Liberals often call Leftists excluding liberals from the Left āpurity testing,ā as though the difference is merely in quantitative degrees, rather than qualitative. If the difference between Leftists and libetals is indeed merely quantitative, wanting the same thing but in greater or lesser extents, then the Liberals would be correct, however opposition to Capitalism itself and support for Socialism fundamentally represents a qualitative shift.
For Leftists, Social Democracy, or Welfare Capitalism, isnāt actually a solution. The countries seen as āsuccess storiesā like the Nordics rely on Imperialism, they arenāt closed loop economies. Further, their conditions are deteriorating as wealth concentrates. Leftists therefore arenāt letting āperfectā be the enemy of āgood,ā itās that Liberalism is built on a brutal system of international plunder, and is on a death spiral as liberal countries increasingly pivot more to the right. Climate Change is still an existential threat. Liberalism isnāt a solution.
Thatās why thereās friction between progressive liberals and Leftists.
Liberals often call Leftists excluding liberals from the Left āpurity testing,ā
Far more often than not, what I see is a Liberal electoralist showing up at a Leftist direct action event and saying āPlease vote for my favorite guyā and getting told to fuck off. This is inevitably because their favorite guy just endorsed the ā$50B for More Gaza Genocides Act of 2025ā and then pissed all over the PRO Act, the GND, and student debt relief as unaffordable boondoggles that would hurt working class people.
Then the liberal calls them antisemitic Russian bots who love the Chinese Communist Party more than their own mothers, storms off, and discretely makes a call to ICE to raid their activist clubhouse. A week later, theyāre online complaining about how Leftists are too divisive and hate freedom.
For Leftists, Social Democracy, or Welfare Capitalism, isnāt actually a solution.
I think there are an enormous number of Leftists who - when presented with a solid mix of social democratic reforms and civil rights protections - are happy enough to get on a progressively liberal bandwagon. What I havenāt seen is progressive liberalism at the head of the Democratic Party. Far more often than not, its the same crop of corporate goons and inter-party bureaucratic careerist worms pushing āBusiness Firstā economic policy and white nationalist social policy, regardless of who is in the White House. The only real difference is whether you get a weepy Samantha Powers or an ice-chewing Steve Bannon providing the PR for the latest wedding party bombing run or surveillance state blank check.
Show me some actual fucking Social Democracy to get behind. Show me some Welfare Capitalism that isnāt means-tested and gatekept to the point of being functionally worthless to any American within spitting distance of the poverty line. Leftists canāt be lured into the waiting arms of a plutocrat friendly Mixed Economy if all anyone offers is a bigger DHS and $20k market-interest loans to three-year-old minority owned small businesses.
Liberalism is built on a brutal system of international plunder, and is on a death spiral as liberal countries increasingly pivot more to the right. Climate Change is still an existential threat. Liberalism isnāt a solution.
Even the most successful communist states werenāt above indulging in extraction industry and sloppy emissions standards. Hell, both the USSR and the CCP were notoriously shit on environmental standards all through the 70s and 80s. It took a big internal backlash within the Chinese proletariat to get mayors, governors, and eventually national leaders to recognize the threat of environmental degradation to long term social cohesion. And Russians never got a chance to learn environmentalism, because they were Shock Doctrineād into a Saudi style petro state.
Still debatable whether Chinese bureaucrats have come around on overseas extraction, too. Certainly, the domestic labor practices vary heavily by industry. And Chinese labor expats are as abused as anyone from the Global South.
But it does appear that these big seemingly rigid and overly-bureaucratic communist systems are receptive to some demands for reform. The ship is large and slow. The progress is gradual. Whether or not weāll see big socialist states fully divest from fossil fuels and extend labor rights beyond their more privileged labor sectors in time to save the planet is speculative at best. But they do seem to be moving in the right direction.
Liberals seem to be collapsing back into a 19th century state of labor and ecology. Even in defiance of economic and social pressures, there is this ideological impulse towards degraded working conditions and deteriorating ecology. As someone who grew up in a deeply neoliberal neighborhood, it seems to defy the bedrock theories of liberal politics. All these pressures arrayed against it, and the so-called technocratic pragmatists are on a total dogmatic bender, intent on making the worst decisions possible in outright defiance of reason, popular opinion, and profit motive.
How can any Leftist stand behind that?
Iām not American but I probably would have voted Democrat if I was.
However, Democrats who are more mad at leftists voting third party than theyāre mad at republicans or their own fucking party that simply could not be bothered to stop bombing children to gain the left-wing vote: Go fuck yourselves.
Why would I throw my vote away? I voted for someone with a chance of winning.
