I'd rather just jump right into it, but we need to start somewhere, so here goes.
The point of this space is to try/practice being a socialist.
I don't think most of us currently identify as socialists, so I recognize this is going to involve some adjustments and growing pains. The general idea is to consistently be making a good faith effort to post/participate/behave as a burgeoning socialist around the topics at hand. It's reasonable to presume that most people don't know what exactly that looks like, so I expect much of the early efforts to be around getting a grip of what that good faith effort looks like.
While I can see how typical news stories could have relevance at a given time, the point isn't to be a socialist parallel of the US politics thread, so we will explicitly not be making this that.
No one has to post here, but if you're going to, the expectation is that you want to engage in this experiment/effort. I'm not using this space to convince people to participate (though I suspect there will be some gray area at first). I will gladly use this space to work with people in developing our mutual understanding and practicing of socialism. We can disagree on socialism, but we need to be doing it from a good faith socialist perspective.
That said, the presumption going forward (for the purposes and within the confines of this blog) is that you've basically engaged with some form of content like below (definitely the video below), and now you're giving socialism a sincere chance. Let's do it!
I trust I will have to amend this. I'll try to stay on top of that.
For those wanting to take trying to be a socialist offline in connection with current political events, I recommend checking out https://generalstrikeus.com/
I think the hardest thing to do (especially for Americans but not exclusively) is to start thinking in terms of systems as opposed to individuals. There's an appeal to thinking in terms of individuals because it creates the possibility of a simple solution, if you replace the bad person with a good person, then you don't have to do anything else, and that's easy. If you had voted for Kamala Harris instead of Trump, problem solved, you don't have to do anything. But you didn't, Trump won, so it must be the fault of some other individuals, for example the people who didn't vote. They should be different, and you don't have to do anything. Now if instead there's a systemic issue where the country and the world are pushed to the right mechanically, there isn't going to be a button that you can push to make that change. The solution becomes unclear, and there's danger associated with it. It's a harder sell. The only thing that you have going for you when selling it is that you're telling the truth, which a lot of people don't care too much about.
The second issue is that people will try and apply morality to this, and morality is silly and kind of boring. My problem has never been with people who are evil, my problem has always been with people who are wrong. You can insist this is the case and people will generally not believe you.
With all that being said, I've never seen someone become a socialist because someone told them to do so on a forum. To some extent, this still sounds like trying to find a solution that works at the level of the individual, much like "voting" or "not voting" did. I think the majority of "liberals" lean more leftist than they do liberal, the steps missing are maybe more in analysis than they are in power of will.
On February 01 2025 05:36 Nebuchad wrote: I think the hardest thing to do (especially for Americans but not exclusively) is to start thinking in terms of systems as opposed to individuals. There's an appeal to thinking in terms of individuals because it creates the possibility of a simple solution, if you replace the bad person with a good person, then you don't have to do anything else, and that's easy. If you had voted for Kamala Harris instead of Trump, problem solved, you don't have to do anything. But you didn't, Trump won, so it must be the fault of some other individuals, for example the people who didn't vote. They should be different, and you don't have to do anything. Now if instead there's a systemic issue where the country and the world are pushed to the right mechanically, there isn't going to be a button that you can push to make that change. The solution becomes unclear, and there's danger associated with it. It's a harder sell. The only thing that you have going for you when selling it is that you're telling the truth, which a lot of people don't care too much about.
The second issue is that people will try and apply morality to this, and morality is silly and kind of boring. My problem has never been with people who are evil, my problem has always been with people who are wrong. You can insist this is the case and people will generally not believe you.
With all that being said, I've never seen someone become a socialist because someone told them to do so on a forum. To some extent, this still sounds like trying to find a solution that works at the level of the individual, much like "voting" or "not voting" did. I think the majority of "liberals" lean more leftist than they do liberal, the steps missing are maybe more in analysis than they are in power of will.
Pretty much agree with all that. That's part of why the focus of this space is for people that are at least ostensibly already socialists. It's a space for liberal/leftists and socialists to try/practice/engage in good faith with such systemic analysis instead of the typical individualistic stuff the US/capitalism has indoctrinated us with.
I used to be all about Korea because, you know, Starcraft, nowadays I've become more interested in Japan almost entirely because of Ado (lol), but I'm 100% sure China is quite interesting, as far as places go. Would probably be a cool trip, especially the south looks quite majestic. A shame that Streetview isn't working there.
On February 01 2025 07:18 Nebuchad wrote: I used to be all about Korea because, you know, Starcraft, nowadays I've become more interested in Japan almost entirely because of Ado (lol), but I'm 100% sure China is quite interesting, as far as places go. Would probably be a cool trip, especially the south looks quite majestic. A shame that Streetview isn't working there.
Honestly I'm ready to go to wherever they are purportedly genociding Uyghurs and compare it to Gaza
If the only choices on this planet are going to be which genocidal regime are you going to fall in line behind, I at least need to be able fairly compare them.
I'm being facetious (I'll chill), but I think part of the problem (and the Red Note and DeepSeek exposure demonstrated this) is that most people in the US haven't updated their understanding of China from the generic 80's propaganda that's just been on repeat since then.
I'm confident China has plenty of serious problems, I'm also confident that the last ~40 years has demonstrated how socialism with Chinese characteristics has done so much better than capitalism in India or the US at helping the least among their societies confront those problems and work on fixing them.
On February 01 2025 06:33 HornyHerring wrote: Move to China for a bit, see socialism at its finest.
Hi, American who did this, you’re a dipshit and don’t know anything lmao
To be vaguely on topic, I don’t think China is worth looking at as a socialist country (at least in the last few decades) it’s really more of an authoritarian capitalist country with a signficantly more competent and beneficial authoritarian party than a lot of people would believe emerges from places like Russia.
Anyone who spent five seconds in Shanghai and was bombarded by the sheer brand obsessed consumerism in the culture would have a hard time appreciating China as socialist lol
China is a nice place (at least where I was) and has a great cost of living and all of the modern amenities I wanted, but the CCP does suck, even though they have done a lot of things to make China as successful a country as it is, their isolationism from the western Tech industry has created a parallel Chinese tech ecosystem that’s super fascinating and made places like Shenzhen possible.
On February 01 2025 06:33 HornyHerring wrote: Move to China for a bit, see socialism at its finest.
Hi, American who did this, you’re a dipshit and don’t know anything lmao
To be vaguely on topic, I don’t think China is worth looking at as a socialist country (at least in the last few decades) it’s really more of an authoritarian capitalist country with a signficantly more competent and beneficial authoritarian party than a lot of people would believe emerges from places like Russia.
Anyone who spent five seconds in Shanghai and was bombarded by the sheer brand obsessed consumerism in the culture would have a hard time appreciating China as socialist lol
China is a nice place (at least where I was) and has a great cost of living and all of the modern amenities I wanted, but the CCP does suck, even though they have done a lot of things to make China as successful a country as it is, their isolationism from the western Tech industry has created a parallel Chinese tech ecosystem that’s super fascinating and made places like Shenzhen possible.
I appreciate you adding the rest, before you had I wrote this: + Show Spoiler +
While I can empathise with the sentiment, we all have to do better than this. Like I said, I expect some growing pains (myself included), but let's strive to do better than this generally. Sound fair?
You're also welcome to try to argue why a post like yours here is reasonably in line with the socialism you relate to if you can make it from a socialist perspective/appropriately referencing socialist thought/theory/practice/etc. Because I definitely know socialists that would say that and worse and just immediately ban someone posting like that (and it's not as if I don't see the appeal).
As for China, as far as I can tell they're doing socialism a helluva lot better than anyone in the US is. I think the relationship between China and socialism is more complicated than we're really ready for here though.
I'm thinking of us all collectively basically as a bunch of bronze league socialists and "China and Socialism" is sorta like masters league micro or something. Being able to split banes against widow mines is a good skill, but we should probably focus on making sure we're not 20 workers behind ~6 minutes in first.
China's government has some understanding that a citizenry that isn't struggling (struggling being relative to their recent past and what have you) is a citizenry that isn't going to cause their party any problems, and will generally accept concessions if it means maintaining that lack of struggle imo. They're sort of faltering in this atm though, certainly more social unrest now than when I was there, but for the most part theyre similar to the US in that way, except the US is infinitely dumber, and the people in charge have no sight beyond the next fiscal quarter and so will keep making things more expensive and QOL as low as they can get away with to wring that next dollar out. China can and will do things long and short term to keep its populace happy if it thinks its the best way to maintain power, not because the CCP cares deeply about people so much as the CCP cares deeply about power.
China is an example of a fairly capable authoritarian government with some basic understanding of how to keep its people from getting too revolutionary without needing to actually fight a revolutionary people, imo, but I can't really extend them socialist cred since corporations are either state/party owned, or are at least, in no way worker owned, theres sort of the two sides of Cigarettes Are A State Monopoly and We Have American Style Tech Megacorps Here Too!
This sort of thing is why I have a hard time wanting to label myself as something other than anticapitalist, realistically I think a lot of the systems we could theoretically transition ourselves to may work, maybe anarchism works, maybe socialism works, whatever has the people who are willing to uphold that system as a system of good for the populace at large is what I'm fine with.
I would probably say socialism as I understand it is probably what Id say I have the most faith in, but I'll take whatever provides food, housing, medical care, the general necessities of a modern life and minimizes unnecessary human suffering.
Or the notion that any country that has a significant unchallenged advantage over another would not try to impose it's own will if it thinks that's in their best interest.
Just because a person or a country calls themselves something doesn't make it so (think Democratic People's Republic of Korea).
There's a big difference between Bernie and Xi not the least of which is Bernie won't ban your business because you call him Pooh (or w/e an equivalent would be).
I think ideally we would offload as much work to machines as possible and would provide free or cheap housing, food and healthcare to everyone at a planetary sustainable level.
Co-ops, unions, helping fellow beings all are good stuff we should want and cultivate.
I think talking about specific actions and programs is the best way to go.
P.S. Zambrah I would agree with a lot of that.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I can't post another reply for some reason... So I guess I was confused by the "Anyone?" in the title.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Update: thread reopened, still can't post a new comment ^_._^ I also like how the OP completely avoids addressing my legitimate concerns about what appears to be pro authoritarian China post. "Title Socialism Anyone? I ask a couple of questions, answer: "Well this thread is for socialists" and I can't post anymore besides editing my existing message. Already silencing basic opposition. Very much a Red Flag to me (pun intended).
Oh don't let the OP slide on this direct quote "purportedly genociding Uyghurs"... (genocide is wrong no matter who does it, this apparently needs to be said...) I can link to youtube channels as well. ^_._^
China's government has some understanding that a citizenry that isn't struggling (struggling being relative to their recent past and what have you) is a citizenry that isn't going to cause their party any problems, and will generally accept concessions if it means maintaining that lack of struggle imo. They're sort of faltering in this atm though, certainly more social unrest now than when I was there, but for the most part theyre similar to the US in that way, except the US is infinitely dumber, and the people in charge have no sight beyond the next fiscal quarter and so will keep making things more expensive and QOL as low as they can get away with to wring that next dollar out. China can and will do things long and short term to keep its populace happy if it thinks its the best way to maintain power, not because the CCP cares deeply about people so much as the CCP cares deeply about power.
China is an example of a fairly capable authoritarian government with some basic understanding of how to keep its people from getting too revolutionary without needing to actually fight a revolutionary people, imo, but I can't really extend them socialist cred since corporations are either state/party owned, or are at least, in no way worker owned, theres sort of the two sides of Cigarettes Are A State Monopoly and We Have American Style Tech Megacorps Here Too!
This sort of thing is why I have a hard time wanting to label myself as something other than anticapitalist, + Show Spoiler +
realistically I think a lot of the systems we could theoretically transition ourselves to may work, maybe anarchism works, maybe socialism works, whatever has the people who are willing to uphold that system as a system of good for the populace at large is what I'm fine with.
I would probably say socialism as I understand it is probably what Id say I have the most faith in, but I'll take whatever provides food, housing, medical care, the general necessities of a modern life and minimizes unnecessary human suffering.
On February 01 2025 10:31 LUCKY_NOOB wrote: I can't even with this thread...+ Show Spoiler +
Gotta love billionaire producing "socialism with Chinese characteristics"
Or the notion that any country that has a significant unchallenged advantage over another would not try to impose it's own will if it thinks that's in their best interest.
Just because a person or a country calls themselves something doesn't make it so (think Democratic People's Republic of Korea).
There's a big difference between Bernie and Xi not the least of which is Bernie won't ban your business because you call him Pooh (or w/e an equivalent would be).
I think ideally we would offload as much work to machines as possible and would provide free or cheap housing, food and healthcare to everyone at a planetary sustainable level.
Co-ops, unions, helping fellow beings all are good stuff we should want and cultivate.
I think talking about specific actions and programs is the best way to go.
P.S. Zambrah I would agree with a lot of that.
Well this thread is for socialists soo... Folks can give it a try or move along, that choice is up to them.
I watched the video in the OP. I think he does a decent job pointing out why the USA is in the situation it's in. He gives a very high-level summary of how socialism will be different, but I don't think he had enough time to really make the case that socialism is the answer.
I do think the USA needs to change so all the power isn't with the rich few who use that power to just get richer at the expense of the 99%, and especially those who are having trouble making ends meet at all. Unfortunately, a large portion of the population is voting for solutions that result in them being in that very unfavorable situation. I think part of that is because of total ignorance (myself included) on how socialism actually looks. From the video I understand a few things about socialism:
The State is responsible for providing the basics (e.g., housing, food, education, healthcare) that people should have under any system. This also makes it harder for super billionaires to exist.
Companies or organizations that produce things people need (e.g., farms for food, factories for personal items) are no longer driven by profit. This means no individual or board can hold ownership over the farm or factory (or what have you) and make a lot of money off of it.
People are still free to do whatever they want. It's not like the State just tells you "you are a farmer or I shoot you" contrary to some fearmongering claims.
Is that a fair summary of what the video said? I think it's clear to see that changes like these take the power away from the super-rich and distribute wealth back down, which needs to happen regardless of the system we use. However, it's still hard for me (and probably many people) to conceptualize how this will actually work.
I grow up with my parents receiving financial help in the form of socialized housing/food/education/etc, and now I'm an educated adult ready to become independent. I decide "I'm pretty lazy and just want to post on tl, play games, watch tv, and live off of my State-guaranteed housing/food for a while, or maybe work a small part-time gig just to cover minor expenses." It turns out most of my graduating class feels the same way. What's to stop that?
Let's say I have a different attitude and want to have a good career and contribute to society all the while. I apply for a job (I assume that still works similarly) and the company/organization decides to hire me. My colleagues show me the ropes and now I'm working. Does my pay correspond at all with how difficult/specialized my work is? If I'm a doctor, can I live a somewhat wealthy life? If I'm an entry-level clerk, do I make much less? In other words, my socialized housing is bare-minimum by default, but by tackling a more challenging job I can increase my qualify of life, such as if I want a nice house instead of a small apartment?
What is the goal of the company? Do we work in order to sell enough of our product to pay for supplies (like ingredients if we were making food products) and salaries? If so, isn't there still a motive to work harder and more efficiently so that we can increase everyone's salary without having to hire more people and spread the income across more mouths to feed? I can obviously see the benefit of not having all that profit go to some super-rich owners, but it definitely seems like it puts a lot of responsibility on the workers to make all the big decisions. It's easy to say "workers know what's" best but I honestly don't think that's always true either.
I would appreciate a few thoughts with how those types of questions are answered by Socialism 101 or 102. I can obviously read more deeply into more sources, but I think at a minimum I will need to understand those issues in order to buy into the video's claim not just that status quo doesn't work, but that socialism is the answer, and not just the flavor of the week until we actually try it and go "oh this actually sucks just as much for different reasons."
On February 01 2025 22:21 micronesia wrote: I grow up with my parents receiving financial help in the form of socialized housing/food/education/etc, and now I'm an educated adult ready to become independent. I decide "I'm pretty lazy and just want to post on tl, play games, watch tv, and live off of my State-guaranteed housing/food for a while, or maybe work a small part-time gig just to cover minor expenses." It turns out most of my graduating class feels the same way. What's to stop that?
Let's say I have a different attitude and want to have a good career and contribute to society all the while. I apply for a job (I assume that still works similarly) and the company/organization decides to hire me. My colleagues show me the ropes and now I'm working. Does my pay correspond at all with how difficult/specialized my work is? If I'm a doctor, can I live a somewhat wealthy life? If I'm an entry-level clerk, do I make much less? In other words, my socialized housing is bare-minimum by default, but by tackling a more challenging job I can increase my qualify of life, such as if I want a nice house instead of a small apartment?
This is something I'm comfortable with personally, yeah. Imo the problematic social hierarchy in capitalism revolves more around class than it does around money, it's always CEOs that are trying to make society more inequal, rather than just rich people. There are very rich singers, very rich actors, very rich athletes, and yeah I assume they vote more rightwing than the average but as a group of people they're not very likely to, like, pressure a government into crushing unions or loosening environmental regulations or something. At my main job I work about 60%, there's someone else there that works 100%, so he makes more money than me but there is no class dynamic between us just because he makes more money, it's all fine. I think we can quite easily keep that distinction so that there are still applicants for jobs that demand a lot of investment on the part of the worker, such as lawyer or doctor. I would personally tweak some things, like make garbage disposal more lucrative and banking less lucrative, but that's just me I don't necessarily want society to listen to my opinion
It's possible that if that system was implemented we would see a social hierarchy develop based on wealth in the future, but imo we can't assume that it will for sure, and if it does we can deal with it at that point, we don't have to do it from the start.
