Neither Major Party in the US Represents the Working Class
Is it possible to build a political party that truly speaks to the needs of working people in an era of runaway inequality and incessant mass layoffs?
i told you bro
The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them.
Karl Marx
So, no elections or no masters? Marx wasn't an anarchist
What Marx says that the government represents the ruling class, and under capitalism it's the capitalist minority.
We can’t vote for a human or the wrong lizard might win.
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
No shit.
Obviously true, but I initially read it as the shitpost title "Neither Mario Party in the US [etc]"
One party represents just what is good for them and theirs with no consideration for long term function and stability of the country. The other represents just what is good for them and theirs but realize they need the country to consider relatively stably for their own long term good.
Eh, I see it this way:
I don't see either as caring too much for longer term stability. Democrats want to raise/eliminate the debt limit (i.e. more social programs), and Republicans want to use the debt limit for political concessions (i.e. appeal to base with lip-service to fiscal responsibility), neither seems particularly worried about balancing the budget.
"The US is also a one-party state, but in typical American extravagance they have two of them"
-Julius Nyerere, first president of Tanzania
The specific combination of factors in the historical formation of U.S. society—dominant “biblical” religious ideology and absence of a workers’ party—has resulted in government by a de facto single party, the party of capital. The two segments that make up this single party share the same fundamental liberalism. Both focus their attention solely on the minority who “participate” in the truncated and powerless democratic life on offer. Each has its supporters in the middle classes, since the working classes seldom vote, and has adapted its language to them. Each encapsulates a conglomerate of segmentary capitalist interests (the “lobbies”) and supporters from various “communities.”
American democracy is today the advanced model of what I call “low-intensity democracy.” It operates on the basis of a complete separation between the management of political life, grounded on the practice of electoral democracy, and the management of economic life, governed by the laws of capital accumulation. Moreover, this separation is not questioned in any substantial way, but is, rather, part of what is called the general consensus. Yet that separation eliminates all the creative potential found in political democracy. It emasculates the representative institutions (parliaments and others), which are made powerless in the face of the “market” whose dictates must be accepted.
Marx thought that the construction of a “pure” capitalism in the United States, without any pre-capitalist antecedent, was an advantage for the socialist struggle. I think, on the contrary, that the devastating effects of this “pure” capitalism are the most serious obstacles imaginable.
But one works much harder than the other at supporting them.
Think about how we got here
Very early on we out sourced a big chunk of the election process to volunteers, fans, fanatics if you will. Why raise taxes to pay for elections?
Parties took over the preliminary parts of the process in exchange for vetting potential candidates.
OK so I'm guessing but, no one works for free
The Pay may not be cash, power, influence, patronage are all nice.
Money has always been speech
Excess resources have always been required to have a meaningful political opinion
The system was designed for information moving at the speed of horse at great expense
The system was to serve 1% of the present population
Damm thing works better than one would expect :D
Vote for the candidate that will do the least harm to the most people
Agreed, that is why I vote for the PSL or green party candidate.
Turns out that making a fake country on forcibly depopulated land means its political parties will be equally as fake.
Eh. That's not really related to the current problem of lack of political representation for non-capitalists. A communist utopia that was built on depopulated land would't really have any issues being a utopia for the existing people just because they genocided some folks 200 years ago.
This is to ignore the entire political culture of the United States and it's history, and how this history is viewed by its contemporaries, and how this view of history influences the present and future. Remember, who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past!
Any hypothetical "communist utopia built on depopulated land" would have to have, at some point, contended with the history of how that land became depopulated in the first place, and the accompanying ideology of colonialism, expansionism and capital accumulation which enabled that, in order to become a "communist utopia". Otherwise, failing to contend with that history, it would not be a "communist utopia", and the ideological descendants of those who carried out the original genocide, depopulation of land, and capital accumulation would still be in charge, most likely trying to expand their empire and methods of subjugation globally. Oh wait, that's exactly what's going on in the USA right now! I'll just quote an excerpt from Samir Amin's Revolution From North To South to illustrate the point further:
The political culture of the United States is not the same as the one that took form in France beginning with the Enlightenment and, above all, the Revolution. The heritage of those two signal events has, to various extents, marked the history of a large part of the European continent. U.S. political culture has quite different characteristics. The particular form of Protestantism established in New England served to legitimize the new U.S. society and its conquest of the continent in terms drawn from the Bible. The genocide of the Native Americans is a natural part of the new chosen people’s divine mission. Subsequently, the United States extended to the entire world the project of realizing the work that “God” had ordered it to accomplish. The people of the United States live as the “chosen people.”
