Revolution is Not a Part-Time Job: a Response to @ContraPoints
Revolution is Not a Part-Time Job: a Response to @ContraPoints
Can someone summarize? I can't watch a video at the moment.
In a nutshell, ContraPoints tweeted some stuff saying that anti-electoralism is mostly pointless posturing and shitposting. Anark responds reasonably without shitting or dunking on ContraPoints that supporting the electoral system is a huge time/energy/resource sink that just upholds the establishment.
All real change takes time and comes from bottom up. The worker movement of the early 1900s is his main and best example. All of that change came from revolutionary organizing and activity and it was slow and bottom up. His main point is instead of spending all that time/energy/resources on an establishment, spend it on organizing and building for the new world/system. Force that change from the bottom up from outside the system, since the system just wants to perpetuate itself anyway.
He's not wrong, but each of us has to decide where our efforts are best placed.
My chances for unionization are nil. My opportunities for mutual aid are being realized. My opportunities for electoral politics are real right now until November.
And electoral politics don't need to take much from you. Donate your money to a union drive instead of a campaign. Volunteer at your food bank, or homeless shelter, check out of the hype until the election and then spend an hour casting a vote.
is mostly pointless posturing
It's kind of funny considering that this is by definition true for electorialism as well.
Anti-electorialism at least advocates for less of that, even though indeed the people that promote it online are mostly LARPing it.
Thanks!
Funny how all this Discourse always comes out during peak campaigning times. Right after the election, suddenly ContraPoints falls off the radar and so do these "revolutionaries".
I think devoting, like, 6 months every four years to making sure literal fascists don't come to power and immediately round up all your revolutionaries to execute them on the town square would not be too big of an ask. He'll have plenty of time in December to do whatever he usually does without worrying about electoralism.
It takes a position of enormous privilege to be this disconnected from political pragmatism. If Trump wins, Natalie Wynn won't get to participate in a revolution. She'd be lucky to survive at all.