In such a system, your primary focus should be on fixing the system.
If you’re talking about the USA, there isn’t really a way forwards within the system. It’s effectively rigged. The only way to gain useful power in that system is to work out of it. A vote is free, use it, but in a system that broken, that vote is almost worthless and cannot solve the problem.
The US federal election is a two-party system with FPTP, making other parties very very very difficult to elect and easy to demonize as a ‘wasted vote’ helping the worse of the main two parties to win. Both of the major parties benefit from this duopoly and have no interest in reforming the election to allow better parties to gain seats. The Democrats didn’t even doing much on removing voter suppression when they had the power to, there are so many easy wins they could make if they cared.
Consolidation of mass media under private owners, combined with the general concentration of wealth and its political influence, give the owner class effective control over which candidates are presented in a positive light and therefore more likely to be known and popular. You can’t make a federal candidate viable without the support of the owning class, and they won’t support a candidate who isn’t enriching them. The selections are rigged.
It may be a flawed democracy on paper, but when you account for the surrounding conditions, the people don’t have the power to choose their leaders. It’s as false as Russia’s.
I don’t know how things will be post-Trump, but up until now I’d say that (especially at the local level) it was very possible to field more left-leaning candidates and move the Overton Window to the left. We know this because the far right has very successfully shifted the discourse rightward, and a door can be traveled through in either direction.
Now, though, I’m not sure if Trump & co will even bother with sham elections. I suppose time will tell.
We know this because the far right has very successfully shifted the discourse rightward, and a door can be traveled through in either direction.
I think there’s a false assumption here that the system is symmetrical. The worker class and the owner class generally have different relationships with the political process, and generally have different class interests which drive the worker class ‘leftward’ and the owner class ‘rightward’. (a note on the whole left-right model)
Is the discourse shift organic, or is a large part of it the effect of mass media influence, social media promoting and repressing political topics, police tolerating and repressing some political movements more than others, etc.? Local elections do have more potential for change, but it’s not immune from these same environmental factors which amplify the rightward voice in a way we don’t have the resources to copy; we don’t have billionaires who can buy up 90% of mass media or widely-used social media services, we don’t have the power to command law enforcement or to engage in voter suppression legislation.
Of course, we’re not powerless. In fact, as workers, the owner class is dependent on us for their power, and so we have exclusive tools like simple sabotage and strikes, and we are more likely to have more meaningful connections to our communities which can help shift the window beyond the pervasive propaganda. But we must understand that this is an uphill battle, the electoral system as we know it, especially in the US and especially at the federal level, is shaped through decades-if-not-centuries of the rich having the means to influence politicians.
If you’re talking about the USA, there isn’t really a way forwards within the system. It’s effectively rigged. The only way to gain useful power in that system is to work out of it. A vote is free, use it, but in a system that broken, that vote is almost worthless and cannot solve the problem.
It may be a flawed democracy on paper, but when you account for the surrounding conditions, the people don’t have the power to choose their leaders. It’s as false as Russia’s.
I don’t know how things will be post-Trump, but up until now I’d say that (especially at the local level) it was very possible to field more left-leaning candidates and move the Overton Window to the left. We know this because the far right has very successfully shifted the discourse rightward, and a door can be traveled through in either direction.
Now, though, I’m not sure if Trump & co will even bother with sham elections. I suppose time will tell.
I think there’s a false assumption here that the system is symmetrical. The worker class and the owner class generally have different relationships with the political process, and generally have different class interests which drive the worker class ‘leftward’ and the owner class ‘rightward’. (a note on the whole left-right model)
Is the discourse shift organic, or is a large part of it the effect of mass media influence, social media promoting and repressing political topics, police tolerating and repressing some political movements more than others, etc.? Local elections do have more potential for change, but it’s not immune from these same environmental factors which amplify the rightward voice in a way we don’t have the resources to copy; we don’t have billionaires who can buy up 90% of mass media or widely-used social media services, we don’t have the power to command law enforcement or to engage in voter suppression legislation.
Of course, we’re not powerless. In fact, as workers, the owner class is dependent on us for their power, and so we have exclusive tools like simple sabotage and strikes, and we are more likely to have more meaningful connections to our communities which can help shift the window beyond the pervasive propaganda. But we must understand that this is an uphill battle, the electoral system as we know it, especially in the US and especially at the federal level, is shaped through decades-if-not-centuries of the rich having the means to influence politicians.