Dividing the left wouldn’t matter if we used a more representative voting system. One that gave people the freedom to vote how they want and still have their vote count if their preference didn’t win. Voters should be able to transfer their vote how they wish and stay represented. To have their vote count no matter what.
Why don’t blue states switch away from First-past-the-post voting? Republicans aren’t in power, they could easily make this change. Don’t they believe in democracy? Or do prefer this undemocratic hostage situation that hands the republicans power repeatedly?
Electoral Reform Videos
First Past The Post voting (What most states use now)
Videos on alternative electoral systems
Alternative voting systems have in practice been proven useless, whether in South Korea, Japan, Australia, and many other capitalist dictatorship countries that use it. It might make bribery a bit more expensive, since there are more candidates to buy off, and more political advertising necessary, but it hasn’t fixed anything.
The root problem is capital standing above political power. And that can’t be undone using it’s own platform.
“you’re hurting your cause!!” whines liberal who hates both you and your cause
I started asking questions whenever some right winger would start in with the whole “here’s what you’re doing wrong” routine. “And you think this will help the far left succeed?” or “So you believe that’s the best way to get people to vote for the leftist candidate?” Just messing around since they are obviously not providing legitimate feedback.
In their moral justification, the argument of the lesser evil has played a prominent role. If you are confronted with two evils, the argument runs, it is your duty to opt for the lesser one, whereas it is irresponsible to refuse to choose altogether. Its weakness has always been that those who choose the lesser evil forget quickly that they chose evil.
-Hannah Arendt
Edit: replied to the wrong comment
I think everyone should pick the best person for the position. But if the only two realistic options are evil and lesser evil. Then I think it’s better if the lesser evil wins than the more evil one.
As seen in last US election, voting for the ideal candidate meant the worse candidate won.
Stop acting like only having two political parties is the only way we can do things. I invite you to step outside the box you are trapped thinking in.
I don’t think we should only have two parties. But with FPTP voting that’s what happens. You need to change to ranked voting system.
Also I think everyone should vote for who they want. Unless it means the worse candidate wins… in FPTP that’s what happens. You need to vote strategically.
It’s amazing to me that you could read that quote, and your take, unironically, is exactly the sentiment that Arendt was warning about.
You could easily argue that the guys constantly chosing the lesser evil brought that catastrophic discourse shift over us, that made the lesser evil of this election worse than the worse evil of former elections.
I am not from the US, so my insight there might be limited. But here in Germany I started to hate the lesser evil fraction so much. The lesser evil here is now openly representing far right ideologies, activley supporting genocide, made it borderline illegal to critizise genocid, killing refugees at the borders, deporting people into regions were they face immediate lethal threats, initiating harsh social cuts while demonizing the poor and are discussing cooperation with open fascists. They are constantly normalizing open fascism, everday a little more. If Germany slights into fascism again, it will be mostly the lesser evils fault.
Fuck the lesser evil. They became more dangerous than the fascist themselves in many respects.
It was also Hindenburg and von Papen back in the 1930s, the lesser evil, who was paving Hitler the way to power.
edit: Lol, I startet this meaning to write 2-3 sentences, seems the lesser evil caused a writing frenzy in me.
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We got to where we are because we’ve been choosing the lesser evil, for far longer than 20 years
If liberals hadn’t been so content with choosing evil, we’d have avoided the last 50 years of backsliding.
This whole theory has been 100% proven by the current shitshow here in Germany. Everything I wrote has already happened and fascists much, much worse than Trump are currently the first among polls in Germany as a result.
And disproven by the shitshow in the US.
Oh my, if you had stopped voting the lesser evil 20 years ago, you’d not have Trump now. Also, asshole move to derail the discussion by getting impertinent “brain dead” and starting to downvote, simply because you disagree (blocking you for that, as it annoys me).
Factually wrong. We would have had Al Gore instead of Bush, if people voted for lesser evils. We wouldn’t have had Nixon or Regan if people voted for lesser evils. Don’t comment on our politics when you know nothing of them.
“Erm acturally thats tankie propaganda, dont you know our Good Guy Candidate™ isnt Fascist he’s actually Fascist Lite™ which is totally different. Yes he’s going to blindly support genocide, yes he’s going to support imperialism, and no he wont do a damn thing to help the workers, but you see these silly graphs we made up say the economy is going and therefore our guy is qualified. Now blindly support the candidate and the party or I’ll downvote you and call you a Tankie or a Russian bot.”
- Average .world user
Good thing they lost the elections then, right?
I’m not sure I understand what point you’re trying to make.
Democrats are not the left. It’s bad that they lose so often. If they weren’t so clearly beholden to their corporate donors they would win more.
Democrats are center right these days.
Always have been.
I don’t think this is correct. There was a marked post-Reagan shift to the right. Sure, they were never socialists, but decades ago they at least tried to do something for the working class.
I’d argue them being centre-left between 1929 and 1973, from the start of the great depression up until the petrodollar agreement and Bretton Woods II, out of fear communism winning during that time.
