Chances are, you're reading this in a Western country. A country where there is literally nothing stopping socialists/communists/anarchists from running for public office. Don't give me a bullshit conspiracy theory that stops you from running. You don't run because you just can't get normies to vote for you.
Normies broadly understand socialism, they might confuse sucdem for socialism, but this is still more desirable than capitalism. Yet the normies still don't vote for it.
Get off internet forums and start interacting with normies. A combination of terrible personality traits and willful ignorance make normies want the society we are stuck in.
Why do you think normies deserve our help? They don't want us. The normies have made their bed, let them lie in it.
Most brainlet thread I've seen in a while Besides the entrenched institutions preventing just that, like the two party system, security state etc etc. Wrong on multiple accounts. Most people equate socialism with social democratic reform, very few of them equate it with abolishing private property and capitalism. Show me an instance ever where these two things were on the ballot. Probably because I find this system personally unbearable, reprehensible, and full of contradictions that will lead to it's destruction anyways. I benefit from socialism personally, therefore I desire it
Noah Evans
Pure idealism
Jackson Cruz
well he's right you know. The current system only exists because this is exactly what the people (or the majority) wants.
Jack Martin
t. too young to vote
Easton Gomez
Again, pure idealism. Yes desire for change is a factor. However, how our system actually operates, how we relate to each other through production, these things determine peoples actual willingness to turn ideas into actions. Like I said, we have institutions and organs of power that prevent people from actually taking these ideas and turning them into something. Nobody wants to get shot at by police at a protest, it takes desperation and a system so broken that death is preferable than continued inaction.
Jace Cook
Just start a socialist party. There is literally nothing stopping you from doing this. There is also nothing stopping normies from voting for you, they consciously choose to vote for the big parties. There is nothing stopping you from putting yourself and your ideas on the ballot. It's a waste of time because the normies won't vote for you. This right here is the only reason I'm socialist. I don't give a fuck about the normies who love being exploited by the system. I just don't want to be dragged down with them.
Normies are in a shit position in the system and will benefit from change. They vote against their own interests. The only reason they do this is because they are terrible people to begin with. They are shitheads who will turn on you the moment they can fuck you over. That's why they support capitalism.
Jason Perry
M8 you don't know how the current political system works. You can't just start a party and magically appear on the ballot, that's not how it works. Most of these positions aren't even on the ballot anyways because we don't live in a democracy, not an actual one. Representatives do whatever the hell they want when they get into office and that's usually what they have to do in order to remain in office, which means giving into lobbying and corporate interests. There's a lot more at play here to but your argument is so simplistic and disconnected from the reality of the situation that I don't feel like I should even bother
Kayden Bell
The only nugget of broadly correct advice. To do things IRL. The rest is garbage though. Liberal republic is a spectacle tinnily veiling the dictatorship of Capital, which can, absolutely, quell any dissent until it destabilizes its own foundation. Not to mention that normie crap.
Jordan Gray
...
Zachary Reyes
History teaches us that no oppressed class ever did, or could, achieve power without going through a period of dictatorship, i.e., the conquest of political power and forceable suppression of the resistance always offered by the exploiters—the resistance that is most desperate, most furious, and that stops at nothing. The bourgeoisie, whose domination is now defended by the Socialists who denounce “dictatorship in general” and extol “democracy in general", won power in the advanced countries through a series of insurrections, civil wars, and the forcible suppression of kings, feudal lords, slaveowners and their attempts at restoration. In books, pamphlets, Congress resolutions, and propaganda speeches, Socialists have everywhere thousands and millions of times explained to people the class nature of these bourgeois revolutions and this bourgeois dictatorship. That is why the present defense of bourgeois democracy under the cover of talk about “democracy in general", and the present howls and shouts against proletarian dictatorship under the cover of shouts about “dictatorship in general", are an outright betrayal of socialism
Jose Brooks
Whether you're right or wrong just depends on how much free will we think humans have. If humans have total free will, you're right and people just have to choose to vote for a better world. If humans don't have free will then their vote is totally determined by the world they were born into. The latter is probably true, but who knows.
