Joe Biden's time is up
- Thread starter petee
- Start date
redsquirrel
This Machine Kills Progressives
What bollocks.
The gains that the working class have obtained have come from below, from workers organising unions, forming civil rights groups, taking direct action, even on occasion using violence.
These weren't slogans they were workers taking action themselves, coming together to obtain wins from capital and the state.
The dismissal of self-organisation is why AAs fundamental point is correct even if I don't agree with how he is saying it.
How could I communicate this better? Genuinely interested in pointers. But yeah, I agree with what you say and in this country the whole Corbyn phenomena seems to have, on the whole, been the kiss of death for the autonomous alternatives from below that were already there and making a real, herioc effort to fight the good fight.
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petee
no gods, no managers
just about everyone here subscribes to self-organization, but not everyone here puts words in others' mouths and attacks them for things he made up himself. i'm sure that's what you mean by "how he is saying it".
MickiQ
In My Defence I was left Unsupervised
Societies can change through direct action but they can't be run on a stable basis by it. Are you suggesting we have a revolution every time the council wants to change the bin collection day?
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
We're not being run on a stable basis by the current system are we
This is just daft
How have I done that? I'm not aware of doing that at all.
redsquirrel
This Machine Kills Progressives
They really don't, see MQ's stupid post directly below yours. There's plenty that want and see electoralism as the path (even if they do pay some sort of lip services to self-organisation). There's been plenty of posts that have claimed non-voters as Trump/Tory/etc supporters. There's even been occasions when Green voters have been accused of being de-facto Trump supporters. There have been those that have excused, defended or even cheered on the attacks on workers so long as they are done by the 'correct; party.
I don't know if this is trolling or just complete stupidity.
There are direct actions that do not take the form of revolution. But I think if workers can organise a revolution, can form the million member groups, they are come up with some way of running society on a 'stable basis'.
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petee
no gods, no managers
i said "almost" quite deliberately.
further, are you, also, blind to the difference between "some government programs help the immediate material conditions of w/c people and should be taken advantage of" and "electoralism is the path to liberation" ? further yet, who are these "plenty that want and see electoralism as the path"? give three examples.
MickiQ
In My Defence I was left Unsupervised
Yes we are, you and a great many others may not like the way it is being run and there are loads of reasons to find fault with it but our society is very definitely a stable one. I don't see any sign of imminent collapse or revolution. The only likely change in the forseeable future is the replacement of the current Conservative government with a Labour one but there is no realistic possibility that the underlying structure of our society (ie a parliamentary democracy with a mostly free market based economy) is going to change anytime soon.
redsquirrel
This Machine Kills Progressives
That's a daft binary question, with an implicit assumption in the first part.
Have the state and capital made concessions that improve workers conditions, of course they have. But how have those concessions come about? Because of voting, or because of labour power?
I do not share AAs position that people should not vote. Indeed, as I've already said, I'm critical of it because it is the flip side of the coin to those that shout that anyone not voting is a Tory supporter. Both make voting a far more political act than I consider it.
One, two, three
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Well personally I think voting for these people is giving them power and legitimacy and my view is that they don't deserve people's vote. I'm opposed to representative democracy and capitalism. But ofcourse if people are gonna vote then thats what they're gonna do.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
The thing about collapses is people generally don't see them coming, do they. So your foresight isn't worth all that much especially when a collapse has been widely forecast for about 20 years time. It won't take too much, tbh, to fuck shit up beyond all recognition and not in a good way.
But we're not really run stably. You're mistaking the fact that gove and Johnson haven't had their severed heads thrust on pikes and paraded round whitehall for stability. British society is like a jenga tower where over the years the tories have removed loads of blocks that held it up. Privatising the nhs. State schools. Libraries. Youth clubs. Wages which rose and didn't stagnate or fall. A justice system which worked in its own way. Respect for the rule of law. Universities now rely on foreign postgraduate students to keep the lights on. Honesty in public life. Local government. So much formerly public space has been privatised. Pretty much all our utilities, are foreign-owned. Everything has been hollowed out. This country's been sold off. There are few things that tie society together that haven't been significantly weakened since 2010. There is no plan beyond the end of this parliament - everything’s short term. There's a peculiar view of Britain as some military heavyweight when the yanks have us down as a tier 2 power on our good days.
