askchapo

There is no democracy. If there was, we would agitate for people to vote.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B

Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.

[...]

In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule — at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the U.S. political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.

What are you referring to? If you're talking about Biden, you're just plain wrong about it being a movement towards the left.

you'll have to be more specific. Are you talking about how people here dismiss Democrats or western liberals in general? Because we don't trust them. It's true that communists have a history of making coalitions with their liberals. Like the current dominant party in Mexico, MORENA, is a coalition between communists, liberals, social democrats, etc. Lenin's party would also make concessions with their liberals when it came to making electoral advancements.

But that's not our situation at all and we're distrustful of liberals. Most of us are from western countries where liberal parties exist to betray us or do nothing, that's really it. We haven't experienced much solidarity at all with the liberals in our countries/areas, we've only experienced betrayal and failure. We have no built up trust. I've personally worked with some liberals in my area, namely the Sierra Club and AFL-CIO. But it was just that. Work, stay on task, because I know once the task drifts from our common goals, they'll go back to being useless liberals. I'm still really salty about how the 2020 anti-cop protests fizzled out.

Because without the threat of revolution you'll never get those rights in the first place and as soon as the threat is removed the rights you have or won will be rolled back at the earliest convenience

Without revolution the capitalist class will call your bluff each time, and if you get mad at them what're you going to do? You already took revolution off the table

As a result Liberal radicalism can best be described as a snake eating it own ass

Because we want real structural shifts in the distribution of power, not just treats from our ruling class overlords.

Look at things in the context of slavery, as an analogy for the ultimate unequal society.

If a slave owner gives his slaves more comfortable beds, or reduces their working hours, or gives them better food, we can agree that these changes are good for the slaves without praising the slaveowner. And if someone in 1820 or whatever went to an abolitionist protest with a sign that said "Comfier beds for slaves", they would (rightfully) get punched in the face.

Why? Because these things are not truly progress. They haven't changed the power dynamic. The slaveowner can still take away the new beds and increase the working hours and start giving them worse food again. The only things that really matter are structural shifts of power.

I am reminded of this line from Billy Bragg's version of the internationale

Freedom is merely privilege extended, unless enjoyed by one and all

But even that is simplistic, because even if everyone has a right, that does not mean freedom. Economy power being in the hands of the producing class is the only way that class can actually be free. How free are black people if they can still be enslaved in prison? That is not separate from general african-american civil liberties, it is inseparable.

Also most of us here love LatAm demsocs like Evo or Allende, we have emotes of them for a reason. Those are not revolutionaries