Seriously. I have no clue why these takes have been cropping up lately, and I don't know what kind of galaxy brain first came up with this brilliant strategy, but it is the most horrible idea I've ever encountered here in a long, long time. Probably ever.
It seems like the source of this is the appraisal that the democrats have become the party of elites and republicans are working class or some shit now. This is moronic and simply not factual. Not because the Democrats aren't the party of the elites. Just because the republicans are even more so. Why don't you look up who minorities overwhelmingly vote for? Why don't you look up the average income of republican voters compared to the dems?
What is true is that the republicans are doing well at rural areas. For this the blame seems to be solely on libs being annoying on twitter, or the dems ignoring rural areas. Both have some truth, especially the second, and it should be avoided at all costs. But no, this is not the only reason, there is also the fact that rural areas pretty much everywhere in the world and especially the developed world are conservative. Again, not just the US, this is EVERYWHERE and it's been like that for ages. The same thing was the case even when Marx was writing. There are reasons for that, and I'm not gonna go into them right now, but it is stupid to ignore that this always happens and to pretend like this is something unique and only because the dems aren't helping them much (and the republicans ostensibly are lol).
All this is to say that it is a good idea to not talk down to people there and to work to get them on our side, but it WILL be harder than it is in the cities, and most of the people there that vote red don't do so because they are secretly progressive but they just don't like dems looking down on them, but because they really are more conservative compared to people in cities, which - again- is true in most countries for rural areas, and these people would never, ever, EVER vote for some "socialist" trying to be elected as a republican. Even worse, everyone who is progressive would never, ever, EVER vote for you either because they wouldn't vote republican either, and the party itself would never, ever, ever, EVER let any kind of socialist run for office with them.
Like, there is also this silly idea that it would somehow be easier to get into the republicans than it is to get into the democrats. Yeah, lol, the party that is fervently and extremely vocally (and in a way that is integral to its function) anti-literally everything the left advocates for, is gonna give you an easy time "infiltrating". Um, no. Just no. It seems to hinge on a childish perception of politics that republicans are just really dumb and super clueless. They are not. When someone in politics does something bad, it's usually not because they are dumb.
The only result this could ever have is stain the left and alienate the only people who remotely care. At least 80% of the people who would ever care about the goals of the left are people who vote democrats. It is super important to reach out to the other 20%, but the worst possible way to do that is to go with the republicans, because not only will you lose 80% of the people who already might care, you will also have to pretend to be something that is much, much different to what you really are and you will end up just making a mockery of the left.
Please please please purge these ideas from your mind, they are so genuinely terrible that even considering them is destructive. It's like people on this sub (who according to the last survey were like, what, 90% liberal before they were radicalised?) are so pissed at their former liberal selves, at Biden and at the democrats that their political instincts are completely blinded and they end up having some genuinely shitty ideas that only lead to embarrassment. The republicans are not turning working class, they can't be pushed to the left. They're doing nothing that almost every conservative party ever hasn't done a million times before. The dems dropping the ball big time with Biden thus making a tiny percentage of minorities and working class people turn to republicans does not fucking mean anything, it just means Biden is even worse than Clinton at convincing these communities, a "shift" won't happen in the foreseeable future. The only way it ever could in the coming few years is if there was a world historic, unprecedented event that is just not foreseeable. Please reconsider your opinions if you are persuaded by these ideas, think why you are being persuaded by that.
But no, this is not the only reason, there is also the fact that rural areas pretty much everywhere in the world and especially the developed world are conservative. Again, not just the US, this is EVERYWHERE and it’s been like that for ages. The same thing was the case even when Marx was writing. There are reasons for that, and I’m not gonna go into them right now
Actually though could you? Because I'm curious...
The small-holding peasants form an enormous mass whose members live in similar conditions but without entering into manifold relations with each other. Their mode of production isolates them from one another instead of bringing them into mutual intercourse. The isolation is furthered by France’s poor means of communication and the poverty of the peasants. Their field of production, the small holding, permits no division of labor in its cultivation, no application of science, and therefore no multifariousness of development, no diversity of talent, no wealth of social relationships. Each individual peasant family is almost self-sufficient, directly produces most of its consumer needs, and thus acquires its means of life more through an exchange with nature than in intercourse with society. A small holding, the peasant and his family; beside it another small holding, another peasant and another family. A few score of these constitute a village, and a few score villages constitute a department. Thus the great mass of the French nation is formed by the simple addition of homologous magnitudes, much as potatoes in a sack form a sack of potatoes.