Edit: just wanted to add that this is in line with Marx as I understand it, cf To each according to his contribution, so I'm not just saying what comes in my head.
On February 01 2025 22:21 micronesia wrote: What is the goal of the company? [...] It's easy to say "workers know what's" best but I honestly don't think that's always true either.
Maybe you'll be disappointed with my answer but I think that should be up to the workers to decide. Having democratic power on their company, they should be allowed to push it in the direction they want, unless they break the law in some way. I think there's a good argument that you lose some amount of efficiency like this, similarly I'm pretty sure authoritarian regimes are more efficient than democracies, but that's a tradeoff I'm okay with based on how much better democracies are for humans than authoritarian regimes are.
Sometimes workers won't know best, you're right, but then the company will just fail, won't it? This happens in capitalism too. If the safety net of our society is strong enough, that doesn't have to be a huge issue.
I watched the video in the OP. I think he does a decent job pointing out why the USA is in the situation it's in. He gives a very high-level summary of how socialism will be different, but I don't think he had enough time to really make the case that socialism is the answer.
I do think the USA needs to change so all the power isn't with the rich few who use that power to just get richer at the expense of the 99%, and especially those who are having trouble making ends meet at all. Unfortunately, a large portion of the population is voting for solutions that result in them being in that very unfavorable situation. I think part of that is because of total ignorance (myself included) on how socialism actually looks. From the video I understand a few things about socialism:
The State is responsible for providing the basics (e.g., housing, food, education, healthcare) that people should have under any system. This also makes it harder for super billionaires to exist.
Companies or organizations that produce things people need (e.g., farms for food, factories for personal items) are no longer driven by profit. This means no individual or board can hold ownership over the farm or factory (or what have you) and make a lot of money off of it.
People are still free to do whatever they want. It's not like the State just tells you "you are a farmer or I shoot you" contrary to some fearmongering claims.
Is that a fair summary of what the video said? I think it's clear to see that changes like these take the power away from the super-rich and distribute wealth back down, which needs to happen regardless of the system we use. However, it's still hard for me (and probably many people) to conceptualize how this will actually work.
I grow up with my parents receiving financial help in the form of socialized housing/food/education/etc, and now I'm an educated adult ready to become independent. I decide "I'm pretty lazy and just want to post on tl, play games, watch tv, and live off of my State-guaranteed housing/food for a while, or maybe work a small part-time gig just to cover minor expenses." It turns out most of my graduating class feels the same way. What's to stop that?
Let's say I have a different attitude and want to have a good career and contribute to society all the while. I apply for a job (I assume that still works similarly) and the company/organization decides to hire me. My colleagues show me the ropes and now I'm working. Does my pay correspond at all with how difficult/specialized my work is? If I'm a doctor, can I live a somewhat wealthy life? If I'm an entry-level clerk, do I make much less? In other words, my socialized housing is bare-minimum by default, but by tackling a more challenging job I can increase my qualify of life, such as if I want a nice house instead of a small apartment?
What is the goal of the company? Do we work in order to sell enough of our product to pay for supplies (like ingredients if we were making food products) and salaries? If so, isn't there still a motive to work harder and more efficiently so that we can increase everyone's salary without having to hire more people and spread the income across more mouths to feed? I can obviously see the benefit of not having all that profit go to some super-rich owners, but it definitely seems like it puts a lot of responsibility on the workers to make all the big decisions. It's easy to say "workers know what's" best but I honestly don't think that's always true either.
I would appreciate a few thoughts with how those types of questions are answered by Socialism 101 or 102. I can obviously read more deeply into more sources, but
I think at a minimum I will need to understand those issues in order to buy into the video's claim not just that status quo doesn't work, but that socialism is the answer, and not just the flavor of the week until we actually try it and go "oh this actually sucks just as much for different reasons."
I just want to reiterate that the premise of my blog is that its participants have agreed to behave in good faith as if they have committed to socialism being the answer. Sorta like they have committed to the existing US system without really being able to figure out how to recapture it from the oligopoly (Democrats were bragging about their billionaire support, literally campaigning with Mark Cuban, and functionally abandoned campaign finance reform). It's the Hamster Wheel + Show Spoiler +
1. There's a problem 2. Politicians won't fix it 3. Need to replace the politicians with ones that will 4. Can't replace the politicians because of how the system works 5. Need to fix the system 6. Politicians wont fix it (because it benefits them) 7. Repeat ad nauseam.
The "You just gotta change the laws so capitalists stop exploiting people so hard" sorta stuff shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how capitalism works. The concentration of wealth isn't a bug, it's a feature. The power that concentrated wealth buys you to manipulate politics/society is also a feature of capitalism, not a bug.
I can construct posts as if I was a lib/Dem, the idea here is that everyone is making a good faith effort in constructing their posts and engaging generally as if they were socialists instead. I can't make you do that, but I would respectfully ask that you respect that premise going forward?
Doesn't mean we can't explore the kinds of questions you've expressed and will likely have. They are questions pretty much every socialist has to work through (some grow up on this stuff though lol).
I never really played, but maybe it would help some posters to imagine my blog as a sort of like a game of "mafia" and we're all in the role of socialists. We want everyone to be convincing in their portrayal because breaking immersion lessens the experience for everyone.
On February 02 2025 01:15 micronesia wrote: I guess I asked my questions in the wrong place, then. I don't belong in this discussion yet.
edit: I don't regret watching the video, though
I'm glad you watched it and like I said I don't have a problem with the questions in themselves. It's a framing/sincerity thing.
Democrats functionally supporting what they themselves identified as genocide was rationalized through framing. "The existing capitalist system is the framework we must use to stop Trump and within that system supporting genocide is the only option"
What we're doing here is changing the framing to a socialist system/worldview. Participants are engaging (they can have skepticism/questions/etc) from the premise that "A socialist system is the framework we will use to stop Trump/fascism". It's a lot easier to do if you already really believe it, but it isn't technically necessary to participate.
On February 01 2025 06:33 HornyHerring wrote: Move to China for a bit, see socialism at its finest.
Hi, American who did this, you’re a dipshit and don’t know anything lmao
To be vaguely on topic, I don’t think China is worth looking at as a socialist country (at least in the last few decades) it’s really more of an authoritarian capitalist country with a signficantly more competent and beneficial authoritarian party than a lot of people would believe emerges from places like Russia.
Anyone who spent five seconds in Shanghai and was bombarded by the sheer brand obsessed consumerism in the culture would have a hard time appreciating China as socialist lol
China is a nice place (at least where I was) and has a great cost of living and all of the modern amenities I wanted, but the CCP does suck, even though they have done a lot of things to make China as successful a country as it is, their isolationism from the western Tech industry has created a parallel Chinese tech ecosystem that’s super fascinating and made places like Shenzhen possible.
Yes and no. A colleague of mine married a Chinese lady and they are now living there for a few months. They live in Chengdu and it is another hyperconsumerist city like Shanghai or Shenzhen. However her parents are from rural Hubei and they were there for the holidays. The money generated in places like Shanghai and Chengdu is partially being spent in places like that, on people who do not have the opportunities that exist in cities like Shanghai.
In many ways what he has shown and told reminded me very much of Brazil (pre-Bolsonaro, anyway. Not sure how it is now). A flourishing agricultural and industrial sector, mainly in the south, funded social programs that lifted much of the north out of abject poverty. The main problems are probably similar too: corruption, nepotism and insufficient redistribution maintaining a vast inequality between the richest and poorest segments of society despite their best redistribution efforts.
Which brings me to my question here: what mechanisms can you think of to prevent the corruption and nepotism sneaking in (or as was the case in Bolshevik Russia and Maoist China: built in from the very beginning)?
And I'm not claiming capitalism has an answer to that. But at least in the market-driven resource allocation you have some semblance of a solution, because corruption should be a less efficient allocation of resources, meaning a competitor can produce the same value for less. We've seen plenty of the problems with that in both Europe and the USA, that what works in theory does not translate to practice, because of human markets not actually caring about maximizing efficiency. But at least there is a theoretical solution.
On February 01 2025 06:33 HornyHerring wrote: Move to China for a bit, see socialism at its finest.
Hi, American who did this, you’re a dipshit and don’t know anything lmao
To be vaguely on topic, I don’t think China is worth looking at as a socialist country (at least in the last few decades) it’s really more of an authoritarian capitalist country with a signficantly more competent and beneficial authoritarian party than a lot of people would believe emerges from places like Russia.
Anyone who spent five seconds in Shanghai and was bombarded by the sheer brand obsessed consumerism in the culture would have a hard time appreciating China as socialist lol
China is a nice place (at least where I was) and has a great cost of living and all of the modern amenities I wanted, but the CCP does suck, even though they have done a lot of things to make China as successful a country as it is, their isolationism from the western Tech industry has created a parallel Chinese tech ecosystem that’s super fascinating and made places like Shenzhen possible.
Yes and no. A colleague of mine married a Chinese lady and they are now living there for a few months. They live in Chengdu and it is another hyperconsumerist city like Shanghai or Shenzhen. However her parents are from rural Hubei and they were there for the holidays. The money generated in places like Shanghai and Chengdu is partially being spent in places like that, on people who do not have the opportunities that exist in cities like Shanghai.
In many ways what he has shown and told reminded me very much of Brazil (pre-Bolsonaro, anyway. Not sure how it is now). A flourishing agricultural and industrial sector, mainly in the south, funded social programs that lifted much of the north out of abject poverty. The main problems are probably similar too: corruption, nepotism and insufficient redistribution maintaining a vast inequality between the richest and poorest segments of society despite their best redistribution efforts.
Which brings me to my question here: what mechanisms can you think of to prevent the corruption and nepotism sneaking in (or as was the case in Bolshevik Russia and Maoist China: built in from the very beginning)?
And I'm not claiming capitalism has an answer to that. But at least in the market-driven resource allocation you have some semblance of a solution, because corruption should be a less efficient allocation of resources, meaning a competitor can produce the same value for less. We've seen plenty of the problems with that in both Europe and the USA, that what works in theory does not translate to practice, because of human markets not actually caring about maximizing efficiency. But at least there is a theoretical solution.
This isn't a blog and isn't very healthy for a website that should be focused on gaming and adjacent interests. Please stick to the political forums and don't use TL as a way to recruit people to whatever cause you believe in. I appreciate that you have view points, but there's better dedicated places for these discussions.
I've made like hundreds of blogs that weren't about gaming and esports so I'd be remiss if I didn't re-open this blog. Initial staff discussion shows this is currently ok.
On February 02 2025 04:39 BisuDagger wrote: This isn't a blog and isn't very healthy for a website that should be focused on gaming and adjacent interests. Please stick to the political forums and don't use TL as a way to recruit people to whatever cause you believe in. I appreciate that you have view points, but there's better dedicated places for these discussions.
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 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.
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.
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 don't think that you can really avoid corruption, that doesn't seem possible. But I don't think corruption needs to become systemic, it can be kept to the level of an individual issue. What you would need to avoid is positions that have a lot of hierarchical power on the system, because then one individual in that position being corrupt would be very problematic, and a general situation of poverty that would lead many people to decide that they would want to cheat the system.
So the way I'd go about this, in super broad strokes obviously, is federalism vs centralism, at the risk of being a little too swiss. Which is ultimately I guess my attempt at avoiding central planning.
I didn't read your posts entirely because I thought the blog was closing down so I don't know if you mentioned it, but another important difference would be all of the corruption that has been legalized in capitalism, through lobbies and dumb shit like Citizens United. These are systemic examples of things that I think we can reasonably link to corruption, that would no longer have a solid reason to exist.
About the thread in general, I'm not sure I'm using it right, I don't know I just see some stuff that I like talking about and I try and answer it. Maybe I'm not supposed to post here either.
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 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.
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.
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.
I don't think that you can really avoid corruption, that doesn't seem possible. But I don't think corruption needs to become systemic, it can be kept to the level of an individual issue. What you would need to avoid is positions that have a lot of hierarchical power on the system, because then one individual in that position being corrupt would be very problematic, and a general situation of poverty that would lead many people to decide that they would want to cheat the system.
So the way I'd go about this, in super broad strokes obviously, is federalism vs centralism, at the risk of being a little too swiss. Which is ultimately I guess my attempt at avoiding central planning.
I didn't read your posts entirely because I thought the blog was closing down so I don't know if you mentioned it, but another important difference would be all of the corruption that has been legalized in capitalism, through lobbies and dumb shit like Citizens United. These are systemic examples of things that I think we can reasonably link to corruption, that would no longer have a solid reason to exist.
About the thread in general, I'm not sure I'm using it right, I don't know I just see some stuff that I like talking about and I try and answer it. Maybe I'm not supposed to post here either.
I mean the blog is for socialists discussing socialism in the US context, it's not for entertaining every capitalism advocate's problem with their (typically terribly mis/uninformed and bad faith) perceptions of socialism.
That being said, I recognize the early stages will be less rigidly enforced to allow space for all of us to adjust and learn how we can best do that.
So far I'm immensely thankful for your contributions already. Just try to keep it like socialists of differing preferences discussing the merits of their competing socialist ideas and you should be doing fine
Is there a minimum level of reading necessary for the believability of the socialist portrayal you’re looking for here? Or can we really just be whatever we think a socialist is, as long as whatever it is is something we’re embracing in good faith as the solution to many (all?) societal problems?
On February 03 2025 00:55 Ryzel wrote: Is there a minimum level of reading necessary for the believability of the socialist portrayal you’re looking for here? Or can we really just be whatever we think a socialist is, as long as whatever it is is something we’re embracing in good faith as the solution to many (all?) societal problems?
Do you think "be whatever we think a socialist is, as long as whatever it is is something we’re embracing in good faith as the solution to many (all?) societal problems?" qualifies? Because I immediately see an overlap with Acro's advocacy of "compassionate capitalism" fitting within your restrictions. Do you see that?
I'd also note that your framing of "solutions to many (all?) societal problems" is already indicative of not getting a basic understanding of what socialism is. In recognition of that, I'm going to try to add some basic resources in the OP about socialism.
I'll go ahead and gather some on my own, but I would encourage Neb and any other socialists that may be lurking to go ahead and submit their own preferred "intro to doing socialism 101" sort of media to potentially be added and/or discussed.
On February 03 2025 00:55 Ryzel wrote: Is there a minimum level of reading necessary for the believability of the socialist portrayal you’re looking for here? Or can we really just be whatever we think a socialist is, as long as whatever it is is something we’re embracing in good faith as the solution to many (all?) societal problems?
Do you think "be whatever we think a socialist is, as long as whatever it is is something we’re embracing in good faith as the solution to many (all?) societal problems?" qualifies? Because I immediately see an overlap with Acro's advocacy of "compassionate capitalism" fitting within your restrictions. Do you see that?
I'd also note that your framing of "solutions to many (all?) societal problems" is already indicative of not getting a basic understanding of what socialism is. In recognition of that, I'm going to try to add some basic resources in the OP about socialism.
I'll go ahead and gather some on my own, but I would encourage Neb and any other socialists that may be lurking to go ahead and submit their own preferred "intro to doing socialism 101" sort of media to potentially be added and/or discussed.
Thanks, I appreciate this. I watched the video in the OP as well, and dipped my toes into the Pedagogy Of The Oppressed by Freire when it was brought up ages ago. The reason I asked those questions is because I wanted to clarify the engagement you’re looking for here; originally I would have thought questions like micronesia and Acro asked were fair game, but based off your responses it seems like you’re characterizing their approaches as “I’d LIKE to be socialist, but what about X?”, and that you’re not looking to entertain that kind of discussion. That gives me the vibe you’re looking for something like “Regardless of any misgivings (if any) I have about socialism, I’m going to be a socialist in this thread and discuss topics with others (specifically regarding praxis) who are making the same commitment.”
If you could correct anything wrong about that assumption, I’d appreciate it!
On February 03 2025 00:55 Ryzel wrote: Is there a minimum level of reading necessary for the believability of the socialist portrayal you’re looking for here? Or can we really just be whatever we think a socialist is, as long as whatever it is is something we’re embracing in good faith as the solution to many (all?) societal problems?
Do you think "be whatever we think a socialist is, as long as whatever it is is something we’re embracing in good faith as the solution to many (all?) societal problems?" qualifies? Because I immediately see an overlap with Acro's advocacy of "compassionate capitalism" fitting within your restrictions. Do you see that?
I'd also note that your framing of "solutions to many (all?) societal problems" is already indicative of not getting a basic understanding of what socialism is. In recognition of that, I'm going to try to add some basic resources in the OP about socialism.
I'll go ahead and gather some on my own, but I would encourage Neb and any other socialists that may be lurking to go ahead and submit their own preferred "intro to doing socialism 101" sort of media to potentially be added and/or discussed.
Thanks, I appreciate this. I watched the video in the OP as well, and dipped my toes into the Pedagogy Of The Oppressed by Freire when it was brought up ages ago. The reason I asked those questions is because I wanted to clarify the engagement you’re looking for here; originally I would have thought questions like micronesia and Acro asked were fair game, but based off your responses it seems like you’re characterizing their approaches as “I’d LIKE to be socialist, but what about X?”, and that you’re not looking to entertain that kind of discussion. That gives me the vibe you’re looking for something like “Regardless of any misgivings (if any) I have about socialism, I’m going to be a socialist in this thread and discuss topics with others (specifically regarding praxis) who are making the same commitment.”
