electoralism

The fact that almost a decade after Bernie was first ratfucked by the DNC, the American left still pins their hopes on a single mayoral candidate (in NYC of all places) tells you everything you need to know about this pipeline.

Bernie boasted one million strong volunteers during his 2020 primary campaign. You’d think that even after he got screwed again, it would have snowballed into a nationwide movement to run socialist mayor and city council candidates to take over the political machineries starting from the municipal level all across the country.

It’s almost amazing to see such energy dissipated into almost nothing right after Bernie conceded and failed to win a single concession, not even healthcare-related, at the height of Covid pandemic for the working class.

To a degree, I think the existence of Hexbear proves that pipelines exist.

Much of the original population of chapo/hexbear were people who were hyped for bernie 10 years ago before witnessing what electoral politics does to the left, and how even mild reforms got ratfucked. That's why this thread exists - it's the same visceral disgust that (I think) lead to the creation of this site.

Pipelines are an idealistic construct, especially when they rely on tricking and miseducation people about communism and socialism.

The fact that the existence of pipelines (kin to the overton window) is taken as a scientific constant exposes the unchallenged idealism in our movements. People need to read Lenin’s work about materialism and Empiro-criticism, it helped me immensely.

anecdotal, but a lot of my PSL comrades got re-engaged in politics b/c of Bernie (me included). but being in PSL, we've all moved past investing in Democrats as a winning strategy, and were radicalized further by his failure.  how statistically significant are we vs. people who just got fully demoralized by politics, or even moved right? who knows, honestly - our org is growing a lot, but still relatively niche looking at the larger horizon of politics. 

i do think it's worth agitating around the failures of these socdem candidates though. and i'm not even telling people not to vote for Zohran if they live there (NYC), like sure he's a genuine harm reduction candidate and voting is low effort, go for it, just manage your expectations and find areas of political work where this stuff isn't a core part of the orgs strategy. 

IME the people you recruit will reflect the method of recruitment. Protests, encampments, unions, music, doorknocking, posting... will primarily bring in the type of people who are interested in that kind of activity.

If a lot of people become engaged in one thing, some of them won't like it and they might meet others who'd prefer to do something else and organically split off into something else. Sometimes people who meet organizing as tenants form an art collective, but tenant organizing isn't a "pipeline" to art collectives.

It is possible to intentionally bring people in through one kind of activity and provide the conditions such that many of them will see the wisdom in moving on to another kind of activity that would be more useful. It's even possible to use the fact that you know the intake activity is doomed to fail as a way to hurry people along.

But it will only happen in any substantial way with A Plan. Not organically. Not by sort of vaguely having information around.

You need to have a plan of inoculation that explains what's happening and why, and help the new people to see how power could be better built and wielded. From the beginning, you are talking about other possibilities and maybe even start setting those things up. So that when the original actions end as predicted, you don't look like a big Loser. "OK, that didn't work. On to the next thing!" and everyone already knows what the next thing is. Otherwise, some people will fall off thinking "This is stupid there's no point" and some will get stuck in the cycle of tinkering trying to get it perfect next time.