From purity politics and not wanting to engage with other left leaning movements MLs are still at the start of the race. Pretty much everyone on lemmy is on the same page on many issues. Particularly on inequality and social welfare.
I always like to chime in that we should also not ignore elections and vote as left as we can in our areas. Doing so only adds credibility to our movement. If you can organize to show up and vote you can also do so for a protest or strike. Not to mention that the latter take far more effort, so skipping on an afternoon to vote shows low commitment. As such I find the remark about online progressivism to be rather funny.
Here’s the context
Fun seeing tankies rage at each other
Your approach of “voting blue no matter who” is only a recipe for failure. Furthermore, the idea that you can just vote for the most left candidate carries with it the presupposition that there exists one to begin with.
Voting itself should never be anything more than a means to an end. The end then is what? Promoting and organising one’s truly left and anti-capitalist party.
This isn’t to support Cowbee’s point or hypocrisy anyways
I never said blue no matter who. Its one reason why I do say we should have our own party. Voting blue is really just a last resort; one we often have to make because we make no effort in primaries with our own guy or trying to run an independent.
In a sense this is like a marathon. You cannot just show up there is a level of prep that goes into it. I still don’t think we need to be a major party. We could still take offices on local levels and even split enough votes to have some sway in state elections.
The thing is that many MLs have a self fulling prophecy here. They won’t participate at all and then of course get nothing; which they then use as evidence they should have done nothing.
I agree with Cowbee that voting alone is not going to bring about all the change we want to see. We will also need strikes to build labor rights again. I just find it to be an unforced error to ignore elections completely.
Where we disagree is the point of last resort. I don’t think you should vote at all unless you’re voting for a party that can be used for advancing a truly leftist and anti-capitalist manifesto. I don’t know what country you’re from but assuming you’re American, i would never vote for anything other than the Green party because they could genuinely become an impetus for leftist organising. In that sense I’m not voting merely to put a candidate in office, but to serve as an organising ground for anti-capitalism. Candidates like Mamdani or Sanders shouldn’t run under the democratic ballot, because they lull voters into a false sense of security which thinks genuine change can occur through the democrats.
The democrats have consistently shown their drive to shirk anything or person to the left of themselves—this is most evident in their hesitance to endorse Mamdani till it was undeniable he would end up winning the election. As a result, they should be regarded as right-wing collaborators which is especially salient and ostensible within the current state of affairs.
I myself am British and don’t vote anything other than Polanski’s green party and am especially with their recent surge pleased, but still remain heavily skeptical of their objectives. If they are using their platform to advance purely reformist capitalism, then count me out, but if they are genuinely interested in sensitising Britons to radical anti-capitalism, then I’m all for it.
Candidates like Mamdani or Sanders shouldn’t run under the democratic ballot, because they lull voters into a false sense of security which thinks genuine change can occur through the democrats.
That is a fare assessment I think.
I am American and a big part of getting the candidates one wants in the general election is to show up for primaries. That is where most of the “Mamdani” types will not get passed as few people show up for them. I do agree we should have our own third party; particularly to run at local levels were we can win. None the less we as leftists in the US keep refusing to actually make one. As such our last resort of being a faction inside the dem party becomes the only resort. MLs that keep discouraging people from voting also keep us in this negative feedback loop.