Insofar as millions of families live under conditions of existence that separate their mode of life, their interests, and their culture from those of the other classes, and put them in hostile opposition to the latter, they form a class. Insofar as there is merely a local interconnection among these small-holding peasants, and the identity of their interests forms no community, no national bond, and no political organization among them, they do not constitute a class They are therefore incapable of asserting their class interest in their own name, whether through a parliament or a convention. They cannot represent themselves, they must be represented. Their representative must at the same time appear as their master, as an authority over them, an unlimited governmental power which protects them from the other classes and sends them rain and sunshine from above. The political influence of the small-holding peasants, therefore, finds its final expression in the executive power which subordinates society to itself.
But let us not misunderstand. The Bonaparte dynasty represents not the revolutionary, but the conservative peasant; not the peasant who strikes out beyond the condition of his social existence, the small holding, but rather one who wants to consolidate his holding; not the countryfolk who in alliance with the towns want to overthrow the old order through their own energies, but on the contrary those who, in solid seclusion within this old order, want to see themselves and their small holdings saved and favored by the ghost of the Empire It represents not the enlightenment but the superstition of the peasant; not his judgment but his prejudice; not his future but his past
Here's Marx's take from The Eigtheenth Brumaire
I know Matt Christman used this text to analyze Trump specifically.
I think your gonna have a bad time if you view it as a univeral rule, and leftists should never write off rural areas entirely. But, I can see why some Marxists might argue that rural areas have a conservative tendency. Though, I only think it holds true as a general rule in the Global North. Mao didn't even pretend that the Proleterian was the base of the Chinese Revolution, and the same is true for many other cases the Global South.
That quote is Marx talking about the peasantry in early 19th century France. In the 200 years after that, the peasant class has been dispossessed and wiped out in all of the advanced capitalist nations. The people who live in the rural areas of the US are not peasants in the Marxist sense, they’re not like subsistence farmers. They are overwhelmingly wage laborers in the working class.
The historical memory/ideal of self sufficient living might play a role in rural conservatism in the US, but at this point capitalism produces its own gravediggers in both the town and country.
The argument made by guys like Matt is less that 19th century French peasants and 21st Century American rural/suburban workers do the same sort of labour, and more that both environments create the same barriers to class consciousness forming via alienation.
It goes back to that William Levitt quote about how no man in Levittown could be a Communist, and how that is true, albeit not in the way that Levitt imagined.
People become members of a particular Class only when they perceive themselves to be one, before that they are just individuals. Proletarians come to view themselves as a member of the working class via mutual intercourse with other Proles (typically in contexts other than labour): by walking to work with them, going to the same social clubs, etc. Through mutual intercourse people eventually realize that their interests, which they previously viewed as individual to them, are in fact common to those who live like them, ie: their class. Thus, Class Consciousness is formed when individuals recognize that their interests overlap. From this they are able to stop viewing their perceived problems in life as them v.s the world, but rather their class v.s another class.
19th Century French Peasants were mostly halted in this process because they almost never experienced mutual intercourse with other peasants, their days were spent on their own small holds, or in the Church (whose propaganda was overwhelmingly a barrier to the formation of Class Consciousness). This is the cause of their conservative outlook, they were alienated from their fellow Peasants.
Matt's argument is that 21st century Americans in the Suburbs, Rural areas, and most of the cities, are also prevented from mutual intercourse with members of their class, albeit in different ways. They drive to work instead of walking with coworkers, watch T.V instead of going to a Pub with other workers, and consume T.V/media which serves the same propagandist function as the Church did. In fact the scenarios of mutual intercourse you do are typically guided by an outside force; for example when attending a Football game with friends you are all orientated around the game, and intentionally exposed to propaganda there. Sure they may do mutual intercourse freely in certain scenarios for example in online communities (hey Chapo.Chat maybe counts) but such cases are the exception.
