Jim Devine wrote: > Why not accept the fact that elections in the US are a game you can't > win by voting? The most the left[*] can do at this point is > propaganda: if a leftist candidate got 897,011 votes (6% of the total) > the way Debs did in 1912 (while in prison), that would shake up US > politics. Of course, it might also bring down repression, as with the > Palmer raids (1919-1921).
It's dispiriting to me to see how little we communicate. No union, no communion, no communism. Why will anybody -- especially the left -- accept what exists as immutable? Propaganda, like theoretical work and any other work aimed at shifting the battleground to where we may have an edge and hold the initiative, is "important" but "not urgent" -- to use Stephen Covey's Time Management Matrix [tm] terminology. We definitely need to Focus [tm] on propaganda. But propaganda, like any other strategic task, means nothing if not grounded on the actual issues people face, the actual fights they wage. The only meaningful definition of the left is not its fidelity to some ideological agenda. It's its connection with the actual struggles of working people. Federal U.S. elections are imposed on the U.S. working people, and the U.S. left, every two years. We don't chose the battle or the battleground. We're brought into that battleground, shackled, kicking, and screaming. But the stakes are very high, not only for us, but for the rest of the world as well, which doesn't have a direct influence on the outcomes. We know these events are important, and we are moved to act in mass, defensively. These periodic events, when they press on us, appear both as "urgent" and "important." How can we Avoid [tm] them then? We can't without leaving any pretended strategy hanging in the air. We have to Manage [tm] them with whatever resources we have at the time. There can be no propaganda without agitation, strategy without tactics, long term without short run. The outcome of U.S. federal elections is not predetermined. Why will anybody -- especially the left -- want to accept what exists as immutable? You don't know if the game can be won by voting or by turning the process upside down. You think you know, but you don't know. I don't know either. All we know is that winning is very hard. But the starting point is not a person with foresight wagging the finger at us and telling us how the game will be won. The starting point is people taking action collectively to win the game, and then finding their way to victory by trial and error. Back to my cave. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
