Unions will continue to be regulated by the US government but would hopefully figure out that without the NLRB pressuring companies to negotiate the workers would have to do it themselves.

Most likely though the courts will say it’s up to the states and then each blue state will have a labor relations board like many already do for workers not covered under the NLRA and zero new organizing will happen or be supported in red and purple states as industries are slowly shipped out of areas with union presence and the unions reach their eventual demise.

At most Kamala only “lost” 2.1 million voters to other candidates this election (realistically it’s probably around a million). If that’s the case then 5.9 million voters voted for Biden in 2020 and nobody in 2024 but still casted a ballot. Now maybe that’s because of Gaza but from my experiences with the American electorate I highly doubt that the majority of those people are refusing to vote for Harris because of Gaza, refusing to vote third party, and yet still voting. I think if Americans had coherent anti-genocide politics then the anti-genocide candidates would have seen more growth than 5% of Harris’ losses. I don’t believe Americans have coherent politics though so I doubt most of those voters were taking a principled anti-genocide stance when they didn’t vote for anybody.

This isn’t to say that abstentions or votes for other candidates because of the genocide could not have played a significant role in the fucked up math of the American electoral system, merely that it didn’t drive her huge loss in the popular vote from Biden’s victory in 2020.

I honestly don’t think any more than 10% of the voters Kamala “lost” were because of Gaza. Otherwise there would be millions more votes for the third parties that ran almost exclusively on ending the genocide. The vast majority of these voters abstained from the presidential election and voted down ballot either because they did not like Harris or Trump, or more likely they didn’t know anything about either of them and did not feel confident casting a ballot for them.

As much of a farce as 2020 was, the political divide was quite clear. Trump represented COVID and racist cops murdering people. Biden seemed to represent something else. The mass mobilisations and the initial response to the pandemic taught people that and many more of them voted accordingly. The Democrats didn’t even try to reach the masses this time around though and so the masses were left confused and aimless and did not vote.

A 2020 Gallup poll found that 46% of American adults read below a 6th grade (11 or 12 year old) level. Many surveys have found slightly better but still worrisome reading levels in the adult population. This is not a matter of Americans being able to read what is on a page, but rather that they do not know how to take in and process information.

Any political analysis that does not start with this fact is fundamentally flawed.

143000 votes for a guy with literal brain worms who isn’t even running for president anymore

This is why any talk of democracy in this country is pointless without systematic mass education.

Essentially capitalism had progressed to a point sometime in the late 19th century where industrial monopolies had formed in the major European powers. The industrial monopolies had been purchased by finance capital, and the finance capital became monopolized as well. In search of cheaper profits, these monopolies began exporting capital overseas to other countries and colonies. The secret treaties were a product of this. France for instance was heavily invested in Russia (I think Lenin said France owned half of all foreign capital in Russia at the start of the war) so France signed a defense pact with Russia to protect their investments there.

The treaties also carved up the world outside of the major European powers so the Balkans, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific were all legally divided between the imperialist powers so that they could be more securely be exploited.

The German, French, British, and American finance capitalists ability to carve up the world (as they did with Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman empire, Africa, Asia, and they intended to do to Russia had the Bolsheviks not won) and exploit the people in these imperial holdings was why the war was fought and they were happy to liquidate the proletariat of all nations to do so. It had nothing to do with fighting autocracy or the right to self determination which only served as ideological cover for the postwar settlement and were quickly done away with especially in the British and French colonies. Therefore the British and French were not the “good guys”. Tens of millions of people were slaughtered just so the British and French could pillage and enslave most of the world.

No, democracy is not identical with the subordination of the minority to the majority. Democracy is a state which recognizes the subordination of the minority to the majority, i.e., an organization for the systematic use of force by one class against another, by one section of the population against another.

We set ourselves the ultimate aim of abolishing the state, i.e., all organized and systematic violence, all use of violence against people in general. We do not expect the advent of a system of society in which the principle of subordination of the minority to the majority will not be observed. In striving for socialism, however, we are convinced that it will develop into communism and, therefore, that the need for violence against people in general, for the subordination of one man to another, and of one section of the population to another, will vanish altogether since people will become accustomed to observing the elementary conditions of social life without violence and without subordination.

This might get at your question somewhat but I’d strongly suggest reading the whole of State and Revolution if you haven’t already.

Essentially, liberal democracy is a sham because of capitalism. Even if there’s some aspects of a democracy like elections or a parliament the capitalist class still rules and democracy will be subordinated or ignored if the capitalists deem it necessary. Marxists recognize that democracy is an important tool in teaching the proletariat how to govern itself and that capitalism must be overthrown therefore it is an important stage of historical development. As communists we also recognize that the democratic state must one day wither away and therefore democracy will wither away. In that way we are not mere democrats with some idealistic belief in majoritarian rule or the perfect democracy or whatever the way liberals are. If democracy becomes impractical or unnecessary in the pursuit of communism than it can be done away with.

The purpose of this is to spread it as “educational content”, to arm people online with talking points. The goal is to create thousands of people with this information in their heads so that everywhere an org name comes up (PSL for example) immediately gets dozens of comments dropping these talking points.

There was a small workers group in my area that had existed for years and hadn’t really done anything until myself and my partner joined and got regular meetings going and set up a plan to do some public facing work. Suddenly one of the prominent members pulled out and shared a post detailing these exact points on Instagram the next day and the group quickly fell apart shortly after. My partner and I were the only two in the group that would even identify ourselves as Marxists and while I like PSL and Workers World neither of us are members of it or any other “vanguardist” organization.

