[lbo-talk] This time it's a September Surprise on Romney

[Wojtek S]

Shane: "Finally on American National Elections.  The capitalist
establishment is determined to present them exactly as Wojtek does--as
a ritual religious spectacle that makes no difference to anything
important.  And that is exactly what they are to them.  But the
populist movements (from Debs to Nader and Stein) have always,
rightly, seen them in a very different way: as an opportunity that the
rulers are forced, against
their will, to have access (as limited as they can make it) to a
national forum in which to present our critiques of, and alternatives
to, their  policies and their powers--and so lay the groundwork for a
majority movement that can really challenge them.  For us, that in
itself is important; and denigrating our effort to do so, as Wojtek
does at every opportunity, is not exactly a positive contribution to
American political life.

[WS:] Maybe - but how do you explain the fact that no populist
candidate - Debs including - never gained more than 6 or so percent of
the popular vote?  You certainly do not believe that the results were
rigged.

The problem with elections is a part of larger group of expectations
that a singular event - be it election of a new president, ascent of a
new tsar to the throne, or a revolution abolishing the latter - can
fundamentally alter the course of a society.  Generations of lefties,
drinking the coolaid of the October Revolution, subscribed to this.
However, I take the view proposed by Gramsci that it takes far more
than changing the government to alter the course of society, as
government is only the tip of an iceberg of "civil society" - a was
array of social institutions that uphold the bourgeois order
independently of the government.
-- 
Wojtek

"An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."