Leftists Vs Centrists Vs Right Wingers
no, it’s eating up the spectacle and expecting it to deliver results. organize. forget the fucking democratic party.
Accusations of ultraleftist abstention I get, but how the fuck do you read the decision to stay out of this fight as opportunist? CTH, for example, is clearly taking an “”“ultraleft”“” anti-entryist position here, not an opportunist one. Probably significantly different from whatever V****'s motivations are. Pressuring Pelosi externally to win M4A is something I can get behind, but why tie this campaign to the doomed struggle to control the uncontrollable (from the inside) Democratic Party? Why trust AOC to lead this sort of fight when this is her strategy to win leverage? She’s still playing the fucking shell game without understanding that it’s a shell game and encouraging the left more broadly to do the same.
this isn’t even an external pressure campaign… “call your reps” is the fucking opportunist line. AOC, I get. she’s hitched her wagon to this eternally-doomed strategy. I’m honestly more skeptical of the rest of the people pushing this. this whole thing seems to me like socdems arguing with each other about the best way to flail ineffectually and there are more opportunists than not involved.
My point was more that this campaign isn’t external when I said I could get behind externally pressuring Pelosi. Calling your rep just for the sake of clogging their answering machine is a funny way to piss them off but if they’re a Dem and you’re a Marxist you can’t gain leverage by threatening not to vote for them unless they do XYZ because you weren’t gonna vote for them as a matter of principle.
My use of sarcastic scare quotes was to emphasize the false conflation with an actual ultraleft position (complete abstention from elections) and the “ultraleft” position of breaking completely away from entryism into capitalist parties. You’re correct that if we’re gonna do electoral politics, we should do so putting forth our own program/platform with a list of carefully-formulated demands we want to fight and organize for, and putting forth our own working-class candidates to represent us, ones subject to instant recall by party membership and committed to only taking pay equivalent to that of an average/typical working-class person from the community they represent to ensure they still have skin in the game.
it is organizing to get a M4A vote on the board and having people call their reps/protest for them to vote Yes
no, that’s mobilization. organizing results in an actual structure after the immediate fight. moreover, it’s strategically bad. the democratic party has absolutely no reason to vote for this, no matter who calls their phones. they don’t answer to their constituents. they answer to capital. this whole strategy is magical thinking.
The country just voted into the presidency the one democratic candidate who was against m4a. Reps have zero reason to pay attention to any amount of calls
