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Added to the OP: For those wanting to take trying to be a socialist offline in connection with current political events, I recommend checking out https://generalstrikeus.com/
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On February 04 2025 05:21 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On February 04 2025 04:37 Sermokala wrote:On February 03 2025 23:48 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 03 2025 23:37 Sermokala wrote:On February 03 2025 22:56 Navane wrote:
In the USA, EU and China, societies have both capitalist and socialist traits. What dogshit are you trying to peddle in this thread.
Any society that even tries to be 100% purebread becomes an instant caricature. USA highways are socialist. China's street markets are kapitalist.
Your abstractions do not serve you. Its a primary flaw in Socialism in the United States, the understanding of socialism in the coasts vs the understanding of socialism in the midwest is worlds apart, and both sides hate each other. The Midwest has a legitimate history of socialism and doing it right. Minnesota didn't become one of the most highly economically developed regions of the world because of oil or gold or a head start on everyone else. It got there because of the Scandinavian socialists that embraced real practical socialist policy like healthcare schools and unions. It got there because we have an unelected cabal of technocratic appointees that have taxing authority and legal authority to bend the development of our state to a long-term vision of prosperity. Going in circles with your own tail on what the exact philosophical tenets and doctrine of socialism is meaningless if you fail to apply it in any real measure. Having a local community of socialists means nothing if you fail to get elected and implement your policy to help people. Sewer socialists did more for their community than any communist ever has. Who are some of the representatives of this Midwest socialism nowadays? Klobuchar? I saw this bit from the Sewer socialists that certainly sounds prescient and familiar. Socialist Assemblyman George L. Tews, during a 1932 debate on unemployment compensation and how to fund it, argued for the Socialist bill and against the Progressive substitute, stating that a Progressive was "a Socialist with the brains knocked out" Ilhan Omar? Walz? Paul Wellstone is the current godfather of the movement and he died in a plane crash a while back "We all do better when we all do better". They call the training camp for new politicians for the DFL "camp wellstone" If you want a functionary then Charles A. Zelle is probably the most effective one of the lot. The Modern MSP buildout was a hallmark of an extremely efficient and well-designed public infrastructure. Integrating rideshare, parking, dropoff/pickup, shuttle bus's, public transport, TSA all in an extremely cost-effective frame. Recently they've moved into park and ride because large-scale electric bus's on dedicated stop buildout are the new hotness. the guy was a CEO for a bus transport company that's still kicking Free healthcare for the poor and free CC and technical education are the golden ticket to bring people up. Giving them cheap and available public transport so they can go to these schools is what will give opportunity and lower disparities. I dunno, I'm probably too biased to give this fair consideration in the moment, I'd like to hear Neb's thoughts. One thing that comes to my mind is how Walz's "midwest socialism" (I think Europe just calls this social democracy?) as you call it and ability to go after Republicans as "weird" really did resonate with a lot of people, only for him to basically be shut up and shelved to bring Cheney to some campaign events.
I mean I like Walz and Omar, they're cool 
What we're talking about seems to map more to social democracy, but social democracy in this context can be understood as liberal capitalism being influenced by some socialists, and that's more or less in line with what Sermo is saying. That's much better than the alternative obviously, I certainly would rather live in Minnesota than in most other states if I had to choose. There was also, at least to me, a small amount of hope associated with the Harris campaign based on her choice of Walz as opposed to Josh Shapiro, it "seemed" to signal that she "may" want to try a different direction, but as you point out the way Democrats shut down Walz's angle speaks to how difficult that might have been, even if that was actually the strategy.
Just in terms of how a population thinks alone, the existence of social democrats is beneficial. If you give "socialists" power and they do healthcare, public transportation, some work on inequality, and it results in a society that is demonstrably better off than if they hadn't, this is a population that is probably less likely to be talking about visits in China or about how the highways are socialist because the state built them.
One angle of question that might be interesting for social democrats is that I've often heard in real life and on this forum that social democracy is a pragmatic compromise: socialism is out of reach without a revolution, so you might as well improve people's lives a little bit by going with a social democracy. At this point when I look at the US and most of Europe, social democracy is just about as out of reach as socialism is. We can't really turn back the Overton window like the right did, because the right did it with the money and the influence that their rich donors afforded them, and there's no comparable systemic force on the left. I don't really see a path to get back to social democracy that doesn't involve revolutionary reforms in the same way as a path to socialism would. Do social democrats see one? And if not, like, if we're going to have to do the work anyway, why stop at the middle ground?
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On February 02 2025 23:20 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On February 02 2025 19:14 Acrofales wrote:On February 02 2025 09:55 Acrofales wrote:I too lament the closing of GH's blog. But I'll endeavour to follow the mods' advice to discuss the topic in the politics threads, so here goes. I really liked the rephrasing and the thought provoking question. What does China currently do about corruption?
How does that compare to the Trump administration?
How should socialists in the US/those in solidarity with them expect to see corruption handled differently than both of those in your view?
At first glance, it seems the cause of corruption seeping into politics is identical on both sides of the Pacific: an elite class who is not accountable, and a political system that does not adequately give power to the people. In China by removing any semblance of a democracy: there is one party and opposition will not be tolerated, and in the US by giving an illusion of choice: you can vote for the elites' lap dog or their attack dog, but either way you are voting for their pets. In China it's by design, and in the US it's by inertia, but in both systems there is a powerful elite that keeps a tight control on the reigns and the only way to get into positions of power is by being one of them or dancing to their music. In addition, the media is firmly under their control too, allowing them to fully shape the message the population hears. Whether that is through a giant firewall and state media organisations controlling the rest, or by outright ownership of the media. They are thoroughly uncritical of their own government and elites. Examples: try finding any info in China about Tiananmen Square. And anything Musk posts on Twitter, but also Bezos instructing the WaPo not to endorse either candidate, and a cartoonist having her cartoon cut when it threatened to be slightly too critical of the boss. However, these similarities conceal a serious difference between the two. In China, the very institutions of government are the ones that incentivise corruption. The lack of democratic oversight is intentional, and the problem is party members using their mandate to ensure friends and family get lucrative business positions outside of civil service. Meanwhile in the US the institutions of government are meant to prevent corruption. They have been degraded and eroded to the point they don't work at all anymore. You can't be a politician without spending millions on campaigns, which obviously makes you beholden to whoever gave you those millions. Combine that with an anachronistic constitution that specifically gives disproportionate power to lower population states, allows presidents to pardon their family members, and a disproportionately huge role to unelected judges, and it's clear the system that was supposed to protect the people from abuse of power has failed. But at least it existed. So. Where do we go from here? Clearly a socialist rebuilding of the US political system would have to build on such institutions and ensure oversight. But how does socialism ever avoid the centralisation of power? It seems built into the system. Maybe an extreme form of direct democracy would allow for decisions about how to allocate resources to be taken collectively, rather than centralized in an elite. It would be very hard and require a full reeducation of the populace to be capable of this responsibility. Those same school teachers who voted for Trump and whose funding was subsequently slashed, will need to teach Freirean critical pedagogy. It seems like a utopian dream that anything like this would work. And how else do we empower people who don't know the first thing about medicine to take informed decisions about what and where to spend money on medical research. Or innovation in farming. Or AI. Not to mention "mundane" decisions like whether we need a traffic light at the intersection of Lenin Avenue with Trotsky Street. So yes, I look at this and think this is inevitably how socialism succumbs to totalitarianism. I can start small: the day-to-day decision-making at my work cause enough meetings to add stress and overhead to my day. I have repeatedly been offered the possibility to move into management and have turned it down, because that is just not the kind of work I enjoy. I'm perfectly happy working under a competent boss. And the company is big enough that he has a boss, and then there is 1 further layer of directors before we reach the CEO. The CEO spends his entire day hopping from meetings with those directors to meetings with investors and other stakeholders, ensuring that everybody is strategically aligned to meet our company objectives, and find ways to work around obstacles to meet them in the face of adversity. I cannot possibly imagine how this, relatively simple, business would run with more democratic decisionmaking, and my workplace is a fairly young, fairly modern and fairly transparent workplace. I'm very happy to say that most decisions are taken in committee with employees who have a stake in that decision. However, the hierarchy is necessary. And that means that some people will have more power than others. Even my brother, who runs a regenerative farming co-op had to abandon the ideas of decision-making by committee: the day-to-day practicalities of running a farm make that far too hard. Everybody has their speciality, and owns that and the decisionmaking in that vertical. But when push comes to shove in a decision that impacts the farm as a whole, one person's voice counts more than others. And that doesn't mean they don't have meetings to discuss these things, but decisions often need to be made in a timely manner, and especially on a farm, time is in spectacularly short supply! So instead of their ideal of unanimous decisionmaking or at the very least, voting, they often end up having the decision made by a dictator. A benevolent one who has the best interests of the farm in mind. And one that they can remove and replace if trust is lost. But still, hierarchy arises naturally. And as long as people are happy to give their power to others, how do you avoid them eventually giving it to a Trump, a Maduro or a Jinping, who do everything with that newfound power to (1) keep it and (2) abuse it. You're going to need very strong institutions. But institutions are als just people. So maybe you need a mechanism that allows for human greed to be harnessed to drive a lot of decision making, but curb its excesses by coupling that market with oversight and government whose main task it is to ensure that a rising tide truly does raise all ships. On February 02 2025 11:17 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 02 2025 09:55 Acrofales wrote:I too lament the closing of GH's blog. But I'll endeavour to follow the mods' advice to discuss the topic in the politics threads, so here goes. I really liked the rephrasing and the thought provoking question. What does China currently do about corruption?
How does that compare to the Trump administration?
How should socialists in the US/those in solidarity with them expect to see corruption handled differently than both of those in your view?
