -- they might still humor you, but in the back of their mind they're thinking "this guy's a crank."
You have to get the person you're trying to convince to take you seriously, and for the people we're trying to convince, elections are serious politics. In addition to the other good reasons to put effort into electoralism, that point is enough on its own.
There were tons of things that I read when I was a baby leftist that I thought were batshit crazy. But hearing them made me start to investigate them, and on a lot of those things after investigating them, I came around to that way of thinking. If those writers had coddled me and worried more about seeming valid to their propagandized reader, then I never would have progressed or developed my understanding of the world.
Other reasons to not champion electoralism include:
When you use your influence to steer people back into the current political system, when that system inevitably doesn't work, you lose a bunch of those people too - they got burned out doing something that could not possibly work, and now they are not available to move on to the real work of organizing and fighting.
The only way to actually make change is outside of the political system, and any effort directed into the system will just be recouped or redirected. You should be funneling out anyone who is even possibly questioning things, not send them back in.
There are ways to talk about electoralism that don't make you a crank, just like there are ways to talk about capitalism or communism without coming off as a complete crank.
If your only goal is to pander to the lowest common denominator, you will literally never get anywhere.
You're right that hearing things that sound crazy leads some people to look into them, but I don't think that strategy works as well or as quickly as you might think. Leftists have been saying those things for decades, yet the left in the U.S. remains small. To me, that looks like a strategy that works great on some people (you and me) but falls flat with most. And we need a strategy with mass appeal -- that's not pandering to the lowest common denominator, that's a prerequisite for any mass movement.
I don't think we should steer people into the current political system -- as in, into electoral politics and nothing else. I think the best approach is to look at any possible way of moving the ball forward and pursue as many of those as possible, dividing our efforts according to whichever produces the best results (and electoral politics have at least pipelined a bunch of people to here and other openly-left spaces). It's electoralism AND everything else, not OR everything else. This is the easiest way to talk about electoralism (and raise issues with it, and present alternatives to it) without sounding like a crank.
But at some point we need to either take over the system from within or tear it apart from the outside. The latter is at least as unlikely as the former, and if the latter winds up being the only possible path forward it'll help to have people who know the machine so they know where to stick a wrench in it. Besides, absent completely rebuilding society from the ground up -- likely impossible -- it'll help to have people who can bring working knowledge of what came before.
I hear what you're saying, a mass movement is what everyone wants. I don't think that's how you get there, at least not a mass movement that has revolutionary potential.
If you want a mass movement, the easiest way to get there is to go where the masses are and create a message that they will understand and can easily support.
If you want a mass movement that has revolutionary potential, you stick the flag in the ground and call people to you. You do it with resolve and courage, you don't go half way in between the masses and you, or anywhere except where it should go.
The potential of people to see and come to your revolutionary thinking is dependent on their consciousness and the way to build consciousness is through a combination of revolutionary theory, programs for the people, and the heightening of the contradictions of capital and the state.
You cannot take over the system from the inside. It must be destroyed, root and branch from the outside, and something else built in it's place, in which case, knowing the current system is a hindrance to building that potential future, not a bonus.
You want more people to come to a class consciousness or revolutionary consciousness? Do the work of organizing, teaching, and insurrection. As more people see the current system as broken, or are willing to think that there may be a better way, more will be willing to engage in and investigate things that they would have at some point called crazy.
I see the theoretical appeal of this, but it's been tried for a long time in the U.S., and it hasn't worked. I'll support groups that keep trying it, but it doesn't make sense to put all of our eggs in that particular basket. We know we can build a mass movement in the electoral arena around baby leftist stuff like Medicare for All, and we know there's a pipeline from that to "The USSR Was Cool And Good, Actually." That's far too promising to abandon.
As for the feasibility of taking over the system from the inside, we really don't know what is or isn't possible, because to date no one has built a socialist government in the imperial core (or at best you have a sample size of one, depending on what you think of Imperial Russia). But we've seen leftists come to power through elections in the imperial periphery (look at South America), and we've seen leftists (or at least baby leftists) win elections in the U.S. (including higher and higher offices at more local levels). Again, that strikes me as far too promising to abandon.