Another thing electoral movements can do is improve conditions enough to where change that previously wasn’t possible becomes possible. Think of a mild reform like forcing police to use body-worn cameras. It certainly didn’t solve all problems with policing in capitalist societies, but it did open up a lot of avenues for changing cop behavior and agitating for further improvements.
More broadly, I think we have to be somewhat agnostic about what electoral movements can and cannot do. No one has ever brought socialism to a bourgeois democracy, or to an economy as developed as that of the modern imperial core. The closest examples to accomplishing that come from Latin America – Chile under Allende, the pink tide early in the 21st century – and were done through elections. There are no historical successes in anything close to the conditions of, say, the modern U.S. No one really knows what will or won’t work.
Another thing electoral movements can do is improve conditions enough to where change that previously wasn’t possible becomes possible. Think of a mild reform like forcing police to use body-worn cameras. It certainly didn’t solve all problems with policing in capitalist societies, but it did open up a lot of avenues for changing cop behavior and agitating for further improvements.
More broadly, I think we have to be somewhat agnostic about what electoral movements can and cannot do. No one has ever brought socialism to a bourgeois democracy, or to an economy as developed as that of the modern imperial core. The closest examples to accomplishing that come from Latin America – Chile under Allende, the pink tide early in the 21st century – and were done through elections. There are no historical successes in anything close to the conditions of, say, the modern U.S. No one really knows what will or won’t work.
this is more or less where I’m at, I like your use of agnosticism in particular, which fits neatly with what I’m trying to develop here