FDR was in that era and was pretty far left. Look at the tax rates he set in motion, the fuckers get mad when they get taxed over 90%. FDR gets elected four terms, has five assassination attempts and many more plots and starts the economy on the path to recovery after the Republicans decimated it with tatmriffs.
Us politics isn’t about economics anyway, especially when you’ve got Republicans raising taxes sky high and restricting free trade. It’s about social and cultural issues more than ever these days.
It’s about social and cultural issues more than ever these days.
Because those do not threaten the 1%s stranglehold on power.
More like very much into the right
You don’t understand, their support of lesser fascism is necessary to avoid the greater fascism, so by opposing them you’re actually supporting the greater fascism
I’d accept a viable alternative. Wake me up when we have one.
whoops, world ended
Damn, if only if I had been more moral.
proactive
Show me how I’m not being proactive enough.
Are you currently involved in trying to replace First-past-the-post voting in your state?
You don’t get to tell people they don’t get to vote how they want and then do nothing to fix the voting system that is the source of the spoiler effect. We’ll, you could if you didn’t really care about democracy at all and just want your preference to win at all costs.
So is it party over country or is your state going to stop using First-past-the-post voting?
Weren’t you being facetious?
If the world was ending, it wouldn’t be because we lacked morals but because we lacked action. I think we agree on what’s moral, we just disagree about how much of what action is needed.
Oh yeah, you’re right. I lost the thread. Don’t mind me, sorry. Im seriously sorry.
Yup. We need lesser of two in red districts and vote for our ideals in our safe districts to move the part as a whole.
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You’re replying to a dbzer0 btw.
I’m just so impressed by them. Forgoing all forms of capitalism so they are not totally responsible for the outcomes of capitalist society. It’s a principled stance but living in stateless, technology absent, collectives outside the rule of the government is not an easy life.
i love the fact that their science says that the fact that their system has never worked proves that it will surely work next time
i think i prefer real science
I was talking about this with my wife. I’d live in a socialist or communist run government, at least the one they fantasize about, but I would never live long enough to see it enacted, as leftists envision.
So in my mind I have two choices that aren’t exactly mutually exclusive:
1.) Openly support communism without thought about what the final outcome of that may actually be because I won’t be alive to guide it (as if I’d have much say).
2.) Just keep working to make the world I live in better
Both are fine options and I can do both but they would have me chose the former and exclude the latter.
Openly support communism without thought about what the final outcome of that may actually be
Just keep working to make the world I live in better
They’re the same picture.
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The only actual job of the DNC is to suck up all the space and oxygen that a real left needs to grow, and rubber stamp every oppressive police measure they think they have to in order to secure the profits of the rich at the expense of all other life on Earth. The best of them are self-deluding soft exterminationists at this point, and the bulk of the party has apparently dispensed with even that fig leaf and embraced a kind of haughty, blue fascist schadenfreude regarding the people it failed to browbeat into supporting genocide. It’s genuinely the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen in my life after the killing itself. The Democratic party is pathologically incapable of taking any responsibility for it’s action, has no desire to change anything, and is actively, dangerously hostile to all living beings, first and foremost human beings outside America. Nothing better will be allowed to grow unless it is thoroughly dismantled alongside the Republican party and most of the rest of the US government.
Fuck the lesser of two evils. I choose good.
“Purity politics and single issue voters are so toxic! All I said is we need to support an active genocide, fund more wars, keep kids in cages, ignore COVID, and do nothing about the cost of living going up with wages going down. Why does the left want to alienate people like me?!”
DEMS: You have to understand we need to eat the shit. If we dont eat the shit the other guy is going to smear it on your face and the faces of your children. So, you see, eating the shit is necessary so that we dont have to smear it over more people’s faces.
Me: how the fuck are the only choices shit? Why dont we just not eat the shit and not have everyone horrified of us?
They’ve somehow managed to convince a stunningly large number of gullible USians, that you need to eat shit to survive, or that its harm reduction or something…
Harm reduction is eating 15 pounds of shit, because the next guy will make you eat 16 pounds of shit. If you want a dental dam, you’re unrealistic.
Because someone has to eat the shit
*the poors must eat the shit.
Trickle Down used be called “Horse and Sparrow Economics.” As in the horses eat the grain, and sparrows peck their meals from the horseshit.
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Not dividing the left, just consolidating the right
True. Sorry, your ideology lost so hard that half of it was Trump’s 1st term policy. Concede to the left for once in your god damn lives or suffer liberals.
Concede to the left for once in your god damn lives or suffer liberals.
They’ll choose suffering. They love Trump, its why they didn’t arrest him. He doesn’t hurt the bottom line, just the poors, browns, and queers.
When a casual acquaintance asks my political leaning, I say Democrat to keep things simple. But, really, I’m a Bernie guy. I don’t want to talk politics, and trying to explain that Democrats are actually center-right is just too much effort to put into… well, just about everyone nowadays.
Why don’t you just say progressive then seems to sum it up
Okay, but Sanders isn’t on the left, either, despite calling himself a socialist. Sanders will say that It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism, and he’ll complain about “crony” capitalism and “über” capitalism, but as a liberal he’ll never question capitalism as such. He’ll never question private ownership of the means of production.
