“The white conservatives aren't friends of the Negro either, but they at least don't try to hide it. They are like wolves; they show their teeth in a snarl that keeps the Negro always aware of where he stands with them. But the white liberals are foxes, who also show their teeth to the Negro but pretend that they are smiling. The white liberals are more dangerous than the conservatives; they lure the Negro, and as the Negro runs from the growling wolf, he flees into the open jaws of the "smiling" fox.”
:malcolm-checks:
It really is unprecedented as I can't recall an example of an advanced capitalist society collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions without an actual threat to the Bourgeoisie posed by an organized Labor movement. Germany and Italy are textbook examples of Fascism as they both had failed proletarian revolutions and burgeoning socialist movements.
If there are no immediate threats to their power, why would the Bourgeoisie need to, in the first place, resort to Fascists (initially a populist, "grassroots" movement born out of the petit-bourgeoisie only to be hijacked by the haut-bourgeoisie for class collaboration)? Perhaps China and the "Chinese-sympathetic fifth column" could act as that substitute, but so far we've just seen vague platitudes towards "freedom vs authoritarianism". What would it take for them to completely drop liberal democratic pretenses altogether, given how thinly-veiled it is now?
I suppose it's all just conjecture when there are events we can't foresee, but I can't help but think about this every time I see the US sink further into decline. "Interesting times" indeed.
For me I think it's because the very DNA of the US is founded upon fascism and evangelical extremism (the pilgrims were extremists wanting to make a one religion state as history shows and were fully into murdering and supressing those that did not follow along). Add in the genocide of Native Americans, enslavement of Africans into a near industrial scale globalized slave trade system, the suppression of voting to only landed white males originally and tbh it's amazing we haven't gone full fascist earlier and I only think it's because there was a somewhat credible leftist threat in the early 1900s with truly militant labor taking inspiration from the Soviets as well as many leftist social movements continuing into the 80s. However as we see now the state itself has learned from these movements such as via the militarization of police, the NSA being part of the surveillance state, and how the FBI and CIA have legally and illegally involved themselves in sabotaging anything threatening the status quo.
It really is unprecedented
We're in unprecedented times. ICBMs, global supply chains, financialization, real time planetary communication, global warming, and of course late capitalism - This is, as far as I know, the first time that there's been nothing left that they can plunder and feed to the Imperial Core. This time it's not Labor threatening to collapse the system from within, it's the vacuum at the center of the Imperial core pulling everything down towards it.
They can't offer good jobs, they can't offer improving material conditions, they can't offer treats, they can't offer any kind of security or stability. All they've got left to motivate their hogs is the thrill of inflicting violence on someone who can't fight back.
Good comment, comrade, with the fact that the demonrats are the brakes on accelerationism into a wall of contradictions.
At risk of sounding like I'm defending CPUSA, this is the wrong reason to criticize them. If you're going to vote, chances are the best candidate on your ballot is a shitty liberal Democrat and you should vote for them because you shouldn't vote for the Republican. I'm not gonna shame anyone for not voting but pretending it is somehow superior to voting Democrat is absurd and abstention is at best just as bad as voting for the liberal.
Marx and Lenin both advocate for supporting the progressive forces in elections that communists are not competing in. The problem is that CPUSA doesn't do anything at all. They don't compete in elections, they almost never do non-electoral work. I assume their entire efforts are dedicated to party congresses and People's World. They submitted to the Democratic party in the 1930s and have been feckless and incompetent since. Their relation is not a temporary alliance but an utterly humiliating bowing down to Democratic party politics and erasing the memory of their own radical history.
CPUSA doesn’t do anything at all.
Jokes on you, they tell their members to phone bank for "the most electable" candidate, like Clinton over Obama, then Obama over McCain and Romney, then Clinton over Trump, and recently Biden over Bernie and Trump.
They even have an Illinois member of their central comittee, or whatever those liberals call it, helped run Obama's campaign to become Illinois senator.
The problem isn't that they don't do anything, that would honestly be preferable. But the leadership of the party act as the left-wing sheepdogs to the DNC and was in the process of liquidating the party until Bernie came along and gave the corpse of the Socialist movement a solid kick in the ass to jump-start it before getting his ass kicked himself.
Yeah that's bad I guess. I assumed the kept it to just telling their members/the public to vote Democrat. Actually dedicating resources to Democratic campaigns is a waste of time.
You're wrong on two counts
- "Voting democrat is the same as not voting at all and that there is no precedent for not voting". “Years and years ago it may have been an acceptable tactic to organize a people’s ticket of solid worker and revolutionary credentials and arm it with an ideal platform—only to be defeated by a mud-slinging opportunist-warlord, demonstrably inferior, scum-willing pig. Then pass out a pamphlet to explain to the people how the system has failed them, or speak it in Pershing Square—or, years ago, in the Campus Hall. Today it is not a tactic—it’s counterrevolution[…] The effect has been reformism rather than revolution. When any election is held it will fortify rather than destroy the credibility of the power brokers. When we participate in this election to win, instead of disrupt, we’re lending to its credibility and destroying our own. With all the factors of control over the electoral process in the hands of the minority ruling class, the people’s party can always be made to seem isolated, unimportant, even extraneous. If these tactics still give the appearance of revolution to some after decades of miscarriage, we are justified in replacing them as vanguard[…] Stupidity is not unknown to our long-range political policy makers. Participation in electoral politics organized by the enemy state—after recognizing that the whole process must be discredited as a conditional step into revolution, and particularly participation that tends to authenticate this process—is the opposite of revolution. It’s a tactic for the ultra-rightists. With history as a guide we could never make such monumental errors” (* Blood in My Eye * , p. 25-26, 28). Jackson, George. Blood in My Eye. 1972. Black Classic Press, 1996.
- "Marx and Lenin advocate for supporting progressive political parties in bourgeois elections that communists are NOT competing in." First, "shitty liberal Democrats" are not progressive. Second, as far as I have seen Marx and Lenin have only supported participation in bourgeois elections if a communist party already exists (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NX9_kXYMSck). Regardless, conditions in the US are entirely different.
And that's fine. Our individual votes or abstentions largely don't matter. There's nothing else for organizations to say beyond "vote blue" when there's nothing better though.
the long term effects of tactical voting are that the approval of your demographic stops being courted as no one has to work to get your vote so politicians stop trying to do things to get your approval.
it is the worst long term strategy in electoralism
