this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2026
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Marxists have been opposed to electoralism since the time of Marx, and not simply around election season, but year-round. It's more that liberals seem to notice revolutionary rhetoric from Marxists more around election season, because that's when liberals are more likely to tune into politics. This meme doesn't actually do the Marxist position any justice, and it misidentifies Marxists as the cause of voter apathy, rather than the actual source: the widespread feeling among voters that voting doesn't actually bring change.
We understand that the state is ultimately a product of the class struggle of society, determined by the base economic structure. Reforms and concessions are not won at the ballot box, they are won through organizing on the ground and directly fighting the system, forcing it to concede. The Stonewall Riots were the catalyst for progressive change, not a change in heart in the ruling class. Same as the Civil Rights Movement, where Dr. King was assassinated as he began pivoting not just from anti-racist agitation, but towards the Poor People's Campaign, a growing socialist movement. It's why the Black Panther Party was infiltrated, and its top leaders killed or imprisoned.
This meme makes it seem like Marxists are some omnipresent movement terrifying liberals into withholding their votes, but the truth of the matter is that political apathy is high across the board. This isn't an inorganic reaction to Marxists finger-wagging people for voting, it's an organic reaction to the fact that both mainstream political parties do not represent the working class. This is understood across the political spectrum. Especially considering the electoral college system means that a huge portion of votes that lie in solidly red or blue states do not actually make a difference, we have to return to how we actually can gain change.
Learning from past struggles, we can see that in every major concession, struggle is what earned reforms. The point isn't that voting for the DNC magically harms the movement, the point is that treating voting as your primary or sole political outlet means no change is possible. The electoral theater is treated like the single most important thing anyone can do politically, but history shows that change has only ever come from the people fighting for it. This is why the age-old adage is
Educate
Agitate
Organize!
The electoral college is irrelevant for midterms. And political apathy is most definitely at a low right now. Democrats are absolutely surging in new voter registrations and in early voting, especially among Black Southerners.
Democrats are actually lowering in favorability. Neither the DNC nor GOP is more favorable than unfavorable, while more people are paying attention politically. The apathy is directed towards the system overall, as people do not feel their votes get them much, if anything. What is surging in the electoral realm is support for the DSA, which signifies that, if nothing else, people want an actual change.
Now, reformism cannot actually establish socialism, so the DSA is still a dead-end. But what the DSA does highlight is the fact that establishment dems are wrong in claiming they need to "appeal to the moderate." This has always been a lie told to protect deliberate inaction. The DNC isn't a smol bean progressive party but a complicit party in US imperialism.
I don't really care about favorability ratings because people can and will still vote for parties they view as unfavorable. The actual numbers of how people are voting are what really matters.
I would certainly rate the Democratic party as more unfavorable than favorable but you'll never catch me not voting blue, especially in these midterms.
The very fact that both major political parties in the US are wildly unpopular means the system needs to change, then. Neither the DNC nor the GOP are going to do it, so we need to directly struggle against the system. Funneling the majority of political activism into the system and away from agitating against it is the problem, not whether or not people vote for the DNC. The actual numbers of how people are voting are less important than the actual numbers of how people are organizing.
How's that organizing going for you? Is your glorious revolution a few weeks out? Our biggest chance at harm reduction is scheduled, how about your solution?
Organizing is, as always, tough work, but it continues to get results. Looking at Minneapolis earlier this year, it wasn't a vote that kicked ICE out, it was a general strike with 100,000 people. It wasn't the democrats helping out, it was the working class organizing and struggling against it. Local struggles against data centers, against landlords screwing over tenants, for labor unionizing, all of this is largely fought on the ground, not at the ballot box, and in many cases democrats directly oppose these struggles at local office.
No, revolution is not a few weeks out. Or, at least I don't think it would be. Revolution happens when the working class is organized, capitalism hits crisis, and the working class party can take it from a local struggle to a pointed attack against the system itself. The George Floyd protests came dangerously close to revolution, which is why organizers were targeted by the state directly. Organizers are targeted now by NSPM-7. The ruling class is scared and afraid.
Revolution isn't something you plan and trigger, it's something that can happen when the conditions are right and the implements necessary are in place. This isn't predictable in the specific sense, only in the general sense as capitalism necessarily enters crisis from its own contradictions. It's our job to make sure the necessary implements are already ready to go beforehand.
Nice you dodged the question there with a novel. Why don't you answer it?
Because your question wasn't based on what I actually said. You're quite literally arguing against a strawman.
You said voting causes people to check out and not organize. Prove it.
No, I said that treating voting like the absolute most important means of political struggle causes people to tune out. Not the act of voting, the treatment of the concept at a societal level. Stop making up strawmen.
I'd just like to thank you for arguing for systemic revolution in an actually realistic and intelligent manner.
To be clear, I'm just summarizing what Lenin already explained, the working classes should form their own parties, and engage in bourgeois elections to advertise their views and show the limits of electoralism. I do not believe that means supporting the DNC, but rather actual working class parties.
I asked this on another place and got a non answer. Cowbee is fine with throwing minorites under the bus for some long game hypothetical revolution that'll happen any day now.
Nope, still making a strawman.
Endless blood on the altar to summon the always-imminent Revolution.
"Reformism cannot actually establish socialism"
Says who? No, really, tell me. I'm not saying it's the only way but this statement lacks context, history, or imagination.
Rosa Luxembourg 126 years ago.
