Memes

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[+] Keeponstalin@lemmy.world -7 points 3 months ago (3 children)

DSA candidates are beholden to the demands of the working class, not the Democratic or Republican party nor capitalist donations.

Additionally, electing candidates to deliver material gains is only a single aspect of DSA. Along with mutual aid, labor organizing, and International solidarity campaigns to name a few.

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[–] QinShiHuangsShlong@lemmy.ml 9 points 3 months ago (2 children)

DSA candidates are beholden to the demands of the working class, not the Democratic or Republican party nor capitalist donations.

A socialist entering a capitalist government does not make that government socialist. The government’s class function remains bourgeois, and the socialist is pressured to act as a bourgeois minister in order to get their (generally minor) reforms through.

Additionally, electing candidates to deliver material gains is only a single aspect of DSA. Along with mutual aid, labor organizing, and International solidarity campaigns to name a few

Not really related to the criticism I was making at all.

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[–] Keeponstalin@lemmy.world -2 points 3 months ago (1 child)

“Organise!” Rabochaya Mysl keeps repeating to the workers in all keys, and all the adherents of the “economist” trend echo the cry. We, of course, wholly endorse this appeal, but we will not fail to add: organise, but not only in mutual benefit societies, strike funds, and workers’ circles; organise also in a political party; organise for the determined struggle against the autocratic government and against the whole of capitalist society. Without such organisation the proletariat will never rise to the class- conscious struggle... Not a single class in history has achieved power without producing its political leaders, its prominent representatives able to organise a movement and lead it.

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[–] QinShiHuangsShlong@lemmy.ml 8 points 3 months ago

I have read Lenin, and if you think he is advocating for electing socialists to the bourgeois government as something to strive for in and of itself, you have completely misread him. Winning bourgeois elections is not the goal, or even in the same playing field as the goal, for communist electoral work. The goal is agitation: using elections to expose bourgeois democracy, spread an independent communist programme, and sharpen the working class’s understanding of the state’s class character.

This quote, and the invocation of Lenin in general, does nothing to strike against the criticism I was making. My criticism was not “organization is bad” or “a political party is unnecessary.” The opposite being obviously true. My criticism was that putting socialists into a bourgeois government does nothing to alter the class character of that government. The state remains bourgeois, and anyone entering it is forced to operate according to its rules, pressures, limits, and class function.

Again, a socialist entering a capitalist government does not make that government socialist. Rather, the socialist is pressured to act as a bourgeois minister in order to administer capitalism and get minor reforms through. The result is not the conquest of the bourgeois state by socialism, but the partial conquest of the socialist by the bourgeois state.

Lenin was arguing for an independent proletarian party capable of organizing the working class for a determined struggle against the whole of capitalist society. He was not arguing for socialists to measure power by how many seats they win inside capitalist institutions, still less for tailing a reactionary party such as the Democratic Party (which the DSA appears quite fond of, which can be seen in their actions, such as the recommendation to vote for Graham Platner: another campaign inside the Democratic Party, another refusal to break from its shadow, another retreat from building a truly independent working-class party.).