Of course, the American ideology is not the cause of U.S. imperialist expansion. The latter follows the logic of capital accumulation and serves the interests of capital (which are quite material). But this ideology is perfectly suited to this process. It confuses the issue. The “American Revolution” was only a war of independence without social import. In their revolt against the English monarchy, the American colonists in no way wanted to transform economic and social relations, but simply no longer wanted to share the profits from those relations with the ruling class of the mother country. Their main objective was above all westward expansion. Maintaining slavery was also, in this context, unquestioned. Many of the revolution’s major leaders were slave owners, and their prejudices in this area were unshakeable...
The specific combination of factors in the historical formation of U.S. society—dominant “biblical” religious ideology and absence of a workers’ party—has resulted in government by a de facto single party, the party of capital.
Thank you, captain obvious.
Most countries don't have a 1 party system for this reason
I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. The US doesn't have a 1 party system. If you meant 2 party system, that's not really true of any specific arrangement of political party spectrums across the world. No system covers most countries. Wikipedia lists 15 countries, many among the most powerful and influential globally that are effectively 2 party systems.
There are so many reasons why the working class lack representation in America and I don't think a single one of those reasons is the 2 party system. In fact, on paper, the US has no limit on how many political parties there can be. The reason we have a 2 party system has more to do with our voting system and the spoiler effect that happens over time in all First-Past-The-Post voting systems.
I think the reason the working class lack representation has so much more to do with the money in our politics. The politicians are more concerned with continuing their political careers and earning more money for themselves than they are with helping the working and poor classes.
Its a one party system because the US Democratic and Republican parties have the same policies on everything that actually matters to people's quality of life. Both provide endless funding to the military. Neither will defund the police. Neither will tax carbon or stop pipelines from being built. Neither will provide single payer healthcare. Neither will invest in building sustainable transportation infrastructure (high speed rail, interstate public busses). Neither will tax carbon or animal consumption. Neither will make universities free and get rid of student loan debt. Neither will provide housing to homeless people. Neither will comply with international laws related to war crimes or refugees. Neither will establish data privacy laws or break up the big tech industry. Neither will shutdown the NSA and illegal government mass surveillance infrastructure.
In the US it's a one party system with an illusion of choice.
But one works much harder than the other at supporting them.
I don't think that's really true, they both essentially ignore the working class. The right caters to small business owners, the just caters to large business owners, and both generally ignore the workers.
The both like to say they're working hard for the workers, but they really don't follow up with effective policy.
More useless "both sides the same" bullshit.
It's not bullshit. You USAians have distilled complex issues to "yes, no", " with us, or against us", "right, wrong", "racist, not racist", etc.
The first past the post system limits the voting options to just two, which limits the power and decision making to a few people who aren't allowed to diverge from their voter-base.
A centrist republican voter and a centrist democrat voter can't both vote for a centrist party. They both have to make a decision of "republican or democrat". A working class USAian can't vote for a working class party - no it has to be one of the two parties.
It's much easier for both parties to make it harder for working class people to vote and garner votes from the middle class upwards, than try to serve the working class. Or, they just indoctrinate the working class to vote against their own interests - what option do they have anyway? It's not like they could vote for a third, forth or fifth party that represents them.
Both parties do little for the working class because they know they don't have to do much. Feed them propaganda on social media, have political ads that DESTROY, OBLITERATE, SMASH the other side (or whatever sensationalist word is used), make promises, claim moral highground and quote Jebus a few times, and the working class will for them. And if they don't vote at all, that's even better!
Yeah yeah, democrats do more than republicans, but "represent" the working class is a stretch.
The USA needs a multi-party system, possibly with preferential voting. The only people with actual representative are the rich, in the USA.
They don't have to be the same to both be shit. They don't even have to be equally bad to both be shit. I'd rather lose a toe than an arm, that doesn't mean I'm excited to lose a toe.
Why are you so emotionally invested to continue the two party system?
Unless you work in media or politics, this system does not serve you.
implying they're on different sides
Both sides being bad doesn't imply that both are bad in the same way.
If either side represented the working class, we would have had universal healthcare over 50 years ago.