If you could correct anything wrong about that assumption, I’d appreciate it!
To be clear the video I just posted is distinct from the one in the OP (though they'll both be there when you read this).
I'd say “Regardless of any misgivings (if any) I have about socialism, I’m going to be a socialist in this thread and discuss topics with others (specifically regarding praxis) who are making the same commitment.” is definitely an improvement from your first articulation.
Would you object to shortening/adjusting it to "I’m going to be a socialist in this thread and discuss topics with others (specifically regarding praxis, theory, and related topics) who are making the same commitment.”?
It's your thread so whatev' but I question the necessity of being so specific, someone like Zambrah who is only ready to say "anticapitalist" I would definitely consider on our side.
On February 03 2025 03:19 Nebuchad wrote: It's your thread so whatev' but I question the necessity of being so specific, someone like Zambrah who is only ready to say "anticapitalist" I would definitely consider on our side.
Logistically it's "mine" (it ultimately being TLs notwithstanding), but practically I see myself more as its facilitator.
Not very hard for an anticapitalist or even progressive libs to pass for a socialist if they try, I'm just asking that they try. In exchange I'll be helping facilitate us all developing a deeper understanding of socialism and how we can apply it to our lives/political futures.
I think socialist-curious people are getting a helluva deal.
It's not like I'm their parole officer demanding people show me their sign-off sheet for volunteer/meeting hours to participate, or that I will lock em up if they express lib/Dem views in some other political venue.
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.
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"
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.
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.
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/
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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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?
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.
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.
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).
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.
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).
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.
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.
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).
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.
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"
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).
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.
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!
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).
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.
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.
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.
On February 07 2025 01:17 WombaT wrote: 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.
Not sure exactly what you're asking? I agree we have better tools for a "planned economy" that could be as or more dynamic than the existing capitalist one.
The issue with Project Cybersyn wasn't that it wasn't technologically advanced enough though... It was socialist, so the US systematically destroyed it
On February 07 2025 01:17 WombaT wrote: 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.
Not sure exactly what you're asking? I agree we have better tools for a "planned economy" that could be as or more dynamic than the existing capitalist one.
The issue with Project Cybersyn wasn't that it wasn't technologically advanced enough though... It was socialist, so the US systematically destroyed it
I was thinking that one of the first things a socialist country should do is abolish money. If there's money there's trade, and if there's trade, there's a profit motive, which is the antithesis of socialism. So we need to get rid of money. Communism is the obvious solution, but imho brings too many of its own problems, especially if we try to transition immediately. But there are a whole bunch of other ways of doing things without money. But that brings me to my question: why hasn't a single socialist country abolished money?
The Soviet Union had a half-hearted attempt in the veeeeery beginning of their existence, but it got abandoned pretty quickly. And I can't find an honest analysis of what actually went wrong with not having money, as opposed to what went wrong with their economy as a whole which are connected but very much separate things. The economy was obviously in shambles after a 6-year civil war. But I can't really see what was wrong with the moneyless system per se.
But there must be a lesson there, because i can find no accounts of any other socialist countries trying it again. So what went wrong, and how can we build a moneyless society that does not repeat that mistake?
On February 07 2025 04:06 Acrofales wrote: I was thinking that one of the first things a socialist country should do is abolish money. If there's money there's trade, and if there's trade, there's a profit motive, which is the antithesis of socialism. So we need to get rid of money. Communism is the obvious solution, but imho brings too many of its own problems, especially if we try to transition immediately. But there are a whole bunch of other ways of doing things without money. But that brings me to my question: why hasn't a single socialist country abolished money?
The Soviet Union had a half-hearted attempt in the veeeeery beginning of their existence, but it got abandoned pretty quickly. And I can't find an honest analysis of what actually went wrong with not having money, as opposed to what went wrong with their economy as a whole which are connected but very much separate things. The economy was obviously in shambles after a 6-year civil war. But I can't really see what was wrong with the moneyless system per se.
But there must be a lesson there, because i can find no accounts of any other socialist countries trying it again. So what went wrong, and how can we build a moneyless society that does not repeat that mistake?
My understanding is we have to transition from capitalism, to socialism, onto communism. There's a lot of steps in between capitalism and abolishing money that if skipped are in all likelihood catastrophic. While we haven't for certain identified all of them, we've identified enough to know that there's many we have yet to achieve.
One aspect that immediately jumps out to me in this ostensible question about "abolishing money" as "one of the first thing a socialist country should do": There's plenty of time, space, and work between deciding to become a socialist country and being the best possible version of that country. It seems you're being reductive and lacking consideration of much of that. International trade being one that comes to mind in this context.
That said, I do think what we see in many intentional communities that are employing socialist teachings (even if not in any particularly strict or doctrinal way) is that money does rapidly fade from their top concerns other than in interacting with people outside of their immediate community.
On February 07 2025 04:06 Acrofales wrote: I was thinking that one of the first things a socialist country should do is abolish money. If there's money there's trade, and if there's trade, there's a profit motive, which is the antithesis of socialism. So we need to get rid of money. Communism is the obvious solution, but imho brings too many of its own problems, especially if we try to transition immediately. But there are a whole bunch of other ways of doing things without money. But that brings me to my question: why hasn't a single socialist country abolished money?
The Soviet Union had a half-hearted attempt in the veeeeery beginning of their existence, but it got abandoned pretty quickly. And I can't find an honest analysis of what actually went wrong with not having money, as opposed to what went wrong with their economy as a whole which are connected but very much separate things. The economy was obviously in shambles after a 6-year civil war. But I can't really see what was wrong with the moneyless system per se.
But there must be a lesson there, because i can find no accounts of any other socialist countries trying it again. So what went wrong, and how can we build a moneyless society that does not repeat that mistake?
Money is quite efficient would be my best guess? There’s that intermediary mechanism that makes asymmetric trades smooth.
I wanna buy your high end motorbike, it’s pretty cool. But on my side all I’ve got to trade is my house, some nick-knacks and my Xbox and TV. You don’t want your house full of nick-knacks, and my Xbox and TV aren’t cutting it. But my house is just way too much to trade.
Depends how socialist we’re going of course.
I imagine we’ll see socialism within some kind of market context way before we see an earnest attempt at Communism, or moneyless society anyway
On February 07 2025 01:17 WombaT wrote: 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.
Not sure exactly what you're asking? I agree we have better tools for a "planned economy" that could be as or more dynamic than the existing capitalist one.
The issue with Project Cybersyn wasn't that it wasn't technologically advanced enough though... It was socialist, so the US systematically destroyed it
On February 07 2025 04:06 Acrofales wrote: I was thinking that one of the first things a socialist country should do is abolish money. If there's money there's trade, and if there's trade, there's a profit motive, which is the antithesis of socialism. So we need to get rid of money. Communism is the obvious solution, but imho brings too many of its own problems, especially if we try to transition immediately. But there are a whole bunch of other ways of doing things without money. But that brings me to my question: why hasn't a single socialist country abolished money?
The Soviet Union had a half-hearted attempt in the veeeeery beginning of their existence, but it got abandoned pretty quickly. And I can't find an honest analysis of what actually went wrong with not having money, as opposed to what went wrong with their economy as a whole which are connected but very much separate things. The economy was obviously in shambles after a 6-year civil war. But I can't really see what was wrong with the moneyless system per se.
But there must be a lesson there, because i can find no accounts of any other socialist countries trying it again. So what went wrong, and how can we build a moneyless society that does not repeat that mistake?
My understanding is we have to transition from capitalism, to socialism, onto communism. There's a lot of steps in between capitalism and abolishing money that if skipped are in all likelihood catastrophic. While we haven't for certain identified all of them, we've identified enough to know that there's many we have yet to achieve.
One aspect that immediately jumps out to me in this ostensible question about "abolishing money" as "one of the first thing a socialist country should do": There's plenty of time, space, and work between deciding to become a socialist country and being the best possible version of that country. It seems you're being reductive and lacking consideration of much of that. International trade being one that comes to mind in this context.
That said, I do think what we see in many intentional communities that are employing socialist teachings (even if not in any particularly strict or doctrinal way) is that money does rapidly fade from their top concerns other than in interacting with people outside of their immediate community.
Foreign trade seems a bit irrelevant. At a state level, you'll need to deal in disgusting stuff like money, but that is a problem for the state. That doesn't mean you need money internally, just that for the state to procure commodities, they will need to deal with their capitalist neighbours on a free market. That will work mostly the same way we do now, except that the state would necessarily have a monopoly on foreign trade, although the state would not function as it does now: it would be entirely at the service of the people. If the American people want Chinese cars, then the state is tasked to obtain them. Ideally the Chinese would also drop their capitalist ways and would happily send the Americans their surplus of cars, while the Americans send the Chinese their surplus of GPUs, totally free and willingly. If the Americans and the Europeans both want Chinese cars, then we have a joint system of deciding the needs of these people and they are allotted in order. Or something. Clearly international trade is not very well fleshed out, because socialists fairly early on realized that the state is not really a useful concept, and with that national borders kinda cease to make sense. But I agree with the fact that we will need to transition there from capitalism.
That said, you've been studying this considerably longer than I have, and will take your word for it that we can't abolish money on day 1. But if we have money, we have profit. And if we have profit, we have capital. And if we have capital, we have capitalism. And as i've said before, I am not actually opposed to a system with limited capitalism, but where the state keeps a tight lid on it. But that isn't what this thread is about. I don't see any Swedish moves toward full socialism, so I am quite hesitant to point to collaborative capitalism as the way to get to socialism. I'd say the socialism has to come first, and it needs to be an earnest attempt. We can't just say "well, lets be socialist" and then not do anything. There has to be a plan that starts at "now" and ends at some form of profit-free economy. That includes, somewhere along the way, abolishing money. Lets take Wombat's example I might want to sell him my motorbike. But why should I only want to sell one motorbike? I consider myself a pretty savvy businessman, so I'll happily take the money and buy both your and Neb's motorbikes. They're clankers, but I can fix them up, and then sell them at a neat profit. So clearly we need to make buying and selling things illegal. But then what need do we have for money?
And yes, I get that maybe we don't want to make trade between individuals illegal on day one, but it shouldn't take too long, because as long as there is money, there is a profit motive. So how has nobody done that? What is the deal with Cuba? They have been kinda isolated from the rest of the world for the last 30 years or so, and interntional trade just really doesn't seem to factor into their economy much. And while they were right vicious cunts, the Castros and their friends seemed pretty sincere about making a go of socialism. So why keep the peso around? What is the motivation for a long-time socialist regime to keep money around? Mostly without even having markets. Prices for most goods are regulated. If it's too have a choice on what to spend your monthly allotment of goods on, food stamps (non-transferrable tokens) seem like the way to go. Especially since the digital age can make it so that digital food stamps are truly untransferrable. If we as a nation decide everybody gets 20 tokens a month, and you try to give me yours, that simply won't work. There are hundreds of technologies that could allow this, but blockchain almost seems tailor-made for it. Allowing full transparancy and auditing, and democratically changing the rules. Sure, that's a bit too newfangled for Cuba's geriatric government, but personalized foodstamps don't seem too wild. In a police state like Cuba, you would simply be required to use your id in combination with the food stamps, it is registered, and if it turns out you used more than your allotment in a month, you are penalized. Ezmode got rid of money. Obviously didn't get rid of a thriving black market which uses gold/sea shells/bitcoin as the currency of choice, but that's an illegal trade and they can shut it down.
But Acro, Wombat asks, how would I go about acquiring your snazzy motorbike in a post-money world? Well, I'd first hand it back in to the motorcycle repurposing center. We would then have a sophisticated system to calculate its remaining value, and as a good citizen who is providing the state with material goods, Acro will be rewarded with non-tradeable tokens equivalent to that value. Wombat would then simply be able to hand in the same number of non-tradeable tokens to obtain that old motorbike. Or something similar. I'm just making this up in a stream-of-thought kinda way. And why is this better than money? Because you cannot make a profit. At no point is it possible to go to the clanker store, buy clankers, fix them up and sell them back. You can definitely dedicate hours to working at fixing up clankers. And you will be paid for those hours of labor. The same way you can work at anything else and be paid for your hours of labor. But an hour fixing up clankers will pay the same as an hour plugging away at numbers in a spreadsheet, or taking care of chickens at the local farm: there is no capital and there is no profit, there is just labor, which is all worth the same.
E: oh, and in my examples I do say state, but it's not necessarily a state as we understand it. It's just what we have self-organized our governance structure into, of course But in the case of Cuba (and other existing socialist states), the state is a very real, very totalitarian entity that I would definitely not want to have in charge.
On February 07 2025 04:06 Acrofales wrote: I was thinking that one of the first things a socialist country should do is abolish money. If there's money there's trade, and if there's trade, there's a profit motive, which is the antithesis of socialism. So we need to get rid of money. Communism is the obvious solution, but imho brings too many of its own problems, especially if we try to transition immediately. But there are a whole bunch of other ways of doing things without money. But that brings me to my question: why hasn't a single socialist country abolished money?
The Soviet Union had a half-hearted attempt in the veeeeery beginning of their existence, but it got abandoned pretty quickly. And I can't find an honest analysis of what actually went wrong with not having money, as opposed to what went wrong with their economy as a whole which are connected but very much separate things. The economy was obviously in shambles after a 6-year civil war. But I can't really see what was wrong with the moneyless system per se.
But there must be a lesson there, because i can find no accounts of any other socialist countries trying it again. So what went wrong, and how can we build a moneyless society that does not repeat that mistake?
My understanding is we have to transition from capitalism, to socialism, onto communism. There's a lot of steps in between capitalism and abolishing money that if skipped are in all likelihood catastrophic. While we haven't for certain identified all of them, we've identified enough to know that there's many we have yet to achieve.
One aspect that immediately jumps out to me in this ostensible question about "abolishing money" as "one of the first thing a socialist country should do": There's plenty of time, space, and work between deciding to become a socialist country and being the best possible version of that country. It seems you're being reductive and lacking consideration of much of that. International trade being one that comes to mind in this context.
That said, I do think what we see in many intentional communities that are employing socialist teachings (even if not in any particularly strict or doctrinal way) is that money does rapidly fade from their top concerns other than in interacting with people outside of their immediate community.
Foreign trade seems a bit irrelevant. At a state level, you'll need to deal in disgusting stuff like money, but that is a problem for the state. That doesn't mean you need money internally, just that for the state to procure commodities, they will need to deal with their capitalist neighbours on a free market. That will work mostly the same way we do now, except that the state would necessarily have a monopoly on foreign trade,although the state would not function as it does now: it would be entirely at the service of the people. If the American people want Chinese cars, then the state is tasked to obtain them. Ideally the Chinese would also drop their capitalist ways and would happily send the Americans their surplus of cars, while the Americans send the Chinese their surplus of GPUs, totally free and willingly. If the Americans and the Europeans both want Chinese cars, then we have a joint system of deciding the needs of these people and they are allotted in order. Or something. Clearly international trade is not very well fleshed out, because socialists fairly early on realized that the state is not really a useful concept, and with that national borders kinda cease to make sense. But I agree with the fact that we will need to transition there from capitalism.
That said, you've been studying this considerably longer than I have, and will take your word for it that we can't abolish money on day 1. But if we have money, we have profit. And if we have profit, we have capital. And
And as i've said before, I am not actually opposed to a system with limited capitalism, but where the state keeps a tight lid on it. But that isn't what this thread is about. I don't see any Swedish moves toward full socialism, so I am quite hesitant to point to collaborative capitalism as the way to get to socialism. I'd say the socialism has to come first, and it needs to be an earnest attempt. We can't just say "well, lets be socialist" and then not do anything. There has to be a plan that starts at "now" and ends at some form of profit-free economy. That includes, somewhere along the way, abolishing money. Lets take Wombat's example I might want to sell him my motorbike. But why should I only want to sell one motorbike? I consider myself a pretty savvy businessman, so I'll happily take the money and buy both your and Neb's motorbikes. They're clankers, but I can fix them up, and then sell them at a neat profit. So clearly we need to make buying and selling things illegal. But then what need do we have for money?
And yes, I get that maybe we don't want to make trade between individuals illegal on day one, but it shouldn't take too long, because as long as there is money, there is a profit motive. So how has nobody done that? What is the deal with Cuba? They have been kinda isolated from the rest of the world for the last 30 years or so, and interntional trade just really doesn't seem to factor into their economy much. And while they were right vicious cunts, the Castros and their friends seemed pretty sincere about making a go of socialism. So why keep the peso around? What is the motivation for a long-time socialist regime to keep money around? Mostly without even having markets. Prices for most goods are regulated. If it's too have a choice on what to spend your monthly allotment of goods on, food stamps (non-transferrable tokens) seem like the way to go. Especially since the digital age can make it so that digital food stamps are truly untransferrable. If we as a nation decide everybody gets 20 tokens a month, and you try to give me yours, that simply won't work. There are hundreds of technologies that could allow this, but blockchain almost seems tailor-made for it. Allowing full transparancy and auditing, and democratically changing the rules. Sure, that's a bit too newfangled for Cuba's geriatric government, but personalized foodstamps don't seem too wild. In a police state like Cuba, you would simply be required to use your id in combination with the food stamps, it is registered, and if it turns out you used more than your allotment in a month, you are penalized. Ezmode got rid of money. Obviously didn't get rid of a thriving black market which uses gold/sea shells/bitcoin as the currency of choice, but that's an illegal trade and they can shut it down.
