swampman
swampman
Dont Mess With Sucess
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After Bush's two narrow victories, Obama's ten-point spread seemed to me, and many other progressives, like a mandate from the people. What a difference four years of hindsight can make! Even the most deadpan Obama supporters I know are open and honest about who he turned out to be. His presidency used a facade of social liberalism to mask enormous advances in economic and political oppression, from drone strikes to domestic surveillance. It makes sense that he turned out to be another thug for capitalism. He's intimate with privilege; one of Obama's parents was a pioneer in microcredit who worked with USAID and Bank Rakyat, and the other got a masters degree in economics from Harvard. And you don't get the support of half of the two-party demon without having sold out.
The people I know who want me to vote for Obama will admit all these things because they're all irrelevant to what's happening on November 6th, the day Mitt Romney is fated to fuck off. And I agree with that point. Romney is such a sleaze that nobody even asks what his presidency would look like. We all know he'd run America like a company - specifically, Enron. So, the argument concludes, we need to re-elect Obama.
Wait a minute. Re-elect him? I'm not sure I feel that he was elected in the first place.
There's another fact that, today, I wish had been at the front of my mind in 2008. Obama had about 55% of the vote - but the voter turnout among eligible voters was about 62%. That means that only 34% of American citizens thought Obama would have been such a good president (or for those who embrace the logic of the current election - that McCain would have been such a bad one) that it was worth their time to cast a vote for him.
Only one third of the population. I wouldn't mind so much, except this means 38% of citizens didn't cast a vote for anyone. Now that's a mandate! In fact, Obama needed to get out the vote among 4.5 million abstainers just to tie with nobody.
We talk about the urgency of beating Romney - but the electoral college system being what it is, your vote is already a statistical nothing if you don't live in a swing state. In 2008, New York had 4.8 million votes for Obama and 2.8 million for McCain. All the Democrats in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan combined could have stayed home and Obama still would have squeaked by with an 80,000 vote margin. Political campaigns, in their infinite cynicism, know this and exploit it. (The idea of Obama visiting Staten Island seems... bizarre.)
I'm told apathy is how they get you - they disenfranchise the left by making them surrender the ballot box, right? Apathy is a feeling of powerlessness - and those who abstained in 2008 aren't powerless. They're the biggest political party in America, the party who understood that the process is not legitimate, and the choice between candidates is not meaningful.
Why would a member of the progressive left vote, anyway? There is no left candidate in this election! Well, that isn't true. There are third-party candidates with good qualities who will each win pieces of a percentage point. To vote for one of them is truly to throw your vote away, because that legitimizes the process. And voting isn't the only way to exercise political power. Compared to the history of resistance in America, from slave rebellions to class action sexual harassment suits to tree spiking, participation in the presidential election doesn't even count as political action. It's quite literally the least we can do.
In the coming election, don't vote. Ask your friends not to vote either. And have fun out there!!
The people I know who want me to vote for Obama will admit all these things because they're all irrelevant to what's happening on November 6th, the day Mitt Romney is fated to fuck off. And I agree with that point. Romney is such a sleaze that nobody even asks what his presidency would look like. We all know he'd run America like a company - specifically, Enron. So, the argument concludes, we need to re-elect Obama.
Wait a minute. Re-elect him? I'm not sure I feel that he was elected in the first place.
There's another fact that, today, I wish had been at the front of my mind in 2008. Obama had about 55% of the vote - but the voter turnout among eligible voters was about 62%. That means that only 34% of American citizens thought Obama would have been such a good president (or for those who embrace the logic of the current election - that McCain would have been such a bad one) that it was worth their time to cast a vote for him.
Only one third of the population. I wouldn't mind so much, except this means 38% of citizens didn't cast a vote for anyone. Now that's a mandate! In fact, Obama needed to get out the vote among 4.5 million abstainers just to tie with nobody.