In both cases a lack of mutual intercourse prevents the recognition of a commonality of class interests, and thus they are alienated from one another, and more likely to adopt a Conservative outlook for the reasons which Marx discussed.
It's almost as if Marxism were not just a system of political-economic analysis, but also the basis of a millenarian religion too.
In the same way Marx and Engels saw the working class in Europe as the main revolutionary class. and for Mao, Castro and Guevara the peasantry was seen as the main revolutionary class in their respective struggles, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale saw the lumpenproletariat as the main revolutionary class in the US.
That’s at least my understanding and is probably mostly accurate
Smallholders were also a big part of the Nazi's base of support, iirc.
This doesn't really account for the leftist rural miners of the early 20th century.
Miners are a bit different than farmers. Despite being in rural areas they work in conditions similar to that of the urban proletariat. They work under the same yoke as each other and so can form class consciousness more easily. They are atomized and in competition with each other like small land holding farmers are.
Right but because of this I think it's a bit off comparing rural people to the peasant class, which were largely farmers.
I'm just saying this passage probably isn't the best one to use when comparing to the current climate, like others in this thread have said, but I figured I'd give a specific example.
A number of reasons, usually. The main are more atomised labor, a much larger portion of the population is a petty bougie farmer (note, this doesn't mean "rich", they may not be rich but farmers tend to be more reactionary, convincing the peasants has been a significant difficulty for old communist movements that they had to try hard to overcome). Basically any degree of class consciousness is harder to achieve in rural areas. Additionally, communities are often more closely knit, which ends up reinforcing tradition, religion etc which are important factors. It is not universal but as a general rule they do tend to be difficult to move left. It might be easier in the US because both parties are failing people there, but it won't be easy or automatic to just flip everything on its head.
I saw this once but it was because some football coach absolutely destroyed an incumbent dem and the person was joking we just find a communist who plays football and run them red
Tubberville isn't just a football coach. He's also a chud concervative who has been completely pilled on Reaganism. He would not have been nominated if he wasn't.
That's normal Alabama shit. You're not going to find a lot of Communist football coaches for the same reason you're not going to find a lot of Communist anything else.
There's a kernal of an idea behind finding absurd low turnout elections, running dark horse campaigns, and riding the ticket through the general. But you're assuming people don't try this shit all the time and lose. AOC was the exception, not the rule.
I don't see anyone on this site suggesting that leftists join the Republican party, so I don't know where you are coming from. Exit polls showed that the GOP picked up a lot of lower income households and working class votes this time around compared to 2016. Stating this does not mean someone is arguing that we should join Republicans, so I don't know where you're coming up with this. But I'm assuming that by you seeing those comments, you've got it in your head that we're suggesting that we need to infiltrate the Republican party.
What is true is that the republicans are doing well at rural areas. For this the blame seems to be solely on libs being annoying on twitter, or the dems ignoring rural areas. Both have some truth, especially the second, and it should be avoided at all costs. But no, this is not the only reason, there is also the fact that rural areas pretty much everywhere in the world and especially the developed world are conservative. Again, not just the US, this is EVERYWHERE and it’s been like that for ages.
Do you even live in a rural small town to come up with this baseless assumption? I do and have lived in them my entire life. Anyone that has lived there and has family out in the rural country can tell you that these places have been de-industrialized decades ago and they are basically wastelands that both political parties have ignored for decades now. There is no hope or future out there unless you consider a shitty job at a dollar store or McDonalds to be good. The rural south at one point was a hotbed for labor activism and used to have stronger worker's rights and unions. A lot of us have grandparents and other relatives who are very pro-union from those days and can tell you how it all went away.
These places aren't more conservative just cause you believe they are. Fact of the matter is, in deep red states, it's voters over the age of 55 and up that are constantly voting Republican in elections. There is usually a less than 40% voter outcome for state elections. If you actually lived in one of those states, it's not that hard to figure out that middle class and rich boomers are the ones voting for these GOP ghouls.