+ Show Spoiler +At first glance, it seems the cause of corruption seeping into politics is identical on both sides of the Pacific: an elite class who is not accountable, and a political system that does not adequately give power to the people. In China by removing any semblance of a democracy: there is one party and opposition will not be tolerated, and in the US by giving an illusion of choice: you can vote for the elites' lap dog or their attack dog, but either way you are voting for their pets. In China it's by design, and in the US it's by inertia, but in both systems there is a powerful elite that keeps a tight control on the reigns and the only way to get into positions of power is by being one of them or dancing to their music. In addition, the media is firmly under their control too, allowing them to fully shape the message the population hears. Whether that is through a giant firewall and state media organisations controlling the rest, or by outright ownership of the media. They are thoroughly uncritical of their own government and elites. Examples: try finding any info in China about Tiananmen Square. And anything Musk posts on Twitter, but also Bezos instructing the WaPo not to endorse either candidate, and a cartoonist having her cartoon cut when it threatened to be slightly too critical of the boss.
However, these similarities conceal a serious difference between the two. In China, the very institutions of government are the ones that incentivise corruption. The lack of democratic oversight is intentional, and the problem is party members using their mandate to ensure friends and family get lucrative business positions outside of civil service.
Meanwhile in the US the institutions of government are meant to prevent corruption. They have been degraded and eroded to the point they don't work at all anymore. You can't be a politician without spending millions on campaigns, which obviously makes you beholden to whoever gave you those millions. Combine that with an anachronistic constitution that specifically gives disproportionate power to lower population states, allows presidents to pardon their family members, and a disproportionately huge role to unelected judges, and it's clear the system that was supposed to protect the people from abuse of power has failed. But at least it existed.
So. Where do we go from here? Clearly a socialist rebuilding of the US political system would have to build on such institutions and ensure oversight. But how does socialism ever avoid the centralisation of power? It seems built into the system. Maybe an extreme form of direct democracy would allow for decisions about how to allocate resources to be taken collectively, rather than centralized in an elite. It would be very hard and require a full reeducation of the populace to be capable of this responsibility. Those same school teachers who voted for Trump and whose funding was subsequently slashed, will need to teach Freirean critical pedagogy. It seems like a utopian dream that anything like this would work. And how else do we empower people who don't know the first thing about medicine to take informed decisions about what and where to spend money on medical research. Or innovation in farming. Or AI. Not to mention "mundane" decisions like whether we need a traffic light at the intersection of Lenin Avenue with Trotsky Street.
So yes, I look at this and think this is inevitably how socialism succumbs to totalitarianism. I can start small: the day-to-day decision-making at my work cause enough meetings to add stress and overhead to my day. I have repeatedly been offered the possibility to move into management and have turned it down, because that is just not the kind of work I enjoy. I'm perfectly happy working under a competent boss. And the company is big enough that he has a boss, and then there is 1 further layer of directors before we reach the CEO. The CEO spends his entire day hopping from meetings with those directors to meetings with investors and other stakeholders, ensuring that everybody is strategically aligned to meet our company objectives, and find ways to work around obstacles to meet them in the face of adversity. I cannot possibly imagine how this, relatively simple, business would run with more democratic decisionmaking, and my workplace is a fairly young, fairly modern and fairly transparent workplace. I'm very happy to say that most decisions are taken in committee with employees who have a stake in that decision. However, the hierarchy is necessary. And that means that some people will have more power than others.
Even my brother, who runs a regenerative farming co-op had to abandon the ideas of decision-making by committee: the day-to-day practicalities of running a farm make that far too hard. Everybody has their speciality, and owns that and the decisionmaking in that vertical. But when push comes to shove in a decision that impacts the farm as a whole, one person's voice counts more than others. And that doesn't mean they don't have meetings to discuss these things, but decisions often need to be made in a timely manner, and especially on a farm, time is in spectacularly short supply! So instead of their ideal of unanimous decisionmaking or at the very least, voting, they often end up having the decision made by a dictator. A benevolent one who has the best interests of the farm in mind. And one that they can remove and replace if trust is lost. But still, hierarchy arises naturally. And as long as people are happy to give their power to others, how do you avoid them eventually giving it to a Trump, a Maduro or a Jinping, who do everything with that newfound power to (1) keep it and (2) abuse it. You're going to need very strong institutions. But institutions are als just people. So maybe you need a mechanism that allows for human greed to be harnessed to drive a lot of decision making, but curb its excesses by coupling that market with oversight and government whose main task it is to ensure that a rising tide truly does raise all ships. The questions did have additional context: Sigh... *taps sign* also *taps other sign* haha. There's a China politics thread where folks can discuss them more comprehensively than I think will be appropriate here any time soon. That said, I don't think China has to be completely off-limits. I just want to keep it relevant to the task at hand, so to that end: What does China currently do about corruption? How does that compare to the Trump administration? How should socialists in the US/those in solidarity with them expect to see corruption handled differently than both of those in your view? I appreciate the lengthy response, but it's not really an answer to the questions, certainly not within the given context. The last couple lines I left out of the spoiler is as close as you get, which is effectively "Maybe socialists should want oBlade's capitalism" which I know you know is a really silly place for you to conclude after those questions and that lengthy response. Neb would probably be more interested than myself in entertaining what reads as your ostensible reasoning for why none of us should bother trying to be a socialist, and instead embrace capitalism, but Neb doesn't participate in this thread. + Show Spoiler +Well, I asked the question in the first place because it's the main aspect of socialism that I always circle back to without finding an answer for myself. I don't think my solution is laissez-faire, and if I gave that idea then I clearly didn't write very well. I think we need very strong institutions that we use to redistribute wealth from the haves to the have-nots. In the forms of very progressive taxes which fund free healthcare, free education, free housing, public independent journalism, and other things that we as a society can keep adding onto the list of things that everyone in society should have guaranteed. But other than those basics, we let free markets do the rest.
I know that you don't believe in this model, which is why I asked the question of how to avoid corruption and nepotism being institutionalised in pure socialism. You countered with an alternative question that I interpreted as "well, current government is rotten to the core already, so how would socialism ever be worse than what we have?" which I tried to respond to. It's the ".. and how do we prevent that?" part which I do not personally have an answer for and was hoping someone else does.
As for your repetition of your spoilers, just because we disagree doesn't mean I'm not mostly on your side. I can rephrase my issue fairly easily: I'm absolutely on board with socialism up until the point where you need central planning. And I don't know how you avoid central planning. Do you? I was actually asking you to compare and contrast how China deals with corruption with how the US/Trump administration does. As in, investigations, prosecutions, conviction rates, sentences, etc. for corruption (as well as the general system to deal with it). What you're doing is trying to rationalize why you don't want to identify/participate as a socialist (that's your choice, just not what this space is for). Show nested quote +I think we need very strong institutions that we use to redistribute wealth from the haves to the have-nots. In the forms of very progressive taxes which fund free healthcare, free education, free housing, public independent journalism, and other things that we as a society can keep adding onto the list of things that everyone in society should have guaranteed. But other than those basics, we let free markets do the rest. That's what capitalism with "democracy" sells itself as. People also call it stuff like "compassionate capitalism" Biden called it "competitive capitalism". You're advocating capitalism. The basic problem is that inevitably the capitalists establish regulatory capture and chip away at "the forms of very progressive taxes which fund free healthcare, free education, free housing, public independent journalism, and other things" stuff. We know this in the US as the refrain about cutting taxes and privatization. Besides that, I agree with Neb afaict.
I think that's a bad faith interpretation of what I'm doing. But I understand that you don't have answers to my questions and believe I should find them for myself.
On the other hand, you aren't being particularly openminded yourself. I fully agree that regulatory capture is a corrupting force in a capitalist economy. Something we need to beware of and shut down when we encounter it. On the other hand, black markets are a larger problem in socialism than they are in capitalism, and exert a corrupting force on a socialist economy. Left unchecked this second economy could basically allow capitalism back in through the back door (some would argue that that is in fact what happened in the USSR). And the answer is much the same, we need to be vigilant.
That said, I am here to give it an honest try, and have spent some considerable time reading articles and watching videos. I was amazed was amazed to learn that labor vouchers were already in Marx's writings. I will freely admit that I haven't exactly updated my knowledge, nor reread Das Kapital in at least 20 years, but I didn't remember labor vouchers as an alternative to money as a thing. And that definitely sounds like something that digital developments since Marx would allow us to use to do a lot of the things a market does, but without having a market or profit motive: instead we have participatory planning to allocate our resources. I will probably have to read some of Paul Cockschott's work, which sounds like a promising solution to the Calculation Problem.
Now I guess I will, yet again, stray from the path of this thread and point out that I am not sure I understand the strong opposition to compassionate capitalism. I think that for the first few years, the transition of America to a compassionate capitalist system or a socialist system with labor tokens is going to be very similar, unless you aim to seize the means of production in a violent revolution. In both cases I think we can agree that non-reformist reforms is the way to get from where we are to where we need to go. The point where a compassionate capitalist and a lower stage socialist will disagree is quite far from where we are right now. Now I have not yet made up my mind. I am enchanted by the idea of abolishing profits. I am fearful of the calculation problem, and that getting it wrong encourages human greed to take over. I am also worried about the practicality of participatory planning, but I have also done some thinking about the situations where I said people needed to be put in charge and think I may have been too hasty. For starters, we can vote to put people in charge, and if we have institutional checks such as full transparency and instant recall methods, as well as short term limits, we should be able to have managers/directors that we empower to make some decisions on our behalf, just as we do right now in democratic systems. But also, I think that I misjudged how much complexity actually stems from the need to make a profit. In fact, in my company of 1500, I'd expect around 1200 or more would either no longer need to work at all anymore if we abolished the profit motive, or could instead focus on customer experience matters. So maybe participatory planning for absolutely everything will not bog us all down in extreme overhead, but rather we can all just pick and choose what we want to be directly involved in, and when we want to just delegate that choice to someone else.