We talk about the urgency of beating Romney - but the electoral college system being what it is, your vote is already a statistical nothing if you don't live in a swing state. In 2008, New York had 4.8 million votes for Obama and 2.8 million for McCain. All the Democrats in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan combined could have stayed home and Obama still would have squeaked by with an 80,000 vote margin. Political campaigns, in their infinite cynicism, know this and exploit it. (The idea of Obama visiting Staten Island seems... bizarre.)
I'm told apathy is how they get you - they disenfranchise the left by making them surrender the ballot box, right? Apathy is a feeling of powerlessness - and those who abstained in 2008 aren't powerless. They're the biggest political party in America, the party who understood that the process is not legitimate, and the choice between candidates is not meaningful.
Why would a member of the progressive left vote, anyway? There is no left candidate in this election! Well, that isn't true. There are third-party candidates with good qualities who will each win pieces of a percentage point. To vote for one of them is truly to throw your vote away, because that legitimizes the process. And voting isn't the only way to exercise political power. Compared to the history of resistance in America, from slave rebellions to class action sexual harassment suits to tree spiking, participation in the presidential election doesn't even count as political action. It's quite literally the least we can do.
In the coming election, don't vote. Ask your friends not to vote either. And have fun out there!!
Edited by discipline ()
dipshit420
dipshit420
political car tune
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Homework thread
swampman
swampman
Dont Mess With Sucess
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libelous_slander posted:Homework thread
Fuck yoU!!!!!!!!!!!!
gyrofry
gyrofry
Kurdt
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if I write in "none of the above" does that legitimize the process
babyhueypnewton
babyhueypnewton
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nothing pisses off liberals more than saying "i didn't vote". even more than saying "i voted romney" because you're refusing to participate in the system and therefore challenging their fundamental beliefs. i would recommend not voting for this reason alone, whether you vote or not makes no difference otherwise, nor does romney or obama winning make a whit of difference.
there is a moral critique of voting obama, because he has so much blood on his hands and romney is still innocent until proven guilty, but it's probably not worth explaining the fundamental principles of liberalism to a liberal.
there is a moral critique of voting obama, because he has so much blood on his hands and romney is still innocent until proven guilty, but it's probably not worth explaining the fundamental principles of liberalism to a liberal.
gyrofry
gyrofry
Kurdt
Post rating:
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The November presidential elections have spawned a multitude of reactions from both the so-called Marxist ‘Left’ and the strains of post-Anarchism and autonomism emerging from the self-liquidation of the Occupy movement. Positions range from an inside-outside strategy which calls to “vote against Romney” while simultaneously building a left pole both inside and outside Democratic Party, voting for a third party candidate, or organizing for an outright boycott. However, as Mao says, “one divides into two.”
The USAmerican “left” provides us with the false choice of outright liquidation into the Democratic Party or the similar erroneous choice of following spontaneous moral outrage in organizing a virtual boycott of the entire institution of bourgeois democracy, where participation amounts to saving face by sharing a link on Facebook.
I will briefly describe these two, seemingly opposing lines, and offer a third position on our tasks within developed bourgeois democracy from the standpoint of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
Beating A Dead Horse
Bill Fletcher and Carl Davidson, two long-time Marxists and labor activists central to developing an American-style ‘21st Century Socialism’, tote a decades old line on the strategic centrality of elections for the Left within bourgeois democracy.
Except in this election, they also make some sense. Bill Fletcher and Carl Davidson both believe a vote for Obama is necessary because the Romney campaign represents white revanchism. Outright white supremacy, not even couched in post-racial discourse, is thoroughly on display as Donald Trump launched a campaign to “uncover” Obama’s foreign birth and the Republican Party attempted to marginalize nationally oppressed at the voting booth through id checks.
