• DessalinesA
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    21 days ago

    Why would the capitalists let you vote away their wealth or power? What incentive do they have to do that?

    That’s defeatism.

    No, it’s a historical reality that voting is not an effective method to undo class society. Even the ancient greeks knew (before the Marxists rediscovered this and dealt their own death blows to representative government in the 1800s) that voting in an aristocracy is nothing more than theatre, because only the rich and entrenched families have the resources to fund campaigns, and get themselves elected (or appoint political puppets to do their bidding).

    Political power is a reflex of economic power, and the rich will not allow you to use the system they control, to undo it.

    single ant cannot destroy a tree. It’s the work of countless ants that achieve that.

    Many socialist / communist parties did just that, and they weren’t deluded enough to try to accomplish it via voting in a system controlled by the ruling classes.

    • atro_city@fedia.io
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      21 days ago

      So you’re completely ignoring the rise of fascism due to voting? The second world war happened because a bunch of nazis stormed the German parliament and took control of it by force? What do you think populism does?

      Of course you can change the system from within. Le Pen, Höcke, Meloni, Wilders, Trump, and so on, they aren’t “part of the establishment”. They latched onto a populist narratives, got financial aid from the radicals in their countries, and gathered votes to get themselves into offices .

      The left-wing parties in France united to pose a unified front against the national assembly (le RN) in France. And it worked. They got the relative majority to vote for them, but as soon as they won, they were beset by infighting. Such is the common reality of left wing parties - they are their own greatest enemy.

      Either you chose to ignore it or you were unaware, but the latter is much less probable, so I’m going to say you chose to in order to fit your narrative of “voting doesn’t matter” and imagine that class warfare (or how Marx would put it “Klassenkampf”) is the only way out.