The fascism has been here since at least 1946. Probably more like 1776. Libs are just scared it might hurt them now unlike before.

Yes

Only two of the seven Democratic presidential campaigns in this century have lost the popular vote.

I have to flesh it out but I keep being struck by the contradictory nature of American elections and how frankly nonsensical it all is and it returned me to this (from Wikipedia)

Gallup principal economist Jonathan Rothwell concluded, in a 2020 analysis and economic impact study of the PIAAC results collected during 2012 - 2017;[55] commissioned by the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy,[56] that the United States could increase its annual GDP by 10%, adding $2.2 trillion in annual income, by enabling greater literacy for the 54% of Americans reading below a sixth-grade level nationwide.[57][58] The analysis noted that, of the 33 OECD nations included in the survey, the U.S. had placed sixteenth for literacy, and surmised that about half of Americans surveyed, aged 16 to 74, had demonstrated a below sixth-grade reading level.[55]

If this and similar studies are accurate it means a significant number of Americans can read what’s on a page and repeat it back to you, but couldn’t tell you what it means or draw anything from it. If it is the case that people can read but not understand than no wonder Americans are so clueless - they’re thinking at the level of twelve year old children.

I think coming out of this election one of the things we should be doing is organizing for the collective education, both political and general. It’s no wonder that communists of yore prioritized workers schools, study groups, newspapers, etc. Illiteracy is a tool of the imperialist because it allows people to wallow in ignorance and uncritical thought. We should be organizing study groups (and schools where possible) for the people in our lives to study, appreciate, and create not just theory but also art, music, literature, etc. of both the expressly political and seemingly apolitical varieties. As long as we are engaging with people and challenging them to think for themselves they will come closer to socialism.

These groups can also serve as the basis for actual organizing which is the second thing that we as a society need to learn. We must make change if we want it, politicians and bureaucrats will not do it for us. This is especially true in the workplace where workers have come to rely on government intervention or legal contracts for far too long into a time when capitalists do not care and will only respond to actual labor action.

Somewhere between forty and seventy percent of American adults do not demonstrate comprehensive English literacy meaning they can technically read and write but the ability to recall, analyze, reference, or think critically about text is at or below the level we expect twelve year olds to read at. This is not a matter of them being able to read words on a page, it’s a matter of them being able to think. America makes a lot more sense when you realize this.

Final tallies aren’t in but it seems like significantly over half the population also did not participate in this election.

A 2020 Gallup survey found that around half of American adults read at or below a sixth grade (11 or 12 year old) level.

America makes a lot more sense once you realize it’s average adult is about as intelligent as an early teenager and much less receptive to learning.

Don’t forget Interest. It should be $2400 to keep up with inflation.

They were always a grift. Targeting Democrat primary voters, DSA glomming on as soon as it got off the ground, refusing to say another candidate’s name. What did anyone expect?

I canvassed for a Dem pac in 2020 because it paid well. I thought i was grifting them but the fact that I actually at least walked the turfs they gave me made me one of the best canvassers on the team. The guy I worked with most of the time was also one of the best and he was a Republican who voted against the candidate we were canvassing for. One guy was selling drugs as he canvassed and most of the team was highschool aged kids who could barely speak English and clearly did not know or care about what was happening. We took long breaks, spoofed doors, and spent as little time as possible actually talking to voters and they were thrilled with our work.

There’s no way anything they’re reporting on here is exclusive to Elon’s pac, the Dems are just in denial about how they spend their money.

We spent the last month touting a Dick Cheney endorsement and now the Arab-Americans hate us? How could that be?

Yeah I agree that most of the union workers in the US are not particularly well off. Unions like NEA and UFCW are massive, business-oriented, and many of their members are dirt poor. I think the issue we run into as leftists is that we just sorta dogmatically look at unions as a good thing (or at least Lenin’s century old formulation of them as useful forms of proletarian organization) or we go ultraleft and reject them as colloborators in colonialism and genocide (which isn’t to say they aren’t) with very little insight into the internal contradictions of a union, how they came to be this way, or what a union even is. The lack of democracy and the outright hostility to workers self organizing within the big unions fucks their members over just as their protectionism or militarism fucks the global proletariat over.

Near where I live for instance there are union members in mills who are frequently ordered to work 24 or more hours in a row and their local has been outright hostile to any sort of strike or activity to fight it. Idk what their contract looks like or how well they’re compensated but they’ve had multiple members killed in car accidents driving home and many more injuries on the job after working for a day straight. These are the “good union mill jobs” everyone’s grandparents had.

There are of course union workers in military contractors and such that are directly benefiting from Imperialism or other forms of exploitation, but the reason the big unions suck is because they are one degree from state institutions designed to choke out proletarian revolution and democracy, not because their members are all living rich off the blood of the global south and have democratically decided to keep it that way. White collar non-union workers in email jobs are much more likely to be true labor-aristocrats that produce nothing than a UFCW grocery clerk or an NNU Nurse.

Actually, some of the people this address was given to would go on to create the SPD and Marx and Engels would support them. The SPD, though it contained a conservative wing, would remain the party of the German proletariat until it split over supporting the first World War and the Bolsheviks in Russia.

I’m not sure what specific names the German petty bourgeois were organizing under in 1850 but at the end of the Communist Manifesto they discuss a number of trends in German politics that would include the petty bourgeoisie.