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On February 04 2025 08:08 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On February 04 2025 05:21 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 04 2025 04:37 Sermokala wrote:On February 03 2025 23:48 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 03 2025 23:37 Sermokala wrote:On February 03 2025 22:56 Navane wrote:
In the USA, EU and China, societies have both capitalist and socialist traits. What dogshit are you trying to peddle in this thread.
Any society that even tries to be 100% purebread becomes an instant caricature. USA highways are socialist. China's street markets are kapitalist.
Your abstractions do not serve you. Its a primary flaw in Socialism in the United States, the understanding of socialism in the coasts vs the understanding of socialism in the midwest is worlds apart, and both sides hate each other. The Midwest has a legitimate history of socialism and doing it right. Minnesota didn't become one of the most highly economically developed regions of the world because of oil or gold or a head start on everyone else. It got there because of the Scandinavian socialists that embraced real practical socialist policy like healthcare schools and unions. It got there because we have an unelected cabal of technocratic appointees that have taxing authority and legal authority to bend the development of our state to a long-term vision of prosperity. Going in circles with your own tail on what the exact philosophical tenets and doctrine of socialism is meaningless if you fail to apply it in any real measure. Having a local community of socialists means nothing if you fail to get elected and implement your policy to help people. Sewer socialists did more for their community than any communist ever has. Who are some of the representatives of this Midwest socialism nowadays? Klobuchar? I saw this bit from the Sewer socialists that certainly sounds prescient and familiar. Socialist Assemblyman George L. Tews, during a 1932 debate on unemployment compensation and how to fund it, argued for the Socialist bill and against the Progressive substitute, stating that a Progressive was "a Socialist with the brains knocked out" Ilhan Omar? Walz? Paul Wellstone is the current godfather of the movement and he died in a plane crash a while back "We all do better when we all do better". They call the training camp for new politicians for the DFL "camp wellstone" If you want a functionary then Charles A. Zelle is probably the most effective one of the lot. The Modern MSP buildout was a hallmark of an extremely efficient and well-designed public infrastructure. Integrating rideshare, parking, dropoff/pickup, shuttle bus's, public transport, TSA all in an extremely cost-effective frame. Recently they've moved into park and ride because large-scale electric bus's on dedicated stop buildout are the new hotness. the guy was a CEO for a bus transport company that's still kicking Free healthcare for the poor and free CC and technical education are the golden ticket to bring people up. Giving them cheap and available public transport so they can go to these schools is what will give opportunity and lower disparities. I dunno, I'm probably too biased to give this fair consideration in the moment, I'd like to hear Neb's thoughts. One thing that comes to my mind is how Walz's "midwest socialism" (I think Europe just calls this social democracy?) as you call it and ability to go after Republicans as "weird" really did resonate with a lot of people, only for him to basically be shut up and shelved to bring Cheney to some campaign events. I mean I like Walz and Omar, they're cool What we're talking about seems to map more to social democracy, but social democracy in this context can be understood as liberal capitalism being influenced by some socialists, and that's more or less in line with what Sermo is saying. That's much better than the alternative obviously, I certainly would rather live in Minnesota than in most other states if I had to choose. There was also, at least to me, a small amount of hope associated with the Harris campaign based on her choice of Walz as opposed to Josh Shapiro, it "seemed" to signal that she "may" want to try a different direction, but as you point out the way Democrats shut down Walz's angle speaks to how difficult that might have been, even if that was actually the strategy. Just in terms of how a population thinks alone, the existence of social democrats is beneficial. If you give "socialists" power and they do healthcare, public transportation, some work on inequality, and it results in a society that is demonstrably better off than if they hadn't, this is a population that is probably less likely to be talking about visits in China or about how the highways are socialist because the state built them. One angle of question that might be interesting for social democrats is that I've often heard in real life and on this forum that social democracy is a pragmatic compromise: socialism is out of reach without a revolution, so you might as well improve people's lives a little bit by going with a social democracy. At this point when I look at the US and most of Europe, social democracy is just about as out of reach as socialism is. We can't really turn back the Overton window like the right did, because the right did it with the money and the influence that their rich donors afforded them, and there's no comparable systemic force on the left. I don't really see a path to get back to social democracy that doesn't involve revolutionary reforms in the same way as a path to socialism would. Do social democrats see one? And if not, like, if we're going to have to do the work anyway, why stop at the middle ground?
I feel like I basically agree with this. I also have the same questions. I intend to give the response a sincere read, but I should also express my skepticism.
I think I'm just very jaded with idea that people like Walz and Omar (and to a lesser degree those that would hold them up as examples) don't recognize the sort of Lucy with the football game third way Democrats have been running on the social democrats to their left for decades.
The strategies/tactics that got the vast majority of the wins Serm was talking about and most people think about were all systematically gutted by the third way Democrat movement, AKA New Democrats. That movement/those Democrats pushed the transition away from the radical grassroots politics that was at the core of basically every "good" thing about the US, to a capital dominated "polite negotiation" with capital "then fall in line with the party even if they give you little to nothing" for workers rights. That's how things like the Parliamentarian stopping Democrats from increasing minimum wage while Trump is letting Musk have 20 year old crypto bros set up identity theft scams using US citizen data from the US Treasury Department (not literally but we literally have no idea what they are doing) happens.
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On February 04 2025 09:19 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On February 02 2025 23:20 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 02 2025 19:14 Acrofales wrote:On February 02 2025 09:55 Acrofales wrote:I too lament the closing of GH's blog. But I'll endeavour to follow the mods' advice to discuss the topic in the politics threads, so here goes. I really liked the rephrasing and the thought provoking question. What does China currently do about corruption?
How does that compare to the Trump administration?
How should socialists in the US/those in solidarity with them expect to see corruption handled differently than both of those in your view?
At first glance, it seems the cause of corruption seeping into politics is identical on both sides of the Pacific: an elite class who is not accountable, and a political system that does not adequately give power to the people. In China by removing any semblance of a democracy: there is one party and opposition will not be tolerated, and in the US by giving an illusion of choice: you can vote for the elites' lap dog or their attack dog, but either way you are voting for their pets. In China it's by design, and in the US it's by inertia, but in both systems there is a powerful elite that keeps a tight control on the reigns and the only way to get into positions of power is by being one of them or dancing to their music. In addition, the media is firmly under their control too, allowing them to fully shape the message the population hears. Whether that is through a giant firewall and state media organisations controlling the rest, or by outright ownership of the media. They are thoroughly uncritical of their own government and elites. Examples: try finding any info in China about Tiananmen Square. And anything Musk posts on Twitter, but also Bezos instructing the WaPo not to endorse either candidate, and a cartoonist having her cartoon cut when it threatened to be slightly too critical of the boss. However, these similarities conceal a serious difference between the two. In China, the very institutions of government are the ones that incentivise corruption. The lack of democratic oversight is intentional, and the problem is party members using their mandate to ensure friends and family get lucrative business positions outside of civil service. Meanwhile in the US the institutions of government are meant to prevent corruption. They have been degraded and eroded to the point they don't work at all anymore. You can't be a politician without spending millions on campaigns, which obviously makes you beholden to whoever gave you those millions. Combine that with an anachronistic constitution that specifically gives disproportionate power to lower population states, allows presidents to pardon their family members, and a disproportionately huge role to unelected judges, and it's clear the system that was supposed to protect the people from abuse of power has failed. But at least it existed. So. Where do we go from here? Clearly a socialist rebuilding of the US political system would have to build on such institutions and ensure oversight. But how does socialism ever avoid the centralisation of power? It seems built into the system. Maybe an extreme form of direct democracy would allow for decisions about how to allocate resources to be taken collectively, rather than centralized in an elite. It would be very hard and require a full reeducation of the populace to be capable of this responsibility. Those same school teachers who voted for Trump and whose funding was subsequently slashed, will need to teach Freirean critical pedagogy. It seems like a utopian dream that anything like this would work. And how else do we empower people who don't know the first thing about medicine to take informed decisions about what and where to spend money on medical research. Or innovation in farming. Or AI. Not to mention "mundane" decisions like whether we need a traffic light at the intersection of Lenin Avenue with Trotsky Street. So yes, I look at this and think this is inevitably how socialism succumbs to totalitarianism. I can start small: the day-to-day decision-making at my work cause enough meetings to add stress and overhead to my day. I have repeatedly been offered the possibility to move into management and have turned it down, because that is just not the kind of work I enjoy. I'm perfectly happy working under a competent boss. And the company is big enough that he has a boss, and then there is 1 further layer of directors before we reach the CEO. The CEO spends his entire day hopping from meetings with those directors to meetings with investors and other stakeholders, ensuring that everybody is strategically aligned to meet our company objectives, and find ways to work around obstacles to meet them in the face of adversity. I cannot possibly imagine how this, relatively simple, business would run with more democratic decisionmaking, and my workplace is a fairly young, fairly modern and fairly transparent workplace. I'm very happy to say that most decisions are taken in committee with employees who have a stake in that decision. However, the hierarchy is necessary. And that means that some people will have more power than others. Even my brother, who runs a regenerative farming co-op had to abandon the ideas of decision-making by committee: the day-to-day practicalities of running a farm make that far too hard. Everybody has their speciality, and owns that and the decisionmaking in that vertical. But when push comes to shove in a decision that impacts the farm as a whole, one person's voice counts more than others. And that doesn't mean they don't have meetings to discuss these things, but decisions often need to be made in a timely manner, and especially on a farm, time is in spectacularly short supply! So instead of their ideal of unanimous decisionmaking or at the very least, voting, they often end up having the decision made by a dictator. A benevolent one who has the best interests of the farm in mind. And one that they can remove and replace if trust is lost. But still, hierarchy arises naturally. And as long as people are happy to give their power to others, how do you avoid them eventually giving it to a Trump, a Maduro or a Jinping, who do everything with that newfound power to (1) keep it and (2) abuse it. You're going to need very strong institutions. But institutions are als just people. So maybe you need a mechanism that allows for human greed to be harnessed to drive a lot of decision making, but curb its excesses by coupling that market with oversight and government whose main task it is to ensure that a rising tide truly does raise all ships. On February 02 2025 11:17 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 02 2025 09:55 Acrofales wrote:I too lament the closing of GH's blog. But I'll endeavour to follow the mods' advice to discuss the topic in the politics threads, so here goes. I really liked the rephrasing and the thought provoking question. What does China currently do about corruption?
