This website is like 100% "don't vote" stuff, but shouldn't we? Like... if our DemSoc comrades are asking us to get out and vote, shouldn't we do so out of solidarity?
Someone explain to me why this is a bad thing. Cause i'm legit not seeing it.
YES you should have solidarity with demsocs. It is entirely fine to vote Biden to make a demsoc happy.
Ok, for the people in the back: who an individual votes for DOES. NOT. MATTER. Like objectively. Mathematically.
Voting isn't magic and not voting doesn't break a spell. It is absolute libshit to be like "a demsoc voting for La Riva is a comrade but Biden voting demsocs aren't comrades". There is zero difference between the two actions because it only matters in the world of bourgeois civic mythology. There is zero MATERIAL difference between the two actions.
Do demsocs organize? Yes. Do they effectively work on projects every socialist universally would prefer, unions, universal healthcare, green new deal? Yes
I'm an MLM and right now the only framework available for me to work in is the DSA. There is large overlap between democratic socialism and Marxism. Plus I would bet that the majority of future Marxists are right now demsocs.
You should express solidarity with demsocs. And if you vote for Biden, so fucking what? What kind of torturous lib fake socialists would judge you for that?
Do demsocs organize? Yes. Do they effectively work on projects every socialist universally would prefer, unions, universal healthcare, green new deal? Yes
More fundamentally, they're willing to seriously criticize capitalism. Whoever's willing to do that is a comrade. If you disagree with them on methods or policies, you try to have a real conversation with them about that, but you don't refuse to work with them.
What we need to watch out for are Elizabeth Warren types who feign leftist ideas but then reveal they're "capitalist to [their] bones" when pressed.
yeah that's extremely true. Voting for whatever reason actually is a huge and reliable signal for a lot of- I dunno- traits? Acculturation?
I've heard results where voting behavior is even heritable. Who you vote for might actually have something to say about your genes.
Voting is significant but not in the one way people insist it is. It's a huge signal though.
Even if they are telling us to vote Biden, vote PSL or Green if that's all that's available and then in conversation explain why. They need us to help pull them left.
The point of the "don't vote" discourse isn't to keep people from voting, it's to break the spell that voting is worthy of our attention and matters all that much. The truth is, vote, don't vote, whatever, but November 3rd, take real action.
it’s to break the spell that voting is worthy of our attention and matters all that much
Even if that's right, just saying "don't vote" is a poor way to communicate this.
Are we really putting Chavez and Corbyn in the same pool of political ideology? Number goes up liberals go up.
iirc Corbyn stated during the last election that he would implement "full Chavismo"
Chavez lead a revolutionary guard that is still in power 20 years later against numerous coup attempts by the U.S government including one earlier this year. I have solidarity with Corbyn, but come on.
Olaf Palme was quite different from Blair on both foreign and domestic policy. A better British counterpart to him ideologically would be someone like Tony Benn (but Benn was never PM so we cant discuss the theory/praxis distinction). Blair didn't fail to defend any achievements, he succeeded in giving a human face to Thatcherism and cementing a neoliberal consensus, and he was so successful in transforming Labour that the party's immune response to Corbyn was successful. Blairism is a departure from socdem ideology, not a weakened version of it.
I think we need to consider the fact that "actual" social democracy, which asks for a partial nationalization of the economy and sectoral collective bargaining and a cradle-to-grave welfare state is quite distinct from the third way liberalism the traditional socdem parties have come to embrace. The center-left parties have become revisionists of revisionism.
I think there are good reasons not to vote, like if you can't afford to miss work and can't get off, your vote is suppressed to the tune of hours-long lines, or if your health or that of a loved one would be at risk.
But otherwise, I do not see a reason not to go vote for Howie or Gloria. Voting is decidedly not praxis, but voting and taking direct action are not mutually exclusive. Voting does not preclude you from being totally disillusioned with electoralism. I went and voted for Howie, do I think it's going to solve any of my problems or make a difference in the world? No, but Republicans and (especially) Democrats are giving me an explicit opportunity to tell them to go fuck themselves; why shouldn't I take up that offer?
DemSoc isn't even a tendency, it's a category. You could count anarcho-communism, syndicalism, DeLeonism or even Eurocommunism as demsoc tendencies.
I am formally calling on our Dem Soc comrades to have solidarity with me, personally, and not vote for Biden
Yes. Also you should vote because there's things besides the president to vote for. As an example the Chicago DSA have 5 socialist alderpersons who do decent stuff, and have had success getting rid of bad judges and stuff.
The thing that this site sometimes forgets is that in the United States, full left wing communism isn’t really acceptable. A major shift of the Overton Window towards, say, social democracy allows potentially for Marxism-Leninism and Anarchism to enter the mainstream. Remember, in Russia, it was not the Tsar in power at the time of the October Revolution. It was the SocDems. It is easier for things to get done under SocDems and DemSocs
In the imperial core, there is no difference between a social democrat and a democratic socialist. They both want to build a welfare state out of the value from super-exploitation in the global south. At least socdems are honest about it.
Yes leftist solidarity most definitely includes DemSocs. But that doesn't mean I would vote for Biden just because they ask.