It's also 100% true that the Democrats don't even bother campaigning in rural areas. I know this cause I have been there and done that. They don't even run house district candidates in some of these states outside their big cities. Want to make some more excuses for them?
Dems have been abandoning the working class since the 90s with the whole "third way/New Democrats" that came out of the Clinton era. The days of that party supporting unions and labor rights are over. All they have to offer anymore are empty platitudes and identity politics; two things that are no longer working anymore.
All this is to say that it is a good idea to not talk down to people there and to work to get them on our side, but it WILL be harder than it is in the cities, and most of the people there that vote red don’t do so because they are secretly progressive but they just don’t like dems looking down on them, but because they really are more conservative compared to people in cities, which - again- is true in most countries for rural areas, and these people would never, ever, EVER vote for some “socialist” trying to be elected as a republican.
WTF, when has talking to down to people ever moved them left????? Liberals have been condescendingly and smugly talking down to the poor for decades and what has been the result? They vote Republican as a way to say fuck you back to those smug assholes, or they just don't vote at all. LOL yeah, you're really going to get far by talking down to these people. Take that lib shit somewhere else.
I can tell from reading your rant here, you've never actually lived out here to make these baseless assumptions that EVERYONE in the rural areas is chuds. Most people out here don't vote at all, cause there isn't a candidate or political party that represents them. Trump got some support from the working class, and I'm sure that had nothing to do with him coming down to factories and telling workers 'hey, I'm going to bring your jobs back and make America great again for you'.
The lesson should be that if you don't talk to them, someone else will. The left is never going to accomplish jack shit in the US as long as they ignore the working class. If you have studied our history, this is the main reason the left has been seen as a weird counterculture joke for the past twenty years. Instead of talking to the working class, the left is more focused on ID-POL and stupid shit to infight over. It's not a fucking mystery why the GOP is making gains with the working class. They're starting to talk to them and telling them that it's not the capitalist system at fault, it's immigrants, looters and criminals that are the reason their material conditions are worsening. Since the quote on quote "left" and Democrats aren't offering them nothing, you can damn well believe that the average worker is going to at least listen to someone even a guy who sounds like a used car salesman like Trump cause it's at least someone talking to them and addressing the fact that things are not OK.
Please please please purge these ideas from your mind, they are so genuinely terrible that even considering them is destructive. It’s like people on this sub (who according to the last survey were like, what, 90% liberal before they were radicalised?) are so pissed at their former liberal selves, at Biden and at the democrats that their political instincts are completely blinded and they end up having some genuinely shitty ideas that only lead to embarrassment.
Not all of us were liberals at one point. Some of us, like me, who grew up in a rural southern small town have always loathed those smug mother fuckers for the same bullshit you're trying to spout here that we are all chuds and conservatives down here and there's no saving us.
The dems dropping the ball big time with Biden thus making a tiny percentage of minorities and working class people turn to republicans does not fucking mean anything,
Yes it does mean something. It means that all the ID-POL shit we've been spoonfed is a bunch of bullshit. Trump got the most POC votes of a Republican candidate since the 1950s. THAT alone should tell you that liberalism is dying. What we are seeing is the first seeds of domestic fascism being sown. Fascist movements focus on the exploited and the working class. Again, if you don't talk to them, someone else will. And that someone else is going to be fascists who actually address to the working class that things are not OK for them.
We've gotten to a point where the GOP's attacks on the Democratic party ring true. They truly are the smug, college educated rich people's party. When Republicans attack them for being out of touch with the everyday man, this shit rings true to people. You can sit here and defend that party all you want, I don't give a shit, but we're witnessing the end of their party.
Instead of writing this smug, condescending rant at us, get off your ass and start talking to your co-workers and people around you. IF YOU DON'T TALK TO THEM, SOMEONE ELSE WILL. Don't be shocked when they start supporting fascists if you don't take the time to argue with them why it's wrong and offer them a better solution. The whole reason working class people are starting to listen to fascistic talking points is cause they're looking for answers and want a solution as to why the capitalist system isn't working for them. It should be leftists job to educate them, not smugly talk down to them like liberals.
