You'd sooner build a movement with a breakfast program than an electoral campaign, but when the left does a breakfast program the cops kill the people behind it. When the left tries a federal electoral campaign, it fails because first past the post incentivizes strategic voting which chokes any third party in the crib.
The remaining paths to power are somewhere in-between, using labor organization and indigenous resistance against colonization as the main points to struggle over and build the movement; the degree to which national electoral politics factors into the left's strategy is pretty limited, but we've always been trying our best to contest local elections where it can actually make a difference. The influence of surveillance on these efforts means that they have to remain decentralized and have limits as to what they can do on the ground without kneecapping themselves. So, yea, there actually is a movement, there are just some important structural forces that preempt the separated pieces of the movement from coalescing beyond where they currently exist. Overcoming those forces requires us to reach more people with the existing movement, and I don't think selling them on voting for a losing candidate for symbolic reasons is particularly effective.
I spent about 2 decades trying. The idea that if you offer this up then you’ll get some groundswell of support just isn’t realistic in America.
We are a nation of people sold hyperindividualism and the goodness of capitalism and greed from birth. People routinely vote against their own interests in every forum imaginable. I tried to organize the people I work with to demand a pittance of compensation for what amounts to mandatory uncompensated work and the overwhelming reply was people going “I don’t know, it’s not so bad, I don’t want to rock the boat”
America is a nation where if you stay in the good graces of the capitalists you can have a somewhat nice life and if you don’t then enjoy the fucking gutter. In the late stage capitalism the exploitation and propaganda is so all consuming that most people spend the vast majority of their hours slaving away and then with what little time they have left they numb themselves with social media, booze, and drugs. The capitalists designed a system to break people’s spirits, to convince them they could do nothing to change them, and instill in their hearts the idea that maintaining it is law & order and these maniacs fucking crave that like none other.
In the absence of being able to make any meaningful change to the conditions they find themselves in they dedicate themselves to othering and hating the others, blaming them for their lousy lot in life because the capital class tells them to. They grab for whatever semblance of control they can find, becoming petty dictators at work and home and their HOA boards. They turn their rage at a system that crushes their dreams on the service workers around them.
This is not a land of solidarity.
If you think that a movement would be some clarion call that would awake these people from their slumber and suddenly the ranks would swell with people ready to right the injustices they suffer. I’ve got some bad fucking news for you. You can ask these fucking morons if it’s fair that they spend all day making the products, delivering the products, generating all the value, and the ceo gets paid more in that day then they will make in a year and they stare back at you and earnestly say “yes, his skill set is in greater demand”
The capital class played the long game, they crushed every speck of solidarity, they filled every bit of media and education with their propaganda, they have waged a half century long project to break the people and they have succeeded.
This is not to say that the ship can’t be turned, but it won’t happen overnight. It is naive to think that some well articulated alternative can undo multiple generations of intensive indoctrination. This is what defeat in a class war looks like, we might be able to make it out of this, but it won’t be easy.
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You'd sooner build a movement with a breakfast program than an electoral campaign, but when the left does a breakfast program the cops kill the people behind it. When the left tries a federal electoral campaign, it fails because first past the post incentivizes strategic voting which chokes any third party in the crib.
The remaining paths to power are somewhere in-between, using labor organization and indigenous resistance against colonization as the main points to struggle over and build the movement; the degree to which national electoral politics factors into the left's strategy is pretty limited, but we've always been trying our best to contest local elections where it can actually make a difference. The influence of surveillance on these efforts means that they have to remain decentralized and have limits as to what they can do on the ground without kneecapping themselves. So, yea, there actually is a movement, there are just some important structural forces that preempt the separated pieces of the movement from coalescing beyond where they currently exist. Overcoming those forces requires us to reach more people with the existing movement, and I don't think selling them on voting for a losing candidate for symbolic reasons is particularly effective.
I spent about 2 decades trying. The idea that if you offer this up then you’ll get some groundswell of support just isn’t realistic in America.
We are a nation of people sold hyperindividualism and the goodness of capitalism and greed from birth. People routinely vote against their own interests in every forum imaginable. I tried to organize the people I work with to demand a pittance of compensation for what amounts to mandatory uncompensated work and the overwhelming reply was people going “I don’t know, it’s not so bad, I don’t want to rock the boat”
America is a nation where if you stay in the good graces of the capitalists you can have a somewhat nice life and if you don’t then enjoy the fucking gutter. In the late stage capitalism the exploitation and propaganda is so all consuming that most people spend the vast majority of their hours slaving away and then with what little time they have left they numb themselves with social media, booze, and drugs. The capitalists designed a system to break people’s spirits, to convince them they could do nothing to change them, and instill in their hearts the idea that maintaining it is law & order and these maniacs fucking crave that like none other.
In the absence of being able to make any meaningful change to the conditions they find themselves in they dedicate themselves to othering and hating the others, blaming them for their lousy lot in life because the capital class tells them to. They grab for whatever semblance of control they can find, becoming petty dictators at work and home and their HOA boards. They turn their rage at a system that crushes their dreams on the service workers around them.
This is not a land of solidarity.
If you think that a movement would be some clarion call that would awake these people from their slumber and suddenly the ranks would swell with people ready to right the injustices they suffer. I’ve got some bad fucking news for you. You can ask these fucking morons if it’s fair that they spend all day making the products, delivering the products, generating all the value, and the ceo gets paid more in that day then they will make in a year and they stare back at you and earnestly say “yes, his skill set is in greater demand”
The capital class played the long game, they crushed every speck of solidarity, they filled every bit of media and education with their propaganda, they have waged a half century long project to break the people and they have succeeded.
This is not to say that the ship can’t be turned, but it won’t happen overnight. It is naive to think that some well articulated alternative can undo multiple generations of intensive indoctrination. This is what defeat in a class war looks like, we might be able to make it out of this, but it won’t be easy.
Good post