peaceful protests are useless because the government can safely ingore them. violent protest forces the government to take action, just look at the history of the civil rights movement in the US. The objective of effective protest should not be to announce your displeasure with the governments actions, but to make it more costly for them to continue than to capitulate.
Heres a good quote from Stokely Carmichael about this:
To add on to this, I dont think you have to choose between persuing progress within the current system and building support for revolution, rather persuing progress within the current system shows the proletariat that your movement gets shit done and the two objectives work in harmony. The biggest concern is making sure reformists or other liberal movements do not take credit for any gains made and use them as proof that complete liberation is possible under capitalism when in fact it is not. The revolutionaries have to be seen as the champions of this progress in the eyes of the masses in order to build support for revolution.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
The point of protests (in proper revolutionary movements) is to gather support and get your agenda out there so that it is un-ignorable.
Violent protest is the only useful protest if your criteria for useful is government change. But we know government change isn’t coming without revolution or at the very least the serious threat of it.
So yes and no.
Violent protest is the only useful protest if your criteria for useful is government change
Roadblocks and disruptive protests fit this category. Make it more expensive for them to disobey the people than to submit.
They’re worse than useless for pressuring; as in this day and age, they’ve started locking up protestors against unpopular policy, and a solid half of them have gotten federal RICO charges applied to whatever else the prosecutor’s office wants to nail them with. (I’ll let you guess which half did.) (Like for real the more I think about it, I don’t think a single Jan. 6th Rioter caught RICO charges; but the Cop City protestors did? Cracker shit.)
The CPC rolled back zero COVID after about two weeks of protest.
CPC is not Washington
So protests only work to help bad policies pass, got it.
The abandobment of zero covid was a disaster
To be fully honest, I am not qualified to pass any judgement on the policy. I just wanted to point out that certain non-capitalist countries actually listen to their protestors.
If you think the point is to pressure change, most of the time, yeah, it’s useless.
It’s a great opportunity to catch people moving up the radicalization ladder to pull them left.
In more extreme moments with sufficient organization behind them, protests can develop into revolutions such as the fascist counter-revolution in Ukraine in 2014. That obviously didn’t change much about the underlying system in Ukraine other than installing a western puppet and further empowering the fascists.
If the government were the target audience, perhaps. Although governments do listen to protests. They want you to think they’re useless so that people don’t join in for thinking that they’re useless.
But there is another target audience, the public. Don’t underestimate how much protests empower onlookers who agree with the message but haven’t quite plucked up the courage to join in yet.
Seeing tens, hundreds, or thousands march in the street is not necessarily going to change minds. It may change a few but more importantly, it gives those who already agree a change to know that they’re not alone.
That’s powerful, particularly in a world where the right wing control almost all media and use that control to give the impression that everyone is right wing and you’d be cast out if you thought different.
Peaceful protest is completely useless, just think about it what pressure does a march on a Sunday put on anyone.
More personally, I find they’re a good place to find likeminded people
Also good for inviting people to, who could be likeminded if they were to witness solidarity in person. I was always sympathetic to some causes but had that liberal nothing-will-ever-change view. Then sometime invited me to a protest. Seeing people come out to stand up for what’s right made me rethink that view.
It’s like when people say don’t vote for a third party because it’s a waste. Well, of course it’s a waste if you agree with me but you won’t vote for them because I won’t and I won’t because you’re convincing me not to. If it works, it only works if we both do it. We only have to decide to do it.
Going to protests, you see the people who are willing to make change with you, even if the protest alone won’t secure the victory. Once it becomes clear that such people exist, and how noisy they can be, an array of political choices suddenly opens itself up. Protests are a visible wedge of the possibility of radical politics.
Voting for a third party is a good idea in an instant runoff system but not in FPTP
When they ignore you and change nothing, it’s good for international opinion to be able to point to widespread popular protests and say “we tried doing it their way” when you escalate.
