this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2024
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Can we stop trying to make electoralism work already? A capitalist system will never let real leftists come to power even if they win; they wouldn't allow people to vote if it did.
Organizing and applying pressure from outside it for a revolution is and has always been the only way. Liberals will align with fascists long before ever moving left, as they always have.
The mistake of this logic is to believe that this betrayal of electoral logic won't radicalize people. It is a necessary step. There are now 11 Million French people, many of which probably don't believe much in electoralism but vote anyway, who are furious at what's happening.
People don't change their mind listening to arguments, they change their mind living experiences. The experience of joy after winning, followed by the disregard of democratic logic by Macron, will mobilize an insane amount of popular energy, contrary to snarky "electoralism doesn't work" comments that are relatable only to a microscopic niche of edgy, maximalist leftists.
This smacks of accelerationist rhetoric to me. We absolutely can help people to understand that electoralism doesn’t work without them having to experience some sort of revelatory moment. But it needs us to log off and talk to people in real life.
nah, you will attract only those that already kinda agree. All the others will see weirdos with weird ideas, weird clothing and weird vocabulary, approaching them in the street or promoting events that they don't care about.
"talking to people" is something I do since I'm in union organizing and the way people react to the same arguments varies wildly over time. After the waves of layoffs in the tech sector, non-politicized tech workers are incredibly more receptive to pro-union rhetoric, in a way that would have been impossible before.
About accelerationism: I'm not saying failing an election is a necessary step in a teleological sense. You should enter elections to win them, if you do it. Nonetheless it is useful to radicalize people. It is a recuperation of what is perceived as a defeat in a system in order to feed a different system. Electoral betrayal is useful, but not necessarily something you should strive for, as an armchair accelerationist would claim. There are better ways to spend your time and energy imho, but if it happens, it is still good manure for growing the seeds of something new.