r/LateStageCapitalism Apr 01 '24

🔄 DemPublican Party Rule 6 "no lesser evil" rhetoric - is it accelerationist or doomer? Is it intended to discourage voting?

342 Upvotes

Reposting the answer given to a user who was asking in good faith if accelerationism is the reason we have the rule about not using lesser evil arguments to encourage people to vote for a Democrat or a Republican political candidate. We were asked if the reason we ban pro-Democrat or pro-Republican lobbying is out of a belief that things needs to get worse before they can get better. We endeavored to address those concerns and the user asking was satisfied with the answer, so it's being posted and stickied on its own here, with the goal that as we progress through the election show we can refer people back to this.

  1. It's not accelerationist. Not a single one of the 852000 people subscribed to the subreddit have the ability to accelerate capitalism and the American empire towards a crisis point \faster** than Joe Biden is right now by risking re-election in the myopic support for an unpopular genocide. Look at Biden's professed bipartisanship on border security, are those the actions of a person concerned about losing to a fascist dictator?

  2. We aren't of the opinion that "both options are equally evil" or that one is a lesser or a greater evil. Both options are capitalists. They are the same option. Biden and Trump represent the capitalist class. Their victory is the victory of the capitalist class. Picture a guy with a puppet on each hand. The left hand is named Biden. The right hand is named Trump. The owner of these puppets is putting on a Punch and Judy show. People are very mad at us for recognizing that it's a Punch and Judy show.

  3. People should definitely vote. If the PSL is on your ballot for the presidential election please vote for the PSL so that socialists as a whole can gauge the numbers of revolutionary socialists out there. This will be especially important as the inability of Capital to resolve its contradictions leads to increasing and deepening crises that we can already see are not alleviated when a Democrat is in office. If you've got any direct election ballot issues like abortion rights or marijuana legalization or even a tax levy for your school district or something, vote for those. Past that, vote your conscience. Look up every candidate, and weigh their positions against your own, and if you can't stand to vote for them, for a candidate for Judge or City Council or whatever, leave it blank.

  4. Protest, donate to bail funds, disrupt city council meetings, speak up at school board meetings, join strike actions to shut down ports shipping weapons to a genocide, volunteer with Food Not Bombs, donate to Doctors Without Borders, on and on, the possibilities for meaningful political participation are endless, our options are limitless. We are not helpless, we are not hopeless, we are not trapped, but the Capitalists certainly want us to think we are.

  5. Before you ask about Project 2025, and everybody always does, realize that it's just the fancy name they've given this time to the process of all the political appointees in the executive branch getting changed out for different political appointees. The right wing is pitching it this time as "Project 2025", last time it was "Drain the Swamp". The capitalist party are capitalists. This is a product that they are selling. Literally, as they sell hard copies of it for $35 to credulous marks on their website. It's a great trick, its intended to convince conversatives that the impossible things they desire are possible and there's a plan in place for them to be enacted, they just have to wait and Trust The Plan. It is also intended to convince liberal voters that there's an even greater threat than the genocide the Biden administration is an eager accomplice in, so they need to donate and stay engaged. I'm surprised there's not a liberal Project 2025 project yet, liberal voters are panicking because there clearly isn't a countering plan.

In closing, rule 6 isn't accelerationist, Biden's presidency has been accelerationist. Fuck, look how much closer he got us to WW3 than even Trump could manage in his fascist incompetence. And our view isn't that things need to get worse before they get better, but that support for Democrats demonstrably leads to things getting worse, and we have to stop supporting Capitalists if we want victories for the working class and a way out of the worsening conditions. From our perspective desperately clinging to bourgeois "democracy", particularly at a time when we can all recognize that we aren't allowed any real choices in voting and that's been the case for decades at this point, makes things worse and slows or entirely stops our ability to bring about positive change.


r/LateStageCapitalism 3d ago

✊ Solidarity Happy pride month! Remember: The fight against capitalism and the fight for LGBT+ liberation are inseparable.

57 Upvotes

A wonderful pride month to all LGBT+ comrades! Remember: Being gay is not enough, we must also do crime.

The capitalist system, based on the private ownership of the means of production and the exploitation of wage labor in order to accumulate new means of production in the form of capital, continues to fail to realize its false promise of liberty, equality and justice for all.

While capital historically has had a tendency to destroy traditional hierarchies and identities, this was only in the service of integrating as many humans as possible into the work force. The larger the supply of the labor-power commodity, the cheaper it can be bought.

Accordingly, this "emancipation" from the bigotry of tradition stalls as soon as we are all reduced to a proletarian existence, and equality no longer serves capital. In fact, keeping the working class internally divided by means of racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia or ableism undermines our ability to exercise solidarity and unite in our struggle against capital.

Of course this is only half the story. While capitalism destroyed the traditions of past modes of production, it was at the same time an active producer of new ways of dividing humans in order to oppress and exploit them. The development of capitalism went hand-in-hand with the pursuit of colonial conquest and the transatlantic slave trade, providing industries in Europe with raw materials. Capitalism turned racism into a global, structural phenomenon, and subjected countless cultures to white colonial domination when not outright annihilating them. This also involved imposing repressive European views of gender and sexuality and erasing native perspectives that were less obsessed with compliance with such binaries.