How it really worked out though is that the old aristocracy and rising bourgeoisie joined forces during the 19th century, once it was obvious that industrial capitalism was going to be the thing and feudalism wasn't coming back. Conservatives dug in and tried to fight the change for a while, and still feign resistance in their messaging towards the poor, but there is no doubt now that conservatives are firmly on board with the free market system and don't particularly mind liberalism's effect on culture (only exploiting the opportunity to rile up the lower classes who don't like the changes liberalism and capitalism has brought to the culture).
That's probably how "socialism" will come to pass in the long term too; it will be elements of the current middle class and a few bourgeoisie (and yes, even some of the old aristocracy) that see the writing on the wall and realize capitalism is coming to an end, and that these classes seeking political power will understand the need to join forces and build over time a new order. I don't see that change happening for a while though. Capitalism has a ways to go where it can continue to exploit and immiserate the masses. WW3 would end it (and any pretense of democracy) as soon as the first nuke is fired, but aside from that, international finance can keep playing a shell game for quite some time, and the threat of even riots is minimal due to the overwhelming police force and the way present society is organized specifically to prevent anything like revolution.
Jackson White
What about the UK, Belgium and the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark ?
I feel like you're all just trying to sweep the issue under the rug here. You give good points about the difficulties socialists would have or do have to get to power from the bourgeoisie, but you wilfully ignore how the public opinion contributes to these difficulties and how they don't always affect it. You make out public opinion to be the end product when it's not.
Doesn't exist by law, even in the US. It appeared independently in almost all democracies that didn't restrict the number of parties. The media is to blame in part, but don't forget journalists are people. It seems that there's a deep tendency for people to separate in two teams of comparable strength. You sure can. In my country, where they need support from hundred of mayors to run for president, there's always one or two trotskyist candidates. They get 1% of the vote. Indeed, but very few expect to get shot. The gilets jaunes were surprised by the brutality of the police. So if workers don't vote for revolutionaries, it's not because they're afraid of the state's response. It's the reverse.
Ideological domination is not only something that the bourgeoisie built on purpose. It's also accidental. What I am trying to get at is that we need to navigate between these two monsters of fatalism, and avoid them at all costs : that the bourgeoisie will always win as long as it is in power, and that the workers will always be on our side in the end.
Blake Ward
The two party system is for all intents and purposes enshrined by law in the US. (The two parties themselves are basically arms of the ruling elite, rather than genuine "political parties" in the sense that Labour or the Tories are political parties. This, if you recall, was an argument implied by Russiagate, where an attack on the ostensibly private DNC was an attack on the American system itself, with the implication that airing their dirty laundry and having any free press at all is actually criminal unless it is limited to printing approved facts.)
Robert Morales
But it's not. There's no law against other parties. The election rules make it hard for them to win, but they can campaign and get votes. I just saw that in 92, the third candidate got almost 20% of the popular vote.
Noah Perez
So if humans aren't voting for socialism because you believe they have no free will, does that justify Soviet style dictatorship?
Adam Brown
You realize people have been few capitalist propaganda for their entire lives? It's what they've been told they want.
Henry Lopez
fed*
Leo Perez
Those same people think the media are liars. They KNOW capitalism is fucked, just look at any opinion poll on privatization. Yet they still vote for it, because normies have personality defects.
I kinda agree with this. Of course there is massive capitalist propaganda and so on, but there's no leftist alternative.
Juan Martinez
Truth exists independent of you. And it is your duty to find it. People make the choice to consume propaganda, to remain ignorant, to oppose equality and maintain hierarchy. That's why during time of crisis, most will go even further right.
Soviet Union is dead, and the narrative of "they don't know better, they are just victims" died with it. Give up, abandon your naivety, worship of workers, and thinking the better of people.
Hunter King
And do what?
Mason Davis
Stupid tank is going to say we need SU 2.0.
Samuel Clark
Prepare to give the Victims of Communism Foundation something to fucking cry about.