But Acro, Wombat asks, how would I go about acquiring your snazzy motorbike in a post-money world? Well, I'd first hand it back in to the motorcycle repurposing center. We would then have a sophisticated system to calculate its remaining value, and as a good citizen who is providing the state with material goods, Acro will be rewarded with non-tradeable tokens equivalent to that value. Wombat would then simply be able to hand in the same number of non-tradeable tokens to obtain that old motorbike. Or something similar. I'm just making this up in a stream-of-thought kinda way. And why is this better than money? Because you cannot make a profit. At no point is it possible to go to the clanker store, buy clankers, fix them up and sell them back. You can definitely dedicate hours to working at fixing up clankers. And you will be paid for those hours of labor. The same way you can work at anything else and be paid for your hours of labor. But an hour fixing up clankers will pay the same as an hour plugging away at numbers in a spreadsheet, or taking care of chickens at the local farm: there is no capital and there is no profit, there is just labor, which is all worth the same.
E: oh, and in my examples I do say state, but it's not necessarily a state as we understand it. It's just what we have self-organized our governance structure into, of course But in the case of Cuba (and other existing socialist states), the state is a very real, very totalitarian entity that I would definitely not want to have in charge.
I'm having a hard time reading this as good faith engagement, but as far as I'm familiar, it is reasonable that you have to shift away from money having practical use over time. Which is to say the infrastructure for eliminating money doesn't exist, nor does a population that has grown up without it conceptually.
Got a lot going on in there but Cuba's economy is significantly people bringing money into the country to spend as tourists, sooo...
Also socialists recognize that different labor is compensated differently. Socialism comes before communism.
The main objection to your (seemingly still capitalist, despite the spirit of this thread) preference is you're arguing (against socialism and) for compassionate capitalism. That's different than the socialist intent of phasing out aspects of capitalism and replacing them with socialist practices over time until we've completely supplanted one with the other.
I don't hate trade or money. Seems those are fine. A future in which abolishing those becomes a real question seems so far away that I can't really project myself there. I'm not really into utopias in general.
On February 07 2025 14:35 Nebuchad wrote: I don't hate trade or money. Seems those are fine. A future in which abolishing those becomes a real question seems so far away that I can't really project myself there. I'm not really into utopias in general.
I also basically agree with this, there's plenty for the US to worry about ahead of abolishing money as a concept nationally.
That said, as I mentioned, intentional communities tend not to organize resources (originating from within the community) by who in the community has money to spend on them. So it doesn't really feel so utopian to me in that sense. Just seems like a reasonably low priority at best.
On February 07 2025 14:35 Nebuchad wrote: I don't hate trade or money. Seems those are fine. A future in which abolishing those becomes a real question seems so far away that I can't really project myself there. I'm not really into utopias in general.
I also basically agree with this, there's plenty for the US to worry about ahead of abolishing money as a concept nationally.
That said, as I mentioned, intentional communities tend not to organize resources (originating from within the community) by who in the community has money to spend on them. So it doesn't really feel so utopian to me in that sense. Just seems like a reasonably low priority at best.
Okay, good for them. Wouldn't be me though I guess they're to my left
On February 07 2025 04:06 Acrofales wrote: I was thinking that one of the first things a socialist country should do is abolish money. If there's money there's trade, and if there's trade, there's a profit motive, which is the antithesis of socialism. So we need to get rid of money. Communism is the obvious solution, but imho brings too many of its own problems, especially if we try to transition immediately. But there are a whole bunch of other ways of doing things without money. But that brings me to my question: why hasn't a single socialist country abolished money?
The Soviet Union had a half-hearted attempt in the veeeeery beginning of their existence, but it got abandoned pretty quickly. And I can't find an honest analysis of what actually went wrong with not having money, as opposed to what went wrong with their economy as a whole which are connected but very much separate things. The economy was obviously in shambles after a 6-year civil war. But I can't really see what was wrong with the moneyless system per se.
But there must be a lesson there, because i can find no accounts of any other socialist countries trying it again. So what went wrong, and how can we build a moneyless society that does not repeat that mistake?
My understanding is we have to transition from capitalism, to socialism, onto communism. There's a lot of steps in between capitalism and abolishing money that if skipped are in all likelihood catastrophic. While we haven't for certain identified all of them, we've identified enough to know that there's many we have yet to achieve.
One aspect that immediately jumps out to me in this ostensible question about "abolishing money" as "one of the first thing a socialist country should do": There's plenty of time, space, and work between deciding to become a socialist country and being the best possible version of that country. It seems you're being reductive and lacking consideration of much of that. International trade being one that comes to mind in this context.
That said, I do think what we see in many intentional communities that are employing socialist teachings (even if not in any particularly strict or doctrinal way) is that money does rapidly fade from their top concerns other than in interacting with people outside of their immediate community.
Foreign trade seems a bit irrelevant. At a state level, you'll need to deal in disgusting stuff like money, but that is a problem for the state. That doesn't mean you need money internally, just that for the state to procure commodities, they will need to deal with their capitalist neighbours on a free market. That will work mostly the same way we do now, except that the state would necessarily have a monopoly on foreign trade, although the state would not function as it does now: it would be entirely at the service of the people. If the American people want Chinese cars, then the state is tasked to obtain them. Ideally the Chinese would also drop their capitalist ways and would happily send the Americans their surplus of cars, while the Americans send the Chinese their surplus of GPUs, totally free and willingly. If the Americans and the Europeans both want Chinese cars, then we have a joint system of deciding the needs of these people and they are allotted in order. Or something. Clearly international trade is not very well fleshed out, because socialists fairly early on realized that the state is not really a useful concept, and with that national borders kinda cease to make sense. But I agree with the fact that we will need to transition there from capitalism.
That said, you've been studying this considerably longer than I have, and will take your word for it that we can't abolish money on day 1. But if we have money, we have profit. And if we have profit, we have capital. And if we have capital, we have capitalism. And as i've said before, I am not actually opposed to a system with limited capitalism, but where the state keeps a tight lid on it. But that isn't what this thread is about. I don't see any Swedish moves toward full socialism, so I am quite hesitant to point to collaborative capitalism as the way to get to socialism. I'd say the socialism has to come first, and it needs to be an earnest attempt. We can't just say "well, lets be socialist" and then not do anything. There has to be a plan that starts at "now" and ends at some form of profit-free economy. That includes, somewhere along the way, abolishing money. Lets take Wombat's example I might want to sell him my motorbike. But why should I only want to sell one motorbike? I consider myself a pretty savvy businessman, so I'll happily take the money and buy both your and Neb's motorbikes. They're clankers, but I can fix them up, and then sell them at a neat profit. So clearly we need to make buying and selling things illegal. But then what need do we have for money?
And yes, I get that maybe we don't want to make trade between individuals illegal on day one, but it shouldn't take too long, because as long as there is money, there is a profit motive. So how has nobody done that? What is the deal with Cuba? They have been kinda isolated from the rest of the world for the last 30 years or so, and interntional trade just really doesn't seem to factor into their economy much. And while they were right vicious cunts, the Castros and their friends seemed pretty sincere about making a go of socialism. So why keep the peso around? What is the motivation for a long-time socialist regime to keep money around? Mostly without even having markets. Prices for most goods are regulated. If it's too have a choice on what to spend your monthly allotment of goods on, food stamps (non-transferrable tokens) seem like the way to go. Especially since the digital age can make it so that digital food stamps are truly untransferrable. If we as a nation decide everybody gets 20 tokens a month, and you try to give me yours, that simply won't work. There are hundreds of technologies that could allow this, but blockchain almost seems tailor-made for it. Allowing full transparancy and auditing, and democratically changing the rules. Sure, that's a bit too newfangled for Cuba's geriatric government, but personalized foodstamps don't seem too wild. In a police state like Cuba, you would simply be required to use your id in combination with the food stamps, it is registered, and if it turns out you used more than your allotment in a month, you are penalized. Ezmode got rid of money. Obviously didn't get rid of a thriving black market which uses gold/sea shells/bitcoin as the currency of choice, but that's an illegal trade and they can shut it down.
But Acro, Wombat asks, how would I go about acquiring your snazzy motorbike in a post-money world? Well, I'd first hand it back in to the motorcycle repurposing center. We would then have a sophisticated system to calculate its remaining value, and as a good citizen who is providing the state with material goods, Acro will be rewarded with non-tradeable tokens equivalent to that value. Wombat would then simply be able to hand in the same number of non-tradeable tokens to obtain that old motorbike. Or something similar. I'm just making this up in a stream-of-thought kinda way. And why is this better than money? Because you cannot make a profit. At no point is it possible to go to the clanker store, buy clankers, fix them up and sell them back. You can definitely dedicate hours to working at fixing up clankers. And you will be paid for those hours of labor. The same way you can work at anything else and be paid for your hours of labor. But an hour fixing up clankers will pay the same as an hour plugging away at numbers in a spreadsheet, or taking care of chickens at the local farm: there is no capital and there is no profit, there is just labor, which is all worth the same.
E: oh, and in my examples I do say state, but it's not necessarily a state as we understand it. It's just what we have self-organized our governance structure into, of course But in the case of Cuba (and other existing socialist states), the state is a very real, very totalitarian entity that I would definitely not want to have in charge.
The example I used was meant to illustrate an example where you either have too valuable a singular commodity to trade, or too many invaluable ones too. Granted, not perfect, I’ve come up with better. Your hypotheticals just seem like money but with more steps.
I think you’ve got a fundamental misconception here. That hypothetical socialism isnt bothered about profits.
It very much is, in a ‘get more out than you put in sense’. If you can’t do that everything ceases to function.
Who profits and how is the socialist question. Perhaps substitute that word for surplus, or a net gain or something else.
You could have a full market economy in a polity, but all the companies within were equitably controlled by their workers who all had stakes in them.
Some may wish to go further still, but the former is still socialism. Perhaps at the ground floor so to speak.
Not saying even that viable anytime soon, seems unlikely!
On February 07 2025 14:35 Nebuchad wrote: I don't hate trade or money. Seems those are fine. A future in which abolishing those becomes a real question seems so far away that I can't really project myself there. I'm not really into utopias in general.
Some say money is the root of all evil. I have a deeper question: "what is the root of money?"
Biff: "To me the problem is that at the foundation of this discussion, there is an unrecognized fact, which is that the political offer in the US reflects the American people, the American mentalities and the American culture."
=> I see the angle from which someone could consider this to be true, but I still think we should push back against this. American exceptionalism is wrong, and it's also wrong when people try instead to claim that Americans are exceptionally bad. Americans are just a grouping of people, every grouping of people everywhere has had leftists, liberals and conservatives, the idea that America is different just doesn't make any sense.
I hate to bring this back (that's a lie I love to bring this back), but recently some CEO ghoul for an insurance company was murdered, and Americans on both sides celebrated. How much celebration was there? Well, it wasn't universal celebration obviously, but it was much more than liberals and conservatives were comfortable with, as we saw from the reaction of the media and that of Ben Shapiro clones. I believe I saw some polls around 40%?
Very simple argument that cannot be incorrect as far as I know: 1) the political offer for Americans is liberals and conservatives. 2) Liberals and conservatives think the system is good, and you should respect order. 3) A very significant percentage of Americans cheered someone going against the system and its order. 4) Those american people's voices aren't reflected.
There is a reason why both parties pretend to be populist during elections and then govern in a very elitist fashion. They both support elitism, and they both understand that the public does not, and that they aren't truly representing Americans.
The ideas of socialism are deeply rooted in the deception of dogmatic ideas that exactly the same as any religion is. When you look at the format and the real output that matters - it is that it shuts down questions, promotes taking sides to already presented positions and very actively works on a blanket of deception to cover this fact and look authoritative and normal. It's virus-like. Shame on you, people.
On February 07 2025 01:17 WombaT wrote: 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.
Not sure exactly what you're asking? I agree we have better tools for a "planned economy" that could be as or more dynamic than the existing capitalist one.
The issue with Project Cybersyn wasn't that it wasn't technologically advanced enough though... It was socialist, so the US systematically destroyed it
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?
Now I understand that around october 2023 Kwark's brain broke a little and on some topics he can't think straight anymore, and that's a shame, but for everyone else it is seriously insane that you think what happened in that election is the US public agreed with republicans on social issues. First of all, the US public isn't a thing, people will vote for one candidate or the other for absolutely different reasons, most of them very bad. That's every election. The idea that there is a direct correlation between candidates' platforms and the will of the voters is childish. Second, the american public ISN'T VOTING FOR REPUBLICANS, why is this discussion even happening am I going crazy? You elect a guy from the other party every four years, and even then you need serious levels of gerrymandering and voter suppression for Republicans to be competitive. What was happening in 2020, was the american public suddenly protrans and antiracist, but in the last four years they changed their mind? The theory doesn't even match the facts.
What is actually happening is that both parties are offering a governance that the public isn't satisfied with, so every time they get an opportunity to tell them that, they do. Obviously. Isn't it absolutely amazing to you guys that the Democrats are willing to give up on immigrants and trans people before they are willing to try any populist policy? Doesn't it tell you that what they care about above all is maintaining capitalism, as opposed to making sure that the capitalist system we are under espouses liberal values?
About the post above, it was mostly me getting mad because I read Sermo talking about how accepting that your politicians won't do shit for you is being an adult.
I guess I'll just write about populism since that's something important that the thread often misunderstands.
Populism is often used interchangeably with demagoguery because liberals absolutely love thinking that the far left and the far right are the same thing, it's the only way they can feel morally superior. And because liberalism is the main ideology in societies today, the press and most other outlets that have audiences are willing to further this flawed understanding.
Populism is the view that there is on one side the elites, and on the other side the people, and that those two groups are at odds with each other. Wiki backs me up as usual: "Populism is a range of political stances that emphasize the idea of the common 'people' and often position this group in opposition to a perceived 'elite'.[1] It is frequently associated with anti-establishment and anti-political sentiment.[2]"
Now what can we say about this, well, one, this is simply an observation, it's not an opinion. It is true that elites and the people are opposed to each other under capitalism, because elites make their money from the work of the people, and then they try and increase their wealth by using their power and influence to crush us more, rather than to improve our lives. That's maybe the first interesting thing: that an ideology that is often used in a derogative way starts by describing reality accurately.
The second point is of course that it isn't populist to go after migrants, or trans people, or to do any fascism. Again, obviously. Migrants and trans people aren't elites. Fascism will espouse the aesthetic of populism during elections because it is easy to get support for attacking elites in a political context that doesn't have a leftist party, but fascism doesn't actually hate elites. A lot of the elite understands this - or at the very least believes this to be true -, and this is why they are more comfortable with fascists being the opposition to liberals than they are with leftists being the opposition to liberals.
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?
Now I understand that around october 2023 Kwark's brain broke a little and on some topics he can't think straight anymore, and that's a shame, but for everyone else it is seriously insane that you think what happened in that election is the US public agreed with republicans on social issues. First of all, the US public isn't a thing, people will vote for one candidate or the other for absolutely different reasons, most of them very bad. That's every election. The idea that there is a direct correlation between candidates' platforms and the will of the voters is childish. Second, the american public ISN'T VOTING FOR REPUBLICANS, why is this discussion even happening am I going crazy? You elect a guy from the other party every four years, and even then you need serious levels of gerrymandering and voter suppression for Republicans to be competitive. What was happening in 2020, was the american public suddenly protrans and antiracist, but in the last four years they changed their mind? The theory doesn't even match the facts.
What is actually happening is that both parties are offering a governance that the public isn't satisfied with, so every time they get an opportunity to tell them that, they do. Obviously. Isn't it absolutely amazing to you guys that the Democrats are willing to give up on immigrants and trans people before they are willing to try any populist policy? Doesn't it tell you that what they care about above all is maintaining capitalism, as opposed to making sure that the capitalist system we are under espouses liberal values?
I largely agree, I think you underestimate quite how effective things like trans scaremongering have been over the years though, and quite deliberately injected.
Quite serious flips can happen, quite bloody quickly.
One obvious example would be Muslims in the Western world pre and post 9/11, and we’re still feeling those effects to this day. Many an average Joe is still tolerant of our Muslim brothers and sisters, but for others well, 9/11 opened up a gate of prejudice that’s never been closed.
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?
Now I understand that around october 2023 Kwark's brain broke a little and on some topics he can't think straight anymore, and that's a shame, but for everyone else it is seriously insane that you think what happened in that election is the US public agreed with republicans on social issues. First of all, the US public isn't a thing, people will vote for one candidate or the other for absolutely different reasons, most of them very bad. That's every election. The idea that there is a direct correlation between candidates' platforms and the will of the voters is childish. Second, the american public ISN'T VOTING FOR REPUBLICANS, why is this discussion even happening am I going crazy? You elect a guy from the other party every four years, and even then you need serious levels of gerrymandering and voter suppression for Republicans to be competitive. What was happening in 2020, was the american public suddenly protrans and antiracist, but in the last four years they changed their mind? The theory doesn't even match the facts.
What is actually happening is that both parties are offering a governance that the public isn't satisfied with, so every time they get an opportunity to tell them that, they do. Obviously. Isn't it absolutely amazing to you guys that the Democrats are willing to give up on immigrants and trans people before they are willing to try any populist policy? Doesn't it tell you that what they care about above all is maintaining capitalism, as opposed to making sure that the capitalist system we are under espouses liberal values?
I largely agree, I think you underestimate quite how effective things like trans scaremongering have been over the years though, and quite deliberately injected.