While voting for Obama can be understood as a symbolic gesture against white supremacy –as Bill Fletcher notes, his critical support for Obama is not at all about his record, Fletcher and Davidson’s ‘inside-outside’ strategy is historically flawed. Fletcher and Davidson, as a corollary, promote the intersection of an insurgent civil society and bourgeois democracy through the creation of mass-based left-wing electoral formations to run progressive Democrats for office, in the hope of eventually challenging the Party duopoly.
This strategy has never worked and has only led to the liquidation of Marxist-Leninist forces in the United $nakes, who, openly (and often rightfully) fearful of ultra-leftism, resorted to disillusion instead, citing isolation from the working masses and the need to “meet people where they’re at.”
We’re Pissed Off!
A seemingly opposed line calls for a complete boycott of bourgeois democratic institutions. Their idea of a boycott is a Facebook campaign in which you register your moral outrage. Taking the Occupy Movement, the convergence of primarily petit-bourgeois students and professionals fearful of re-proletarianization as a starting point, these forces make the assumption that the Occupy Movement itself is politics at a distance from the state.
And from this summation, developed through the work of Alain Badiou, only see the proliferation of communes and Occupy-related forms as the practical work of building a movement to overthrow the the state and it’s institutions.
But, in effect, they only substitute voluntarism for liquidationism (itself a form of liquidation) and instead of addressing bourgeois democracy, ignore it for the “Event”, subjectivization, communization, or whatever term one wishes to use for the radicalization of the individual qua collective. However, they neglect, too, that Alain Badiou states it is sometimes necessary to reinforce the state while enacting a political distance from it.
The Third Position
The “boycott the system” populist line is not only totally vapid, but, equates bourgeois democracy entirely with Capital, as if politics do not shape economics co-terminously but that the entire system is determined by “material circumstances” and the conspiracies of the imperialist bourgeoisie alone.
Yet, what is Democracy? Democracy comes from the term ‘Demos’ (or the rabble), and as Plato begrudgingly admits, the only qualification of democracy is that there are no qualifications. However, engaging bourgeois democracy requires a substantial assortment of qualifications. You can’t be a prisoner. You can’t be on parole. You may need proper identification and so on. What the “boycott” line avoids is national oppression.
While I agree that our focus should never be on handing Obama victory in 2012, there should be massive mobilization in regards to defending and enhancing the democratic rights of the excluded and nationally oppressed. Communists should intervene in reforms which decriminalize nationally oppressed youth, even if this activism only culminates in a massive turn-out at the voting booth.
For example, our “pure” Communist friends would have abstained from voting on the question of decriminalizing marijuana, even though this directly contributes to the struggle against settler white supremacy. I’ll call it: Racism. While the right opportunist line calls for liquidation, the left opportunist line envisions a petit-bourgeois utopian movement which “counts each person as one” and claims “everyone who is here is from here” without the understanding that it isn’t simply ‘the system’ which counts people for not, but, the very popular classes themselves who also enforce national oppression. If Bill Fletcher and Carl Davidson epitomize revisionism, the opposed side represents the worst strains of national chauvinism covered-up in book worship.
We’re Not There Yet
There is not yet a comprehensive, non-reformist strategy which takes into account the contradictory character of bourgeois democracy, that, while supposedly requiring no qualifications, enacts qualifications for it’s very existence. Yet, the future of the Communist movement in the United $nakes requires walking that tight rope between reform and revolution. The failure of articulating a centrist position on this question which simultaneously strives for a people’s war (or insurrection – sue me) to enact the dictatorship of the proletariat while forcing bourgeois democracy to be bourgeois is disconcerting and reveals our continued state of overall disarray.
Away with false choices: Let’s make the hard choice of building a strategy, which can really unite the proletariat with the vanguard and rally the masses around the proletariat.
The USAmerican “left” provides us with the false choice of outright liquidation into the Democratic Party or the similar erroneous choice of following spontaneous moral outrage in organizing a virtual boycott of the entire institution of bourgeois democracy, where participation amounts to saving face by sharing a link on Facebook.