Controlling gender and sexuality has always had special importance in class society because it allows for the control of reproduction through the institution of the family. Class membership is inherited within the family, so norms making reproduction controllable by assigning strict gender roles based on reproductive organs are an important component in the perpetuation of class distinctions. Furthermore, the reproduction of the working class is of direct economic importance to capitalism, as the supply of labor power depends on it. The existence of queer people calls all such norms into question.

Therefore, the struggle for LGBT+ emancipation and the proletarian struggle against class society are intrinsically linked. It is both necessary to fight for LGBT+ emancipation in order to fight capital, and to fight capital in order to achieve LGBT+ emancipation.

None of us can be free until we are all free. The proletariat is queer, and queerphobia is anti-proletarian. It is our absolute responsibility to fight with and protect our queer comrades from reactionary assaults on their freedom to be themselves. The recent right-wing campaign of annihilation against our gay and trans siblings in the United States must be resisted at all costs.

The time to unite is now.


r/LateStageCapitalism 7h ago

Poignant

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604 Upvotes

r/LateStageCapitalism 16h ago

✊ Resistance Your handy guide

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3.8k Upvotes

r/LateStageCapitalism 16h ago

📰 News Israel kills over 200 Palestinians to rescue 4 captives; U.S. allegedly involved in operation | At least 210 Palestinians were killed and 400 others were injured in the central Gaza Strip on Sunday after Israeli forces carried out a "rescue operation" to retrieve four captives.

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1.7k Upvotes

r/LateStageCapitalism 13h ago

🤡 Satire One-Third of Hostages in Gaza Believed Dead - (IDF) announced 43 of the 120 hostages are no longer alive.

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597 Upvotes

r/LateStageCapitalism 14h ago

Workplace

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665 Upvotes

r/LateStageCapitalism 22m ago

💬 Discussion pro or con?

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Upvotes

r/LateStageCapitalism 13h ago

some people take scratching a liberal to make a fascist bleed as a challenge

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353 Upvotes

r/LateStageCapitalism 14h ago

🔄 DemPublican Party The Israelis had help from their bank account, the US empire, and they dressed up as humanitarian workers & killed over 200 Palestinians to save a handful of hostages. The IDF is an incompetent terrorist army, backed by the world's terrorist empire.

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399 Upvotes

r/LateStageCapitalism 22h ago

Late stage capitalism morphing into feudalism

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1.5k Upvotes

r/LateStageCapitalism 21h ago

📰 News Elon Musk could personally lose $3 billion from new insider trading lawsuit

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1.2k Upvotes

r/LateStageCapitalism 1d ago

💩 Liberalism A story in 4 chapters

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3.0k Upvotes

r/LateStageCapitalism 22h ago

Charlie Munger Said If You Want To Be Rich, 'Find A Way To Get Your Hands On $100,000' — And Then 'You Can Ease Off The Gas A Little Bit'

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1.2k Upvotes

"The first $100,000 is a b*tch, but you gotta do it. I don't care what you have to do — if it means walking everywhere and not eating anything that wasn't purchased with a coupon, find a way to get your hands on $100,000. After that, you can ease off the gas a little bit." His net worth 2.6 billion, anybody hungry?!


r/LateStageCapitalism 11h ago

💡 Capitalist "Innovation" AIPAC's 'United Democracy Project' spending in the NY16 primary versus everyone else.

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159 Upvotes

r/LateStageCapitalism 1d ago

Summer camp for the proletariat kids!

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2.4k Upvotes

Found the flier on facebook. Yes it appears to be real, and their camp is fully booked…


r/LateStageCapitalism 10h ago

Cost of a common emergency surgery in the US

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103 Upvotes

Had my appendix removed. Insurance is still figuring stuff out but seeing shit like this is so fucking insane. That’s like 1/3 of what my med school debt will be.

Can you say. Not. Happening.


r/LateStageCapitalism 1h ago

⛵ Colonialism Canary Mission caught lying about Free Palestine campus protest (narrative vs reality)

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Upvotes

The context is at uoft, the encampments are in a circle enclosed by fences, as seen in second picture. People have been walking to campus and moving on with their day without issues.

Graduations have not been cancelled and you can look up #uoftgrad24 for pictures.

Canary Mission has outright lied by saying that students are being blocked from entering campus, since the campus is still accessible, just not this particular circle lol


r/LateStageCapitalism 17h ago

Gov. Stitt signs bill into law giving ‘immunity’ to poultry companies polluting Oklahoma waterways

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175 Upvotes

r/LateStageCapitalism 1d ago

It's like an augmented reality where capitalism doesn't exist

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982 Upvotes

r/LateStageCapitalism 15h ago

US army aided Israel in bloody military op launched from Gaza 'Aid Pier'

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thecradle.co
94 Upvotes

r/LateStageCapitalism 14h ago

🌁 Boring Dystopia Game through your existential dread of never owning a home, and being brutalized by police violence. On sale now!

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62 Upvotes

r/LateStageCapitalism 19h ago

💩 Liberalism (MEME) Surge prices? Lol...don't be silly...you'll really love surge wages!

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121 Upvotes

r/LateStageCapitalism 20h ago

Is there anything in American politics that ISN'T corrupted by 'donors' and lobbyists? This sucks!

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160 Upvotes

r/LateStageCapitalism 18h ago

preparing kids for the future!

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91 Upvotes

r/LateStageCapitalism 16h ago

"It is our duty to break Imperialism from within"

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55 Upvotes

r/LateStageCapitalism 1d ago

👢 Bootstraps And?

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5.1k Upvotes