Quite serious flips can happen, quite bloody quickly.
One obvious example would be Muslims in the Western world pre and post 9/11, and we’re still feeling those effects to this day. Many an average Joe is still tolerant of our Muslim brothers and sisters, but for others well, 9/11 opened up a gate of prejudice that’s never been closed.
I think it's a bit different with muslims cause there's a large milestone event there, which obviously it was wrong to blame "muslims" for but we all knew that would happen. Similarly I'm sure there's more hatred of Russians as a people in Europe today.
I'm willing to say that trans messaging isn't as effective for two reasons, one because in 2022 the same messaging was there and Republicans lost an election that they were supposed to win, and two because of the way trans messaging is used in conversations, unless you're talking to Joanne it's always basically a way of dismissing someone. You think what you said makes sense, but lol you can't even define woman, lol. I'm fairly convinced that if someone was running on, like, minecrafting the US healthcare system, and the other guy was running on transphobia, you would even get some transphobes voting for the Minecraft guy. Even within transphobes, there's only a minority that cares a lot about transphobia.
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?
Now I understand that around october 2023 Kwark's brain broke a little and on some topics he can't think straight anymore, and that's a shame, but for everyone else it is seriously insane that you think what happened in that election is the US public agreed with republicans on social issues. First of all, the US public isn't a thing, people will vote for one candidate or the other for absolutely different reasons, most of them very bad. That's every election. The idea that there is a direct correlation between candidates' platforms and the will of the voters is childish. Second, the american public ISN'T VOTING FOR REPUBLICANS, why is this discussion even happening am I going crazy? You elect a guy from the other party every four years, and even then you need serious levels of gerrymandering and voter suppression for Republicans to be competitive. What was happening in 2020, was the american public suddenly protrans and antiracist, but in the last four years they changed their mind? The theory doesn't even match the facts.
What is actually happening is that both parties are offering a governance that the public isn't satisfied with, so every time they get an opportunity to tell them that, they do. Obviously. Isn't it absolutely amazing to you guys that the Democrats are willing to give up on immigrants and trans people before they are willing to try any populist policy? Doesn't it tell you that what they care about above all is maintaining capitalism, as opposed to making sure that the capitalist system we are under espouses liberal values?
I largely agree, I think you underestimate quite how effective things like trans scaremongering have been over the years though, and quite deliberately injected.
Quite serious flips can happen, quite bloody quickly.
One obvious example would be Muslims in the Western world pre and post 9/11, and we’re still feeling those effects to this day. Many an average Joe is still tolerant of our Muslim brothers and sisters, but for others well, 9/11 opened up a gate of prejudice that’s never been closed.
I think it's a bit different with muslims cause there's a large milestone event there, which obviously it was wrong to blame "muslims" for but we all knew that would happen. Similarly I'm sure there's more hatred of Russians as a people in Europe today.
I'm willing to say that trans messaging isn't as effective for two reasons, one because in 2022 the same messaging was there and Republicans lost an election that they were supposed to win, and two because of the way trans messaging is used in conversations, unless you're talking to Joanne it's always basically a way of dismissing someone. You think what you said makes sense, but lol you can't even define woman, lol. I'm fairly convinced that if someone was running on, like, minecrafting the US healthcare system, and the other guy was running on transphobia, you would even get some transphobes voting for the Minecraft guy. Even within transphobes, there's only a minority that cares a lot about transphobia.
It’s been 24 years and there’s still a lot of anti-Muslim sentiment that didn’t exist before, outside of regular ‘I don’t like brown people’ racism
As per your other points, I think over time the backlash has intensified, so 2022 and the cultural lay of the land isn’t necessary 2025.
To put myself in the boots of a transphobe, it’s the difference between thinking they’re weird, I don’t like them but it’s kinda niche, I don’t encounter many versus they’re running around sexually assaulting our women in bathrooms. And I think attitudes have shifted with this deliberately cultivated attack vector.
I think you are correct in that head-to-head, however that dichotomy isn’t going to come up any time soon. Transphobia will be either mask on or off a part of the right’s general platform, and minecrafting the US healthcare system doesn’t seem likely to be a big Dem staple anytime soon.
Gun to the head, yeah I think people maybe go that way, but nobody’s going to be forced into that binary choice anytime soon.
On February 22 2025 10:15 Nebuchad wrote: You think what you said makes sense, but lol you can't even define woman, lol. I'm fairly convinced that if someone was running on, like, minecrafting the US healthcare system, and the other guy was running on transphobia, you would even get some transphobes voting for the Minecraft guy. Even within transphobes, there's only a minority that cares a lot about transphobia.
According to the LBGT community a biological woman is someone who doesn't buy poppers. Of course, this is a necessary but insufficient condition; so, it is not a complete definition. Lots of transwomen buy poppers.
What is transphobia any way? The security guys working at the Adult Store Retail Chain contracting my software services get called transphobes every night.
On February 22 2025 10:15 Nebuchad wrote: You think what you said makes sense, but lol you can't even define woman, lol. I'm fairly convinced that if someone was running on, like, minecrafting the US healthcare system, and the other guy was running on transphobia, you would even get some transphobes voting for the Minecraft guy. Even within transphobes, there's only a minority that cares a lot about transphobia.
According to the LBGT community a biological woman is someone who doesn't buy poppers. Of course, this is a necessary but insufficient condition; so, it is not a complete definition. Lots of transwomen buy poppers.
What is transphobia any way? The security guys working at the Adult Store Retail Chain contracting my software services get called transphobes every night.
Obviously we won't get baited by this weak-ass post. I guess we could have a little laugh at objectivism instead?
"Objectivism's main tenets are that reality exists independently of consciousness, that human beings have direct contact with reality through sense perception (see direct and indirect realism), that one can attain objective knowledge from perception through the process of concept formation and inductive logic, that the proper moral purpose of one's life is the pursuit of one's own happiness (see rational egoism), that the only social system consistent with this morality is one that displays full respect for individual rights embodied in laissez-faire capitalism, and that the role of art in human life is to transform humans' metaphysical ideas by selective reproduction of reality into a physical form—a work of art—that one can comprehend and to which one can respond emotionally."
"reality exists independently of consciousness" => True! "human beings have direct contact with reality through sense perception" => True! "that one can attain objective knowledge from perception through the process of concept formation and inductive logic" => True!
"that the proper moral purpose of one's life is the pursuit of one's own happiness" => wait what? Lol? That's like a complete 180? Suddenly we don't care about the real world and how it exists, we don't care about logic, we only care about our own perceptions and we're establishing moral goals for others? So what was the point of saying all those other things earlier? Clearly the real world, concept formation and inductive logic are going to get in the way of the pursuit of our own happiness.
"that the only social system consistent with this morality is one that displays full respect for individual rights embodied in laissez-faire capitalism" => loooooooool that's such a comically silly thing to believe If we use the fact that we have direct contact with reality through sense perception, we can observe very easily that 1) capitalism isn't consistent with this morality at all, it constantly attacks the human rights of individuals for profit. 2) capitalism is obviously not the only social system consistent with this morality as there is no connexion between a capitalist class existing and the following of this morality. Let's pretend that capitalism was following that morality, if we kept the system exactly the same but removed the capitalist class, that morality would still be followed. 3) laissez-faire capitalism is obviously worse at respecting individual rights than regulated capitalism. The whole point of the regulations is to make it so that it's harder for the capitalists to behave in a way that is harmful to humans.
"and that the role of art in human life is to transform humans' metaphysical ideas by selective reproduction of reality into a physical form—a work of art—that one can comprehend and to which one can respond emotionally." => Completely random thing to throw in, sounds like this whole thing was thought of after a few drinks and Ayn just went on a tangent there.
I like this paragraph a lot because it portrays the comically large contradiction that is at the root of objectivism. First, a stated belief that reality matters and that logic is important. And then, seemingly with no trigger at all, we're abandoning all of this talk about logic and reality and we're veering off entirely into idealism and whatever dumb shit Ayn Rand believes about morals and capitalism, both of which have absolutely no connexion with reality or logic.
"Academic philosophers have generally paid little attention to or dismissed Rand's philosophy" => well yeah because only an idiot would pay a lot of attention to it, that makes sense :o)
On February 22 2025 10:15 Nebuchad wrote: You think what you said makes sense, but lol you can't even define woman, lol. I'm fairly convinced that if someone was running on, like, minecrafting the US healthcare system, and the other guy was running on transphobia, you would even get some transphobes voting for the Minecraft guy. Even within transphobes, there's only a minority that cares a lot about transphobia.
According to the LBGT community a biological woman is someone who doesn't buy poppers. Of course, this is a necessary but insufficient condition; so, it is not a complete definition. Lots of transwomen buy poppers.
What is transphobia any way? The security guys working at the Adult Store Retail Chain contracting my software services get called transphobes every night.
Obviously we won't get baited by this weak-ass post. I guess we could have a little laugh at objectivism instead?
"Objectivism's main tenets are that reality exists independently of consciousness, that human beings have direct contact with reality through sense perception (see direct and indirect realism), that one can attain objective knowledge from perception through the process of concept formation and inductive logic, that the proper moral purpose of one's life is the pursuit of one's own happiness (see rational egoism), that the only social system consistent with this morality is one that displays full respect for individual rights embodied in laissez-faire capitalism, and that the role of art in human life is to transform humans' metaphysical ideas by selective reproduction of reality into a physical form—a work of art—that one can comprehend and to which one can respond emotionally."
"reality exists independently of consciousness" => True! "human beings have direct contact with reality through sense perception" => True! "that one can attain objective knowledge from perception through the process of concept formation and inductive logic" => True!
"that the proper moral purpose of one's life is the pursuit of one's own happiness" => wait what? Lol? That's like a complete 180? Suddenly we don't care about the real world and how it exists, we don't care about logic, we only care about our own perceptions and we're establishing moral goals for others? So what was the point of saying all those other things earlier? Clearly the real world, concept formation and inductive logic are going to get in the way of the pursuit of our own happiness.
"that the only social system consistent with this morality is one that displays full respect for individual rights embodied in laissez-faire capitalism" => loooooooool that's such a comically silly thing to believe If we use the fact that we have direct contact with reality through sense perception, we can observe very easily that 1) capitalism isn't consistent with this morality at all, it constantly attacks the human rights of individuals for profit. 2) capitalism is obviously not the only social system consistent with this morality as there is no connexion between a capitalist class existing and the following of this morality. Let's pretend that capitalism was following that morality, if we kept the system exactly the same but removed the capitalist class, that morality would still be followed. 3) laissez-faire capitalism is obviously worse at respecting individual rights than regulated capitalism. The whole point of the regulations is to make it so that it's harder for the capitalists to behave in a way that is harmful to humans.
"and that the role of art in human life is to transform humans' metaphysical ideas by selective reproduction of reality into a physical form—a work of art—that one can comprehend and to which one can respond emotionally." => Completely random thing to throw in, sounds like this whole thing was thought of after a few drinks and Ayn just went on a tangent there.
I like this paragraph a lot because it portrays the comically large contradiction that is at the root of objectivism. First, a stated belief that reality matters and that logic is important. And then, seemingly with no trigger at all, we're abandoning all of this talk about logic and reality and we're veering off entirely into idealism and whatever dumb shit Ayn Rand believes about morals and capitalism, both of which have absolutely no connexion with reality or logic.
"Academic philosophers have generally paid little attention to or dismissed Rand's philosophy" => well yeah because only an idiot would pay a lot of attention to it, that makes sense :o)
Eh, not that recently I'm afraid. Last I read was probably The Shock Doctrine, which I've had for a while but hadn't taken the time to finish. But that must have been at least a year ago.
On February 25 2025 02:08 Nebuchad wrote: Eh, not that recently I'm afraid. Last I read was probably The Shock Doctrine, which I've had for a while but hadn't taken the time to finish. But that must have been at least a year ago.
You read the bit on Project Cybersyn by chance? Or have a preexisting familiarity with the project generally?
On February 27 2025 03:56 Nebuchad wrote: No, never heard of this. I'll check it out
Should be mandatory reading for people that ask some variation of the question "how come socialism never works huh!?"
One of a rather long list, albeit a blooming depressing one. Pretty fascinating, first I’d heard of this one!
I'm okay with reading it ~1 minute at a time, then sharing some thoughts. I think we can all manage that?
In 1970 Chilean voters opted to pursue a democratic road to socialist change under the guidance of Salvador Allende. As Chile’s first democratically elected Socialist president, Allende proposed a political third way, something different from the politics and ideology of either the United States or the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
Allende wanted to make Chile a socialist nation, but he also wanted change to occur peacefully and in a way that respected the nation’s existing democratic processes and institutions. Moving property ownership from foreign multinationals and the Chilean oligarchy to the state, redistributing income, and creating mechanisms for worker participation were among the top priorities of the Allende government. Among the democratic institutions that Allende wished to preserve were respect for election results, individual freedoms (such as the freedom of thought, speech, press, and assembly), and the rule of law. His commitment to socialist change through constitutional means set Chile’s socialism apart from that of Cuba or the Soviet Union. His platform became known as the “Chilean road to socialism.”
Chile was an exceptional nation within Latin America. From 1932 to 1973 Chile boasted the longest period of uninterrupted democratic rule in Latin America. Allende’s outward commitment to peaceful socialist change and the free expression of ideas stood in sharp contrast to the political situation in neighboring countries such as Argentina and Brazil. In 1970 these two nations had repressive military governments that had seized control, ostensibly to stop the threat of communism. Chile was also a battleground in the global cold war and a focus of U.S. attention. From 1962 to 1969 Chile received more than a billion dollars in U.S. aid, more than any other nation in Latin America, as part of the Alliance for Progress. The United States believed such levels of aid would help raise living standards for Chileans and thus stop members of the poor and working classes from turning to communism.
Yeah I’m broadly familiar with Allende, not this specific program. Interesting read
One has to ask the question that if socialism is doomed to fail, why not leave it to fail?
If there’s a genuinely socialist nation that wanted socialism, was left to implement it and that tanked without outside interference, I’ve yet to encounter it.
Maybe there is one, as I say, I just haven’t encountered it.
It’s like saying ‘being a nice guy’ can’t work based on a school where ruthless bullies beat the shit out of every nice guy in the playground.
In an alternative universe where being a nice guy had failed millions of times with no such beatings, then yeah maybe you can parse that data in a certain way.
If there’s a genuinely socialist nation that wanted socialism, was left to implement it and that tanked without outside interference, I’ve yet to encounter it.
Maybe there is one, as I say, I just haven’t encountered it.
It’s like saying ‘being a nice guy’ can’t work based on a school where ruthless bullies beat the shit out of every nice guy in the playground.
In an alternative universe where being a nice guy had failed millions of times with no such beatings, then yeah maybe you can parse that data in a certain way.
The simple answer seems to be "Because it isn't". That anyone working from that narrative is either too oblivious or operating in bad faith.
Not sure how much you read, but there's plenty in there that can help us think about the issues that we're dealing with today.
EDIT: Just from the first minute there, it is an example of how the US explicitly opposes socialism/communism more than authoritarianism. It also opposes socialism/communism more than than it supports democracy. Given the choice (or by insisting on taking it) between democratic socialism and fascistic capitalism, it repeatedly and unambiguously chooses the latter in a bipartisan fashion. It can help us recognize that the US is probably the biggest threat to human rights on the planet right now.
In 1970 Chilean voters opted to pursue a democratic road to socialist change under the guidance of Salvador Allende. As Chile’s first democratically elected Socialist president, Allende proposed a political third way, something different from the politics and ideology of either the United States or the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
Allende wanted to make Chile a socialist nation, but he also wanted change to occur peacefully and in a way that respected the nation’s existing democratic processes and institutions. Moving property ownership from foreign multinationals and the Chilean oligarchy to the state, redistributing income, and creating mechanisms for worker participation were among the top priorities of the Allende government. Among the democratic institutions that Allende wished to preserve were respect for election results, individual freedoms (such as the freedom of thought, speech, press, and assembly), and the rule of law. His commitment to socialist change through constitutional means set Chile’s socialism apart from that of Cuba or the Soviet Union. His platform became known as the “Chilean road to socialism.”
Chile was an exceptional nation within Latin America. From 1932 to 1973 Chile boasted the longest period of uninterrupted democratic rule in Latin America. Allende’s outward commitment to peaceful socialist change and the free expression of ideas stood in sharp contrast to the political situation in neighboring countries such as Argentina and Brazil. In 1970 these two nations had repressive military governments that had seized control, ostensibly to stop the threat of communism. Chile was also a battleground in the global cold war and a focus of U.S. attention. From 1962 to 1969 Chile received more than a billion dollars in U.S. aid, more than any other nation in Latin America, as part of the Alliance for Progress. The United States believed such levels of aid would help raise living standards for Chileans and thus stop members of the poor and working classes from turning to communism.
☐ Yes, Both ☐ No, Neither ☐ Yes Cybersyn ☐ Yes Allende
People are welcome to share their thoughts about the previous minute but I'm also going to move on to the next minute. The first bit is something that came to my mind while people were talking about Russia influencing US elections. The second bit is our introduction to the thinking behind starting Cybersyn
The United States responded to Allende’s election by adopting a “non-overt course” to prevent Chile from turning socialist. This included funding government opposition parties and opposition-owned media outlets and sabotaging the Chilean economy. For example, the United States established an invisible financial blockade and significantly reduced its aid to Chile. It also used its substantial influence to cut international and bilateral aid and private bank credit to Chile, prevented Allende from renegotiating the national debt he had inherited from his predecessor, and decreased the value of U.S. exports to Chile. Allende’s commitment to changing Chile’s long-standing social and economic structures also met with strong opposition from members of Chile’s privileged classes. Nevertheless, Chile’s long and solid commitment to its democratic institutions led Chileans and onlookers from around the world to wonder whether Allende and his government might succeed in pioneering a new political model.