I think so! At least, I don’t think protesting is going to lead to change. What it does lead to is a group of really pissed off people, and contrary to what a lot of neolib discourse suggests, a group of really pissed off people can get things done.
I find them great for networking and spreading your own ideas. The protestors are there because they want change. It’s actually pretty trivial to educate them on what will actually lead to it. They probably will forget about what you’ve taught them after their single-issue cause gets resolved, though.
Protests provide a radicalization opportunity, an opportunity to seize narratives, and an opportunity for organizations to connect and gain new members. They’re pretty much useless for affecting the government, as others have pointed out, but that’s kind of the point. When hundreds of thousands of people are marching in the street for months and the government is still saying “Yeah, we don’t care. We’re just gonna keep bombing brown kids instead of fixing homelessness” then that’s kind of hard to ignore for people who are just coming into their political consciousness.
Peaceful marches etc are useful for raising awareness of a problem.
In 1974 it was illegal for a woman to get a credit card without a male co-signer.
When people protested laws got changed.
Uh huh.
It’s just another way people choose to spend their time. We are already free but the problem is chaos reigns supreme. Our governments are just “order” naturally made from “chaos”. So no government is actually supreme. I suppose protestation is also another segment of “order” from “chaos” but the the result won’t ever be a contrasting change made in our lifetime.
Same for education and change… And anything else. We are at the mercy of universal laws. Nothing will ever change that except maybe going full matrix and creating a digital world with coded rules that would take the place of universe/God and “humanity”.
Freedom is only found in the present moment. All else is wasting the future.
This was supposed to be a joke but I also think it’s true.
You sound like a Gnostic that believes that they are having a personal battle with the Demiurge. There are the rules of “spirit” also known as common sense that confine what nature can be. However the rules of matter often discover that the world is stranger than our cultural ancestors presumed and we should update our understanding accordingly. A more accurate understanding helps one understand why something exists. Knowing why something exists can tell you how to make something not exist. This applies to living things, people, societal concepts and all other things. To give up on the concept of understanding is to relinquish one’s power to those that want to keep power. It is the common sense of the spirit that fights understanding that truly limits ones power and freedom more than the limits of matter.
I’m always impressed by the knowledge and academic type responses you “communists” respond with.
I’m just a loner stoner that’s been lost in though for nearly 2 decades and most the stuff people say goes over my head., lol.
TLDR
Its good to learn things. Its good to apply oneself in earnest to the universe to see where they are wrong in practical tests. Both success and failure teach you how the world works. Its better than presuming there is nothing to learn and nothing will ever change.
Perhaps your comprehension skills will improve if you lay off the pot.
Heyyy I’m always high and I have no trouble understanding things 😶🌫️
Why’d you put communists in quotes? Serious question
Because it’s such a misused word in politics these days. As well as not having a full understanding of actual communism.
you got raked with the downvotes earlier but i think this is a based mindset you have. you seem confident in what you do know and don’t mind admitting what you don’t. i think you should try and foster your curiosity further. if you really wanted to know what commies think you can learn. it’s not a skill or an intellectual issue, it’s just about being curious enough.
And you think this applies to us? Lol what exactly is your “full understanding of actual (again lol) communism”?
No not lemmygrad in particular. You guys are on top of your game.
I don’t really have much understanding of any politics.
You should stick around and learn, we’re always open to educating those who don’t understand. It won’t hurt, if anything it’ll improve your understanding of the world around you so 💁🏿♂️
You need to start thinking in materialist categories. “Order” in society does not exist as a universal principle, it is always the byproduct of concrete interests with concrete means to enforce them, and the fundamental nature of the social order depends on and changes with what these interests are. Once you know this, you can understand the dialectics of society and convince yourself that only the lower class can and must be the motor for fundamental social change. The role of protest is not to create further “order”, but to articulate the interests of the lower class and sections within it, to mend its internal divisions, and to precipitate the changes its interests necessitate.
