President Biden?
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Bob Avakian who is a Maoist he said that when he was young he voted for the lesser evil and the lesser evil became the big evil
Well he contradicts your advice
“Lesser evil is still as evil.”
A typo – it meant to read
Lesser evil is still an evil”
“Really though, what I think is more important is what people do on the hundreds of other days when there is no election.”
And we can agree on that.
It will be interesting to see if the Justice Democrats and the Sanders Movement would metamorphise into an independent and organised opposition and resistance to a Biden government.
But I don’t think Biden will win and if Biden loses, they’ll blame the left, just as they did in 2016 and choose another “electability” candidate in another right-wards shift. (mere guess-work on my part)
Lesser evil is still as evil.
Not always true. And if it was, voting for the lesser evil wouldn’t make any difference anyhow, so nothing lost. It’s like Pascal’s wager.
It is still an evil. The class struggle goes on regardless. It is hindered by ideologically reinforced misconceptions. Weakened by bureaucratic union organisations. So many in the USA think they are middle class because they wear white collars to work.
Really though, what I think is more important is what people do on the hundreds of other days when there is no election….
Well, that is what the handful of comrades in the WSPUS are doing. Trying to make socialists. There is no other worthwhile alternative to this.
Everything else is futile.
What will the legacy of Bernie Sanders be?
He can be rightly credited as bringing the idea of socialism back into the popular political discourse once again (no matter how flawed the definition might be)
He talked about the working class
He galvanised the proponents of the welfare state safety-net against the advocates of libertarian/neo-liberalism, the redistributionists against the trickle-downers
He created an efficient elaborate net-work of campaigners and supporters
He built a fund-raising structure for a political organisation that wasn’t dependent upon a few big donors.
Where does he go from here? Is he going to be the “Tony Benn” of America
“Everything else is futile.”
As the Borg say, Matt, “Resistance is futile”
No, i’m not in agreement that for the working class it is only socialism and nothing else.
We need an effective class struggle and that and resistance are not futile.
Americans (and other workers) need to re-build their unions in one shape or another, bring back its militancy and conduct class war against the ruling class. They need to form alliances with other social movements such as the environmentalists.
It is no guarantee of success, no guarantee of automatic appearance of socialist consciousness, but without self-organisation, without the courage to engage in class battles, working people may not acquire the confidence to protect themselves from the encroachments of capital. They may not acquire an expectancy of victory and give rise to the vision of establishing socialism.
I did say that ‘The class struggle goes on regardless.’
But the political struggle for other than socialism is futile.
We shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking that Trump was the cause of right-wing populism in the USA. Rather his election was the symptom of it. Like all demagogues Trump feeds off their discontent. He offers simplistic scape-goats for their troubles. Like all good “leaders” he follows the mob, echoing their sentiments.
His supporters, in their own minds, feel justified in being alienated from the identity politics of the Democratic Party, that ignored their economic plight and offered the politics of tokenism.
Biden lacks the arguments that Sanders made about improving the standard and quality of life for working people.
Nostalgia for a fictitious past is not a vote-winner. Biden is going to lose. (please note all my other earlier predictions and their failure have failed to materialise.)
The Left will place their faith in the 2024 run for AOC but by then i confidently predict she will be comfortably ensconced in the Democratic Party establishment.
We shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking that Trump was the cause of right-wing populism in the USA.
I don’t think anyone thinks that. But equally, it’s a mistake to think that Trump’s victory hasn’t emboldened and enlarged the far-right in the USA or that his removal would have no effect on anything.
I suppose, luckily those of us living in the UK don’t have to make that choice. However I would add this to the debate::
would you rather have
a) A right wing populist who has many loathsome and anti working class policies and ideas, but who is unable to enact the vast majority of them due to a combination of the opposition he creates and the fact that he is clearly a moron.
b) A centre right bigot, nationalist and sexual preditor, who is up to his neck in promises to big business and who will probably be able to implement many of his slightly less loathsome policies and definitely more hawkish foreign policy decisions, because he doesn’t create as much opposition to his policies and he is not as much of a moron as Trump.
Personally it’s like being asked “which bollock would you like to be cut off”, my answer would be neither.
In the USA peoples have always elected reactionaries, recalcitrants right-wingers, racists, xenophobic, criminals, invaders, anticommunists, and warmongers. Nothing is new
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