This political experiment set the stage for an innovative and ambitious technological experiment, known as Project Cybersyn. Bringing Chile’s most important industries under state control constituted a key plank in Allende’s political platform, and it soon challenged the management capabilities of the Allende government. Members of the Chilean government thought that electronic computers and the interdisciplinary science of cybernetics might help the government gain control over the country’s economic transition.
An Unexpected Invitation
In July 1971, the British cybernetician Stafford Beer received an unexpected letter from Chile. Its contents would dramatically change Beer’s life. The writer was a young Chilean engineer named Fernando Flores, who was working for the government of newly elected Socialist president Salvador Allende. Flores worked for the Chilean State Development Corporation, the agency responsible for leading the nationalization effort. Although Flores was only 28 when he wrote Beer, he held the third-highest position in the development agency and a leadership role in the Chilean nationalization process. Flores wrote that he was familiar with Beer’s work in management cybernetics and was “now in a position from which it is possible to implement on a national scale — at which cybernetic thinking becomes a necessity — scientific views on management and organization.” Flores asked Beer for advice on how to apply cybernetics to the management of the Chilean economy, which was expanding quickly because of Allende’s aggressive nationalization policy.
As someone who listens more than speaks, just chiming in to say thank you for taking the time to put this together, and thanks to those who have contributed so far.
On February 27 2025 03:56 Nebuchad wrote: No, never heard of this. I'll check it out
Should be mandatory reading for people that ask some variation of the question "how come socialism never works huh!?"
One of a rather long list, albeit a blooming depressing one. Pretty fascinating, first I’d heard of this one!
I'm okay with reading it ~1 minute at a time, then sharing some thoughts. I think we can all manage that?
In 1970 Chilean voters opted to pursue a democratic road to socialist change under the guidance of Salvador Allende. As Chile’s first democratically elected Socialist president, Allende proposed a political third way, something different from the politics and ideology of either the United States or the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
Allende wanted to make Chile a socialist nation, but he also wanted change to occur peacefully and in a way that respected the nation’s existing democratic processes and institutions. Moving property ownership from foreign multinationals and the Chilean oligarchy to the state, redistributing income, and creating mechanisms for worker participation were among the top priorities of the Allende government. Among the democratic institutions that Allende wished to preserve were respect for election results, individual freedoms (such as the freedom of thought, speech, press, and assembly), and the rule of law. His commitment to socialist change through constitutional means set Chile’s socialism apart from that of Cuba or the Soviet Union. His platform became known as the “Chilean road to socialism.”
Chile was an exceptional nation within Latin America. From 1932 to 1973 Chile boasted the longest period of uninterrupted democratic rule in Latin America. Allende’s outward commitment to peaceful socialist change and the free expression of ideas stood in sharp contrast to the political situation in neighboring countries such as Argentina and Brazil. In 1970 these two nations had repressive military governments that had seized control, ostensibly to stop the threat of communism. Chile was also a battleground in the global cold war and a focus of U.S. attention. From 1962 to 1969 Chile received more than a billion dollars in U.S. aid, more than any other nation in Latin America, as part of the Alliance for Progress. The United States believed such levels of aid would help raise living standards for Chileans and thus stop members of the poor and working classes from turning to communism.
☐ Yes, Both ☐ No, Neither ☐ Yes Cybersyn ☐ Yes Allende
People are welcome to share their thoughts about the previous minute but I'm also going to move on to the next minute. The first bit is something that came to my mind while people were talking about Russia influencing US elections. The second bit is our introduction to the thinking behind starting Cybersyn
The United States responded to Allende’s election by adopting a “non-overt course” to prevent Chile from turning socialist. This included funding government opposition parties and opposition-owned media outlets and sabotaging the Chilean economy. For example, the United States established an invisible financial blockade and significantly reduced its aid to Chile. It also used its substantial influence to cut international and bilateral aid and private bank credit to Chile, prevented Allende from renegotiating the national debt he had inherited from his predecessor, and decreased the value of U.S. exports to Chile. Allende’s commitment to changing Chile’s long-standing social and economic structures also met with strong opposition from members of Chile’s privileged classes. Nevertheless, Chile’s long and solid commitment to its democratic institutions led Chileans and onlookers from around the world to wonder whether Allende and his government might succeed in pioneering a new political model.
This political experiment set the stage for an innovative and ambitious technological experiment, known as Project Cybersyn. Bringing Chile’s most important industries under state control constituted a key plank in Allende’s political platform, and it soon challenged the management capabilities of the Allende government. Members of the Chilean government thought that electronic computers and the interdisciplinary science of cybernetics might help the government gain control over the country’s economic transition.
An Unexpected Invitation
In July 1971, the British cybernetician Stafford Beer received an unexpected letter from Chile. Its contents would dramatically change Beer’s life. The writer was a young Chilean engineer named Fernando Flores, who was working for the government of newly elected Socialist president Salvador Allende. Flores worked for the Chilean State Development Corporation, the agency responsible for leading the nationalization effort. Although Flores was only 28 when he wrote Beer, he held the third-highest position in the development agency and a leadership role in the Chilean nationalization process. Flores wrote that he was familiar with Beer’s work in management cybernetics and was “now in a position from which it is possible to implement on a national scale — at which cybernetic thinking becomes a necessity — scientific views on management and organization.” Flores asked Beer for advice on how to apply cybernetics to the management of the Chilean economy, which was expanding quickly because of Allende’s aggressive nationalization policy.
I find this especially interesting as I’ve pondered ‘with modern tools, specifically IT solutionsare some of the issues in trying to plan elements of the economy, more resolvable’?
But apparently folks were trying this half a century ago, it’s extremely interesting. Thanks for pushing me onto it.
The thing I find somewhat lacking in this article is how successful these efforts were, but also I guess the whole deposition of Allende saw to that overall.
I feel we’re almost in a paradoxical time. It feels to me there’s never been a better time to give it a proper shot, but yet we’re seemingly as far from it as ever. A shame if you ask me.
And I really must say I don’t fully understand why. I grasp many elements of why, but in totality less so
On February 27 2025 03:56 Nebuchad wrote: No, never heard of this. I'll check it out
Should be mandatory reading for people that ask some variation of the question "how come socialism never works huh!?"
One of a rather long list, albeit a blooming depressing one. Pretty fascinating, first I’d heard of this one!
I'm okay with reading it ~1 minute at a time, then sharing some thoughts. I think we can all manage that?
In 1970 Chilean voters opted to pursue a democratic road to socialist change under the guidance of Salvador Allende. As Chile’s first democratically elected Socialist president, Allende proposed a political third way, something different from the politics and ideology of either the United States or the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
Allende wanted to make Chile a socialist nation, but he also wanted change to occur peacefully and in a way that respected the nation’s existing democratic processes and institutions. Moving property ownership from foreign multinationals and the Chilean oligarchy to the state, redistributing income, and creating mechanisms for worker participation were among the top priorities of the Allende government. Among the democratic institutions that Allende wished to preserve were respect for election results, individual freedoms (such as the freedom of thought, speech, press, and assembly), and the rule of law. His commitment to socialist change through constitutional means set Chile’s socialism apart from that of Cuba or the Soviet Union. His platform became known as the “Chilean road to socialism.”
Chile was an exceptional nation within Latin America. From 1932 to 1973 Chile boasted the longest period of uninterrupted democratic rule in Latin America. Allende’s outward commitment to peaceful socialist change and the free expression of ideas stood in sharp contrast to the political situation in neighboring countries such as Argentina and Brazil. In 1970 these two nations had repressive military governments that had seized control, ostensibly to stop the threat of communism. Chile was also a battleground in the global cold war and a focus of U.S. attention. From 1962 to 1969 Chile received more than a billion dollars in U.S. aid, more than any other nation in Latin America, as part of the Alliance for Progress. The United States believed such levels of aid would help raise living standards for Chileans and thus stop members of the poor and working classes from turning to communism.
☐ Yes, Both ☐ No, Neither ☐ Yes Cybersyn ☐ Yes Allende
People are welcome to share their thoughts about the previous minute but I'm also going to move on to the next minute. The first bit is something that came to my mind while people were talking about Russia influencing US elections. The second bit is our introduction to the thinking behind starting Cybersyn
The United States responded to Allende’s election by adopting a “non-overt course” to prevent Chile from turning socialist. This included funding government opposition parties and opposition-owned media outlets and sabotaging the Chilean economy. For example, the United States established an invisible financial blockade and significantly reduced its aid to Chile. It also used its substantial influence to cut international and bilateral aid and private bank credit to Chile, prevented Allende from renegotiating the national debt he had inherited from his predecessor, and decreased the value of U.S. exports to Chile. Allende’s commitment to changing Chile’s long-standing social and economic structures also met with strong opposition from members of Chile’s privileged classes. Nevertheless, Chile’s long and solid commitment to its democratic institutions led Chileans and onlookers from around the world to wonder whether Allende and his government might succeed in pioneering a new political model.
This political experiment set the stage for an innovative and ambitious technological experiment, known as Project Cybersyn. Bringing Chile’s most important industries under state control constituted a key plank in Allende’s political platform, and it soon challenged the management capabilities of the Allende government. Members of the Chilean government thought that electronic computers and the interdisciplinary science of cybernetics might help the government gain control over the country’s economic transition.
An Unexpected Invitation
In July 1971, the British cybernetician Stafford Beer received an unexpected letter from Chile. Its contents would dramatically change Beer’s life. The writer was a young Chilean engineer named Fernando Flores, who was working for the government of newly elected Socialist president Salvador Allende. Flores worked for the Chilean State Development Corporation, the agency responsible for leading the nationalization effort. Although Flores was only 28 when he wrote Beer, he held the third-highest position in the development agency and a leadership role in the Chilean nationalization process. Flores wrote that he was familiar with Beer’s work in management cybernetics and was “now in a position from which it is possible to implement on a national scale — at which cybernetic thinking becomes a necessity — scientific views on management and organization.” Flores asked Beer for advice on how to apply cybernetics to the management of the Chilean economy, which was expanding quickly because of Allende’s aggressive nationalization policy.
I find this especially interesting as I’ve pondered ‘with modern tools, specifically IT solutionsare some of the issues in trying to plan elements of the economy, more resolvable’?
But apparently folks were trying this half a century ago, it’s extremely interesting. Thanks for pushing me onto it.
The thing I find somewhat lacking in this article is how successful these efforts were, but also I guess the whole deposition of Allende saw to that overall.
I feel we’re almost in a paradoxical time. It feels to me there’s never been a better time to give it a proper shot, but yet we’re seemingly as far from it as ever. A shame if you ask me.
And I really must say I don’t fully understand why. I grasp many elements of why, but in totality less so
In some ways it is as simple as people just not stopping to consider how all of the data social media, online shopping, google, etc. could be used to better provide what we actually want/need as humans instead of being used to deliver hundreds of billions of dollars of systemic professional psychological warfare to convince us we're bad humans if we aren't constantly consuming. We're failing as individuals if we don't have the latest models of the latest useless things that identify us as part of the right group under capitalism. That we're failing society if we don't spend every spare moment measuring and judging everyone around us by those metrics.
On February 27 2025 03:56 Nebuchad wrote: No, never heard of this. I'll check it out
Should be mandatory reading for people that ask some variation of the question "how come socialism never works huh!?"
One of a rather long list, albeit a blooming depressing one. Pretty fascinating, first I’d heard of this one!
I'm okay with reading it ~1 minute at a time, then sharing some thoughts. I think we can all manage that?
In 1970 Chilean voters opted to pursue a democratic road to socialist change under the guidance of Salvador Allende. As Chile’s first democratically elected Socialist president, Allende proposed a political third way, something different from the politics and ideology of either the United States or the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
Allende wanted to make Chile a socialist nation, but he also wanted change to occur peacefully and in a way that respected the nation’s existing democratic processes and institutions. Moving property ownership from foreign multinationals and the Chilean oligarchy to the state, redistributing income, and creating mechanisms for worker participation were among the top priorities of the Allende government. Among the democratic institutions that Allende wished to preserve were respect for election results, individual freedoms (such as the freedom of thought, speech, press, and assembly), and the rule of law. His commitment to socialist change through constitutional means set Chile’s socialism apart from that of Cuba or the Soviet Union. His platform became known as the “Chilean road to socialism.”
Chile was an exceptional nation within Latin America. From 1932 to 1973 Chile boasted the longest period of uninterrupted democratic rule in Latin America. Allende’s outward commitment to peaceful socialist change and the free expression of ideas stood in sharp contrast to the political situation in neighboring countries such as Argentina and Brazil. In 1970 these two nations had repressive military governments that had seized control, ostensibly to stop the threat of communism. Chile was also a battleground in the global cold war and a focus of U.S. attention. From 1962 to 1969 Chile received more than a billion dollars in U.S. aid, more than any other nation in Latin America, as part of the Alliance for Progress. The United States believed such levels of aid would help raise living standards for Chileans and thus stop members of the poor and working classes from turning to communism.
☐ Yes, Both ☐ No, Neither ☐ Yes Cybersyn ☐ Yes Allende
People are welcome to share their thoughts about the previous minute but I'm also going to move on to the next minute. The first bit is something that came to my mind while people were talking about Russia influencing US elections. The second bit is our introduction to the thinking behind starting Cybersyn
The United States responded to Allende’s election by adopting a “non-overt course” to prevent Chile from turning socialist. This included funding government opposition parties and opposition-owned media outlets and sabotaging the Chilean economy. For example, the United States established an invisible financial blockade and significantly reduced its aid to Chile. It also used its substantial influence to cut international and bilateral aid and private bank credit to Chile, prevented Allende from renegotiating the national debt he had inherited from his predecessor, and decreased the value of U.S. exports to Chile. Allende’s commitment to changing Chile’s long-standing social and economic structures also met with strong opposition from members of Chile’s privileged classes. Nevertheless, Chile’s long and solid commitment to its democratic institutions led Chileans and onlookers from around the world to wonder whether Allende and his government might succeed in pioneering a new political model.
This political experiment set the stage for an innovative and ambitious technological experiment, known as Project Cybersyn. Bringing Chile’s most important industries under state control constituted a key plank in Allende’s political platform, and it soon challenged the management capabilities of the Allende government. Members of the Chilean government thought that electronic computers and the interdisciplinary science of cybernetics might help the government gain control over the country’s economic transition.
An Unexpected Invitation
In July 1971, the British cybernetician Stafford Beer received an unexpected letter from Chile. Its contents would dramatically change Beer’s life. The writer was a young Chilean engineer named Fernando Flores, who was working for the government of newly elected Socialist president Salvador Allende. Flores worked for the Chilean State Development Corporation, the agency responsible for leading the nationalization effort. Although Flores was only 28 when he wrote Beer, he held the third-highest position in the development agency and a leadership role in the Chilean nationalization process. Flores wrote that he was familiar with Beer’s work in management cybernetics and was “now in a position from which it is possible to implement on a national scale — at which cybernetic thinking becomes a necessity — scientific views on management and organization.” Flores asked Beer for advice on how to apply cybernetics to the management of the Chilean economy, which was expanding quickly because of Allende’s aggressive nationalization policy.
I find this especially interesting as I’ve pondered ‘with modern tools, specifically IT solutionsare some of the issues in trying to plan elements of the economy, more resolvable’?
But apparently folks were trying this half a century ago, it’s extremely interesting. Thanks for pushing me onto it.
The thing I find somewhat lacking in this article is how successful these efforts were, but also I guess the whole deposition of Allende saw to that overall.
I feel we’re almost in a paradoxical time. It feels to me there’s never been a better time to give it a proper shot, but yet we’re seemingly as far from it as ever. A shame if you ask me.
And I really must say I don’t fully understand why. I grasp many elements of why, but in totality less so
In some ways it is as simple as people just not stopping to consider how all of the data social media, online shopping, google, etc. could be used to better provide what we actually want/need as humans instead of being used to deliver hundreds of billions of dollars of systemic professional psychological warfare to convince us we're bad humans if we aren't constantly consuming. We're failing as individuals if we don't have the latest models of the latest useless things that identify us as part of the right group under capitalism. That we're failing society if we don't spend every spare moment measuring and judging everyone around us by those metrics.
On February 27 2025 03:56 Nebuchad wrote: No, never heard of this. I'll check it out
Should be mandatory reading for people that ask some variation of the question "how come socialism never works huh!?"
One of a rather long list, albeit a blooming depressing one. Pretty fascinating, first I’d heard of this one!
I'm okay with reading it ~1 minute at a time, then sharing some thoughts. I think we can all manage that?
In 1970 Chilean voters opted to pursue a democratic road to socialist change under the guidance of Salvador Allende. As Chile’s first democratically elected Socialist president, Allende proposed a political third way, something different from the politics and ideology of either the United States or the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
Allende wanted to make Chile a socialist nation, but he also wanted change to occur peacefully and in a way that respected the nation’s existing democratic processes and institutions. Moving property ownership from foreign multinationals and the Chilean oligarchy to the state, redistributing income, and creating mechanisms for worker participation were among the top priorities of the Allende government. Among the democratic institutions that Allende wished to preserve were respect for election results, individual freedoms (such as the freedom of thought, speech, press, and assembly), and the rule of law. His commitment to socialist change through constitutional means set Chile’s socialism apart from that of Cuba or the Soviet Union. His platform became known as the “Chilean road to socialism.”
