How could you possibly disagree on a single point with an anti-Soviet 91 year old
The struggle session about whether we should spend time arguing over whether voting is good or bad shall now commence.
Shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up
Also ignore his other points about American war crimes and manufacturing consent.
Noam Chomsky = Voting good
What is the material/strategic benefit to not voting? We're adults enough to acknowledge that voting isn't a valid strategy to save us. But it is a valid tactic for helping other strategies. It be nice if we didn't have to worry about the president giving the go ahead for cops to kill Union organizers.
Ballots provide the public mandate for the state to persist as it is constituted. A state with 80% voter participation appears much more legitimate than a state with 35% voter participation. It is a lot harder for an illegitimate regime to defend their right to power when it rests on 51% of the 35% of the country which voted. If your power rests on the support of 18% of the country, you are a blatant dictatorship.
I still voted, but everything above the municipal level was write-in or third party. I feel strongly that we should not inflate the mandate of these oligarchical institutions.
I get caught in it too, but you're right: not voting isnt as big a statement as we hope it to be. Pushing back against the "you have no choice but to vote biden" is fun but not incredibly helpful
Not voting encourages democrats to adopt our policies to get our votes.
You’re joking right ?
Edit: sorry I don’t mean to be rude, I guess I just mean to ask how you think not voting get democrats to adopt more leftist policies?
If democrats know the left will vote for them regardless they have no reason to appeal to us.
I'm not saying it's very plausible but neither is thinking you're accomplishing anything by voting
In my opinion, it would pan out exactly opposite. Dems would compensate by shifting policies to the right to capture more of the moderate Republican vote, which is seen as a more reliable voter base anyways... and aligns with their own economic interests better
Truly it’s the radical equivalent of “push them left”. The fact is the Democrats are never going to appeal to the left beyond platitudes and shaming as they don’t want what we want. Not voting for them isn’t going to teach them a lesson, they will find every excuse to go more conservative no matter what.
Whatever the outcome the real fight starts if the Dems take power. Every single person on the left needs to be working overtime to show people the Dems are the real roadblock to change.
I see no reason to think they'll ever try to appeal to leftists instead of just chasing the mythical swing voter who's voted in every election for the past 40 years
Maybe. I don't live in a swing state so I don't really have to care.
Vote local, skip whatever shitty options you have for national. If there's a socialist/anarchist/comrade/leftist on your ballot, absolutely go out there and fucking vote for them.
i always jerk off to chomsky to my lib friends but loathe him secretly
I like when they find a quote of a revolutionary saying "its good when a bunch of people vote for the communist party because it builds awareness" or whatever but then imply that means to vote biden
Wasn't it Chomsky who described US politics as a spectator sport? I swear i read chapters by him where he was saying that voting essentialyl just decides which brick hits you in the face.
Engels had the same position as Chomsky :)
"The bourgeoisie cannot win political power for itself nor give this political power constitutional and legal forms without at the same time putting weapons into the hands of the proletariat. As distinct from the old Estates, distinguished by birth, it must proclaim human rights, as distinct from the guilds, it must proclaim freedom of trade and industry, as distinct from the tutelage of the bureaucracy, it must proclaim freedom and self-government. To be consistent, it must therefore demand universal, direct suffrage, freedom of the press, association and assembly and the suspension of all special laws directed against individual classes of the population. And there is nothing else that the proletariat needs to demand from it. It cannot require that the bourgeoisie should cease to be a bourgeoisie, but it certainly can require that it practices its own principles consistently. But the proletariat will thereby also acquire all the weapons it needs for its ultimate victory. With freedom of the press and the right of assembly and association it will win universal suffrage, and with universal, direct suffrage, in conjunction with the above tools of agitation, it will win everything else.
It is therefore in the interests of the workers to support the bourgeoisie in its struggle against all reactionary elements, as long as it remains true to itself. Every gain which the bourgeoisie extracts from reaction, eventually benefits the working class, if that condition is fulfilled. And the German workers were quite correct in their instinctive appreciation of this. Everywhere, in every German state, they have quite rightly voted for the most radical candidates who had any prospect of getting in."
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/02/12.htm?fbclid=IwAR11eYPsh2tNuzxO97zztPlicSn3fLlIYVVlRC7aNeBSonYUHEn5NDyRUkg