How does that compare to the Trump administration?
How should socialists in the US/those in solidarity with them expect to see corruption handled differently than both of those in your view?
+ Show Spoiler +At first glance, it seems the cause of corruption seeping into politics is identical on both sides of the Pacific: an elite class who is not accountable, and a political system that does not adequately give power to the people. In China by removing any semblance of a democracy: there is one party and opposition will not be tolerated, and in the US by giving an illusion of choice: you can vote for the elites' lap dog or their attack dog, but either way you are voting for their pets. In China it's by design, and in the US it's by inertia, but in both systems there is a powerful elite that keeps a tight control on the reigns and the only way to get into positions of power is by being one of them or dancing to their music. In addition, the media is firmly under their control too, allowing them to fully shape the message the population hears. Whether that is through a giant firewall and state media organisations controlling the rest, or by outright ownership of the media. They are thoroughly uncritical of their own government and elites. Examples: try finding any info in China about Tiananmen Square. And anything Musk posts on Twitter, but also Bezos instructing the WaPo not to endorse either candidate, and a cartoonist having her cartoon cut when it threatened to be slightly too critical of the boss.
However, these similarities conceal a serious difference between the two. In China, the very institutions of government are the ones that incentivise corruption. The lack of democratic oversight is intentional, and the problem is party members using their mandate to ensure friends and family get lucrative business positions outside of civil service.
Meanwhile in the US the institutions of government are meant to prevent corruption. They have been degraded and eroded to the point they don't work at all anymore. You can't be a politician without spending millions on campaigns, which obviously makes you beholden to whoever gave you those millions. Combine that with an anachronistic constitution that specifically gives disproportionate power to lower population states, allows presidents to pardon their family members, and a disproportionately huge role to unelected judges, and it's clear the system that was supposed to protect the people from abuse of power has failed. But at least it existed.
So. Where do we go from here? Clearly a socialist rebuilding of the US political system would have to build on such institutions and ensure oversight. But how does socialism ever avoid the centralisation of power? It seems built into the system. Maybe an extreme form of direct democracy would allow for decisions about how to allocate resources to be taken collectively, rather than centralized in an elite. It would be very hard and require a full reeducation of the populace to be capable of this responsibility. Those same school teachers who voted for Trump and whose funding was subsequently slashed, will need to teach Freirean critical pedagogy. It seems like a utopian dream that anything like this would work. And how else do we empower people who don't know the first thing about medicine to take informed decisions about what and where to spend money on medical research. Or innovation in farming. Or AI. Not to mention "mundane" decisions like whether we need a traffic light at the intersection of Lenin Avenue with Trotsky Street.
So yes, I look at this and think this is inevitably how socialism succumbs to totalitarianism. I can start small: the day-to-day decision-making at my work cause enough meetings to add stress and overhead to my day. I have repeatedly been offered the possibility to move into management and have turned it down, because that is just not the kind of work I enjoy. I'm perfectly happy working under a competent boss. And the company is big enough that he has a boss, and then there is 1 further layer of directors before we reach the CEO. The CEO spends his entire day hopping from meetings with those directors to meetings with investors and other stakeholders, ensuring that everybody is strategically aligned to meet our company objectives, and find ways to work around obstacles to meet them in the face of adversity. I cannot possibly imagine how this, relatively simple, business would run with more democratic decisionmaking, and my workplace is a fairly young, fairly modern and fairly transparent workplace. I'm very happy to say that most decisions are taken in committee with employees who have a stake in that decision. However, the hierarchy is necessary. And that means that some people will have more power than others.
Even my brother, who runs a regenerative farming co-op had to abandon the ideas of decision-making by committee: the day-to-day practicalities of running a farm make that far too hard. Everybody has their speciality, and owns that and the decisionmaking in that vertical. But when push comes to shove in a decision that impacts the farm as a whole, one person's voice counts more than others. And that doesn't mean they don't have meetings to discuss these things, but decisions often need to be made in a timely manner, and especially on a farm, time is in spectacularly short supply! So instead of their ideal of unanimous decisionmaking or at the very least, voting, they often end up having the decision made by a dictator. A benevolent one who has the best interests of the farm in mind. And one that they can remove and replace if trust is lost. But still, hierarchy arises naturally. And as long as people are happy to give their power to others, how do you avoid them eventually giving it to a Trump, a Maduro or a Jinping, who do everything with that newfound power to (1) keep it and (2) abuse it. You're going to need very strong institutions. But institutions are als just people. So maybe you need a mechanism that allows for human greed to be harnessed to drive a lot of decision making, but curb its excesses by coupling that market with oversight and government whose main task it is to ensure that a rising tide truly does raise all ships. The questions did have additional context: Sigh... *taps sign* also *taps other sign* haha. There's a China politics thread where folks can discuss them more comprehensively than I think will be appropriate here any time soon. That said, I don't think China has to be completely off-limits. I just want to keep it relevant to the task at hand, so to that end: What does China currently do about corruption? How does that compare to the Trump administration? How should socialists in the US/those in solidarity with them expect to see corruption handled differently than both of those in your view? I appreciate the lengthy response, but it's not really an answer to the questions, certainly not within the given context. The last couple lines I left out of the spoiler is as close as you get, which is effectively "Maybe socialists should want oBlade's capitalism" which I know you know is a really silly place for you to conclude after those questions and that lengthy response. Neb would probably be more interested than myself in entertaining what reads as your ostensible reasoning for why none of us should bother trying to be a socialist, and instead embrace capitalism, but Neb doesn't participate in this thread. + Show Spoiler +Well, I asked the question in the first place because it's the main aspect of socialism that I always circle back to without finding an answer for myself. I don't think my solution is laissez-faire, and if I gave that idea then I clearly didn't write very well. I think we need very strong institutions that we use to redistribute wealth from the haves to the have-nots. In the forms of very progressive taxes which fund free healthcare, free education, free housing, public independent journalism, and other things that we as a society can keep adding onto the list of things that everyone in society should have guaranteed. But other than those basics, we let free markets do the rest.
I know that you don't believe in this model, which is why I asked the question of how to avoid corruption and nepotism being institutionalised in pure socialism. You countered with an alternative question that I interpreted as "well, current government is rotten to the core already, so how would socialism ever be worse than what we have?" which I tried to respond to. It's the ".. and how do we prevent that?" part which I do not personally have an answer for and was hoping someone else does.
As for your repetition of your spoilers, just because we disagree doesn't mean I'm not mostly on your side. I can rephrase my issue fairly easily: I'm absolutely on board with socialism up until the point where you need central planning. And I don't know how you avoid central planning. Do you? I was actually asking you to compare and contrast how China deals with corruption with how the US/Trump administration does. As in, investigations, prosecutions, conviction rates, sentences, etc. for corruption (as well as the general system to deal with it). What you're doing is trying to rationalize why you don't want to identify/participate as a socialist (that's your choice, just not what this space is for). I think we need very strong institutions that we use to redistribute wealth from the haves to the have-nots. In the forms of very progressive taxes which fund free healthcare, free education, free housing, public independent journalism, and other things that we as a society can keep adding onto the list of things that everyone in society should have guaranteed. But other than those basics, we let free markets do the rest. That's what capitalism with "democracy" sells itself as. People also call it stuff like "compassionate capitalism" Biden called it "competitive capitalism". You're advocating capitalism. The basic problem is that inevitably the capitalists establish regulatory capture and chip away at "the forms of very progressive taxes which fund free healthcare, free education, free housing, public independent journalism, and other things" stuff. We know this in the US as the refrain about cutting taxes and privatization. Besides that, I agree with Neb afaict. I think that's a bad faith interpretation of what I'm doing. But I understand that you don't have answers to my questions and believe I should find them for myself. + Show Spoiler +On the other hand, you aren't being particularly openminded yourself. I fully agree that regulatory capture is a corrupting force in a capitalist economy. Something we need to beware of and shut down when we encounter it. On the other hand, black markets are a larger problem in socialism than they are in capitalism, and exert a corrupting force on a socialist economy. Left unchecked this second economy could basically allow capitalism back in through the back door (some would argue that that is in fact what happened in the USSR). And the answer is much the same, we need to be vigilant.