Dividing the left wouldnāt matter if we used a more representative voting system. One that gave people the freedom to vote how they want and still have their vote count if their preference didnāt win. Voters should be able to transfer their vote how they wish and stay represented. To have their vote count no matter what.
Why donāt blue states switch away from First-past-the-post voting? Republicans arenāt in power, they could easily make this change. Donāt they believe in democracy? Or do prefer this undemocratic hostage situation that hands the republicans power repeatedly?
Electoral Reform Videos
First Past The Post voting (What most states use now)
Videos on alternative electoral systems
Alternative voting systems have in practice been proven useless, whether in South Korea, Japan, Australia, and many other capitalist dictatorship countries that use it. It might make bribery a bit more expensive, since there are more candidates to buy off, and more political advertising necessary, but it hasnāt fixed anything.
The root problem is capital standing above political power. And that canāt be undone using itās own platform.
Youāre right that it doesnāt solve much but the two party system in the US is particularly terrible. Fundamental change is a lot harder to achieve than changing voting systems and even with a socialist state weād want one of these, so I think thereās no point opposing it even if it isnāt a panacea
Electoral reform not only doesnāt address root causes, it doesnāt even treat the symptoms. It hasnāt prevented australia or japan from having far right governments, hasnāt returned land to indigenous peoples, hasnāt done anything against inequality, hasnāt empowered poorer peoples. All it does is make the political bribery slightly more expensive.
At a deeper level, representative elections always result in an oligarchy. The wealthy / economically dominant classes are the only ones who have enough money / prestige to finance their campaigns and win the popularity contest. It makes any political system based on elections nothing more than political theatre.
This is basic stuff even the ancient greeks knew, and communists learned through trial and error, yet liberals in the 21st century canāt wrap their heads around it.
Theyāre useless because the capital powers that be actively try to misinform the public on preferential voting (As part of a larger attack on education to keep a complicit population)
If I had a dollar every time I heard someone tell me Iām throwing away my vote for preferencing a minor party that has no hope of winning Iād probably have enough money to bribe a politician into making some decent fucking policy
In their moral justification, the argument of the lesser evil has played a prominent role. If you are confronted with two evils, the argument runs, it is your duty to opt for the lesser one, whereas it is irresponsible to refuse to choose altogether. Its weakness has always been that those who choose the lesser evil forget quickly that they chose evil.
-Hannah Arendt
I think everyone should pick the best person for the position. But if the only two realistic options are evil and lesser evil. Then I think itās better if the lesser evil wins than the more evil one.
As seen in last US election, voting for the ideal candidate meant the worse candidate won.
You could easily argue that the guys constantly chosing the lesser evil brought that catastrophic discourse shift over us, that made the lesser evil of this election worse than the worse evil of former elections.
I am not from the US, so my insight there might be limited. But here in Germany I started to hate the lesser evil fraction so much. The lesser evil here is now openly representing far right ideologies, activley supporting genocide, made it borderline illegal to critizise genocid, killing refugees at the borders, deporting people into regions were they face immediate lethal threats, initiating harsh social cuts while demonizing the poor and are discussing cooperation with open fascists. They are constantly normalizing open fascism, everday a little more. If Germany slights into fascism again, it will be mostly the lesser evils fault.
Fuck the lesser evil. They became more dangerous than the fascist themselves in many respects.
It was also Hindenburg and von Papen back in the 1930s, the lesser evil, who was paving Hitler the way to power.
edit: Lol, I startet this meaning to write 2-3 sentences, seems the lesser evil caused a writing frenzy in me.
Stop acting like only having two political parties is the only way we can do things. I invite you to step outside the box you are trapped thinking in.
I donāt think we should only have two parties. But with FPTP voting thatās what happens. You need to change to ranked voting system.
Also I think everyone should vote for who they want. Unless it means the worse candidate winsā¦ in FPTP thatās what happens. You need to vote strategically.
As seen in last US election, voting for the ideal candidate meant the worse candidate won.
Is there actual evidence for this? Was there a higher than usual vote for 3rd party candidates in this election, and has that been determined to be the cause of Harris losing? Legit curious.
āErm acturally thats tankie propaganda, dont you know our Good Guy Candidateā¢ isnt Fascist heās actually Fascist Liteā¢ which is totally different. Yes heās going to blindly support genocide, yes heās going to support imperialism, and no he wont do a damn thing to help the workers, but you see these silly graphs we made up say the economy is going and therefore our guy is qualified. Now blindly support the candidate and the party or Iāll downvote you and call you a Tankie or a Russian bot.ā
- Average .world user
