John’s correct about the one issue many on the left get wrong, and we need to say so out loud. The franchise isn’t something you hang on top of class rule; it is a medium whereby the working class has a genuine (if limited) ability and a reflex that deems its protection unworthy, which is just a cover for having nothing to protect it with. So: Yes to Alarm.
But there needs to be a correction made to the diagnosis since it dictates what the demand can be. Bonapartism in the Eighteenth Brumaire is not a station on a continuum ranging from parliamentarian rule to dictatorship. Bonapartism is a specific solution to a crisis of representation. In this case, the bourgeoisie gives up direct political control but preserves its social influence. The state develops a degree of independence that it uses through individual rather than class representative means. What is new here is the patrimonial component. Offices are treated as private property and are staffed by retinue members instead of civil servants, and these offices are used primarily to maintain the family's social power. The postal proposal is this exact same thing, and it is not a plan to suspend the election. Instead, states are to provide lists of registered mail-in voters to a federally run ballot portal. If the voter registration data contained in the agency's database does not match what the agency reads using the scanners on the envelopes, the agency will refuse to deliver them. Whistleblower testimony was recently released through Sen. Richard Blumenthal. This testimony describes procedures being conducted behind closed doors and expedited towards a September 1st deadline while multiple courts review whether or not states must produce those lists. There is no announcement of suspending anything. A technical standard is established, the agency employing people loyal to Trump implements that standard, and mass disenfranchisement occurs due to a difference in rates of identification. CNN CNN That is why Viktor Orban is the proper comparator for John's opposite reasoning. Orban conducts elections. The Patrimony State doesn't need to eliminate voting. It simply needs to oversee it. This leads me to Charles. Charles performs the typical action, and it should be identified. Charles accepts that unions and DSA will take no action. He assumes that the smaller organizations cannot alter anything. Then he transforms this inability to carry out action into a program: Raise the Alarm and Add Propaganda Calling for the Overthrow of Capitalism. Draper called attention to this process in his book, Anatomy of the Micro-Sect. Smaller groups call for broader demands because calling for a demand without any group able to bear it costs nothing to put forth. Adding “And Capitalism Can Not Be Reformed” to “Hands Off The Election" does not strengthen the second demand. Rather, adding this phrase provides a replacement for what is absent—any group capable of bearing it. Regarding DSA, DSA’s silence is not an error that could be corrected by passing another motion. The caucuses within DSA have replaced recall, mandates, and factional discipline with bodies at which it cannot function. Therefore, an organization that cannot bind its delegates cannot organize opposition to an administration’s capture of the franchise. What I believe would be worth offering as a proposition is a small one that has a base: the Postal Unions. They handle this mail. A demand that local union branches refuse to execute discrepancy-based refusal-to-deliver is small and unlikely, and unlike the other option, it identifies who will have to perform it. -- Tony -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#43265): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/43265 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/121053097/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
