: To which I respond, there won't be any damned revolution, and from the rhetoric that flies around here concerning it, that's a good thing. Firing squads lining up the cancerous old guard -- the hell with that!Revolution does not necessitate violence, revolution just means a drastic change in the composition/structure of society, cf. The Velvet Revolution, etc. A Socialist revolution of an immense majority would have little chance of meating violent resistence.
: I'm voting in November: first, because there are millions around the world who are dying for the opportunity to vote; second, because not voting is a cop-out -- other people will certainly vote, and you have no right to complain if you don't like the results; third, it does make a difference who wins.
Spoiling is different from not voting, it is a vote, a vote against all the choices on offer - spoilt ballots are counted.
: 3. All or nothing, now!
: That's the bullshit strategy of frigid ideologues. Small steps forward can mean big things for those at the bottom (including the environment), and such steps are better than nothing at all. Take big steps when you can, and continue to strive for them, but don't reject progress on account of it being to small to satisfy you -- that's vanity.
If socialism is, as we say, teh cure for societies ills, then why don't we do it, why do we continue with wee palliatives? If You had a disease, and were in hospital, surrounded by doctors who could treat you, and could cure you, but yet declined to do so, and instead simply mopped your brow, and made your slow decline into misery a littler easier, would you be happy with that? "Small steps" they would say, we've got to do it a little bit at a time...
How can we take small steps, when we cannot fight the basic p[roblems that capitalism throws up that way - a pittance doubled is still a fucking pittance, making poor people a little less poor is no step forward, making the hungry a little less hungry isn't good enough - why ask for crumbs, when we can take the whole fucking bakery?
