• slugbones@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    7
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    1 year ago

    “Go Vote!” Rings more and more hollow every day we have watch the country crumble. I am begging you to think outside the box of electoral politics because it is where dreams go to die.

    Nobody voted to put kids to work at meatpacking plants and we will almost assuredly not be allowed to vote on a solution but there are children suffering dangerous jobs right now. The capitalists that run the country do not care about your votes they care about profits and they have so many more resources than us to tip things in their favor.

    Voting has not and never will be enough. It is literally the bare minimum you can do and you should not pat yourself on the back for it.

    • CannotSleep420@lemmygrad.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      1 year ago

      Bourgeois democracy, although a great historical advance in comparison with medievalism, always remains, and under capitalism is bound to remain, restricted, truncated, false and hypocritical, a paradise for the rich and a snare and deception for the exploited, for the poor.

      –Lenin

    • argv_minus_one@beehaw.org
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      I am begging you to think outside the box of electoral politics because it is where dreams go to die.

      I assure you I’ve thought long and hard about this.

      Nobody voted to put kids to work at meatpacking plants

      Ah, but they did. Politicians talk about doing that and people still vote for them. That’s the whole problem.

      Voting has not and never will be enough. It is literally the bare minimum you can do and you should not pat yourself on the back for it.

      The alternative is violent revolution. If you’ll study history, you’ll observe that most violent revolutions result in either failure (in which case the revolutionaries are all executed) or a brutal dictatorship that no one can meaningfully challenge (see Mao, Stalin, etc). Very rarely does violent revolution have a result that could be reasonably called positive. The 1776 revolution in what would become the United States is a historical anomaly, and there is no good reason to believe that doing it again would have the same positive result.

      • slugbones@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        If you think I was trying to tell you to pick up a weapon and charge at the govt you truly haven’t thought about anything beyond the box.

          • slugbones@lemmy.ml
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            1 year ago

            Form a labor union, join a leftist org, start a mutual aid network for your community. Literally ANYHING beyond just mindlessly yelling about voting.

            • argv_minus_one@beehaw.org
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              2
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              edit-2
              1 year ago

              It’s pretty hard to form a labor union as long as it remains legal to just fire the entire workplace’s staff and replace them all, and that will remain legal as long as people keep voting for anti-union politicians.

              Leftist organizations and mutual aid networks already exist in good number, and that’s great, but it doesn’t put good politicians in office. The one and only thing that decides who’s in office is voting.

              I would like to remind you that if voting didn’t do anything, no one would be trying to stop people from voting.

              • slugbones@lemmy.ml
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                3
                arrow-down
                1
                ·
                1 year ago

                You are literally just making excuses for doing nothing… exactly as I thought. If voting changed anything they would make it illegal.

                • argv_minus_one@beehaw.org
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  2
                  arrow-down
                  1
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  1 year ago

                  They’ve been trying. Various voter-suppression campaigns have been the subject of news reports for over a decade now. By your own reasoning, therefore, voting must be effective.

                  • slugbones@lemmy.ml
                    link
                    fedilink
                    arrow-up
                    1
                    arrow-down
                    1
                    ·
                    1 year ago

                    Those voter suppression tactics are 2 capitalist parties arguing over whose rich donors are gonna get kickbacks. Not any meaningful change.