That said, I am here to give it an honest try, and have spent some considerable time reading articles and watching videos. I was amazed was amazed to learn that labor vouchers were already in Marx's writings. I will freely admit that I haven't exactly updated my knowledge, nor reread Das Kapital in at least 20 years, but I didn't remember labor vouchers as an alternative to money as a thing. And that definitely sounds like something that digital developments since Marx would allow us to use to do a lot of the things a market does, but without having a market or profit motive: instead we have participatory planning to allocate our resources. I will probably have to read some of Paul Cockschott's work, which sounds like a promising solution to the Calculation Problem. Now I guess I will, yet again, stray from the path of this thread and point out that I am not sure I understand the strong opposition to compassionate capitalism. I think that for the first few years, the transition of America to a compassionate capitalist system or a socialist system with labor tokens is going to be very similar, unless you aim to seize the means of production in a violent revolution. In both cases I think we can agree that non-reformist reforms is the way to get from where we are to where we need to go. The point where a compassionate capitalist and a lower stage socialist will disagree is quite far from where we are right now. Now I have not yet made up my mind. I am enchanted by the idea of abolishing profits. I am fearful of the calculation problem, and that getting it wrong encourages human greed to take over. I am also worried about the practicality of participatory planning, but I have also done some thinking about the situations where I said people needed to be put in charge and think I may have been too hasty. For starters, we can vote to put people in charge, and if we have institutional checks such as full transparency and instant recall methods, as well as short term limits, we should be able to have managers/directors that we empower to make some decisions on our behalf, just as we do right now in democratic systems. But also, I think that I misjudged how much complexity actually stems from the need to make a profit. In fact, in my company of 1500, I'd expect around 1200 or more would either no longer need to work at all anymore if we abolished the profit motive, or could instead focus on customer experience matters. So maybe participatory planning for absolutely everything will not bog us all down in extreme overhead, but rather we can all just pick and choose what we want to be directly involved in, and when we want to just delegate that choice to someone else.
I asked you pretty straightforward questions, and then clarified. You didn't answer them. That's fine, I think we can move forward.
Imo "compassionate capitalism", "social democracy", and "thirdway neoliberalism"are all describing essentially the same thing with the same problems I mentioned in my recent post in response to Neb regarding Serm's contributions on "midwest socialism"
Couple things that distinguishes them from socialism as I understand it (social Democrats that see it as a path to socialism are welcome for now) are the "non-reformist reforms" and how/when they are willing to fight for them
Basically "compassionate capitalism", "social democracy", "thirdway neoliberal new Democrats", "midwest socialism", all come down on the side of the "white moderate" and "order" instead of justice. They "paternalistically believe [they] can set the timetable for another man's freedom; [they] live by a mythical concept of time and [they] constantly advise the oppressed to wait for a "more convenient season."
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On February 04 2025 09:21 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On February 04 2025 08:08 Nebuchad wrote:On February 04 2025 05:21 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 04 2025 04:37 Sermokala wrote:On February 03 2025 23:48 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 03 2025 23:37 Sermokala wrote:On February 03 2025 22:56 Navane wrote:
In the USA, EU and China, societies have both capitalist and socialist traits. What dogshit are you trying to peddle in this thread.
Any society that even tries to be 100% purebread becomes an instant caricature. USA highways are socialist. China's street markets are kapitalist.
Your abstractions do not serve you. Its a primary flaw in Socialism in the United States, the understanding of socialism in the coasts vs the understanding of socialism in the midwest is worlds apart, and both sides hate each other. The Midwest has a legitimate history of socialism and doing it right. Minnesota didn't become one of the most highly economically developed regions of the world because of oil or gold or a head start on everyone else. It got there because of the Scandinavian socialists that embraced real practical socialist policy like healthcare schools and unions. It got there because we have an unelected cabal of technocratic appointees that have taxing authority and legal authority to bend the development of our state to a long-term vision of prosperity. Going in circles with your own tail on what the exact philosophical tenets and doctrine of socialism is meaningless if you fail to apply it in any real measure. Having a local community of socialists means nothing if you fail to get elected and implement your policy to help people. Sewer socialists did more for their community than any communist ever has. Who are some of the representatives of this Midwest socialism nowadays? Klobuchar? I saw this bit from the Sewer socialists that certainly sounds prescient and familiar. Socialist Assemblyman George L. Tews, during a 1932 debate on unemployment compensation and how to fund it, argued for the Socialist bill and against the Progressive substitute, stating that a Progressive was "a Socialist with the brains knocked out" Ilhan Omar? Walz? Paul Wellstone is the current godfather of the movement and he died in a plane crash a while back "We all do better when we all do better". They call the training camp for new politicians for the DFL "camp wellstone" If you want a functionary then Charles A. Zelle is probably the most effective one of the lot. The Modern MSP buildout was a hallmark of an extremely efficient and well-designed public infrastructure. Integrating rideshare, parking, dropoff/pickup, shuttle bus's, public transport, TSA all in an extremely cost-effective frame. Recently they've moved into park and ride because large-scale electric bus's on dedicated stop buildout are the new hotness. the guy was a CEO for a bus transport company that's still kicking Free healthcare for the poor and free CC and technical education are the golden ticket to bring people up. Giving them cheap and available public transport so they can go to these schools is what will give opportunity and lower disparities. I dunno, I'm probably too biased to give this fair consideration in the moment, I'd like to hear Neb's thoughts. One thing that comes to my mind is how Walz's "midwest socialism" (I think Europe just calls this social democracy?) as you call it and ability to go after Republicans as "weird" really did resonate with a lot of people, only for him to basically be shut up and shelved to bring Cheney to some campaign events. I mean I like Walz and Omar, they're cool What we're talking about seems to map more to social democracy, but social democracy in this context can be understood as liberal capitalism being influenced by some socialists, and that's more or less in line with what Sermo is saying. That's much better than the alternative obviously, I certainly would rather live in Minnesota than in most other states if I had to choose. There was also, at least to me, a small amount of hope associated with the Harris campaign based on her choice of Walz as opposed to Josh Shapiro, it "seemed" to signal that she "may" want to try a different direction, but as you point out the way Democrats shut down Walz's angle speaks to how difficult that might have been, even if that was actually the strategy. Just in terms of how a population thinks alone, the existence of social democrats is beneficial. If you give "socialists" power and they do healthcare, public transportation, some work on inequality, and it results in a society that is demonstrably better off than if they hadn't, this is a population that is probably less likely to be talking about visits in China or about how the highways are socialist because the state built them. One angle of question that might be interesting for social democrats is that I've often heard in real life and on this forum that social democracy is a pragmatic compromise: socialism is out of reach without a revolution, so you might as well improve people's lives a little bit by going with a social democracy. At this point when I look at the US and most of Europe, social democracy is just about as out of reach as socialism is. We can't really turn back the Overton window like the right did, because the right did it with the money and the influence that their rich donors afforded them, and there's no comparable systemic force on the left. I don't really see a path to get back to social democracy that doesn't involve revolutionary reforms in the same way as a path to socialism would. Do social democrats see one? And if not, like, if we're going to have to do the work anyway, why stop at the middle ground? I feel like I basically agree with this. I also have the same questions. I intend to give the response a sincere read, but I should also express my skepticism. I think I'm just very jaded with idea that people like Walz and Omar (and to a lesser degree those that would hold them up as examples) don't recognize the sort of Lucy with the football game third way Democrats have been running on the social democrats to their left for decades. The strategies/tactics that got the vast majority of the wins Serm was talking about and most people think about were all systematically gutted by the third way Democrat movement, AKA New Democrats. That movement/those Democrats pushed the transition away from the radical grassroots politics that was at the core of basically every "good" thing about the US, to a capital dominated "polite negotiation" with capital "then fall in line with the party even if they give you little to nothing" for workers rights. That's how things like the Parliamentarian stopping Democrats from increasing minimum wage while Trump is letting Musk have 20 year old crypto bros set up identity theft scams using US citizen data from the US Treasury Department (not literally but we literally have no idea what they are doing) happens.
I know some social democrats who aren't on our side, this exists. Levrat, who ran the socialist party in Switzerland for a good while, was one of them, very nice guy to be around fwiw, but pretty bad politics. I obviously don't follow Minnesota politics enough to have an informed opinion but when I don't have a solid reason to I like to assume that people like this are genuine, it's not like they couldn't have just made their career presenting as liberals if they wanted to. Ilhan Omar specifically I have a decent amount of trust in.
And yeah I'm sure everyone who is that invested into politics recognizes what Third Way democrats are doing, it's not that subtle.
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On February 04 2025 10:01 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On February 04 2025 09:21 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 04 2025 08:08 Nebuchad wrote:On February 04 2025 05:21 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 04 2025 04:37 Sermokala wrote:On February 03 2025 23:48 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 03 2025 23:37 Sermokala wrote:On February 03 2025 22:56 Navane wrote:
In the USA, EU and China, societies have both capitalist and socialist traits. What dogshit are you trying to peddle in this thread.
Any society that even tries to be 100% purebread becomes an instant caricature. USA highways are socialist. China's street markets are kapitalist.
