Political Mechanics

Max Mastellone
2 min readDec 21, 2020

Exposing politicians by demanding they vote on an issue is a tired old tactic that rarely works. Those people are beyond our reach. They are totally unaccountable to us. The duopoly Congress shows disdain for the people in their every decision and action. An inevitably failed vote will be turned around and used against progressives one way or another. We cannot shame or embarrass duopoly politicians. They do not depend on voters for their positions. Their job security comes from solid oligarch support. They have an agenda and care not one whit what we think about it.

We have empirical evidence on what works in politics and what doesn't. I'm a big fan of not continuing to do what doesn't work. Doing so dilutes the already modest power of progressive activism. Lobbying the oligarch-owned duopoly Congress is one of those things.

Working class victories such as Women's suffrage, the New Deal, civil rights and gay marriage took decades of movement politics to achieve. More than a decade for the Vietnam War. In all of those cases save gay marriage, we had a much more mature and organized left leading and succeeding in the struggles than we do today. Social conditions, not activists, tip class conscious people into action. And masses of people engaging in sustained direct disruptive action are what achieve the tipping point into progressive structural change.
Winning primary challenges, as some promote, even when progressives are the winners, has never amounted to much due to the total dominance of neoliberalism in Congress.

While I remain an optimist in the long run, the American People today remain woefully class UNconscious, thus insufficiently prepared to respond to the abuses with any kind of organized rebellion. Moreover, today's activists are looking for quick fixes while being unprepared themselves with the knowledge and skills required to build a powerful political movement.

Usually, the government quickly responds with oppressive force when it even sniffs rebelllion brewing, as it did with this year's BLM uprising. I suspect that the government would have acted by now if it perceived a threat resulting from the desperate economic conditions it is creating by refusing to financially support people and small businesses directly. Such support would easily avert the ongoing crisis that is set to mushroom. In my view, the adament refusal by Congress to provide adequate support means they are not worried at all that the people will come after them.

In the end, only a sustained massive popular movement of direct action against the corporate capitalist system can achieve our goals. Anything short of that is a waste of time and energy because it is easily countered by the rulers. Gaining the knowledge and skills to build and lead such a movement is what should be today's priority for progressives.

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