This post was triggered by someone very, very specifically suggesting this. And I've seen it very, very specifically suggested before.
ETA: Also, you misread something OP said. You actually thought they were saying that talking down to people is good. Reread the sentence.
So you're admitting someone suggested it and then saying noone has suggested it???
I think OP is against any form of Republican entryism though. And despite flukes like that satanist lady (who is more of a right-libertarian than a leftist anyway) I do think he's right to be against that.
Which is real bourgeois muh cooties country-club shit. Just the sort of thing that a Democratic partisan, doing their partisan duty of sabotaging any challenge to private property, would tell us to do. Fits right in with the current "there is no working class" messaging, too.
I grew up surrounded by cornfields and I disagree with most of what you're saying here. A bunch of people vote Republican because the Republicans have made it very clear in recent years that they'll deliver the goods on:
- Christianity and the free market
- no abortion
- freedom from government regulation and taxes
- "state's rights" (guns and segregation for all!)
Which is exactly what a bunch of these people want. Maybe not all of it, but the GOP coalition is based on single-issue voters who dogmatically believe in at least one of these things and see their representatives fighting tooth and nail to accomplish it.
I am probably never going to convince my GOP-voting aunt to vote Dem, because she truly believes abortion is baby-killing. And likewise with my uncle, because he is a lifelong NRA member and former customs agent (and not in a crazy way either, in a boy scout black powder riflery / keep drugs from sneaking inside car trunks kind of way.) They consider themselves moderate conservatives and don't get what all the fuss is about, just want to live their quiet white boomer lives in peace and vote their conscience. And the GOP delivers for them on their pet issues.
They'll want whatever the aesthetically compatible oligarch tells them to want. Can you tell me where the Moral Majority came from and explore some of the causal links to how these issues suddenly became movements of interest?
Liberals have been condescendingly and smugly talking down to the poor for decades and what has been the result? They vote Republican as a way to say fuck you back to those smug assholes
I think this argument is really overstated. I really don't think working class people are moving to the Republicans because Charlotte Clymer is an asshole on Twitter. They'll rant about "coastal elites" as an ad-hominem talking point but they don't actually give a shit about smug rich people, otherwise they would be calling out Republican oil barons and upper middle-class conservative McMansion suburbanites who would rather commit hara-kiri on the spot than give up a single tax dollar for the dirty poors.
I don’t see anyone on this site suggesting that leftists join the Republican party,
Well I have, like, 3 times these last days. They said it outright, not my interpretation. And they were upvoted. I can find a couple of them and send them to you.
The rural south at one point was a hotbed for labor activism and used to have stronger worker’s rights and unions.
Because they were more industrialised, and now they aren't. I didn't say it has something to do with the rural psyche or whatever. It is what always ends up happening in places where the economy is much more agriculturally oriented.
Fact of the matter is, in deep red states, it’s voters over the age of 55 and up that are constantly voting Republican in elections. There is usually a less than 40% voter outcome for state elections. If you actually lived in one of those states, it’s not that hard to figure out that middle class and rich boomers are the ones voting for these GOP ghouls.
So basically the same thing as everywhere else. This is not unique to rural areas. Yes, I know it is mostly rich boomers who vote for them, that's what I said elsewhere in my post, I don't disagree, but again, that this generally prevails in rural areas is a general rule, and it will genuinely be harder to move these areas left. Not impossible, just harder. That's what the argument is for, it's not like if you just say you're not a democrat and stop talking down to them they will stop voting R and flock to you, they won't. It's not as simple.
It’s also 100% true that the Democrats don’t even bother campaigning in rural areas. I know this cause I have been there and done that. They don’t even run house district candidates in some of these states outside their big cities. Want to make some more excuses for them?
I literally said it's bad that they do that, why do you think I'm making excuses for them? I think you've missed the point of the post.
WTF, when has talking to down to people ever moved them left???