Your abstractions do not serve you. Its a primary flaw in Socialism in the United States, the understanding of socialism in the coasts vs the understanding of socialism in the midwest is worlds apart, and both sides hate each other. The Midwest has a legitimate history of socialism and doing it right. Minnesota didn't become one of the most highly economically developed regions of the world because of oil or gold or a head start on everyone else. It got there because of the Scandinavian socialists that embraced real practical socialist policy like healthcare schools and unions. It got there because we have an unelected cabal of technocratic appointees that have taxing authority and legal authority to bend the development of our state to a long-term vision of prosperity. Going in circles with your own tail on what the exact philosophical tenets and doctrine of socialism is meaningless if you fail to apply it in any real measure. Having a local community of socialists means nothing if you fail to get elected and implement your policy to help people. Sewer socialists did more for their community than any communist ever has. Who are some of the representatives of this Midwest socialism nowadays? Klobuchar? I saw this bit from the Sewer socialists that certainly sounds prescient and familiar. Socialist Assemblyman George L. Tews, during a 1932 debate on unemployment compensation and how to fund it, argued for the Socialist bill and against the Progressive substitute, stating that a Progressive was "a Socialist with the brains knocked out" Ilhan Omar? Walz? Paul Wellstone is the current godfather of the movement and he died in a plane crash a while back "We all do better when we all do better". They call the training camp for new politicians for the DFL "camp wellstone" If you want a functionary then Charles A. Zelle is probably the most effective one of the lot. The Modern MSP buildout was a hallmark of an extremely efficient and well-designed public infrastructure. Integrating rideshare, parking, dropoff/pickup, shuttle bus's, public transport, TSA all in an extremely cost-effective frame. Recently they've moved into park and ride because large-scale electric bus's on dedicated stop buildout are the new hotness. the guy was a CEO for a bus transport company that's still kicking Free healthcare for the poor and free CC and technical education are the golden ticket to bring people up. Giving them cheap and available public transport so they can go to these schools is what will give opportunity and lower disparities. I dunno, I'm probably too biased to give this fair consideration in the moment, I'd like to hear Neb's thoughts. One thing that comes to my mind is how Walz's "midwest socialism" (I think Europe just calls this social democracy?) as you call it and ability to go after Republicans as "weird" really did resonate with a lot of people, only for him to basically be shut up and shelved to bring Cheney to some campaign events. I mean I like Walz and Omar, they're cool What we're talking about seems to map more to social democracy, but social democracy in this context can be understood as liberal capitalism being influenced by some socialists, and that's more or less in line with what Sermo is saying. That's much better than the alternative obviously, I certainly would rather live in Minnesota than in most other states if I had to choose. There was also, at least to me, a small amount of hope associated with the Harris campaign based on her choice of Walz as opposed to Josh Shapiro, it "seemed" to signal that she "may" want to try a different direction, but as you point out the way Democrats shut down Walz's angle speaks to how difficult that might have been, even if that was actually the strategy. Just in terms of how a population thinks alone, the existence of social democrats is beneficial. If you give "socialists" power and they do healthcare, public transportation, some work on inequality, and it results in a society that is demonstrably better off than if they hadn't, this is a population that is probably less likely to be talking about visits in China or about how the highways are socialist because the state built them. One angle of question that might be interesting for social democrats is that I've often heard in real life and on this forum that social democracy is a pragmatic compromise: socialism is out of reach without a revolution, so you might as well improve people's lives a little bit by going with a social democracy. At this point when I look at the US and most of Europe, social democracy is just about as out of reach as socialism is. We can't really turn back the Overton window like the right did, because the right did it with the money and the influence that their rich donors afforded them, and there's no comparable systemic force on the left. I don't really see a path to get back to social democracy that doesn't involve revolutionary reforms in the same way as a path to socialism would. Do social democrats see one? And if not, like, if we're going to have to do the work anyway, why stop at the middle ground? I feel like I basically agree with this. I also have the same questions. I intend to give the response a sincere read, but I should also express my skepticism. I think I'm just very jaded with idea that people like Walz and Omar (and to a lesser degree those that would hold them up as examples) don't recognize the sort of Lucy with the football game third way Democrats have been running on the social democrats to their left for decades. The strategies/tactics that got the vast majority of the wins Serm was talking about and most people think about were all systematically gutted by the third way Democrat movement, AKA New Democrats. That movement/those Democrats pushed the transition away from the radical grassroots politics that was at the core of basically every "good" thing about the US, to a capital dominated "polite negotiation" with capital "then fall in line with the party even if they give you little to nothing" for workers rights. That's how things like the Parliamentarian stopping Democrats from increasing minimum wage while Trump is letting Musk have 20 year old crypto bros set up identity theft scams using US citizen data from the US Treasury Department (not literally but we literally have no idea what they are doing) happens. I know some social democrats who aren't on our side, this exists. Levrat, who ran the socialist party in Switzerland for a good while, was one of them, very nice guy to be around fwiw, but pretty bad politics. I obviously don't follow Minnesota politics enough to have an informed opinion but when I don't have a solid reason to I like to assume that people like this are genuine, it's not like they couldn't have just made their career presenting as liberals if they wanted to. Ilhan Omar specifically I have a decent amount of trust in. And yeah I'm sure everyone who is that invested into politics recognizes what Third Way democrats are doing, it's not that subtle.
I'm not sure how you maintain both the idea that they are sincere and that they easily recognize what third way Democrats have been doing to them personally for years and generally for decades.
The closest I come is you have the Omars, AOCs, maybe even Obama. They come in sincere as you imagine and not just using a political moment and a more progressive aesthetic to jump a line/remove an incumbent/get grassroots social democrat support to beat a Republican (Fetterman comes to mind on that last one).
But then they meet the machine and realize it will grind them up and spit them out if they don't keep lining up to kick the football and laughing with the social/third way/new Democrats when they pull it away. While also telling all the people whose lives depend on them actually kicking that ball to keep laughing along with the Democrats or else things will be even worse for them.
I don't know how many years of them laughing along while insisting it isn't funny is fair to give them before we can write them off as not sincere or serious/competent/cognizant/etc enough to rely on politically?
EDIT: Thinking about it, I don't doubt that a lot of social/thirdway/new Democrats genuinely believe that doing the Lucy with the football bit to sincere social dems (because that's what their donors demand/pay them for) is actually how you stop Republicans through compromise when they first start doing it too.
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I think there's enough evidence to say that Obama wasn't sincere. For the others I mean, I'm not exactly sure what the issue is. I don't think they're unaware that they're in a liberal party and that it doesn't make sense for leftists to be in a liberal party, clearly you would realize just about immediately that you're being stopped from doing 90% of what you want to do. But what you do after you realize that as a politician is not necessarily obvious. Do you just quit and try to create a third party? The system has enough guardrails that this is very difficult to do. Do you just spend your entire day yelling at liberals? They will try and force you out (but they already do that), maybe more importantly you'll be seen as an outsider and it's going to be even harder to develop any kind of influence as a politician. It seems to me that they plan to stay in the party and hope that in the future more leftists are elected as Democrats, at which point you could do something with the party, and the line they're trying to tread in the meantime is maintaining a progressive position without being openly hostile to the party. It doesn't always make them look good.
This isn't me saying that it will work, it's a difficult task. It may very well fail. But I don't see enough to claim that they're insincere. And (provided that the US is still a democracy, lol) I don't think it's absolutely impossible that AOC becomes a presidential candidate for Democrats in the future if she plays her cards right, even if at this point I would still say it's quite unlikely.
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On February 04 2025 18:28 Nebuchad wrote:+ Show Spoiler +I think there's enough evidence to say that Obama wasn't sincere. For the others I mean, I'm not exactly sure what the issue is. I don't think they're unaware that they're in a liberal party and that it doesn't make sense for leftists to be in a liberal party, clearly you would realize just about immediately that you're being stopped from doing 90% of what you want to do. But what you do after you realize that as a politician is not necessarily obvious. Do you just quit and try to create a third party? The system has enough guardrails that this is very difficult to do. Do you just spend your entire day yelling at liberals? They will try and force you out (but they already do that), maybe more importantly you'll be seen as an outsider and it's going to be even harder to develop any kind of influence as a politician. It seems to me that they plan to stay in the party and hope that in the future more leftists are elected as Democrats, at which point you could do something with the party, + Show Spoiler +and the line they're trying to tread in the meantime is maintaining a progressive position without being openly hostile to the party. It doesn't always make them look good.
This isn't me saying that it will work, it's a difficult task. It may very well fail. But I don't see enough to claim that they're insincere. And (provided that the US is still a democracy, lol) I don't think it's absolutely impossible that AOC becomes a presidential candidate for Democrats in the future if she plays her cards right, even if at this point I would still say it's quite unlikely.
I guess my point is more or less that they functionally sheepdog the "leftists" away from the strategies/tactics that worked in the US up through the 60's. Instead, they direct them into more passive and ineffective politics where their biggest accomplishment in our entire lifetimes has been passing a Republican healthcare plan that Nixon basically rejected as too right-wing in the 70's.
It's not just unlikely they succeed in changing them from the inside, it's actively destructive to people working on the outside trying to get things done the way that worked for the first ~200 years instead of the stuff Democrats have been trying and failing with for the last ~50. Fred Hampton (EDIT: I have to draw attention to the fact Fred Hampton would be younger than Trump if he was still alive) was assassinated by Democrats as an example of the damage they can and have done.
I suspect we'll see these dynamics play out around the idea of a general strike in opposition of Trump stacking up constitutional crises like Big Macs. This is while Democrats continue to approve his cabinet picks.
Democrats unanimously approved the guy who immediately appointed this white nationalist to the State Department:
Enter Darren Beattie, a former Trump staffer who was fired from the White House in 2016 after attending a white nationalist conference. Beattie has now been tapped to serve as the State Department’s acting Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, according to a report from Semafor. It’s a mouthful, but it’s a high-level office in the department. ...
In October, for example, Beattie wrote on X: “Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work. Unfortunately, our entire national ideology is predicated on coddling the feelings of women and minorities, and demoralizing competent white men.”
www.rollingstone.com
Sometimes being ostensibly stupid/incompetent/impotent/blindly optimistic is functionally indistinguishable from being a fascist sincerely.
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On February 04 2025 19:32 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On February 04 2025 18:28 Nebuchad wrote:+ Show Spoiler +I think there's enough evidence to say that Obama wasn't sincere. For the others I mean, I'm not exactly sure what the issue is. I don't think they're unaware that they're in a liberal party and that it doesn't make sense for leftists to be in a liberal party, clearly you would realize just about immediately that you're being stopped from doing 90% of what you want to do. But what you do after you realize that as a politician is not necessarily obvious. Do you just quit and try to create a third party? The system has enough guardrails that this is very difficult to do. Do you just spend your entire day yelling at liberals? They will try and force you out (but they already do that), maybe more importantly you'll be seen as an outsider and it's going to be even harder to develop any kind of influence as a politician. It seems to me that they plan to stay in the party and hope that in the future more leftists are elected as Democrats, at which point you could do something with the party, + Show Spoiler +and the line they're trying to tread in the meantime is maintaining a progressive position without being openly hostile to the party. It doesn't always make them look good.