Chile was an exceptional nation within Latin America. From 1932 to 1973 Chile boasted the longest period of uninterrupted democratic rule in Latin America. Allende’s outward commitment to peaceful socialist change and the free expression of ideas stood in sharp contrast to the political situation in neighboring countries such as Argentina and Brazil. In 1970 these two nations had repressive military governments that had seized control, ostensibly to stop the threat of communism. Chile was also a battleground in the global cold war and a focus of U.S. attention. From 1962 to 1969 Chile received more than a billion dollars in U.S. aid, more than any other nation in Latin America, as part of the Alliance for Progress. The United States believed such levels of aid would help raise living standards for Chileans and thus stop members of the poor and working classes from turning to communism.
☐ Yes, Both ☐ No, Neither ☐ Yes Cybersyn ☐ Yes Allende
People are welcome to share their thoughts about the previous minute but I'm also going to move on to the next minute. The first bit is something that came to my mind while people were talking about Russia influencing US elections. The second bit is our introduction to the thinking behind starting Cybersyn
The United States responded to Allende’s election by adopting a “non-overt course” to prevent Chile from turning socialist. This included funding government opposition parties and opposition-owned media outlets and sabotaging the Chilean economy. For example, the United States established an invisible financial blockade and significantly reduced its aid to Chile. It also used its substantial influence to cut international and bilateral aid and private bank credit to Chile, prevented Allende from renegotiating the national debt he had inherited from his predecessor, and decreased the value of U.S. exports to Chile. Allende’s commitment to changing Chile’s long-standing social and economic structures also met with strong opposition from members of Chile’s privileged classes. Nevertheless, Chile’s long and solid commitment to its democratic institutions led Chileans and onlookers from around the world to wonder whether Allende and his government might succeed in pioneering a new political model.
This political experiment set the stage for an innovative and ambitious technological experiment, known as Project Cybersyn. Bringing Chile’s most important industries under state control constituted a key plank in Allende’s political platform, and it soon challenged the management capabilities of the Allende government. Members of the Chilean government thought that electronic computers and the interdisciplinary science of cybernetics might help the government gain control over the country’s economic transition.
An Unexpected Invitation
In July 1971, the British cybernetician Stafford Beer received an unexpected letter from Chile. Its contents would dramatically change Beer’s life. The writer was a young Chilean engineer named Fernando Flores, who was working for the government of newly elected Socialist president Salvador Allende. Flores worked for the Chilean State Development Corporation, the agency responsible for leading the nationalization effort. Although Flores was only 28 when he wrote Beer, he held the third-highest position in the development agency and a leadership role in the Chilean nationalization process. Flores wrote that he was familiar with Beer’s work in management cybernetics and was “now in a position from which it is possible to implement on a national scale — at which cybernetic thinking becomes a necessity — scientific views on management and organization.” Flores asked Beer for advice on how to apply cybernetics to the management of the Chilean economy, which was expanding quickly because of Allende’s aggressive nationalization policy.
I find this especially interesting as I’ve pondered ‘with modern tools, specifically IT solutionsare some of the issues in trying to plan elements of the economy, more resolvable’?
But apparently folks were trying this half a century ago, it’s extremely interesting. Thanks for pushing me onto it.
The thing I find somewhat lacking in this article is how successful these efforts were, but also I guess the whole deposition of Allende saw to that overall.
I feel we’re almost in a paradoxical time. It feels to me there’s never been a better time to give it a proper shot, but yet we’re seemingly as far from it as ever. A shame if you ask me.
And I really must say I don’t fully understand why. I grasp many elements of why, but in totality less so
In some ways it is as simple as people just not stopping to consider how all of the data social media, online shopping, google, etc. could be used to better provide what we actually want/need as humans instead of being used to deliver hundreds of billions of dollars of systemic professional psychological warfare to convince us we're bad humans if we aren't constantly consuming. We're failing as individuals if we don't have the latest models of the latest useless things that identify us as part of the right group under capitalism. That we're failing society if we don't spend every spare moment measuring and judging everyone around us by those metrics.
That’s the odd thing. Ya ask people what they really value, it tends not to be that.
But, much behaviour says otherwise.
Fighting through decades of ubiquitous, scientifically engineered, psychological/behavioral manipulation reinforced with trillions of dollars in propaganda is unsurprisingly pretty tough both individually and societally.
A lot of people's identity is wrapped up in their perceived value based on the system as it is. Dramatically changing the system threatens their personal identities and self-perception in potentially catastrophic ways.
Anyways, that's all academic. The reason for bringing up Hasan was that maybe the people who have acquired a lot of both financial and social influence off of... let's call it praxis... should be the ones escalating when shit is apparently hitting the fan. If the left is to mobilise, and mobilise those not currently committed to their message, this seems to be the angle, not telling people working for the government that they're complicit in whatever Trump or Musk decided to do after the latest three seconds of thought if they don't quit.
I dont think Hasan does that, though yeah Im pretty tired of GH harping on it.
I get his point, he wants people to ask themselves, "when is what Im doing as a member of society/the government going to cross a point where what Im doing is actively supporting fascism," but imo hes trying to hammer them into an answer like its some sort of gotcha, whereas its a question that shouldnt need a verbal answer, its something for people to think about over time, something they can keep in mind for when there does come a moment where they have an answer for that question.
For clarity sake I'd just mention that part of the motivation was that had people drawn a line 6+ months ago there's very few of them that would have said what Trump is doing regarding Ukraine wouldn't have crossed it. But since no one drew a line in the context of 6-12 months ago, they can convince themselves that what Trump is doing to Ukraine is regrettable but acceptable.
The point isn't to draw the minimum line, it's to draw a maximum that you can be accountable to while leaving anything before it open to actually be where your line ends up.
It's really easy and utterly reasonable to draw a line at say, Trump outlawing Democrats from existing. But that doesn't preclude one from saying "Actually, when he locked up the 3 leading Democrat primary candidates, that was enough to cross the line for me". Just to give a relatively straightforward example.
On February 27 2025 03:56 Nebuchad wrote: No, never heard of this. I'll check it out
Should be mandatory reading for people that ask some variation of the question "how come socialism never works huh!?"
One of a rather long list, albeit a blooming depressing one. Pretty fascinating, first I’d heard of this one!
I'm okay with reading it ~1 minute at a time, then sharing some thoughts. I think we can all manage that?
In 1970 Chilean voters opted to pursue a democratic road to socialist change under the guidance of Salvador Allende. As Chile’s first democratically elected Socialist president, Allende proposed a political third way, something different from the politics and ideology of either the United States or the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
Allende wanted to make Chile a socialist nation, but he also wanted change to occur peacefully and in a way that respected the nation’s existing democratic processes and institutions. Moving property ownership from foreign multinationals and the Chilean oligarchy to the state, redistributing income, and creating mechanisms for worker participation were among the top priorities of the Allende government. Among the democratic institutions that Allende wished to preserve were respect for election results, individual freedoms (such as the freedom of thought, speech, press, and assembly), and the rule of law. His commitment to socialist change through constitutional means set Chile’s socialism apart from that of Cuba or the Soviet Union. His platform became known as the “Chilean road to socialism.”
Chile was an exceptional nation within Latin America. From 1932 to 1973 Chile boasted the longest period of uninterrupted democratic rule in Latin America. Allende’s outward commitment to peaceful socialist change and the free expression of ideas stood in sharp contrast to the political situation in neighboring countries such as Argentina and Brazil. In 1970 these two nations had repressive military governments that had seized control, ostensibly to stop the threat of communism. Chile was also a battleground in the global cold war and a focus of U.S. attention. From 1962 to 1969 Chile received more than a billion dollars in U.S. aid, more than any other nation in Latin America, as part of the Alliance for Progress. The United States believed such levels of aid would help raise living standards for Chileans and thus stop members of the poor and working classes from turning to communism.
☐ Yes, Both ☐ No, Neither ☐ Yes Cybersyn ☐ Yes Allende
People are welcome to share their thoughts about the previous minute but I'm also going to move on to the next minute. The first bit is something that came to my mind while people were talking about Russia influencing US elections. The second bit is our introduction to the thinking behind starting Cybersyn
The United States responded to Allende’s election by adopting a “non-overt course” to prevent Chile from turning socialist. This included funding government opposition parties and opposition-owned media outlets and sabotaging the Chilean economy. For example, the United States established an invisible financial blockade and significantly reduced its aid to Chile. It also used its substantial influence to cut international and bilateral aid and private bank credit to Chile, prevented Allende from renegotiating the national debt he had inherited from his predecessor, and decreased the value of U.S. exports to Chile. Allende’s commitment to changing Chile’s long-standing social and economic structures also met with strong opposition from members of Chile’s privileged classes. Nevertheless, Chile’s long and solid commitment to its democratic institutions led Chileans and onlookers from around the world to wonder whether Allende and his government might succeed in pioneering a new political model.
This political experiment set the stage for an innovative and ambitious technological experiment, known as Project Cybersyn. Bringing Chile’s most important industries under state control constituted a key plank in Allende’s political platform, and it soon challenged the management capabilities of the Allende government. Members of the Chilean government thought that electronic computers and the interdisciplinary science of cybernetics might help the government gain control over the country’s economic transition.
An Unexpected Invitation
In July 1971, the British cybernetician Stafford Beer received an unexpected letter from Chile. Its contents would dramatically change Beer’s life. The writer was a young Chilean engineer named Fernando Flores, who was working for the government of newly elected Socialist president Salvador Allende. Flores worked for the Chilean State Development Corporation, the agency responsible for leading the nationalization effort. Although Flores was only 28 when he wrote Beer, he held the third-highest position in the development agency and a leadership role in the Chilean nationalization process. Flores wrote that he was familiar with Beer’s work in management cybernetics and was “now in a position from which it is possible to implement on a national scale — at which cybernetic thinking becomes a necessity — scientific views on management and organization.” Flores asked Beer for advice on how to apply cybernetics to the management of the Chilean economy, which was expanding quickly because of Allende’s aggressive nationalization policy.
I find this especially interesting as I’ve pondered ‘with modern tools, specifically IT solutionsare some of the issues in trying to plan elements of the economy, more resolvable’?
But apparently folks were trying this half a century ago, it’s extremely interesting. Thanks for pushing me onto it.
The thing I find somewhat lacking in this article is how successful these efforts were, but also I guess the whole deposition of Allende saw to that overall.
I feel we’re almost in a paradoxical time. It feels to me there’s never been a better time to give it a proper shot, but yet we’re seemingly as far from it as ever. A shame if you ask me.
And I really must say I don’t fully understand why. I grasp many elements of why, but in totality less so
In some ways it is as simple as people just not stopping to consider how all of the data social media, online shopping, google, etc. could be used to better provide what we actually want/need as humans instead of being used to deliver hundreds of billions of dollars of systemic professional psychological warfare to convince us we're bad humans if we aren't constantly consuming. We're failing as individuals if we don't have the latest models of the latest useless things that identify us as part of the right group under capitalism. That we're failing society if we don't spend every spare moment measuring and judging everyone around us by those metrics.
That’s the odd thing. Ya ask people what they really value, it tends not to be that.
But, much behaviour says otherwise.
Fighting through decades of ubiquitous, scientifically engineered, psychological/behavioral manipulation reinforced with trillions of dollars in propaganda is unsurprisingly pretty tough both individually and societally.
A lot of people's identity is wrapped up in their perceived value based on the system as it is. Dramatically changing the system threatens their personal identities and self-perception in potentially catastrophic ways.
Aye for sure, it’s a tricky one.
The odd part to me is it almost feels as with more access to information, it’s tightened rather than loosened that grip.
I wonder if it’s as simple as x person now being more bombarded by things outside of their direct experience than before.
On February 27 2025 03:56 Nebuchad wrote: No, never heard of this. I'll check it out
Should be mandatory reading for people that ask some variation of the question "how come socialism never works huh!?"
One of a rather long list, albeit a blooming depressing one. Pretty fascinating, first I’d heard of this one!
I'm okay with reading it ~1 minute at a time, then sharing some thoughts. I think we can all manage that?
In 1970 Chilean voters opted to pursue a democratic road to socialist change under the guidance of Salvador Allende. As Chile’s first democratically elected Socialist president, Allende proposed a political third way, something different from the politics and ideology of either the United States or the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
Allende wanted to make Chile a socialist nation, but he also wanted change to occur peacefully and in a way that respected the nation’s existing democratic processes and institutions. Moving property ownership from foreign multinationals and the Chilean oligarchy to the state, redistributing income, and creating mechanisms for worker participation were among the top priorities of the Allende government. Among the democratic institutions that Allende wished to preserve were respect for election results, individual freedoms (such as the freedom of thought, speech, press, and assembly), and the rule of law. His commitment to socialist change through constitutional means set Chile’s socialism apart from that of Cuba or the Soviet Union. His platform became known as the “Chilean road to socialism.”
Chile was an exceptional nation within Latin America. From 1932 to 1973 Chile boasted the longest period of uninterrupted democratic rule in Latin America. Allende’s outward commitment to peaceful socialist change and the free expression of ideas stood in sharp contrast to the political situation in neighboring countries such as Argentina and Brazil. In 1970 these two nations had repressive military governments that had seized control, ostensibly to stop the threat of communism. Chile was also a battleground in the global cold war and a focus of U.S. attention. From 1962 to 1969 Chile received more than a billion dollars in U.S. aid, more than any other nation in Latin America, as part of the Alliance for Progress. The United States believed such levels of aid would help raise living standards for Chileans and thus stop members of the poor and working classes from turning to communism.
☐ Yes, Both ☐ No, Neither ☐ Yes Cybersyn ☐ Yes Allende
People are welcome to share their thoughts about the previous minute but I'm also going to move on to the next minute. The first bit is something that came to my mind while people were talking about Russia influencing US elections. The second bit is our introduction to the thinking behind starting Cybersyn
The United States responded to Allende’s election by adopting a “non-overt course” to prevent Chile from turning socialist. This included funding government opposition parties and opposition-owned media outlets and sabotaging the Chilean economy. For example, the United States established an invisible financial blockade and significantly reduced its aid to Chile. It also used its substantial influence to cut international and bilateral aid and private bank credit to Chile, prevented Allende from renegotiating the national debt he had inherited from his predecessor, and decreased the value of U.S. exports to Chile. Allende’s commitment to changing Chile’s long-standing social and economic structures also met with strong opposition from members of Chile’s privileged classes. Nevertheless, Chile’s long and solid commitment to its democratic institutions led Chileans and onlookers from around the world to wonder whether Allende and his government might succeed in pioneering a new political model.
This political experiment set the stage for an innovative and ambitious technological experiment, known as Project Cybersyn. Bringing Chile’s most important industries under state control constituted a key plank in Allende’s political platform, and it soon challenged the management capabilities of the Allende government. Members of the Chilean government thought that electronic computers and the interdisciplinary science of cybernetics might help the government gain control over the country’s economic transition.
An Unexpected Invitation
In July 1971, the British cybernetician Stafford Beer received an unexpected letter from Chile. Its contents would dramatically change Beer’s life. The writer was a young Chilean engineer named Fernando Flores, who was working for the government of newly elected Socialist president Salvador Allende. Flores worked for the Chilean State Development Corporation, the agency responsible for leading the nationalization effort. Although Flores was only 28 when he wrote Beer, he held the third-highest position in the development agency and a leadership role in the Chilean nationalization process. Flores wrote that he was familiar with Beer’s work in management cybernetics and was “now in a position from which it is possible to implement on a national scale — at which cybernetic thinking becomes a necessity — scientific views on management and organization.” Flores asked Beer for advice on how to apply cybernetics to the management of the Chilean economy, which was expanding quickly because of Allende’s aggressive nationalization policy.
I find this especially interesting as I’ve pondered ‘with modern tools, specifically IT solutionsare some of the issues in trying to plan elements of the economy, more resolvable’?
But apparently folks were trying this half a century ago, it’s extremely interesting. Thanks for pushing me onto it.
The thing I find somewhat lacking in this article is how successful these efforts were, but also I guess the whole deposition of Allende saw to that overall.
I feel we’re almost in a paradoxical time. It feels to me there’s never been a better time to give it a proper shot, but yet we’re seemingly as far from it as ever. A shame if you ask me.
And I really must say I don’t fully understand why. I grasp many elements of why, but in totality less so
In some ways it is as simple as people just not stopping to consider how all of the data social media, online shopping, google, etc. could be used to better provide what we actually want/need as humans instead of being used to deliver hundreds of billions of dollars of systemic professional psychological warfare to convince us we're bad humans if we aren't constantly consuming. We're failing as individuals if we don't have the latest models of the latest useless things that identify us as part of the right group under capitalism. That we're failing society if we don't spend every spare moment measuring and judging everyone around us by those metrics.
That’s the odd thing. Ya ask people what they really value, it tends not to be that.
But, much behaviour says otherwise.
Fighting through decades of ubiquitous, scientifically engineered, psychological/behavioral manipulation reinforced with trillions of dollars in propaganda is unsurprisingly pretty tough both individually and societally.
A lot of people's identity is wrapped up in their perceived value based on the system as it is. Dramatically changing the system threatens their personal identities and self-perception in potentially catastrophic ways.
