cross-posted from: lemmy.world/post/24998458
It is both.
Voting is a good system. The alternative is “let’s just have a fight with guns, or with money, or connections to powerful people, every time there’s a disagreement.”
The problem is that we delegated the process of informing people what to vote for, to absolutely rotten media. And we delegated the process of figuring out the details of putting some candidates forward, to an absolutely craven, useless, and corrupt class of full-time political operatives who generally don’t give a shit about the people.
We need to fix those things. And yes, getting organized labor to fight back whenever they are fucking us, which is pretty much every day, to add some bite to all those polite ballots we’re sending in, sounds great.
But voting, as a concept, is good. It doesn’t have to be either or. It can be a 10-day general strike, and also voting to get rid of the guy who wants to nuke Iceland, and also organizing our politics better, for some candidates that aren’t so shit as these ones generally are. Each one will help the others get done.
minnow@lemmy.world 5 days ago
A strike that has a scheduled end date is a strike that’s has scheduled its own failure. A ten day strike would achieve nothing except the suffering of it’s participants.
Yes, the economy would grind to a halt, yes people would likely die, yes it would financially hurt the powerful people in charge.
But do you really think those powerful people will give a shit? They know after ten days the gravy train will resume, but only for them and not the people who lost their jobs, got arrested, were injured, etc. The rich and powerful can afford to be patient, meanwhile everyone who sacrificed for ten days is going to have to question whether they can survive doing it again.
No, we’re way past the point where our society can afford another failed effort to affect change. We need a general strike that doesn’t end until the government capitulates to the needs of the people. It’s all or nothing, now. ☹️
db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 days ago
That’s not always accurate. A strike where people sit at home and watch TV might have this result, but a 10 days of people on the streets talking and hyping each other up, can easily grow revolutionary.
1-day strikes and random marches on the other hand are practically useless
AVengefulAxolotl@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Reddit protest be like. Huffman literally said ‘You only protest for 2 days? Sure, we’ll wait’.
rayyy@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Many cannot afford to strike but that is the way the system was set up but we only need 10% participation to send a powerful message - any more is icing on the cake. Those who cannot fully can participate by cutting back 10% or more. Everyone should be able to cut back to some extent. Yet, expect the corporate controlled MSM to NOT report on the effects or participation of a general strike. Look for your news on independent sites, some reliable foreign sources and the Fediverse only.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 5 days ago
A flex of power is a great way of demonstrating to both your own union members and your bosses/administrators. Proving that coworkers can and will dictate the terms of economic activity is an incredibly powerful statement that illustrates exactly who is in charge of the workfloor.
People are going to try things and those things are going to continue to have a mixed chance at success. The idea that an ill-defined indefinite general strike will work better than a highly coordinated short-term shutdown is predicated on a number of your own personal theories about how oligarchs will respond and how long union organizers can effectively maintain a work outage.
You’re rolling dice just like the rest of us. Nothing you’re suggesting guarantees a particular outcome.
SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social 5 days ago
The strike is not the start of the exercise, oh, no! To pull off a huge action like this will take coordination, spreading awareness, cultivating relationships of trust, establishing lines of communication, laying the foundations by organizing, and getting people primed for action. That’s what we lack now.
Right now, we could all just choose to disobey together, and there are so many of us that they couldn’t stop us. But it would take a lot of people; only a few here and there taking action would simply leave those few destitute or in jail.
A general strike is not the goal, it’s the announcement that we’re organized. That awareness, those relationships, that trust, doesn’t just have to go away…
bestboyfriendintheworld@sh.itjust.works 4 days ago
Once you have built the list of demands and the political alliance for a one day strike, the infrastructure stays around. So the next one day or longer strike is easier to execute.
Clinicallydepressedpoochie@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Booooooo
mm_maybe@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
What about canceling a specific day of work every week? That would spread out the pain on both sides, but in a way that makes it less painful for workers because some may have sick days they can use. If literally nobody shows up on every Friday it sucks pretty bad for the bosses, even if they show up all the other days.