I will briefly describe these two, seemingly opposing lines, and offer a third position on our tasks within developed bourgeois democracy from the standpoint of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
Beating A Dead Horse
Bill Fletcher and Carl Davidson, two long-time Marxists and labor activists central to developing an American-style ‘21st Century Socialism’, tote a decades old line on the strategic centrality of elections for the Left within bourgeois democracy.
Except in this election, they also make some sense. Bill Fletcher and Carl Davidson both believe a vote for Obama is necessary because the Romney campaign represents white revanchism. Outright white supremacy, not even couched in post-racial discourse, is thoroughly on display as Donald Trump launched a campaign to “uncover” Obama’s foreign birth and the Republican Party attempted to marginalize nationally oppressed at the voting booth through id checks.
While voting for Obama can be understood as a symbolic gesture against white supremacy –as Bill Fletcher notes, his critical support for Obama is not at all about his record, Fletcher and Davidson’s ‘inside-outside’ strategy is historically flawed. Fletcher and Davidson, as a corollary, promote the intersection of an insurgent civil society and bourgeois democracy through the creation of mass-based left-wing electoral formations to run progressive Democrats for office, in the hope of eventually challenging the Party duopoly.
This strategy has never worked and has only led to the liquidation of Marxist-Leninist forces in the United $nakes, who, openly (and often rightfully) fearful of ultra-leftism, resorted to disillusion instead, citing isolation from the working masses and the need to “meet people where they’re at.”
We’re Pissed Off!
A seemingly opposed line calls for a complete boycott of bourgeois democratic institutions. Their idea of a boycott is a Facebook campaign in which you register your moral outrage. Taking the Occupy Movement, the convergence of primarily petit-bourgeois students and professionals fearful of re-proletarianization as a starting point, these forces make the assumption that the Occupy Movement itself is politics at a distance from the state.
And from this summation, developed through the work of Alain Badiou, only see the proliferation of communes and Occupy-related forms as the practical work of building a movement to overthrow the the state and it’s institutions.
But, in effect, they only substitute voluntarism for liquidationism (itself a form of liquidation) and instead of addressing bourgeois democracy, ignore it for the “Event”, subjectivization, communization, or whatever term one wishes to use for the radicalization of the individual qua collective. However, they neglect, too, that Alain Badiou states it is sometimes necessary to reinforce the state while enacting a political distance from it.
The Third Position
The “boycott the system” populist line is not only totally vapid, but, equates bourgeois democracy entirely with Capital, as if politics do not shape economics co-terminously but that the entire system is determined by “material circumstances” and the conspiracies of the imperialist bourgeoisie alone.
Yet, what is Democracy? Democracy comes from the term ‘Demos’ (or the rabble), and as Plato begrudgingly admits, the only qualification of democracy is that there are no qualifications. However, engaging bourgeois democracy requires a substantial assortment of qualifications. You can’t be a prisoner. You can’t be on parole. You may need proper identification and so on. What the “boycott” line avoids is national oppression.
While I agree that our focus should never be on handing Obama victory in 2012, there should be massive mobilization in regards to defending and enhancing the democratic rights of the excluded and nationally oppressed. Communists should intervene in reforms which decriminalize nationally oppressed youth, even if this activism only culminates in a massive turn-out at the voting booth.
For example, our “pure” Communist friends would have abstained from voting on the question of decriminalizing marijuana, even though this directly contributes to the struggle against settler white supremacy. I’ll call it: Racism. While the right opportunist line calls for liquidation, the left opportunist line envisions a petit-bourgeois utopian movement which “counts each person as one” and claims “everyone who is here is from here” without the understanding that it isn’t simply ‘the system’ which counts people for not, but, the very popular classes themselves who also enforce national oppression. If Bill Fletcher and Carl Davidson epitomize revisionism, the opposed side represents the worst strains of national chauvinism covered-up in book worship.
