this post was submitted on 15 Apr 2025
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No single thing alone will fix the world. Voting alone won't fix it. Throwing a molotov alone won't fix it.
Voting (in many places, for many people) takes almost no effort. Go do it. But don't call it a day and think you've done everything you can do. Refusing to vote just yields one of the many fronts in this conflict without a fight.
Yes throwing a Molotov won't fix it. Throwing 30 million on the other hand...
How bout voting for throwing a Molotov cocktails?
The voting apparatus takes immense effort in fact. It takes so much effort that it's almost all consuming for most nations during the election period and wastes thousands of human-workhours.
I meant the amount of effort it takes for the end user.
If we're going to talk about higher order levels of effort, then everything gets very expensive very quickly.
When I lived in Little Rock, I stood in line to vote for 4.5 hours. There are a lot of places in the US where they make it as difficult as possible. I couldn’t even count how many people left the line to go back to work before they could vote.
No, The point is that all that "higher order level" of effort is wasted on electoralism. It's not wasted in direct action.
I'm not sure I follow. I was talking about what individuals should do: direct action and also voting. Voting is often just a few minutes for the end user.
I'm not talking about what the state should spend resources on.
Voting is largely volunteer run. All that effort is wasted. Taking part in elections legitimizes that effort
Most people follow election results and those people's actions have real, discernable, effects. If you yield on this front, even if you think elections are flawed, you're letting your opponents have this power uncontested. That's a terrible strategy.
No, it's a terrible strategy to waste any effort on elections. If that effort was put in direct action for prefiguration instead, it would not matter what your opponents did.
I really don't think the little old ladies volunteering to run the tables are an untapped vanguard of the revolution, nor do I think that them spending an afternoon there is mutually exclusive with other activities.
You can't just ignore the world because you don't like it and expect it to conform to your desires. Laws and government exist. If you forfeit this front, the people who do put effort in will use these apparatuses to do real things in the real world. People on food stamps can't eat your idealism. (And programs like that are not mutually exclusive with mutual aid)
I think you're being deliberately obtuse or incredibly naive on the amount of volunteer effort extended in elections.
And yes even the little old ladies volunteering on food kitchens would be thousand times more valuable than doing election tables.
I'm not ignoring the real world at all. I'm saying that if we put the electioneering efforts into direct action, it won't matter if someone else has the state.
They can do both!
In what way will it not matter if someone else controls the state?
It sounds like you're ignoring the real world when you say we should abandon elections and let our opponents take full control of the government. That will lead to incalculable tragedy.
They cannot do both! Time is finite.
It doesn't matter because if we take direct action and prefigure mutual aid networks for improving our lives the state fucking collapses from its own contradictions. The reaction from whatever is left from the state to those movements would be identical whether they're nominally left or right
So I guess they better not sleep or have other hobbies then, either, right? I don't think expecting maximum optimization is realistic.
Many people will suffer and die if the state collapses abruptly. Especially if it continues on the trajectory the right wing is aiming it right now. We should avoid the equivalent of an unsafe shutdown. We can do more than one thing at a time, especially when one of those things is "spend 15 minutes once a year voting against the store brand nazi". If you just forfeit on this front, people will be rounded up and disappeared because that's what won the election, and there are enough people that comply, and enough people that are eager for that. Voting won't magically fix everything, but it can act as harm reduction.
What? That makes no sense with what I was saying.
not if it collapses due to anarchist prefiguration. That's the whole point!
Honestly I don't think you're reading or comprehending what I'm saying so I think I'll just disengage here.
Exactly, voting exists to the detriment of any state that implements it. It costs the government billions of dollars. Once we create a socialist paradise, the first thing we should do is abolish elections to save money.
I don't give a fuck about the money
Money, work-hours, whatever. The only efficient and responsible way to run a socialist economy is with the firm grasp of a centralised authority. Voting doesn't stop fascism, heroic dictators stop fascism.
ye ye fuck off