Pragmatic Leftist Theory
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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insofar as voting: Direct democracy, mandatory (under significant penalty) ranked-choice voting with an option for "none of the above" -- and if that wins, you go back to the fucking drawing board and find some new candidates or policy ideas. No bullshit voting districts, no bullshit representatives except in advisory make-shit-happen roles, not decide-what-happens roles. Local laws get voted on by everyone living in the county over 18 for more than half a calendar year, state laws get voted on by everyone living in the state for more than half a year, and so on for national. You get a day off for voting, it's a twice yearly national holiday and no employer can force you to work on those days (or must give you an alternative day off) under severe penalty -- once for state and local referendums and once for national or regional policy decisions (what makes sense for the midwest may not make sense for the northeast or west coast, but probably best to have them all vote on the same policy at once as a region instead of as individual states over a few different election cycles).
Democracy is a participation sport and I'm tired of being subject to the whims of the loudest idiots in the room.
A voting day isn't really practical here, since there can't just be a day when no one works. There's something that must be done every single day.
I like the idea of a voting week, and you must have one day off that week to vote. I also vastly prefer mail-in overall, I do mail-in and being able to casually research every name on the ballot at my leisure is amazing. Trying to remember all your choices from the sample ballot when you're in-person honestly sucks. But I'm super bad with names, so that might just be me.
I kinda like mandatory voting, but also I think that forcing apathetic people is mostly just going to add noise to the actual will of the people who care enough to engage. There are pros and cons, I'd need to do a more detailed analysis to have a strong opinion either way.
Fair point, hence why I said "or must give you an alternative day off".
Noise would still be a better problem to have, especially with ranked-choice voting in place, than having millions of people who just didn't give enough of a shit to bother. At least if it's mandatory you're forcing some of them think about how things are going and where they'd like them to go from here, even if they end up just writing in "Mickey Mouse" or some silly bullshit.