This isn't me saying that it will work, it's a difficult task. It may very well fail. But I don't see enough to claim that they're insincere. And (provided that the US is still a democracy, lol) I don't think it's absolutely impossible that AOC becomes a presidential candidate for Democrats in the future if she plays her cards right, even if at this point I would still say it's quite unlikely. I guess my point is more or less that they functionally sheepdog the "leftists" away from the strategies/tactics that worked in the US up through the 60's.
I'm skeptical that there is a large cohort of people who would be politically active but aren't because they have put their trust in the squad instead. Is that something that you've encountered?
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On February 04 2025 19:55 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On February 04 2025 19:32 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 04 2025 18:28 Nebuchad wrote:+ Show Spoiler +I think there's enough evidence to say that Obama wasn't sincere. For the others I mean, I'm not exactly sure what the issue is. I don't think they're unaware that they're in a liberal party and that it doesn't make sense for leftists to be in a liberal party, clearly you would realize just about immediately that you're being stopped from doing 90% of what you want to do. But what you do after you realize that as a politician is not necessarily obvious. Do you just quit and try to create a third party? The system has enough guardrails that this is very difficult to do. Do you just spend your entire day yelling at liberals? They will try and force you out (but they already do that), maybe more importantly you'll be seen as an outsider and it's going to be even harder to develop any kind of influence as a politician. It seems to me that they plan to stay in the party and hope that in the future more leftists are elected as Democrats, at which point you could do something with the party, + Show Spoiler +and the line they're trying to tread in the meantime is maintaining a progressive position without being openly hostile to the party. It doesn't always make them look good.
This isn't me saying that it will work, it's a difficult task. It may very well fail. But I don't see enough to claim that they're insincere. And (provided that the US is still a democracy, lol) I don't think it's absolutely impossible that AOC becomes a presidential candidate for Democrats in the future if she plays her cards right, even if at this point I would still say it's quite unlikely. I guess my point is more or less that they functionally sheepdog the "leftists" away from the strategies/tactics that worked in the US up through the 60's. I'm skeptical that there is a large cohort of people who would be politically active but aren't because they have put their trust in the squad instead. Is that something that you've encountered?
"would be politically active" is tough to know/say. I do see the Squad members touted around frequently as a reason not to pursue the more functional radical direct action politics that built the best parts of the US and instead vote in more primaries ultimately voting blue no matter who in the general. They are treated as evidence that radicals of the 60's integrating into the party would bring Democrats left rather than make the radicals ineffectual and drag the whole country to the right as the last ~50 years of evidence actually shows.
They also serve as a way for Democrats to say "okay guys, now the Squad/Bernie Sanders types told you to fall in line even if we know it's genocide (or whatever other shitty policy of the day), so it's time" It gives the people that want to do something like draw a line at supporting genocide an out to rationalize their depravity when they don't draw that line.
Democrats also have a logistics problem when it comes to the structure of US democracy in that even without any shady gerrymandering, their support is disproportionately geographically concentrated in a way that functionally getting enough squad like members across the geography just isn't really feasible without some radical shifts.
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Thoughts on the thread, it is (obviously) not true that Americans have chosen racism. They're being faced with a choice between not racism and racism, and every four years they keep changing their pick. If racism was the important factor in their pick, they would either always pick Democrats (because of antiracism) or Republicans (because of racism). Clearly the fact that they keep changing their vote demonstrates that this isn't very important to them and they are dissatisfied with something else, perhaps the one thing that both parties have complete agreement on, which is gross, open neoliberal elitism?
I think this extends to 2026/2028, btw. Democrats are clearly making the bet that Trump is going to be unpopular and that they can win the next elections without doing anything simply because he's going to make the country worse. If you still have elections at this point (which, for the record, is not that unlikely, obviously there is a clear threat but it's also possible that the system keeps going), I think they're right, they're probably a huge favourite to win those. So I would consider it important to frame that fight as attempting to make the country better, not as having a chance of winning elections, because they have that, for sure.
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Marxist here, reporting for duty, but i hate tankies, so uh,
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On February 05 2025 08:54 Nebuchad wrote:
Thoughts on the thread, it is (obviously) not true that Americans have chosen racism. They're being faced with a choice between not racism and racism, and every four years they keep changing their pick. If racism was the important factor in their pick, they would either always pick Democrats (because of antiracism) or Republicans (because of racism). Clearly the fact that they keep changing their vote demonstrates that this isn't very important to them and they are dissatisfied with something else, perhaps the one thing that both parties have complete agreement on, which is gross, open neoliberal elitism?
I think this extends to 2026/2028, btw. Democrats are clearly making the bet that Trump is going to be unpopular and that they can win the next elections without doing anything simply because he's going to make the country worse. If you still have elections at this point (which, for the record, is not that unlikely, obviously there is a clear threat but it's also possible that the system keeps going), I think they're right, they're probably a huge favourite to win those. So I would consider it important to frame that fight as attempting to make the country better, not as having a chance of winning elections, because they have that, for sure.
In complete agreement on the first bit.
Second bit less so. Democrats are definitely leaning into the "you voted for this" as their strategy hoping that turns people toward them. I'm currently leaning toward elections happening because I don't think, as they sit, they're a threat to the fascist agenda. As to Democrats being favorites, you have entirely too much faith in the skill level of people in the US to follow a causal chain of events. As far as the literal "favorite" to win it's Republicans with Vance leading the pack
According to Star Sports, vice president JD Vance is the favorite to win the 2028 contest with odds of 11/4 (26.7 percent), followed by Pennsylvania's Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro with 12/1 (7.7 percent).
www.newsweek.com
There's time between now and even 2026 though, and I do expect things to get worse fast. But also, there's a chance all the stuff Trump is doing doesn't really make most of his supporters lives that much worse because so many people scramble to keep everything basically working despite him and his efforts to break everything. They recognize the catastrophe that would ensue if they actually went with Democrats strategy of letting shit collapse with fascists in power.
Also his supporters are top-tier delusional in their capacity to shift blame away from Trump and his loyalists.
Democrats have a chance because it's a two party system and all the tendencies that come along with that, but I think Democrats really buy into this "we need to be more hateful and stupid like Trump to win" stuff. I don't know that they can be moved to campaign on making things better, as it would require indicting (sometimes literally/legally) their donors.
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On February 05 2025 14:09 Husyelt wrote:
Marxist here, reporting for duty, but i hate tankies, so uh,
That's literally the point of the word "tankie", it's people that you get to hate even though they're on the left and you're supposed to be on their side, so it would be weird if you didn't.
On February 06 2025 00:48 GreenHorizons wrote:Second bit less so. Democrats are definitely leaning into the "you voted for this" as their strategy hoping that turns people toward them. I'm currently leaning toward elections happening because I don't think, as they sit, they're a threat to the fascist agenda. As to Democrats being favorites, you have entirely too much faith in the skill level of people in the US to follow a causal chain of events. As far as the literal "favorite" to win it's Republicans with Vance leading the pack Show nested quote +According to Star Sports, vice president JD Vance is the favorite to win the 2028 contest with odds of 11/4 (26.7 percent), followed by Pennsylvania's Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro with 12/1 (7.7 percent). www.newsweek.comThere's time between now and even 2026 though, and I do expect things to get worse fast. But also, there's a chance all the stuff Trump is doing doesn't really make most of his supporters lives that much worse because so many people scramble to keep everything basically working despite him and his efforts to break everything. They recognize the catastrophe that would ensue if they actually went with Democrats strategy of letting shit collapse with fascists in power. Also his supporters are top-tier delusional in their capacity to shift blame away from Trump and his loyalists. Democrats have a chance because it's a two party system and all the tendencies that come along with that, but I think Democrats really buy into this "we need to be more hateful and stupid like Trump to win" stuff. I don't know that they can be moved to campaign on making things better, as it would require indicting (sometimes literally/legally) their donors.
Things aren't set in stone clearly but you point out the things that they (and I) are considering: it is pretty standard in two party systems for the party in power to lose support quite quickly once it's in power, it sheds a lot of the people who were voting for something but that thing isn't happening (for example, like, there's a lot of inflation under Biden Trump is going to fix that!!! but he doesn't). Every time you make a decision, there is an amount of people that would have preferred the other decision, and over time it adds up. And when the things are so obviously bullshit like attempting to annex Canada or Greenland, removing the department of education or making a bunch of shit even more expensive through tariffs, it's unlikely that there is no pushback.
Unless the country is doing incredibly well, which I don't see how it could be, the cycle has every chance to continue as usual imo. But "as usual" is Democrats rolling back some things but overall mostly keeping things as they are until the next fascist comes in and makes them even worse than Trump has, and that's why this can't be viewed as an acceptable path.