Boris johnson's promise of a high wage society seems a bitter joke now, where people in the public sector are - if they're lucky - on 4/5's what they were in 2010. Many if not most are rather worse off than that, my job's maybe 2/3's what it was. This isn't a recipe for stability, even if it's not going to produce a revolution. Won't take much to blow this jenga tower over.
but we're not run stably now because we're run by hedge fund wankers who've always after the fast buck. If we were run stably there wouldn't be the shit over fuel bills, the energy companies would have been told to take a hit after all their massive profits: but their profits now eclipse what they were a couple of years back. We're at the mercy of 'the markets' without more than a fig leaf being offered for our protection by the government. Really fucking stable
MickiQ
In My Defence I was left Unsupervised
Of course we are the mere fact that Johnson's head isn't on a spike is proof that society is basically stable. None of those things are even remotely likely to create more than superficial changes. People aren't storming govt offices and corporation HQ's and chucking people out of windows, They're demanding reductions in energy bills. The current wave of strikes isn't about bringing down capitalism or even overthrowing the Govt, it's about getting a decent payrise for the strikers. When they get one (some will, some won't) they will end.
I worked in Liverpool in the 80's when Thatcher and her ilk had pretty much abandoned it to die and I could find you no end of people who kept talking like you do.About how this was the end and revolution was just around the corner, still not here yet.
Some things may change for the better and some things will definitely change for the worse but I don't expect people looking back from 2060 will see a great deal of difference looking back to now than I do to the 1980's
The only way our current society is going to fall is some external event that is too big for us to react to. There are currently only 2 possibilities that I can see. One is that the current conflict in Ukraine will spiral out of control and nukes will get thrown around. At the moment I think that possibility is low but it is a volatile situation that could suddenly change. The other is climate change and whilst that will cause problems including more poverty in first world countries I really don't think it will be bad enough to bring about the massive social changes some people on this forum want.
A lot of people will die but most of them will be in places like Africa and the Middle East but the very uneven distribution of the world's wealth will shield those that have it which on a world wide basis includes the likes of you and me. I agree totally with the idea that our society is very unfair but tbh all others have been and this one (bar the sudden catastophe) has plenty of life left in yet.
At the end of the day, its obvious to me that if you vote for people like Biden or Starmer or any of those types of politicians you're supporting neoliberalism. Doing so is completely counter-productive to dealing with the far right because it actually fuels and strengthens the far right. And why anyone who is supposed to be on the left or an anarchist would want to support neoliberalism?! It just doesn't make any sense and is totally counter productive to trying to achieve anything decent..
What should the voters in the US be doing, do you think?
Coming together to build autonomous alternatives from below to resist capitalism and practice solidarity and unite, empower and help their communtities as much they can.
Don't you agree?
Doesn't matter if agree or no. Am wondering how that would work in such a fractured country like the US. For sure, there are grass roots/activists/anarchist and communities at odds with the status quo but it's a long and almost impossible battle.
In the face of militarized cops, a hostile media and armed far right organisations, how will the autonomy coalesce into something bigger?
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
I don't think revolution is around the corner. I don't think climate change will bring changes people want. Lots of changes no one wants tho
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Thats your opinion. I've given you my answer and don't have to answer all of your questions - I also doubt I have the space and energy etc on here for me to try to answer that question, and neither should it be all down to me to do so. I get the impression that you think the ballot box and electoralism is the only way in the US, and I don't agree with that at all. I think its very clear that electoralism and representative democracy have failed, in the US and elsewhere around the world.
So, in fact, you don't know how coming together to build autonomous alternatives from below to resist capitalism and practice solidarity and unite, empower and help their communtities as much they can, would work in such a fractured nation?
It's a great idea, of course, but how can grass roots activism grow beyond communities, how to come together in the face of a powerful establishment like the one in place? Be it republican or democrat?
Of course you don't have to answer any questions, but it sure would be nice to back up your suggestions with a concrete plan, rather than claiming you know what others think/do.
Nobody here is defending the status quo.
But what is the actual plan, before the American voters make that switch?
agricola
a genuine importer of owls
The one thing that gives me a bit of confidence is that, unlike in the US, the guilty people are a relatively tiny section of society who've done a lot of this recently (and haphazardly) and much of their "work" could conceivably be undone without too much grief. They don't have anything like the genuine domestic political support that would be required to intervene (and prevent necessary corrections being brought in), and as you say the military and legal system could not be relied upon to prop them up either (in fact one imagines they would be the people who actually did the removing).
