Our View on the US Elections

it's currently an election year in

america

because of that some of the same

confusion that's typical of all election

years

has once again begun to rear its head we

at the infrared collective want to take

this opportunity to clarify

what we perceive are some of the most

common confusions surrounding it among

the left

recently virgil texas and rihanna joy

grey of the bad faith podcast hosted

noam chomsky to have a debate about

their significance

in one segment virgil argued that if it

doesn't it doesn't matter if trump wins

or not

because if capitalism isn't overthrown

in 10 years

the climate crisis will become

irreversible chomsky responded by saying

is there the remotest chance that within

a decade or two

will overthrow capitalism it's not even

a dream

okay while we agree with the spirit of

virgil's position

obviously when you begin from there

chomsky is right capitalism isn't going

to be overthrown in the next 10 years

whatever that means and no concrete

position can be premised on the

expectation that it will be

instead it's an abstract position that

doesn't establish any meaningful

relation to present political realities

so the real question that you have to

ask is this

is chomsky's position which means voting

for biden as an individual

the only real concrete political

position as it concerns the elections

while chomsky might be right about the

fact that basing your position

on overthrowing capitalism is

practically meaningless the sense of

self-satisfaction that comes with

individually voting

or canvassing is from a practical

perspective equally meaningless right

similar to ultra leftist the important

thing isn't the actual or concrete

result of your position

it's its ability to fulfill a purely

abstract criteria

chomsky knows that his own vote or the

vote of people who listen to him

are not concretely uh are not completely

decisive from a practical perspective

yet he advocates for people to do this

because he thinks that from an

individual perspective

it's the most immoral thing to do it's

what you need to do as a citizen what

the position of chomsky

and the ultra leftists have in common

something which marxist in the past

called the quality of petty bourgeois

individualism

the petty bourgeoisie in the context of

this phrase

it typically referred to tendencies that

prevailed among the conscientious

middle class and professional classes

but the important thing

as marx noted is that the members of

this class are unable to distinguish its

special condition

from the general conditions on which the

class struggle

or in this example climate crisis can be

avoided

in this example by fulfilling certain

special

and in this case purely individual

conditions

such as voting or by contrast

maintaining some ultra leftist posture

the real and general conditions of

ameliorating the contradictions they're

pretending to respond to

which is the crisis they feel is at

stake in the current elections

are somehow satisfying the important

thing here

isn't the question of whether biden

provides the opportunity for leftists to

solve problems

in the first place it's a question of

how they're articulating

their own practical relationship to

these problems

and the way these problems are mediated

in the institutions

such as the electoral process in the

first place what makes the way they are

doing this

sometimes epithelium refers to small

scale independent

propagators but in the context of a

pejorative

against the errors of leftists or

socialists is usually refers to the

educated professional

urban middle class the very basis of

these classes existences

but lie in the official institutions of

soviet society

they come to believe that there is no

reality outside of these official

institutions because

as individuals they know another reality

they come to think that by voting

individually they are participating in

the rail site

of politics conversely ultra leftists

think that by denying the reality of

these institutions

they are participating in the actual

abolition of real politics

this stem from the same error which does

not

distinguish material reality from the

institutions

that officially mediate reality

that's also why they view the current

reality in a purely subjective way of

like problem solving or correcting moral

wrongs

but it's not a material or objective

perspective but a purely subjective

standpoint of institutions

it's a too big to fail mentality held by

wall street

for example before 2008. they don't view

institutions as part of a larger reality

but idealistically as

the only reality they don't perceive an

objective contradiction only one between

abstract principles

or what's within the practical

intervention of establishment

institutions

and the violation of these principles

and at that point it just becomes a

matter of making a personal decision you

know based on the outcomes you would

personally like to see happen

but what this takes for granted is how

you perceive what you consider the

problem in the first place

and the institutions that you've taken

for granted as the vehicle for resolving

them

you know you someone like this stops

short of the recognition that you're an

american

president of american democracy and that

you feel some personal obligation to

actively make a decision about the