Great! A data point from a time where the industrial revolution hadn't even started walking briskly.
How does this mean anything to me today aside from a consideration in the huge calculus of direct action?
If you're going to take the position that systems/philosophies are illegitimate purely based on their age, then boy do I have some fun facts for you regarding the timeline between the inception of most of the US political systems and Rosa's work. By that logic, the US is entirely illegitimate.
No I am saying they are made insignificant by the growth of a body of work surrounding them.
What I'm saying is shit happens, then we know more about shit and instead of one idea, we have n+ ideas.
The further back you go the more information and context you're going to have to ignore in order for that datapoint to maintain complete signifigance. It's real easy. I'm challenging you to prove the relevance of a historical claim in the face of the history that has taken place since.
And yeah how is America doing these days? How's all that idealism and grit holding up? You get my point now follow through already instead of being a goddamn stereotype.
Essentially, the state is a product of class struggle, and is a superstructural reinforcement of the underlying base of society. The state is not a neutral, system-indepentent "state," but specifically a "feudal state," a "capitalist state," a "socialist state." The systems and mechanisms of a capitalist state cannot simply be reformed from within, they depend on and are built to support the actual capitalist system.
Throughout history, major changes in modes of production have come through revolution. Reformist approaches like in Chile with Allende end swiftly in coups, and we are seeing the current struggles in Venezuela due to not having a complete revolution (though the commune movement is still building dual power). It isn't simply a lack of imagination, it's something tested time and time again throughout history.
You really need to work on being concise and accessible, this isn't a classroom it's a comment section.
And both of those examples were, I'm just gonna guess, subsumed by US CIA activity and not an organic failing of reformism.
So what's the solution, revolution the CIA away? Does that sound like a good plan?
The CIA certainly helped in both cases, but the actual state apparatus in both Venezuela and Chile worked against the socialists. In Chile, Pinochet used the capitalist military to coup Allende, in Venezuela companies and businesses resist any progress from the PSUV. The solution is to replace the capitalist state with a socialist one, which doesn't make you immune to CIA influence, but does provide the basis for maintaining socialism domestically without retaining mechanisms that rely on private property to function.
Again, concise.
All I'm getting is the US planted opposition during the Red Scare and did a foreign interference, again if the goal is to show reformism always fails you're going to need to show an example that doesn't involve a psychotic i.perialist state actor actively undemining it. A control, I'm asking for a control group here.
It's not just Chile and Venezuela. The Paris Commune was overthrown because they didn't march on Versailles. Reformism has never established socialism in history, while revolution has.
The Paris Commune was a reform movement?
This is why i don't take you seriously.
No? The Paris Commune neglected to abolish the capitalist state.
If we're looking at defining things by how they resulted then we have a wholly different standard for argumentation here, but unless you want to find a different definition to suit your terms, it was a radical military takeover by the natiknal guard in the name of revolution that sought to implement progressive changes, yes? I'm not a historian so I'm kind of breezing through here but if they were a reform movement would have thought you were describing a parliamentary caucus but this doesn't appear to be the case.
Either way, yeah, obviously if you leave an army standing in opposition you're going to have a bad time. Still not a reform movement.
It wasn't a reform movement, it was a failed revolution for the same reason reformism fails. They did not correctly target the state, and so the state was used to crush them. Allende and Venezuela are examples of reformism attempted, but even Venezuela relies heavily on the Bolivarian revolution to keep going.
You're losing me. So you brought up a revolution to compare it to reformation, and in all cases it's because the state is too powerful to reform so then... revolution is the way but only if we do it right?
Am I going crazy, is this not a really roundabout way to try and circular logic how nothing gets done until we dismantle a state first? Because then that is a whole other thing and I did not sign up for that. Just saying that's how doesn't describe how it's even feasible.
There have been many failed revolutions, yes. There have also been many successful revolutions. There have been no successful reformations of a state to represent the rising class. That's the center point, and I provided historical examples of what reform and failed revolution have in common: failing to dismantle the superstructure and create a new one. There are much longer explanations, such as Reform or Revolution and The State and Revolution, but these are just comments on Lemmy.
And as I stated elsewhere, I don't think the text here bears the burden of historical context in our current day.
I'm gonna go do something else. Have a nice day.
Do you have a reason for that claim other than their being old? History affirms their theoretical basis thus far.
Then why don't you advocate for voting and organizing?
Oh wait you said people who vote will organize less.
Hey where's that source for that? You got a scientific study? Not just a Lenin quote?
I advocate for organizing, because plenty of people advocate for voting already. My concern isn't with people voting or not, it's with people organizing.
Then why not tell people to vote as well as organize?
People who vote will do so regardless. The focus of my organizing work is in pushing people to get organized.
Then why do you advocate against voting each and every time people say to vote?
I don't, so this just returns to your insistence on beating me with a strawman.
You say it's something that keeps people from organizing. It's not hard to draw a line as to what you think people should do, with you being pro organizing.
I never said voting keeps people from organizing. I said funneling people into the elecoral system as though it's a valid means of enacting societal change depresses revolutionary organizing. It legitimizes the system. The point isn't "voting stops organizing," it's about how the working class understands itself.
Yep! I never said voting causes apathy, I pointed to the way people treat voting as a cause of apathy towards organizing. Critical distinction!
Which you failed to prove regardless.
I gave evidence, you pretended the evidence didn't support my point because you continued to pretend my point was a different one entirely.