We’re Not There Yet
There is not yet a comprehensive, non-reformist strategy which takes into account the contradictory character of bourgeois democracy, that, while supposedly requiring no qualifications, enacts qualifications for it’s very existence. Yet, the future of the Communist movement in the United $nakes requires walking that tight rope between reform and revolution. The failure of articulating a centrist position on this question which simultaneously strives for a people’s war (or insurrection – sue me) to enact the dictatorship of the proletariat while forcing bourgeois democracy to be bourgeois is disconcerting and reveals our continued state of overall disarray.
Away with false choices: Let’s make the hard choice of building a strategy, which can really unite the proletariat with the vanguard and rally the masses around the proletariat.
babyhueypnewton
babyhueypnewton
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i didnt read all of that but is that the FRSO statement advocating everyone vote for obama? the same FRSO that obama tried to destroy with arrests and harassment? the cowardice of the 1st world left knows no bounds, they'll even beg for more while getting beaten.
that whole saga was a highlight of leftist trainspotting, close but not quite at the level of that crimethinc meeting that turned into a fight with queer black anarchists or something (still the funniest thing ever)
that whole saga was a highlight of leftist trainspotting, close but not quite at the level of that crimethinc meeting that turned into a fight with queer black anarchists or something (still the funniest thing ever)
gyrofry
gyrofry
Kurdt
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no its from signalfire
Crow
Crow
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It's one thing that either candidate wins the election with 50%+ of voter turnout and then imposes austerity, which is inevitable. It's another thing if they win with barely 30% voter turnout. The conditions will be favorable! Rahowa! It is right to rebel!
getfiscal
getfiscal
Mike Nelson here.
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this thread is all pretty ethnocentric. was chavez versus capriles a bogus bourgeois election with nothing at stake? why act like we can make a universal out of a tactic in a particular situation? the same election has hundreds of other offices at stake, surely some of those matter. why focus only on obama?
guidoanselmi
guidoanselmi
meet me in st louis
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didnt read op - voting obama, but thanks
~one love~ obama 2012 ~
~one love~ obama 2012 ~
swampman
swampman
Dont Mess With Sucess
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getfiscal posted:this thread is all pretty ethnocentric. was chavez versus capriles a bogus bourgeois election with nothing at stake? why act like we can make a universal out of a tactic in a particular situation? the same election has hundreds of other offices at stake, surely some of those matter. why focus only on obama?
i specifically say you should vote for candidates who are actually leftist, clearly chavez versus capriles is far different & had great turnout
karphead
karphead
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this forum is not even capable of polls (i'm guessing). Disgusting.
getfiscal
getfiscal
Mike Nelson here.
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swampman posted:i specifically say you should vote for candidates who are actually leftist, clearly chavez versus capriles is far different & had great turnout
sorry i was talking about the anti-humanist barbarian huey prolapse newton
Goethestein
Goethestein
Nippon
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i would like one day to write a serious essay about all the ways that american democacy is a neutered sham
getfiscal
getfiscal
Mike Nelson here.
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Goethestein posted:i would like one day to write a serious essay about all the ways that american democacy is a neutered sham
goat chomsky
Goethestein
Goethestein
Nippon
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one of the things that strikes me as interesting that nobody considers a problem is the fact that both the parties have been in existence for over 150 years, have never lost a presidential election, have never been seriously challenged in over a century, and freely invert both ideology and territorial control rapidly without any seeming contradiction
getfiscal
getfiscal
Mike Nelson here.
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Goethestein posted:have never been seriously challenged in over a century
getfiscal
getfiscal
Mike Nelson here.
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weird, a bunch of rich white people aren't voting socialist? must be something wrong with how the votes are counted. yeah totally that and not the fact that americans are right-wing assholes.
Goethestein
Goethestein
Nippon
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im rereading about the ross perot campaign and lol hes just a less libertarian ronpaul
getfiscal
getfiscal
Mike Nelson here.
