INDIRECT PLUTOCRACY
but sure, let's keep calling selling the system to the highest bidder a "democracy".
#Corruption #Electoralism #PowerOver #PoliticalDomination #PolicySpaces #Illusion

Courtesy of the University of Michigan Library’s Joseph A. Labadie Collection #antipolitics #anarchist #anarchists #voting #electoralism #democracy

"The word 'Socialism' has become in the hands of the Socialist politicians a sort of mitigated middle-class exploitation. They are all Socialists now, but Socialism is gone, and the most confused ideas prevail now among the Social-Democrats concerning the sense of this great war-cry of the workers."
— Kropotkin, 1903
#anarchism #socialism #electoralism

Our Friendly Critique of Bookchin's Politics has now been posted to our substack!!! Check it out if you want to see where we agree and disagree with Bookchin and more importantly how to potentially upgrade overall social ecological, communalist, and libertarian socialist praxis!!!

"Even though this essay has been rooted in a critical appraisal of Bookchin’s politics, this essay has also been aiming to do something more: that is to sketch out how to potentially upgrade social ecological praxis through a critical appraisal of Bookchin’s politics. Social ecology and communalism should be retained because their most essential and salient features hold true. And yet, social ecology and communalism can be made more coherent. Bookchin’s written and spoken philosophy is a closed book of sorts, but social ecology and communalism are living praxes that are internally differentiated and incomplete. First and foremost, the primary way that both social ecology and communalism can be made more coherent is through retaining their most essential features as part of praxis as they develop (including horizontality, direct democracy, mutual aid, direct action, communal self-governance, confederalism, oppositional politics, reconstructive politics, and an understanding of ecological problems as having their roots in social problems of hierarchy, etc.). Such a politics would keep a communalist core through the development of communal assemblies and confederations thereof as mass organizations for functions of mutual aid and direct action towards dual power and revolution. Such communal assemblies and federations thereof would be both counterpowers to capitalism and the state and help meet needs of people in self-managed ways– while prefiguring the new world based on self-management on every scale in the shell of the old. Aside from retaining their most essential features, social ecology and communalism can be made more coherent by subtracting Bookchin’s electoral approach to politics. Additionally, social ecology and communalism can use a reintegration of syndicalism as part of a revolutionary social movement ecosystem in such a way where syndicalism is viewed as a means (not as an end or as THE means)– and one of multiple means to be strategically emphasized more or less depending on conditions. Such a reintegration of syndicalism into overall social ecological praxis does not and should not overly reduce modes of oppositional politics to syndicalism (or otherwise underemphasize communalist means and ends). A fleshed out strategy involving relations of ideologically specific groups to social movements and popular organizations can further communalist goals. And communalism can further the goals of ideologically specific libertarian communist groups through creation of and social insertion within communal assemblies as direct action and mutual aid organs (in such a way that still retains an “organizational pluralism” of sorts via social insertion in community, union, student spheres and beyond). Such a sublation of libertarian communism, communalism, syndicalism, and ways ideologically specific libertarian communist groups can interface with mass movements can potentially move social ecological praxis forward. "

https://usufructcollective.substack.com/p/a-friendly-critique-of-bookchins

#anarchism #socialism #communism #communalism #commons #syndicalism #organization #electoralism #platformism #especifismo

It's your last day to make history and decide the second fully open soda! Make your voice heard, vote!
https://brands.town/@opencola/109342421095154890

#electoralism #voterid #soda

:promoted: Promoted

Yet another article on #electoralism, from Matt this time as part of the #CriticalNotes series #anarchism https://www.redblacknotes.com/2022/08/13/anarchists-and-parliamentarianism-elections-and-social-change/

For those who voted in the #USMidtermElections2022, I don't necessarily discourage it. I voted. But we must acknowledge that voting is not enough. We are given a limited and unhelpful (to put it mildly) set of realistic choices, with a #Vote that gets thrown in with millions of not discarded outright, for people to govern us, once every two years. There's not a lot that can be accomplished through #electoralism--not nothing, but not much.

#DirectAction. That's the way to change systems. For #ClimateJustice and #Ecosocialism, examples include starting and helping out in #CommunityGardening projects, collecting materials that would have gone to waste and turning them into useful things (ie making woven #Plarn or paper clay containers and furniture from used plastic and paper bags), #SeedBombing empty lots with native, edible, and #PollinatorFriendly plants, carpooling or riding public transit, and even blocking, obstructing, or sabotaging fossil fuel and deforestation infrastructure (don't get caught, though). The #Solarpunk community is generating, spreading, and acting on many such ideas.

We will also need to support direct action through research on critical issues and effective actions, communication (including through the arts) to spread our ideas and share our methods, and living our lives in #prefigurative ways for a better world.

For decades, the capitalist state has known about #EcologicalBreakdown, has faced public demand to stop it, and has done next to nothing. They're not going to start now. It's on us to stop ecological destruction from reaching its worst outcomes, and it's on us to build the structures we need to survive and adapt on this planet as it does face crisis and harm. Capitalism, hierarchy, and the state don't have a place in a #Sustainable future, anyway.

I come from a different perspective on #electoralism and #voting . I suppose I don't care what you do, but we should seek to demystify what the horse race is, and why it serves to perpetuate the capitalist system. It's becoming increasingly difficult to deny that democracy is in decline, and "both parties" play a role in the decline. The ones who always lose are the working class. As the GOP dismantles liberal democracy in the US, there comes a point where voting will never matter again. (1/2)

Oh because I am seeing it again the problem i have with voting are not how effective it is at getting reform under a capitalist state. I think that criticism is weak and dangerous. instead of challenging reformist thinking it too often endorses it by leave open the idea that it is good to vote if it did get reforms.

electoralism trains people to be reliant on the state and not try to liberate themselves. I don't care if someone votes but focusing on voting is definitely harmful.

sorry for my tired rambling.

#electoralism #state #anarchism #communism #voting

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-leak-report-corbyn-election-whatsapp-antisemitism-tories-yougov-poll-a9462456.html

The #labour party is at it again.

#elections #uk #labourparty #electoralism #jeremycorbyn

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/rubycramer/bernie-sanders-drops-ends-campaign-2020?origin=spl&ref=hpsplash

Well, let's witness the death of electoral hope together.

#berniesanders #politics #electoralism #usa #elections

Kyle Kulinski knows about politics: he cofounded Justice Democrats, the American progressive political action committee responsible for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's candidacy and election, FFS! Listen to him commenting AOC's betrayal (or cooptation by the DNC if you like) #usapolitics #electoralism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-XsybPgrfY