Socialism != Communism though
It’s okay to say you’re a socialist but too not like communism.
I for one really like socialist policies like national healthcare which I get in the UK etc. But I don’t think full communism is the way to go for a modern society. Plus the track record of every time a country tries to head towards full communism, the door is left wide open for a dictator, and someone takes it.
Thia is kinda the point of the post tho is these guys think theres no room in the middle you must be full blown marx or bust. Which in this day and age is jist stupid
Then enjoy the continued lurch toward the right that’s been going on for generations, ever since the last time politicians feared socialism enough to make significant concessions. Previously:
When you have to go back 93 years to the Great Depression to find an example, you’ve made my point.
FDR did what he did to save capitalism from the threat of socialist revolution, and politicians have spent the last three generations clawing back the concessions he had made to socialist & labor agitators. They also purged socialists from labor unions, and they purged and even assassinated communists, to avoid any such thing happening again.
Chris Hedges, America: The Farewell Tour:
The New Deal, as Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, saved capitalism. It was put in place because socialists were a strong and serious threat. The oligarchs understood that with the breakdown of capitalism—something I expect we will again witness in our lifetimes—there was a possibility of a socialist revolution. They did not want to lose their wealth and power. Roosevelt, writing to a friend in 1930, said there was “no question in my mind that it is time for the country to become fairly radical for at least one generation. History shows that where this occurs occasionally, nations are saved from revolution.” In other words, Roosevelt went to his fellow oligarchs and said, “Hand over some of your money or you will lose all your money in a revolution.” And they complied. That is how the government created fifteen million jobs, Social Security, unemployment benefits, and public works projects. The capitalists did not do this because the suffering of the masses moved them to pity. They did this because they were scared.
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of differences between socialism and communism.
Modes of production aside, socialism is just the transition period between capitalism and communism but does not have fundamentally different goals from communism. The goal of socialism is to reach communism. The differentiation is just a matter of how far society has progressed in that transition and their modes of production. Socialists are communists. Any differentiation outside of the above context is colloquial or otherwise a result of the uninformed misusing the terms as you have.
Nationalized healthcare in the UK != Socialism and != a socialist policy, it is a social/welfare program. Social/welfare programs are agnostic of modes of production, which is why they can exist in both socialist and capitalist economies.
Please refer to the socialism entry on Prolewiki as well as the modes of production link I added above. This is one of the most commonly confused things about socialism and communism. If you really want to say you don’t like the idea of communism, you should at least be informed about what it is you don’t like and don’t think applies to our modern society. These are short articles that collectively take <5 minutes to read through.
What you are advocating for is social democracy.
6·12 hours agoMrScottyTay cannot see your comment becuaee shit.just.works has defederated from lemmygrad.
Shame. Thanks for the heads up!
Uk is monarchist, not socialist
Because he’s a politician and he understands that his rhetoric has to ramp up slowly to convince his audience. Go to your local pub/bar and say that to someone that isn’t a terminally online ML, see how they react.
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They’re certainly more trustworthy than Liberals and completely better in every way to that fascist orange pig.
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I’d argue that your average communist is moral and trustworthy right up until the moment they get any power, then they are just corrupt(able) politicians, ready and able to fuck over group A to benefit group B, who they happen to favor more this week (decisions must be made, after all!). No system is perfect, and definitely no individual.
Big picture view: The scales will tip every now and then, but it’s ultimately survival of the fittest system that wins, with none existing in isolation - there are always external forces at play.
With that in mind, I’d put my money on more limited socialist-style-carve-outs like single payer healthcare in the US, more rent controls and housing subsidies, slightly better employee protections. Just enough to placate the masses, while the ruling class mostly continues as before. Even this will require a massive effort. Post-republicans, of course.
Anarchy is not left in the US unless they’ve all of a sudden come around on social programs.
As an Anarcho-Syndicalist we dont support government owned social programs because we prefer community based and worker ran solutions to issues like housing, food, and education. Furthermore most social ills that exist today are a direct or indirect effect of capitalism, the problems that cannot be solved by simply destroying capitalism can be solved with more syndicates.
This is why I love lemmy.
I get all angry on someone’s comment, and someone else has already made my point, and better. We’re even doing mutual aid in comments!
Sharing information is the greatest form of mutual aid :3
Welfare capitalism is not the left; it’s the leftmost part of the right. The left is socialism. Anarchists are socialists. Liberals are not.
The American Libertarian sects tend to loosely regard themselves as anarchist, which is frustrating as all hell.
Anarcho-capitalism is opportunistic enough to co-opt anything.
Anarcho-capitalism is such an oxymoron too, capitalism is inherently an unjust hierarchy
capitalism itself does that pretty well
come around on social programs.
Wat.
Anarchists are the ones who are consistently making social programs from scratch. Direct action is and has always been about feeding people as well as sabotaging bulldozers.
Yup, mutal aid and communal efforts are the cornerstones of real anarchism.
i think they’re conflating anarchists with “anarcho”-capitalists
“Anarcho”-Capitalists are as Anarchist as Capitalist-“Libertarians” are acturally Libertarian
