Pragmatic Leftist Theory

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The neolibs are too far right. The tankies are doing whatever that is. Where's the space for the people who want fully-automated-luxury-gay-space-communism, but realize that it's gonna take a while and there are lots of steps between now and then? Here. This is that space.

Here, people should endeavor to discuss and devise practical, actionable leftist action. Vote lesser evil while you build grassroots coalitions. Unionize your workplace. Participate in SRAs. Build cohesion your local community. Educate the proletariat.

This is a place for practical people to develop practical plans to implement stable, incremental improvement.

If you're dead-set on drumming up all 18,453 True Leftists® into spontaneous Revolution, go somewhere else. The grown ups are talking.

Rules:

-1. Don't be a dick. Racism, sexism, other assorted bigotries, you know the drill. At least try to default to mutually respectful discussion. We're all on the same side here, unless you aren't, in which case kindly leave.

-2. Don't be a tankie. Yes I'm sure you have an extensive knowledge of century-old theory. There's been a century of history since then. Things didn't shake out as expected, maybe consider the possibility that a different angle of attack might be more effective in light of new data.

-3. Be practical. No one on the left benefits from counterproductive actions. This is a space informed by, not enslaved to, ideology. Promoting actions that are fundamentally untenable in the system in question, because they fulfill a sense of ideological purity, is a bad look. Don't do that.

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agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works

Government (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 4 days ago by agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works to c/PLT@sh.itjust.works

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A stateless, classless, moneyless society based on mutual aid and fulfillment, obviously.

But even Marx knew that was gonna take a while. What do we do in the meantime?

Now I'm no political prodigy, this is a place for discussion and my views are nothing but prototypes. But I am a systems guy. I understand the importance of considering implementation when devising a system. Administration, operations, logistics, supply chain, maintenance, etc. I can't even count the number of cool ideas I've seen that totally fell apart in the boring details of implementation.

People need a government. Anarchism is a great guiding principle, but we all know what happens in total power vacuums. We grant the state a monopoly on force so that we can democratically regulate that force. Ending the state doesn't end oppression through force, it just removes the regulations.

Also modern civilization requires a great deal of coordination. If you've ever tried to get a dozen friends together without any sort of decision-making hierarchy, coordinating the resources of 300M people is even harder than that. You need some kind of administration.

By that principle, the most important function of the state is to concentrate power in an institution with democratic oversight and obstacles to autocracy; checks and balances.

Honestly, I think the bones of the US system aren't all that bad. Most of the problems we have come from voters not being informed citizens, but that would be an issue in any system. And those problems can be fixed. The US system provides the tools to change just about anything you want, with the mandate of the voters, but it's so resilient to corruption that it took decades of concentrated, coordinated effort to get where we are today.

Obviously it's still susceptible to corruption, but so is any system. If you create a position of power, sociopaths will flock to it like a [redacted] to a flame. Humans are crafty creatures, we will figure out a way to exploit any game you put in front of us. Even if it's a Kobayashi Maru, someone will find a way to cheat. You can't create a system immune to tyranny, all you can do is build an adaptive immune system within it.

So I'm a reformist. I think if we don't have the numbers and coordination to dominate the political landscape through voting, we don't have the numbers or coordination to do it by force.

And I think we don't. We could, in like a decade, if we really hustled on raising class consciousness. There are a lot of elections between now and then.

To me, the obvious answer is lesser evil. It's just how FPTP voting works, and greater evil is going full fascist. Now, we can also hit lesser evil from the inside to make it even lesser. Primaries work if everyone actually shows up.

Don't neglect local elections. I'm sure at least one person reading this could run for School Board or City Council or something. We're seeing more and more young leftists running successful local campaigns on peanuts thanks to social media. It's never been cheaper or easier.

You can even do it in podunk red towns if you've got some tact. It's not very hard to make socialism sound damn good to rednecks, you just have to learn to find synonyms for all the scary commie words.

If you can't run yourself, encourage others. If you're active in your local leftist community, you probably know someone who would make a good candidate. Encourage them to run, help with their campaign. The more leftists in positions of power, even minor ones, the more the working class is exposed to their ideas.

No matter what the future looks like, we're going to need more leftists with government experience, and a more class-conscious working class.

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[–] PugJesus@lemmy.world 6 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

I agree with most of this, except that the bones of the US system not being that bad. It was revolutionary when it was formed, but the ad hoc fixes since have been a subpar method of catching up with the rest of the world's democratic innovations. For that matter, the notion that intentionally gumming up the works of government as a means of preventing tyranny has just... proven not to be viable. The obstruction to tyrants is minimal beyond that which resistance from officials and the public would give them even without the proceduralist bullshit; the obstruction to reformers who operate within the law is immense.

I don't really have any hope for rewriting the whole goddamn Constitution, but ideally, that's what we'd be discussing. Something which the Founding Fathers, ironically enough, would've agreed with, who saw the Constitution not as a final, holy document, but a flawed compromise piece which replacing was not out of the question. "We the People, in order to form a more perfect Union..."

Realistically speaking, even amending the damn this is out of the question in today's environment, so we play the game with the cards we have, not the ones we want.

[–] agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

A big part of saying it's "not that bad" is taking into consideration implementation. The government is woven into most of our daily lives. Any major overhaul is going to create a lot of complications, which will combine with other complications to create more complications. Without a careful transition, many of the systems we rely on will be disturbed.

I totally agree with the sentiment of a new constitutional convention, but the more stuff we change the more chaos we introduce. Realistically, that seems like a 10-20 years down the road kind of goal.

That's why first I'm focused on the states, and the counties, and the cities. Flood every election with Mamdanis, and we might get the 2/3s we need for Article V one day. Plus, laying the groundwork locally will ease the transition when that day comes.