- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/24998458
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A strike that has a scheduled end date is a strike that’s has scheduled its own failure. A ten day strike would achieve nothing except the suffering of it’s participants.
Yes, the economy would grind to a halt, yes people would likely die, yes it would financially hurt the powerful people in charge.
But do you really think those powerful people will give a shit? They know after ten days the gravy train will resume, but only for them and not the people who lost their jobs, got arrested, were injured, etc. The rich and powerful can afford to be patient, meanwhile everyone who sacrificed for ten days is going to have to question whether they can survive doing it again.
No, we’re way past the point where our society can afford another failed effort to affect change. We need a general strike that doesn’t end until the government capitulates to the needs of the people. It’s all or nothing, now. ☹️
That’s not always accurate. A strike where people sit at home and watch TV might have this result, but a 10 days of people on the streets talking and hyping each other up, can easily grow revolutionary, especially if during those 10-days people use direct action for their mutual aid to cover their needs
1-day strikes and random marches on the other hand are practically useless
It is both.
Voting is a good system. The alternative is “let’s just have a fight with guns, or with money, or connections to powerful people, every time there’s a disagreement.”
The problem is that we delegated the process of informing people what to vote for, to absolutely rotten media. And we delegated the process of figuring out the details of putting some candidates forward, to an absolutely craven, useless, and corrupt class of full-time political operatives who generally don’t give a shit about the people.
We need to fix those things. And yes, getting organized labor to fight back whenever they are fucking us, which is pretty much every day, to add some bite to all those polite ballots we’re sending in, sounds great.
But voting, as a concept, is good. It doesn’t have to be either or. It can be a 10-day general strike, and also voting to get rid of the guy who wants to nuke Iceland, and also organizing our politics better, for some candidates that aren’t so shit as these ones generally are. Each one will help the others get done.
I think you’re opening up a false dichotomy here: it’s not about voting vs. the law of the fist. It’s about how the democratic systems are set up to keep the powerful in power.
The system is set up to promote those “absolutely craven, useless, and corrupt class of full-time political operatives who generally don’t give a shit about the people”. And “fixing” the media to not promote those things is like trying to teach a cat not to hunt mice.
There are more ways to have a democratic stucture of politics than “we decide onsour ruler every four years”.
“We need both” “It doesn’t have to be either or”
“I think you’re opening up a false dichotomy here”
Voting is a good system. The alternative is “let’s just have a fight with guns, or with money, or connections to powerful people, every time there’s a disagreement.”
Show me how this is not a dichotomy. Why are these the only options?
Discussing why not having voting invites other methods of deciding power struggles that are even less democratic, does not mean a false dichotomy. I am very clearly discussing why both voting and also using other means of people power, together, is the way.
What do you think is my main argument? If not that both together are the way?
The media will always exist and people will always base their decisions on the information they receive in the media. This is inevitable in any society with the degree of complexity we have today. It is just not possible to gather all the information ourselves about any but the most personal of topics. That is why free, unbiased, and independent media is an extremely important part of liberal electoral democracy. And for the greater part of the past two centuries, this is what we more or less had. Yes, major media outlets have always been somewhat controlled by the upper class (whether in the form of media companies or local media magnates), but until quite recently, most of them didn’t care about using those outlets as propaganda pieces; they just cared about continuing to collect their subscription money, which is likely the best-case scenario for privately owned for-profit media. It is astonishing that this system lasted as long as it did.
There used to be a requirement of giving equal air time to opposing opinions - that was one of the earlier things Republicans successfully targeted. I’ve no idea how to make that work with the virtually unlimited possible sources available today.
That just opens you up to false balancing. See: the media landscape on climate change for the last 70 years.
And also only works when there are only two sides to represent to begin with, so it would reinforce the two party system
The rich can wait it out longer than you
Not if their plumbing needs fixing
Scabs exist. And fascism, the original one in Italy, rose as an answer to the left wing.
You can draw your own conclusions from this.
Electoral politics doesn’t get the job done, but failing to attend to electoral politics can sure as shit make the job harder.
The question of “Who are we negotiating with” is all-important in every scenario except “Complete and total unconditional victory”.
Failing to attend to electoral politics is also a great way to ensure that blood has to be spilled again to re-win battles that were already fought, as has been seen with many of those left of center sitting out elections for half a century, which just so happens to coincidence with decoupling of wages from productivity, increasing wealth inequality, and erosion of workers’ rights.
If I thought people were consistent enough, I’d say that the founding of anti-electoralism was a right-wing, authoritarian conspiracy, but I don’t think that’s super likely.
Yeah, with all those general strikes we’ve had they must be really easy to organize!
This is what bothers me so much about the constant calls for general strikes on social media. They’re almost never paired with serious organization (ex: where are the strike funds to support people who otherwise can’t afford to miss paychecks?)
Not to mention a large chunk of the public won’t agree with the idea to begin with. Especially the top 20-30% of income earners.
Additionally, emergency/medical personnel not working would mean people are directly dying as a result of it, creating easy negative PR against the movement.
Asking 180+ million people to coordinate on anything is a farce, and for something like a general strike it is an absolute fantasy.
Have you noticed they’re always paired with messages encouraging voter apathy and disparticipation ?
I mean, I have 5 kids who need to eat. I would absolutely participate, but I just can’t afford it.
We’re in a country with very little organized labor compared to other countries in Europe or Latin America where strikes are common. Also cops here are highly militarized. Plus we are a massive country. Still, I think Americans need to consider a general strike and organize if need be. Is it easy? Obviously not. But I’ll happily take some optimism in these dark times.
You need to go vote too. Probably for Democrats, if you’re reading this here.
Actions speak louder than words
