When you have hope in the voting system there’s less motivation to educate yourself about history and current events. “We know what the problems are: let’s just vote them away!” You need to be motivated to educate yourself because it’s much easier to accept dominant narratives than to admit how little you know on any given subject.

On the flip side, abandoning electoralism requires an independence of thought that lends itself toward questioning other narratives. Once you realize you’ve been fooled before, it’s obvious that you likely hold other beliefs that don’t align with reality. At this point, you have ample motivation. Personally, this is when I began reading leftist theory. It’s easier to question the system after you’ve been disillusioned.

And the economy is a pyramid scheme.

Spot on. As Ernest Mandel explains:

The worker appears to sell his ‘labour’ in exchange for a wage. The capitalist ‘combines’ that labor with machines, raw material and the labour of other men to produce finished products. As the capitalist owns these machines and raw materials, as well as the money to pay the wages, is it not ‘natural’ that he should also own the finished products which result from the ‘combination of these factors’?

This is what appears to occur under capitalism. However, probing below the surface, Marx comes up with a series of striking observations which can only be denied if one deliberately refuses to examine the unique social conditions which create the very peculiar and exceptional ‘exchange’ between labour and capital. In the first place, there is an institutional inequality of conditions between capitalists and workers. The capitalist is not forced to buy labour-power on a continuous basis. He does it only if it is profitable to him. If not, he prefers to wait, to lay off workers, or even to close his plant down till better times. The worker, on the other hand… is under economic compulsion to sell his labour-power. As he has no access to the means of production, including land, as he has no access to any large-scale free stock of food, and as he has no reserves of money which enable him to survive for any length of time while doing nothing, he must sell his labour-power to the capitalist on a continuous basis and at the current rate. Without such institutionalized compulsion, a fully developed capitalist society would be impossible.

This is not meant to identify value with price or imply that every product of labor is a commodity. But the image seemed vaguely Marxian.

So, on your view, the reason why voting for democratic socialists will fail is not because successful reforms will distract us (in the short-term), but because our present economic situation won’t allow such reforms to occur at all?

If this is true, then we are already at a historical crossroads. (I don’t know whether it is or isn’t true; I certainly don’t know enough about the situation in the UK to weigh in there.)

If the arc of history inevitably leads toward communism, then these failures will ultimately foster greater class consciousness. The inherent contradictions of capitalism will be made more apparent in the long-run. But the same is true of any reform that falls short of abolishing capitalism. Better wages, for example, do not address the capitalist’s need to profit by exploiting the value of our labor.

In the short-term, democratic socialists subdue and redirect our righteous anger by giving us false hope in the system. This could delay progress for another generation, and I’d rather see a real movement rise to prominence in my lifetime.

Research paid by public university funds then goes into for profit journals because… money?

I literally cannot help it. It’s like an argument addiction.

Ah, I think I understand your position better now. Fair point.

Of course, we want people to suffer less under capitalism. But the hope of incremental improvement stands in the way of addressing the root of the problem. Incrementalism can only provide a temporary relief from the increasing tensions between the ruling and working classes. History has shown that the wealthy may grant workers certain concessions in the short term, but these will be largely revoked or circumvented in search of greater profits later on. What’s worse, the rulers then devise better strategies to distract the people, redirect their frustrations, and suppress insurrections. Half-measures reassure us that the system is “working” while the ruling class better their position.

For the aforementioned reasons, working within the system is playing into the capitalists’ hands. Instead, we must advocate for forms of mutual aid to address the burdens of capitalism. If we can build community, then we help people suffering under capitalism, decrease our dependence on the government, and increase our political base. Ironically, it is much easier to band together when there is a greater need. And when the greed of the wealthy have impacted the material conditions of the workers so acutely that the exploitation is staring them in the face, we will have laid the grassroots foundation for real change.

The only time I’ve had a gun pointed at me was by police: and I was an adolescent. Three guesses as to my nationality.

And often they employ the same view to disparities in race/gender. If you think that the system is a meritocracy, then a difference is outcomes becomes a personal failing. Nevermind the unjust history of red-lining, loan-denial, patriarchal expectations, and overall denial of access.

The unfortunate thing about the internet is all the people who agree with this sentiment are scattered across the globe. You’d have to do flyers in your local community or something

Always has been

And the FBI, killed Martin Luther King!

Bonus Meme:

He just like me fr

Academia is absolutely fucked. The job market was already bad before Trump and he’s certainly not helping

The good thing about the Trump budget cuts is grad students realizing doing literally anything else is more lucrative (while they also work toward their degree).