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On February 06 2025 01:42 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On February 05 2025 14:09 Husyelt wrote:
Marxist here, reporting for duty, but i hate tankies, so uh, That's literally the point of the word "tankie", it's people that you get to hate even though they're on the left and you're supposed to be on their side, so it would be weird if you didn't. Show nested quote +On February 06 2025 00:48 GreenHorizons wrote:Second bit less so. Democrats are definitely leaning into the "you voted for this" as their strategy hoping that turns people toward them. I'm currently leaning toward elections happening because I don't think, as they sit, they're a threat to the fascist agenda. As to Democrats being favorites, you have entirely too much faith in the skill level of people in the US to follow a causal chain of events. As far as the literal "favorite" to win it's Republicans with Vance leading the pack According to Star Sports, vice president JD Vance is the favorite to win the 2028 contest with odds of 11/4 (26.7 percent), followed by Pennsylvania's Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro with 12/1 (7.7 percent). www.newsweek.comThere's time between now and even 2026 though, and I do expect things to get worse fast. But also, there's a chance all the stuff Trump is doing doesn't really make most of his supporters lives that much worse because so many people scramble to keep everything basically working despite him and his efforts to break everything. They recognize the catastrophe that would ensue if they actually went with Democrats strategy of letting shit collapse with fascists in power. Also his supporters are top-tier delusional in their capacity to shift blame away from Trump and his loyalists. Democrats have a chance because it's a two party system and all the tendencies that come along with that, but I think Democrats really buy into this "we need to be more hateful and stupid like Trump to win" stuff. I don't know that they can be moved to campaign on making things better, as it would require indicting (sometimes literally/legally) their donors. Things aren't set in stone clearly but you point out the things that they (and I) are considering: it is pretty standard in two party systems for the party in power to lose support quite quickly once it's in power, it sheds a lot of the people who were voting for something but that thing isn't happening (for example, like, there's a lot of inflation under Biden Trump is going to fix that!!! but he doesn't). Every time you make a decision, there is an amount of people that would have preferred the other decision, and over time it adds up. And when the things are so obviously bullshit like attempting to annex Canada or Greenland, removing the department of education or making a bunch of shit even more expensive through tariffs, it's unlikely that there is no pushback. Unless the country is doing incredibly well, which I don't see how it could be, the cycle has every chance to continue as usual imo. But "as usual" is Democrats rolling back some things but overall mostly keeping things as they are until the next fascist comes in and makes them even worse than Trump has, and that's why this can't be viewed as an acceptable path. I actually won't be surprised if he sorta gets Greenland by way of "independence" and "free association" with promises he has no intent on keeping. Canada would have to be militarily, but if the US said "join or die", I don't know that Canada would really want to fight. Especially if the US had already effectively genocided Palestinians out of Gaza by then.
I do think something should break. I just don't have as much confidence as I'd like that the "pushback" will be aimed at Trump and not the systems/institutions for "not being compliant enough"
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On February 06 2025 02:14 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On February 06 2025 01:42 Nebuchad wrote:On February 05 2025 14:09 Husyelt wrote:
Marxist here, reporting for duty, but i hate tankies, so uh, That's literally the point of the word "tankie", it's people that you get to hate even though they're on the left and you're supposed to be on their side, so it would be weird if you didn't. On February 06 2025 00:48 GreenHorizons wrote:Second bit less so. Democrats are definitely leaning into the "you voted for this" as their strategy hoping that turns people toward them. I'm currently leaning toward elections happening because I don't think, as they sit, they're a threat to the fascist agenda. As to Democrats being favorites, you have entirely too much faith in the skill level of people in the US to follow a causal chain of events. As far as the literal "favorite" to win it's Republicans with Vance leading the pack According to Star Sports, vice president JD Vance is the favorite to win the 2028 contest with odds of 11/4 (26.7 percent), followed by Pennsylvania's Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro with 12/1 (7.7 percent). www.newsweek.comThere's time between now and even 2026 though, and I do expect things to get worse fast. But also, there's a chance all the stuff Trump is doing doesn't really make most of his supporters lives that much worse because so many people scramble to keep everything basically working despite him and his efforts to break everything. They recognize the catastrophe that would ensue if they actually went with Democrats strategy of letting shit collapse with fascists in power. Also his supporters are top-tier delusional in their capacity to shift blame away from Trump and his loyalists. Democrats have a chance because it's a two party system and all the tendencies that come along with that, but I think Democrats really buy into this "we need to be more hateful and stupid like Trump to win" stuff. I don't know that they can be moved to campaign on making things better, as it would require indicting (sometimes literally/legally) their donors. Things aren't set in stone clearly but you point out the things that they (and I) are considering: it is pretty standard in two party systems for the party in power to lose support quite quickly once it's in power, it sheds a lot of the people who were voting for something but that thing isn't happening (for example, like, there's a lot of inflation under Biden Trump is going to fix that!!! but he doesn't). Every time you make a decision, there is an amount of people that would have preferred the other decision, and over time it adds up. And when the things are so obviously bullshit like attempting to annex Canada or Greenland, removing the department of education or making a bunch of shit even more expensive through tariffs, it's unlikely that there is no pushback. Unless the country is doing incredibly well, which I don't see how it could be, the cycle has every chance to continue as usual imo. But "as usual" is Democrats rolling back some things but overall mostly keeping things as they are until the next fascist comes in and makes them even worse than Trump has, and that's why this can't be viewed as an acceptable path. I actually won't be surprised if he sorta gets Greenland by way of "independence" and "free association" with promises he has no intent on keeping. Canada would have to be militarily, but if the US said "join or die", I don't know that Canada would really want to fight. Especially if the US had already effectively genocided Palestinians out of Gaza by then. I do think something should break. I just don't have as much confidence as I'd like that the "pushback" will be aimed at Trump and not the systems/institutions for "not being compliant enough"
USA isnt going to invade Canada anytime soon. I think even normie Republicans would protest that. This all comes down to conditioning. The base needs to be told to hate or fear Canada for a long time before they will turn and support that kind of thing. Invading Mexico is a much more realistic possibility, especially if it starts out as a "special 3 day military operation" type thing where they say they are only going after known Cartel locations. Trump and the GOP will just say "Cartels and rapists and socialist dirt bags need to be dealt with". Americans hate and fear immigrants and Mexico is the gateway in their eyes. Gotta condition or brainwash the base before doing too drastic of things. It's why Trump floats the idea of a third term as a joke, get it into the public conscious and watch GOP laugh it off, and then say actually, hey Trump really should get a third term hes so good!
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On February 06 2025 10:43 Husyelt wrote:Show nested quote +On February 06 2025 02:14 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 06 2025 01:42 Nebuchad wrote:On February 05 2025 14:09 Husyelt wrote:
Marxist here, reporting for duty, but i hate tankies, so uh, That's literally the point of the word "tankie", it's people that you get to hate even though they're on the left and you're supposed to be on their side, so it would be weird if you didn't. On February 06 2025 00:48 GreenHorizons wrote:Second bit less so. Democrats are definitely leaning into the "you voted for this" as their strategy hoping that turns people toward them. I'm currently leaning toward elections happening because I don't think, as they sit, they're a threat to the fascist agenda. As to Democrats being favorites, you have entirely too much faith in the skill level of people in the US to follow a causal chain of events. As far as the literal "favorite" to win it's Republicans with Vance leading the pack According to Star Sports, vice president JD Vance is the favorite to win the 2028 contest with odds of 11/4 (26.7 percent), followed by Pennsylvania's Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro with 12/1 (7.7 percent). www.newsweek.comThere's time between now and even 2026 though, and I do expect things to get worse fast. But also, there's a chance all the stuff Trump is doing doesn't really make most of his supporters lives that much worse because so many people scramble to keep everything basically working despite him and his efforts to break everything. They recognize the catastrophe that would ensue if they actually went with Democrats strategy of letting shit collapse with fascists in power. Also his supporters are top-tier delusional in their capacity to shift blame away from Trump and his loyalists. Democrats have a chance because it's a two party system and all the tendencies that come along with that, but I think Democrats really buy into this "we need to be more hateful and stupid like Trump to win" stuff. I don't know that they can be moved to campaign on making things better, as it would require indicting (sometimes literally/legally) their donors. Things aren't set in stone clearly but you point out the things that they (and I) are considering: it is pretty standard in two party systems for the party in power to lose support quite quickly once it's in power, it sheds a lot of the people who were voting for something but that thing isn't happening (for example, like, there's a lot of inflation under Biden Trump is going to fix that!!! but he doesn't). Every time you make a decision, there is an amount of people that would have preferred the other decision, and over time it adds up. And when the things are so obviously bullshit like attempting to annex Canada or Greenland, removing the department of education or making a bunch of shit even more expensive through tariffs, it's unlikely that there is no pushback. Unless the country is doing incredibly well, which I don't see how it could be, the cycle has every chance to continue as usual imo. But "as usual" is Democrats rolling back some things but overall mostly keeping things as they are until the next fascist comes in and makes them even worse than Trump has, and that's why this can't be viewed as an acceptable path. I actually won't be surprised if he sorta gets Greenland by way of "independence" and "free association" with promises he has no intent on keeping. Canada would have to be militarily, but if the US said "join or die", I don't know that Canada would really want to fight. Especially if the US had already effectively genocided Palestinians out of Gaza by then. I do think something should break. I just don't have as much confidence as I'd like that the "pushback" will be aimed at Trump and not the systems/institutions for "not being compliant enough" USA isnt going to invade Canada anytime soon. I think even normie Republicans would protest that. This all comes down to conditioning. The base needs to be told to hate or fear Canada for a long time before they will turn and support that kind of thing. Invading Mexico is a much more realistic possibility, especially if it starts out as a "special 3 day military operation" type thing where they say they are only going after known Cartel locations. Trump and the GOP will just say "Cartels and rapists and socialist dirt bags need to be dealt with". Americans hate and fear immigrants and Mexico is the gateway in their eyes. Gotta condition or brainwash the base before doing too drastic of things. It's why Trump floats the idea of a third term as a joke, get it into the public conscious and watch GOP laugh it off, and then say actually, hey Trump really should get a third term hes so good!
Probably right about Mexico being significantly more likely with a "going after the cartel" type thing and the intent to set up a "buffer zone". Just wouldn't take Canada off the table. Especially if there's someone competent enough in his admin to secure pro-Trump election results. Not into Canadian politics, but I hear their Trump figure is likely to win already.
Oh yeah, unless Trump is much further gone than Biden was, he and his supporters will be ready and raring for a 3rd term.
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Northern Ireland23700 Posts
The cultural and political engagement sphere besides, which I think actively impede IMO, what are the musings in socialist land about technological advancement and socialism, if you’ve encountered them?
It feels to me that we have a much better suite of tools to do something like a planned economy these days than the 20th Century for one, if we so desired.
Of course, much less of socialism consists of a top-down state-led planned economy than some believe, but if one did wish to go that direction it seems much more viable nowadays.
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EPT