elections

and even when you decide not to vote you

still somehow you know as even that as a

decision you had to make actively

um this is because you don't see

american democracy as having itself

have it as itself having its basis in a

more fundamental reality and more

material really than its own official

institutions

if you did you'd be able to perceive

that the scope of your individual

relationship to politics isn't

exclusively defined

by the institutions but by a necessity

that's drawn from a deeper sense of

reality

you wouldn't feel a personal necessity

to vote or even to abstain

you recognize that the fact of being an

american citizen in american democracy

does not exhaust

your material and real relationship to

politics in general

this is actually something that the

majority of american working class

actually understands which is why it's

pretty laughable when people say

that refusing to vote is privileged the

reason why so many ordinary and lower

class americans believe in conspiracy

theories and don't vote

is because they recognize deeper reality

of politics that's utterly beyond the

relationship that individual citizens

have

towards american political institutions

they recognize cabals

shadow governments secret societies the

deep state and well-connected

establishments

because they understand that they are

part of the same political reality

that's more fundamental than the one

democratic institutions

try to define for them what's really

unforgivable about this fact

is that this was given to bernie sanders

supporters on a silver platter many of

whom now campaign for biden both in the

recent and 2016 primaries

in both of those cases establishment

voices treated the primaries as

something objective

and almost set in stone and that the

wishes of bernie voters don't matter

when both presidential election seasons

finally come around all of a sudden

voting is no longer objective it's no

longer set in stone

it's something that demands immediate

subjective will

when we're using words like material or

objective we're not talking about some

vulgar economic determinism

we're not saying there's no need to vote

as an individual because of capitalism

or something

saying there's no need to vote because

of establishments if you're an

individual leftist or even

former bernie supporter it should now be

clear to you that you're not really the

one who's decisive for winning elections

by personally voting or canvassing for

biden you're just being a sucker

and to bernie people now arguing for

biden if biden needs you specifically

for him to win

then why then you would have already

gotten bernie to win the democratic

ticket

you should have better leveraged your

position then instead of fantasizing

about future scenarios like nathan

robinson is doing now

if he doesn't need you which may very

well be possible

then why do you feel personally

obligated to waste your time voting for

him

whether he wins or not won't be down to

people like you it's going to be down to

factors that are utterly

outside the sphere of your practical

intervention

and all of that aside you shouldn't feel

compelled to create meaningless

hypotheticals about choosing the lesser

of two evils

because not even the democrats do that

as we speak they're holding up a bill

that will provide

some relief to people who really need it

how is giving people nothing at all the

lesser of two evils in that case

the reason is obvious to anyone with a

spine there comes a certain point where

you draw a line

if you don't all you end up doing is

submitting to whatever subjective

authorities

happen to prevail at the expense of your

own deeper sense of material reality

and that's what this is really about of

decisive importance now for leftists

isn't voting but acquiring a better

sense of reality

a better sense of the objective and

material necessity

that compels you to identify with the

causes you do

because as of now you don't have a

deeper sense of material objectivity

what mao called the primary

contradiction of the class struggle

you have a purely subjective stance

about right and wrong

the technocratic faith and current

institutions

to fix the environment and keep in mind

none of this is about whether there's a

reality to elections

or whether organizations find it

strategically important

to participate in them for the purpose

of acquiring power

but that's completely different from

voting on a purely individual basis

or voting because you want a big society

rather than overthrowing the current

institutions which you expect to do this

and replacing them with the new people's

power proletarian dictatorship

that's why bosh's arguments that lenin

would vote for biden

are dishonest and opportunistic for

lenin

the significance of voting isn't the

same as the official one

which is to govern society it's about

establishing a concrete relationship

to actual political realities and the

people that has nothing to do with

voting as an

individual because you want to see some

policies enacted

what's at stake in the first place is

how the objective conditions are given

meaning in the first place

how does reality make sense for you in

the first place

right now that's what we the infrared

collective

consider a pressing concern for leftists

in america

like to keep it