Did you miss the "not" in my post? Read the sentence you put in bold again. It says it is a good idea NOT to talk down to them. I'm not going to go in detail responding to your post if you've just misread my post. I am saying the opposite of what you think I am saying. My post has nothing to do with you. It has to do with the people who advocate for socialists to join the Republican party, word for word. 3 times. And again, upvoted. The third time I saw it I got pissed at how terrible some people's ideas were and made this post. Now I can understand why you were angry at my post if this is what you read, but it is not what I said. I am 100% with you that these areas should not be abandoned and we should not adopt the shitty attitude of the liberals.
infiltrating the rpublican party is dumb (and honestly, infiltrating the dems is even questionable, if understandable, at this point)
im gonna disagree with the end part, trump managing to pull more minorities and disenfranchised people toward him after such a racist and xenophobic 4 years and campaign is a huge indictment on the democratic party failing to do anything for anyone aside from the 1% though.
Yes, it means the dems failed, not that the republicans are becoming a working class party, or that there is a shift. That's what I said.
I disagree where you say it doesn’t mean anything. Agree with the rest of your post. Neither party is gonna be a working class party at the end of the day
Yes, maybe I phrased it badly. I meant to say that it doesn't mean anything regarding the idea that the republicans are turning working class. It obviously does mean that dems made garbage decisions, again.
I actually wonder how many Republicans just vote straight party ticket and don't ever bother learning about the candidate. I feel like this strategy could work as a fluke in very, very few cases.
Yes, if the point was simply to accidentally end up in office. But I don't think this should be the strategy.
Primary elections tend to be sparsely attended. People lie to pollsters so they don't think they have anything to worry about, then show up en masse to hijack their primary and let the candidate run to the Democrat's left.
Parties don't even have binding, enforceable platforms. Look at QAnon lady. Imagine having to sit her down and explain to her that yes, there is a deep state, and yes, she now works for them, or at least with them.
Sure. But also the QAnon lady isn't a socialist, and the GOP doesn't care much if they're gonna run some QAnon person, a large chunk of their voter base believes that shit anyways.
There is a tacit division of labor between the parties. Democrats rig their primaries, Republicans rig the general. The question is, which party exercises better control over their primary elections and is better at quickly mobilizing elite resources to produce outcomes against resistance? Fuck liberals and fuck their precious bourgeois labels and team divisions in the ass. To be precious about the means of political production is a luxury.
Akshually if we just start the provisional Republican party we can do a leftism
enter isn't the right word, more like infiltrate
have a bunch of leftists work undercover as conservatives for years
then when the primaries are guaranteed everyone goes mask off at the same time
or you could just.. you know.. build a real workers party at that point? It would straight up be easier
In the US system where ballot lines and elections are private property of private corporations, maybe that isn't actually the case.
Perfect reason why the worker's party would not engage in bourgeois elections with the intention of actually winning, but rather as a means of propaganda and agitation. Victory is gained by organising the working class to the point where they can seize a crisis to stage a revolution and overthrow the bourgeoisie and for that you need a worker's party (i.e. a communist party)
I don't think you can call something a failed idea when it's barely been tried. Parties shift all the time.
Not all the time, but the cartel does trade its constituencies (the technical term is a party system) back and forth when the contradictions become too much to handle.
Yes, worse. Much worse. For all the reasons I tried to outline. There are real examples of leftists who entered the dems and won seats. I don't even think it is the best idea to do that right now but it's been proven to work to some extent, while doing it with the republicans is just gonna fail and even if it won't, it's gonna stain your name.
to capture the Rs
leftists who pay attention to policy would also vote because policy, and Rs would vote because R good
I think it'd only work if you manage to sneak in to an uncontested race nobody cares about, or AOC-style do the legwork of letting liberal voters know what you're up to directly without alerting conservatives.
And then it'd only work locally, and probably once, before the party machine crushes you and voters realize they've been had.
Much much more effective would be to campaign as whichever party seems most likely to get you in power and then just quietly do whatever you know to be moral and right, while talking out your ass when the press comes knocking. You know, like every other politician.
the logistics of it are such that it would never work in practice yes. maybe one singular race like you said
Lol a leftist won't vote republican just because they said "oh hey, good policies".
This won't capture the R's, it will either turn whomever is doing that into a conservative, or it will drive the republican voters into full cold war communist infiltration panic mode.