Of course whether we get the time to do that depends on the nature of the event(s) that caused a collapse.
Yuwipi Woman
Whack-A-Mole Queen
I think people underestimate the challenges associated with creating autonomous networks and interest groups that counter the dominant paradigm. You can look at groups like the Black Panthers, and more recently, Water Protectors. The government did everything they could to infiltrate these groups and break them up from within, or to hit them with every violent option the government has in countering these groups. (I've met people at pipeline protests that I was convinced were undercover police. I know this because I used to be a dispatcher for a local pd and can tell them by something as simple as how they walk across a room, etc.). Look at the recent shooting and death of a protestor, and terrorism charges aimed at people protesting the leveling of a forest and replacing it with a police education facility. I have no doubt that these things are awaiting anyone who disturbs the status quo.
Here's some video of the pipeline protests and the way the company used dogs. In many cases, you can see blood in the dog's mouths, and the wounds that people received for peacefully protesting on private land:
This is what awaits anyone who steps too far out of line. I'm not saying its hopeless, but you have to be mindful that if you create something that actually threatens those in power, they will try to dismantle your efforts, using any means at their disposal. You should be prepared for when that happens.
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petee
no gods, no managers
right, so ... electoral success is half the result, eh. rent strikes and self-defense activity didn't by themselves lead to the imposition of rent control laws here in NYS a century ago, they led to forcing the legislature to enact them, and if bloody-minded legislators had decided otherwise we wouldn't have rent regulation at all (The ‘Great Rent Wars’ of New York). and it's ONLY because the democratic party took control of all three branches in albany in 2018 that the strongest tenant-protection laws ever were passed (including the provision which makes my tenancy secure forever,, unless the SC gets its hands on the matter NYC Rent Stabilization Rules Beat Challenges by Landlords (1)). there was no concerted w/c activity leading to this immediate result. there was concerted w/c activity leading to the idea in the first place.
none of this has prevented me from engaging in [org name redacted] actions. there's no contradiction. this state of affairs is not a political goal, but folks gotta eat and pay the rent. let's have housing for use not profit.
well that's good.
those are statements about electoral activity. i see no bare defense of electoralism itself in there (except the first one maybe).
redsquirrel
This Machine Kills Progressives
What's your point? That for laws to be passed the government had be involved? Yeah of course they do.
But what was the key leverage point of such action? Workers have achieved gains under governments of different parties and ideologies suggesting to me the key is workers self action rather than top down laws delivered by politicians.
I agree that there is no logical contradiction between both supporting self-organisation and supporting an electoral route.
The reason why electoralism has been rejected by anarchists, and many socialists, is as based on practical experience as much as anything. That electoralism has not only not delivered gains for the working class but all too often has delivered harm by putting into power parties that attack the working class. The trajectory of former social democratic parties to neo-liberalism across many countries being a prime example.
A dual approach sounds very reasonable, but past experience has shown that electoralism begins to dominate, then takes over, and that self-activity is diminished and cut adrift. The UK being a perfect example, the Labour Party initial set up as the electoral arm of the labour movement, now there is nothing for the LP but electoralism. Even when the party leadership is more sympathetic to the wider labour movement, as under Corbyn, the systematic pressures mean that self-organisation is relegated to a secondary role (well) behind electoralism.
And sooner of later there is going to come point at which electoralism comes against self-activity, which side do people take then. By focussing on self-organisation workers have the power, confidence and organisation not only to make such betrayals by politicians less likely but resist them when they do happen.
The examples I gave are great examples of how electoralism becomes the be all and end all, that it becomes a moral imperative to vote for attacks on workers because they won't (or may not) be as bad as other attacks on workers.
Then your reading is wrong.
The first is a literal claim that self-organisation won't get bins emptied, the second is a liberal arguing that socialists need to abandon their politics to vote for a party that wants to attack workers, the third is that people must vote for the lesser evil in all cases and goes on to deny any w/c action is taking place at the moment (you may not be aware but there is plenty of action taking place in the UK at the present)
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Yuwipi Woman
Whack-A-Mole Queen
petee
no gods, no managers
his profile says he's 40.
Yuwipi Woman
Whack-A-Mole Queen
Okey dokey, then.
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