Your use of “work” is doing a lot of heavy lifting and is very reductive. I’d recommend reading theory until you properly understand the issue, Dessalines.
See, the problem with Dessalines’ meme is that it uses “work” as a binary category. As in, something either has no effect or it completely restructures society. It is absolutely true that electoralism can’t completely restructure society, and there are many valid explanations for why that is in communist theory. However, Dessalines reveals his lack of understanding by equating completely restructuring society with “working”.
If we were to construct a true binary between working and not working, it would be between having zero effect, and having any effect, no matter how small. The beating of a butterfly’s wings has some effect on the world, and could theoretically contribute towards a tornado that sucks up all the bourgeoisie and allows the workers to democratise the means of production. So obviously voting has some tiny effect, since it’s stronger than a butterfly’s wings. Voting works, in other words. But that’s a virtually meaningless statement if we’re constructing a binary as Dessalines did.
The correct approach is to ask “how much can voting accomplish”, and with that question we can actually arrive at an answer with some nuance and a justification from within the theory. But the binary question Dessalines asks can afford no nuance, and is obviously not supported by theory or anything else. Which proves that even if Dessalines read theory, he didn’t understand much of it.
I think the fundamental issue is that “works” doesn’t have a good measurable metric and so when discussing it tends to fall into that false binary that you correctly identified.
The best I’ve seen that attempts to work around this problem was this paper from back in 20141. Unfortunately their results showed that while you’re correct that causitive impact is not zero that <5% correlation, especially for a field with as high a signal/noise ratio as political science, is an incredibly disheartening answer for “how much can voting accomplish?”
So while you are likely correct that it’s not nothing, it does suggest reality is much closer to the meme than your attempt at “nuance”.
If you have any sources that cite measurable and non-anecdotal impact that tell a different story I’d love to read them.
^1 linking the preprint because it’s not paywalled^
Closer than my attempt at nuance? I didn’t know I made an attempt at nuance yet. I thought I just vaguely gestured towards the nuance and said it exists. Can you please explain what my position is on how much I think voting can accomplish so I’m all caught up with the conversation?
Your use of “work” is doing a lot of heavy lifting and is very reductive. I’d recommend reading theory until you properly understand the issue, Dessalines.
Is your “theory” originating from three letter organisations or have you never actually read it yourself?
See, the problem with Dessalines’ meme is that it uses “work” as a binary category. As in, something either has no effect or it completely restructures society. It is absolutely true that electoralism can’t completely restructure society, and there are many valid explanations for why that is in communist theory. However, Dessalines reveals his lack of understanding by equating completely restructuring society with “working”.
If we were to construct a true binary between working and not working, it would be between having zero effect, and having any effect, no matter how small. The beating of a butterfly’s wings has some effect on the world, and could theoretically contribute towards a tornado that sucks up all the bourgeoisie and allows the workers to democratise the means of production. So obviously voting has some tiny effect, since it’s stronger than a butterfly’s wings. Voting works, in other words. But that’s a virtually meaningless statement if we’re constructing a binary as Dessalines did.
The correct approach is to ask “how much can voting accomplish”, and with that question we can actually arrive at an answer with some nuance and a justification from within the theory. But the binary question Dessalines asks can afford no nuance, and is obviously not supported by theory or anything else. Which proves that even if Dessalines read theory, he didn’t understand much of it.
I think the fundamental issue is that “works” doesn’t have a good measurable metric and so when discussing it tends to fall into that false binary that you correctly identified.
The best I’ve seen that attempts to work around this problem was this paper from back in 20141. Unfortunately their results showed that while you’re correct that causitive impact is not zero that <5% correlation, especially for a field with as high a signal/noise ratio as political science, is an incredibly disheartening answer for “how much can voting accomplish?”
So while you are likely correct that it’s not nothing, it does suggest reality is much closer to the meme than your attempt at “nuance”.
If you have any sources that cite measurable and non-anecdotal impact that tell a different story I’d love to read them.
^1 linking the preprint because it’s not paywalled^
Closer than my attempt at nuance? I didn’t know I made an attempt at nuance yet. I thought I just vaguely gestured towards the nuance and said it exists. Can you please explain what my position is on how much I think voting can accomplish so I’m all caught up with the conversation?
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The socialist alliance party is working with Israel? Wowzers, I didn’t know that! Can you provide a source, or are you making things up?
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Which liberal theory do you recommend? Star wars, or Harry Potter?