The Abandon Harris movement that sprouted late last year out of the widespread outrage over the Biden-Harris administration’s support for the ongoing Israeli war on Gaza has officially endorsed the Green Party’s Jill Stein for US president.
The endorsement is the first of its kind for Stein and the Green Party, with the Abandon Harris campaign being the first major Muslim-led political group to endorse her campaign this election cycle. Last month, a smaller group, the Muslim American Public Affairs Council NC, also endorsed Stein.
“We are not choosing between a greater evil and a lesser evil. We are confronting two destructive forces: one currently overseeing a genocide and another equally committed to continuing it. Both are determined to see it through,” the Abandon Harris campaign said in a statement released on Monday.
Hey there! I read through Worker’s Paradise and have some thoughts I’d like to discuss if you have the time:
The author does not elaborate on the reasoning for their assertion that voting will never bring into manifestation the will of the workers, except to say:
The Soviet Union lacked the communication infrastructure to be able to allow democracy to actually be able to control the entirety of the huge system. Which is true, for the Soviet Union. At that time.
We have the technology today. We have the computers. We have the AI which can quickly and easily determine the most efficient options for our democratic processes to choose from.
Why do they think big industry can ONLY be developed through market competition? What is the reasoning behind that? (Aside from what they have seen happen in the past, for older generations of people with very different material conditions to our own today?)
This is true. So why are you all so against voting in the United States’ two-party system, when that very voting will continue to allow incredibly high levels of economic development and the GRADUAL socialization of industry and society?
The market has created that large-scale infrastructure. Let’s use it to make the world better.
Then what is it all for? Why do anything if it doesn’t lead to an eventual utopia where everyone has their needs met and we can just hang out in parks and play games all day? Isn’t that what the whole point of this thing is?? Is that NOT what we are striving for?
Marx himself wanted that utopia. We have the means of achieving it today, because, as the author says, we allowed the market to create that large-scale infrastructure. The process worked. We’re here now, and now we inherently deserve to be able to have a say in what we do with it. Because we’re sentient beings. We deserve to have control over our own lives.
This article is merely a defense of capitalism (and the way that China has structured itself in particular). There’s logic behind it, of course, and that’s clearly laid out. But it’s based on presuppositions. It’s based on the idea that this is the ONLY way to achieve that utopia.
In fact, the article itself basically says “resign yourself to the idea of never having control over your life, because you’re never going to create a utopia, so you might as well just be content being a cog in the wheel of the system and be thankful that we who are in control continue to allow you to live” which is no better than the slavery system that (I thought) we (and marx) are trying to get society away from!
This is because Reform or Revolution is a “solved question” elsewhere. In a 20 minute article, there’s not much room to go over everything.
Yes, that’s why as the PRC continues to develop and socialize, it becomes more capable of democratization. The point isn’t that the USSR wasn’t democratic. It was, just not a fantasy.
Markets are efficient at centralization. It isn’t only possible via markets, it just comes with slower growth and recessions. More on that in Socialism Developed China, Not Capitalism.
Because the bourgeois state cannot simply be reformed. The State and Revolution is the clearest overview of why.
Yes, let’s overthrow the bourgeoisie so this can happen! Exactly.
The point is to continue advancing, not to come up with an idea and force it into reality. That’s the difference between Utopian and Scientific Socialism. We still want all of what you said.
Marx was anti-utopian. You are correct in saying we can socialize now, but haven’t analyzed the means.
It’s a defense of socialist markets as a means of stabilizing growth towards Communism (not utopia).
No, it says building Communism takes time even after siezing the means of production. Check out the other texts I linked.
Are there any modern texts that aren’t written by people who lived in completely different circumstances with completely different technology, and who aren’t currently dead?
I specifically linked sources that remain true to this day, where the circumstances haven’t affected their analysis, and the article Socialism Developed China, Not Capitalism was written in 2020.
Thanks. I’ll read that one then. I’ve read parts of State and Revolution but never the whole thing in one sitting.
It’s a good article, but it specifically deals with markets centralizing and making themselves ripe for central planning under a DotP, it won’t answer the questions of Reform or Revolution like State and Rev and Reform or Revolution do. Their analysis is still good to this day, the bits of analysis that weren’t as good I obviously didn’t link (like Mao trying to socialize too early, which was wrong).
So, in reading Socialism Developed China, I came across this paragraph:
Given that, why wouldn’t American leftists (if they existed) want to participate in electoral politics that can transition us to socialism? Since we are already a developed market economy, it should be just a matter of re-alignment of the cultural priorities in order to produce that change.
The path to socialism is not just through violent revolution.
Yet American leftists seem to be either nihilistic and cynical, or hell-bent on violent revolution being the only way to socialism.
A violent revolution in America would inevitably fail without buy-in from the public at large.
Buy-in from the public at large will only come through education and indoctrination and by changing minds. But American leftists seem to want to isolate themselves into exclusive online enclaves like Hexbear and Lemmygrad and reddit’s “socialist” subreddits, who ban anyone who wants or needs to learn.
Why are leftists so anti-evangelical (for lack of a better term)? Why don’t leftists want to recruit?
Because the bourgeoisie have no interest in transitioning to Socialism, they can only lose. The only way to wrest power from them is revolution. It isn’t as simple as “re-aligning cultural priorities,” the electoral system is a reflection of the interests of the bourgoeisie as they influence through donations.
It is, sadly.
Correct.
Correct.
This is wrong. Ideas change with material conditions, as disparity rises leftism rises as well. Capitalist decay brings about Socialist values, making the public more accepting of Marxism. Additionally, Hexbear and Lemmygrad don’t ban people who want to learn, just people who pick fights and refuse to. See the “Redpill me on China” thread. If you make a Lemm.ee, Lemmy.ml, Hexbear, Lemmygrad, or whatever you want account and meaningfully ask for people to clarify their positions without picking a fight, you’ll get honest and kind answers.
They do recruit, like what I am doing right here and now. The reality is that the vast majority of liberals aren’t convinced logically, only when it becomes ideologically convenient.
Well, first of all, you seem to be the outlier, in my experience.
I have made accounts on all three of those lemmy instances and have been instantly banned from them for trying to have a conversation like we’re having right now.
Hexbear called me a “wrecker” and the others said I was a shitlib. Their patience is non-existent and their paranoia has become their personality. And it’s really off-putting to those of us who would like to actually discuss this stuff like adults.
Yes, we may call you guys “tankies” but surely you must have thicker skin than that, right?