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Goethestein posted:im rereading about the ross perot campaign and lol hes just a less libertarian ronpaul
stegosaurus
stegosaurus
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my dear grandma, rip, voted perot. so he cant be all bad
gyrofry
gyrofry
Kurdt
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lol george wallace got 13.5% of the popular vote in 1968. vive l'esprit de soixante-huit
Goethestein
Goethestein
Nippon
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my mom voted perot in 1992. good mom
Ironicwarcriminal
Ironicwarcriminal
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babyhueypnewton posted:there is a moral critique of voting obama, because he has so much blood on his hands and romney is still innocent until proven guilty, but it's probably not worth explaining the fundamental principles of liberalism to a liberal.
this is the same reason why it's more ethical to vote for the BNP than for Labor in the UK, the BNP never slaughtered thousands of people. Most people i've articulated this concept to don't appreciate it
Anyway, we have to vote in Australia so i dunno
Ironicwarcriminal
Ironicwarcriminal
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gyrofry posted:lol george wallace got 13.5% of the popular vote in 1968. vive l'esprit de soixante-huit
Unfortunately the only 'leftist' candidate who got anywhere near that number was trot scumfuck Eugene Debs
prikryl
prikryl
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Ironicwarcriminal posted:trot scumfuck Eugene Debs
mods plz namechange
Ironicwarcriminal
Ironicwarcriminal
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Thousands of people will have to pay a fine of $70 after low voter turnout in some of Melbourne's biggest municipalities.
Based on the most recent figures, fewer than half of those in Port Phillip — which has long been mired in bitter political infighting over the future of the St Kilda Triangle — cast their ballot.
In Yarra, just 52 per cent turned out to vote, in Stonnington it was 56 per cent and in Moreland it was about 64 per cent.
So lame, $70 for not voting, and this is for local government councillors who just deal with collecting trash and go on sister city junkets to Europe
DeleuzerAndRetardi
DeleuzerAndRetardi
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Ironicwarcriminal posted:babyhueypnewton posted:there is a moral critique of voting obama, because he has so much blood on his hands and romney is still innocent until proven guilty, but it's probably not worth explaining the fundamental principles of liberalism to a liberal.
this is the same reason why it's more ethical to vote for the BNP than for Labor in the UK, the BNP never slaughtered thousands of people. Most people i've articulated this concept to don't appreciate it
that was a decent impression of baby huey b newton but it needs more lacan imo
aerdil
aerdil
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Crow
Crow
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aerdil posted:
deadken
deadken
penitent
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Ironicwarcriminal posted:Anyway, we have to vote in Australia so i dunno
spoil ur ballot
Ironicwarcriminal
Ironicwarcriminal
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deadken posted:Ironicwarcriminal posted:
Anyway, we have to vote in Australia so i dunno
spoil ur ballot
I generally do this, especially for council elections, but they’re always on a Saturday and I can’t tell you how much I resent being Forced By The State to go to some school hall on a Saturday to vote
Lykourgos
Lykourgos
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I don't vote, but the state makes me go watch other people vote. the ultimate hardship~
swampman
swampman
Dont Mess With Sucess
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Dont encourage australians to civil disobey by writing a candidate in, we cant risk them electing Hitler.
gyrofry
gyrofry
Kurdt
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heres a surprisingly tolerable article about this from a liberal trot eichmann scumfuck perspective
http://www.salon.com/2012/10/27/the_progressive_case_against_obama/
http://www.salon.com/2012/10/27/the_progressive_case_against_obama/
Ironicwarcriminal
Ironicwarcriminal
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gyrofry posted:tolerable........trot..................................................................................fuck
[account deactivated]
djbk
djbk
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i've never voted for a winner since 2000, voted for jack in the box, ron paul, and this year i'm thinking jimmy johns
alternatively your essay needs more fucks and destroys
alternatively your essay needs more fucks and destroys
TG
TG
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i couldnt think of a good protest writein so i just left it blank and mailed it in. im sure some unscrupulous county official will fill it in for me