this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2025
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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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Harris was not worth running, I agree.
Unfortunately, if the choices are reduced to "Harris" or "Trump", the answer - from a position of harm reduction - should be obvious.
We fight the mainstream Dems when we can, where we can. I'm a two-time Bernie voter, and if he'd ran in the 2024 primaries, I would've voted for him again. But that's also not an excuse to let fascists win in the general election. No one was saved by preventing Harris from winning - many people - including many more Palestinians - will die because Trump got into office.
i do not disagree. however i just could not cast my vote for genocide even if she’s less genocide than trump. it’s a binary thing with me. i could not not vote too. sigh.
the dem primary process is always so… “gummy”
As a Canadian poet-philosopher once said, "If you choose not to decide/You still have made a choice."
When presented with the option of lesser evil or greater evil, if you say "Whatever everyone else decides is fine with me", which is what abstaining or protest voting in a FPTP system with two near-majority support candidates is, you have chosen in favor of the eventual victor. Which was, unfortunately, the fucking fascist in this case.
Every candidate in my lifetime for either party has been in favor of the ongoing Palestinian genocide by Israel, to varying degrees of support. Yet if I were to find myself in 2000, the thought of refusing to cast a vote for Gore over Bush is morally repugnant - Gore supported Israel, but Bush supported Israel more and, with the benefit of hindsight (and probably some contemporary analysis as well), cause millions of additional deaths outside of that as well.
No amount of "Nader was the better candidate" changes what that abstention or protest vote means, in practical terms, of what a citizen is supporting. It means increasing the chances of the worse candidate winning - it means increasing the chances of millions more dying for no gain of substance to anyone - including the people you're claiming to protest for - and in many cases, this case included, at their further expense.
i get that. i do. but we “finally” had a candidate that was outwardly anti-genocide.
i wish we had ranked choice voting.
If you get it, why didn’t you vote for her?
because harris supports genocide, which outranks all theory about how outcomes happen with other solutions for voting. why were you ok voting for genocide?
Because the alternative was more genocide.
I don't pretend that my vote in 2020 for Biden was anything less than a vote for an admin which unambiguously was going to (and did) support Israel in-line with the policy of previous administrations (and, unfortunately, the vast majority of the American population) - which is repugnant and in support of a genocidal ethnostate. But that vote was also against the immensely more Israel-positive Trump administration which proposed MORE support for genocide than the Biden administration did.
We bear the sin of supporting the lesser evil, because not supporting the lesser evil, when there is only a choice between evils, is in support of the greater evil.
The price of citizenship is responsibility. The price of citizenship is the demand to make imperfect decisions in concert with an imperfect population which will always result in some form of atrocious outcome. The price of citizenship is guilt. If you want to be innocent of political responsibility, well, that's why oligarchies and autocracies are so intermittently popular.
i enjoyed your replies. thank you.
Glad to be of interest. Ultimately, I'm of the opinion that no one should beat themselves up too much about their prior action or lack of action - we can't change the past, and most of us are little specks in nations of millions, and a world of billions. All we can do is try to work for a better future.
So, you don’t get it.
Who? De La Cruz and Stein were both in favor of Ukrainian genocide.
Yeah.
Rush were MASSIVE libertarian disciples of Ayn Rand who blamed the rise of punk rock on "the failures of socialism". Maybe they aren't who you want to be quoting right now.