Aye for sure, it’s a tricky one.
The odd part to me is it almost feels as with more access to information, it’s tightened rather than loosened that grip.
I wonder if it’s as simple as x person now being more bombarded by things outside of their direct experience than before.
Sort of the opposite imo. With the plethora of information and content out there one never really has to leave their bubble.
I could easily do a "ThirdHorizons" that was a third way Dem or "ConHorizons" to be a neverTrumper Republican, or "MAGAHorizons". Meanwhile, basically no one that's been dismissing socialism as potential path out of this, can effectively do that with any type of socialism.
They don't know how, and they obliviously see no need to learn.
People do not value being correct as much as we'd like to believe they do. Just look at Sermo here: "I really hope we reach the day when GH can say that its that bad and we should do the simple thing in front of us to stop him from having the power to do these things."
Like, Sermo isn't this stupid. He knows that the thing he advocates for doesn't stop Trump from having power, because he's been doing it and Trump has power. But he values not having to do anything over being correct or trying to find solutions that actually work.
I feel like this is something we should also account for. There will always be a proportion of people who will never be ready to do anything. Spending time trying to move those specific people is a waste.
On March 05 2025 00:26 Nebuchad wrote: People do not value being correct as much as we'd like to believe they do. Just look at Sermo here: "I really hope we reach the day when GH can say that its that bad and we should do the simple thing in front of us to stop him from having the power to do these things."
Like, Sermo isn't this stupid. He knows that the thing he advocates for doesn't stop Trump from having power, because he's been doing it and Trump has power. But he values not having to do anything over being correct or trying to find solutions that actually work.
I feel like this is something we should also account for. There will always be a proportion of people who will never be ready to do anything. Spending time trying to move those specific people is a waste.
TBH even I've been disappointed in LibHorizons' reception. They remind me of the "dog who caught the car" idiom.
They have a place to discuss socialism with me in good faith and/or a liberal version of me that's desperate to work the electoralism angle.
With that at hand, they're angrily refusing both. Opting instead for endless asinine discussions with bad faith right wingers. It has catastrophically undermined years of their complaints about me/people to their left. It also pretty objectively displays them as valuing not having to do anything over being correct (EDIT: unless it's to 'pwn the MAGAts') or trying to find working (even under their own paradigms) solutions as you say.
I would actually rather us both be wrong about this, but I fear we're not.
To add on to the “worth it” piece, what motivates someone to devote themselves to making the world a better place for everyone when there’s so much hostility directed towards you from the people you’re supposedly trying to help? It seems to me that a movement with that goal should have a foundation of compassion and love for everyone, what does one tell themselves to maintain said compassion in the face of such adversity? Or if one doesn’t have that compassion, why would they go through the effort?
On March 06 2025 01:48 Ryzel wrote: To add on to the “worth it” piece, what motivates someone to devote themselves to making the world a better place for everyone when there’s so much hostility directed towards you from the people you’re supposedly trying to help? It seems to me that a movement with that goal should have a foundation of compassion and love for everyone, what does one tell themselves to maintain said compassion in the face of such adversity? Or if one doesn’t have that compassion, why would they go through the effort?
At the core of it you're going to need to have some humanist values for sure, because I can't lie if someone is an egoist and only wants to create better conditions for themselves, they probably shouldn't be a leftist, that's not the best way to achieve that.
Now if you start from that core, maybe it's my bias talking but I don't really see how you can argue for anything other than socialism. Just about everything that negatively impacts humans, racism, bigotry, poverty, imperialism / fascism, derives from social hierarchies and an attempt to maintain them or reinforce them. Aiming to have an impact on those realities without targeting the cause, which in this day and age is capitalism, seems like a self-delusion.
I think there's some spectrum quality to this as well, which you're getting at in your post. Most people aren't entirely humanists or entirely egoists. More people will be willing to fight a social hierarchy when it doesn't cost them anything, and the larger the cost, the least amount of people you'll have on your side. I probably wouldn't give up internet for example I can imagine people giving up because they're getting yelled at, but I would need something a little more impactful myself, I'm not doing this because I want to be liked. Also I'm a bit of a dick in general, some of the yelling is probably on me.
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.
This is the only real answer that is worth looking at. Every system is just a mix of the two.
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.
This is the only real answer that is worth looking at. Every system is just a mix of the two.
Obviously this is nonsense, the capitalist class can't at the same time exist and not exist. The guy was literally saying the highways are socialist because the State built them, lol. But I assume you don't care?
So in this current moment with the journalist being added in the group chat of Hegseth, one very large issue that is worth pointing out is that because of their past choices liberals are going to have a hard time criticizing one of the largest issues in this group chat, which is that there is zero effort made to avoid civilian casualties. The chats go, we see him go into his girlfriend's appartment building, bomb that shit down, the building is down, excellent. If none of this was public there would be some pretense that efforts were made to avoid civilian casualties, but here we see clearly that nothing at all happened. That's a war crime obviously.
We could attack them for that, could we not? But we can't, because in their doomed quest of defending whatever Israel has done, the Democrats and the liberals have made it very clear that doing something like this is entirely okay with them. So now if they attack the Republicans for doing it, it would look massively hypocritical even to their own audience. And so we lose a very human angle of attack on the opposition.
On March 28 2025 02:03 Nebuchad wrote: So in this current moment with the journalist being added in the group chat of Hegseth, one very large issue that is worth pointing out is that because of their past choices liberals are going to have a hard time criticizing one of the largest issues in this group chat, which is that there is zero effort made to avoid civilian casualties. The chats go, we see him go into his girlfriend's appartment building, bomb that shit down, the building is down, excellent. If none of this was public there would be some pretense that efforts were made to avoid civilian casualties, but here we see clearly that nothing at all happened. That's a war crime obviously.
We could attack them for that, could we not? But we can't, because in their doomed quest of defending whatever Israel has done, the Democrats and the liberals have made it very clear that doing something like this is entirely okay with them. So now if they attack the Republicans for doing it, it would look massively hypocritical even to their own audience. And so we lose a very human angle of attack on the opposition.
You're absolutely right. Nevermind the whole aspect of Congress not being involved because of the 2001 AUMF.
IIRC one of our primary disagreements was basically whether the US was salvageable through electing the Democrat party and revolutionary politics were unnecessary. How you feeling about that nowadays?
On March 28 2025 02:03 Nebuchad wrote: So in this current moment with the journalist being added in the group chat of Hegseth, one very large issue that is worth pointing out is that because of their past choices liberals are going to have a hard time criticizing one of the largest issues in this group chat, which is that there is zero effort made to avoid civilian casualties. The chats go, we see him go into his girlfriend's appartment building, bomb that shit down, the building is down, excellent. If none of this was public there would be some pretense that efforts were made to avoid civilian casualties, but here we see clearly that nothing at all happened. That's a war crime obviously.
We could attack them for that, could we not? But we can't, because in their doomed quest of defending whatever Israel has done, the Democrats and the liberals have made it very clear that doing something like this is entirely okay with them. So now if they attack the Republicans for doing it, it would look massively hypocritical even to their own audience. And so we lose a very human angle of attack on the opposition.
You're absolutely right. Nevermind the whole aspect of Congress not being involved because of the 2001 AUMF.
IIRC one of our primary disagreements was basically whether the US was salvageable through electing the Democrat party and revolutionary politics were unnecessary. How you feeling about that nowadays?
I mean I probably don't think the US is salvageable either through the Democrats or revolutionary politics, so based on not having a ton of hope either way I'm not going to cut my options in half and demand that we do one or the other, that makes no sense to me.
On March 28 2025 02:03 Nebuchad wrote: So in this current moment with the journalist being added in the group chat of Hegseth, one very large issue that is worth pointing out is that because of their past choices liberals are going to have a hard time criticizing one of the largest issues in this group chat, which is that there is zero effort made to avoid civilian casualties. The chats go, we see him go into his girlfriend's appartment building, bomb that shit down, the building is down, excellent. If none of this was public there would be some pretense that efforts were made to avoid civilian casualties, but here we see clearly that nothing at all happened. That's a war crime obviously.
We could attack them for that, could we not? But we can't, because in their doomed quest of defending whatever Israel has done, the Democrats and the liberals have made it very clear that doing something like this is entirely okay with them. So now if they attack the Republicans for doing it, it would look massively hypocritical even to their own audience. And so we lose a very human angle of attack on the opposition.
You're absolutely right. Nevermind the whole aspect of Congress not being involved because of the 2001 AUMF.
IIRC one of our primary disagreements was basically whether the US was salvageable through electing the Democrat party and revolutionary politics were unnecessary. How you feeling about that nowadays?
I mean I probably don't think the US is salvageable either through the Democrats or revolutionary politics, so based on not having a ton of hope either way I'm not going to cut my options in half and demand that we do one or the other, that makes no sense to me.
I'd be curious what odds you'd give each or at least relative to each other including the US collapsing/becoming a nakedly fascist superpower?
I guess I'm also curious if you make a distinction between non-reformist reforms and "vote blue no matter who" type electoralism when you're portioning out your options there?
On March 28 2025 02:03 Nebuchad wrote: So in this current moment with the journalist being added in the group chat of Hegseth, one very large issue that is worth pointing out is that because of their past choices liberals are going to have a hard time criticizing one of the largest issues in this group chat, which is that there is zero effort made to avoid civilian casualties. The chats go, we see him go into his girlfriend's appartment building, bomb that shit down, the building is down, excellent. If none of this was public there would be some pretense that efforts were made to avoid civilian casualties, but here we see clearly that nothing at all happened. That's a war crime obviously.
We could attack them for that, could we not? But we can't, because in their doomed quest of defending whatever Israel has done, the Democrats and the liberals have made it very clear that doing something like this is entirely okay with them. So now if they attack the Republicans for doing it, it would look massively hypocritical even to their own audience. And so we lose a very human angle of attack on the opposition.
You're absolutely right. Nevermind the whole aspect of Congress not being involved because of the 2001 AUMF.
IIRC one of our primary disagreements was basically whether the US was salvageable through electing the Democrat party and revolutionary politics were unnecessary. How you feeling about that nowadays?
I mean I probably don't think the US is salvageable either through the Democrats or revolutionary politics, so based on not having a ton of hope either way I'm not going to cut my options in half and demand that we do one or the other, that makes no sense to me.
I'd be curious what odds you'd give each or at least relative to each other including the US collapsing/becoming a nakedly fascist superpower?
I guess I'm also curious if you make a distinction between non-reformist reforms and "vote blue no matter who" type electoralism when you're portioning out your options there?
Nah I won't give odds cause it wouldn't be based on much, and I could easily be wrong. Fighting against systemic forces is hard and has a very low chance of success, that's all I can say with certainty.
And yeah of course I make that distinction, obviously there's no difference for the future of the US when Biden is in power or when Trump is in power, as Biden won't change anything and will just hold space until the next republican is president. I'm only speaking about people on our side.
On March 28 2025 02:03 Nebuchad wrote: So in this current moment with the journalist being added in the group chat of Hegseth, one very large issue that is worth pointing out is that because of their past choices liberals are going to have a hard time criticizing one of the largest issues in this group chat, which is that there is zero effort made to avoid civilian casualties. The chats go, we see him go into his girlfriend's appartment building, bomb that shit down, the building is down, excellent. If none of this was public there would be some pretense that efforts were made to avoid civilian casualties, but here we see clearly that nothing at all happened. That's a war crime obviously.
We could attack them for that, could we not? But we can't, because in their doomed quest of defending whatever Israel has done, the Democrats and the liberals have made it very clear that doing something like this is entirely okay with them. So now if they attack the Republicans for doing it, it would look massively hypocritical even to their own audience. And so we lose a very human angle of attack on the opposition.
You're absolutely right. Nevermind the whole aspect of Congress not being involved because of the 2001 AUMF.
IIRC one of our primary disagreements was basically whether the US was salvageable through electing the Democrat party and revolutionary politics were unnecessary. How you feeling about that nowadays?
I mean I probably don't think the US is salvageable either through the Democrats or revolutionary politics, so based on not having a ton of hope either way I'm not going to cut my options in half and demand that we do one or the other, that makes no sense to me.
I'd be curious what odds you'd give each or at least relative to each other including the US collapsing/becoming a nakedly fascist superpower?
I guess I'm also curious if you make a distinction between non-reformist reforms and "vote blue no matter who" type electoralism when you're portioning out your options there?
What do you mean by ‘non-reformist reforms’? Maybe this is obvious and I’m yet to fully awaken properly!
On March 28 2025 02:03 Nebuchad wrote: So in this current moment with the journalist being added in the group chat of Hegseth, one very large issue that is worth pointing out is that because of their past choices liberals are going to have a hard time criticizing one of the largest issues in this group chat, which is that there is zero effort made to avoid civilian casualties. The chats go, we see him go into his girlfriend's appartment building, bomb that shit down, the building is down, excellent. If none of this was public there would be some pretense that efforts were made to avoid civilian casualties, but here we see clearly that nothing at all happened. That's a war crime obviously.
We could attack them for that, could we not? But we can't, because in their doomed quest of defending whatever Israel has done, the Democrats and the liberals have made it very clear that doing something like this is entirely okay with them. So now if they attack the Republicans for doing it, it would look massively hypocritical even to their own audience. And so we lose a very human angle of attack on the opposition.
You're absolutely right. Nevermind the whole aspect of Congress not being involved because of the 2001 AUMF.
IIRC one of our primary disagreements was basically whether the US was salvageable through electing the Democrat party and revolutionary politics were unnecessary. How you feeling about that nowadays?
I mean I probably don't think the US is salvageable either through the Democrats or revolutionary politics, so based on not having a ton of hope either way I'm not going to cut my options in half and demand that we do one or the other, that makes no sense to me.
I'd be curious what odds you'd give each or at least relative to each other including the US collapsing/becoming a nakedly fascist superpower?
I guess I'm also curious if you make a distinction between non-reformist reforms and "vote blue no matter who" type electoralism when you're portioning out your options there?
Nah I won't give odds cause it wouldn't be based on much, and I could easily be wrong. Fighting against systemic forces is hard and has a very low chance of success, that's all I can say with certainty.
And yeah of course I make that distinction, obviously there's no difference for the future of the US when Biden is in power or when Trump is in power, as Biden won't change anything and will just hold space until the next republican is president. I'm only speaking about people on our side.
Okay. I was just thrown off by the " I'm not going to cut my options in half and demand that we do one or the other, that makes no sense to me.".
If I read that from most other posters that would be them saying they don't understand how supporting Clinton, Biden, etc could be detrimental to progress. Also I consider non-reformist reforms to be revolutionary politics.
It's clear the libs/Dems/ilk don't have any damn idea what to do at this point. They can't even decide if they support, oppose, or should modify LibHorizons' plan. What are your thoughts on a plan/how we can maximize our odds of winning the war against these systemic forces?
On March 28 2025 02:03 Nebuchad wrote: So in this current moment with the journalist being added in the group chat of Hegseth, one very large issue that is worth pointing out is that because of their past choices liberals are going to have a hard time criticizing one of the largest issues in this group chat, which is that there is zero effort made to avoid civilian casualties. The chats go, we see him go into his girlfriend's appartment building, bomb that shit down, the building is down, excellent. If none of this was public there would be some pretense that efforts were made to avoid civilian casualties, but here we see clearly that nothing at all happened. That's a war crime obviously.
We could attack them for that, could we not? But we can't, because in their doomed quest of defending whatever Israel has done, the Democrats and the liberals have made it very clear that doing something like this is entirely okay with them. So now if they attack the Republicans for doing it, it would look massively hypocritical even to their own audience. And so we lose a very human angle of attack on the opposition.
You're absolutely right. Nevermind the whole aspect of Congress not being involved because of the 2001 AUMF.
IIRC one of our primary disagreements was basically whether the US was salvageable through electing the Democrat party and revolutionary politics were unnecessary. How you feeling about that nowadays?
I mean I probably don't think the US is salvageable either through the Democrats or revolutionary politics, so based on not having a ton of hope either way I'm not going to cut my options in half and demand that we do one or the other, that makes no sense to me.
I'd be curious what odds you'd give each or at least relative to each other including the US collapsing/becoming a nakedly fascist superpower?
I guess I'm also curious if you make a distinction between non-reformist reforms and "vote blue no matter who" type electoralism when you're portioning out your options there?
What do you mean by ‘non-reformist reforms’? Maybe this is obvious and I’m yet to fully awaken properly!
No offense, but this is one reason why I repeat things so many times.
Non-reformist reforms are basically reforms that move us toward socialism, rather than perpetuating capitalism.
On March 28 2025 02:03 Nebuchad wrote: So in this current moment with the journalist being added in the group chat of Hegseth, one very large issue that is worth pointing out is that because of their past choices liberals are going to have a hard time criticizing one of the largest issues in this group chat, which is that there is zero effort made to avoid civilian casualties. The chats go, we see him go into his girlfriend's appartment building, bomb that shit down, the building is down, excellent. If none of this was public there would be some pretense that efforts were made to avoid civilian casualties, but here we see clearly that nothing at all happened. That's a war crime obviously.
We could attack them for that, could we not? But we can't, because in their doomed quest of defending whatever Israel has done, the Democrats and the liberals have made it very clear that doing something like this is entirely okay with them. So now if they attack the Republicans for doing it, it would look massively hypocritical even to their own audience. And so we lose a very human angle of attack on the opposition.
You're absolutely right. Nevermind the whole aspect of Congress not being involved because of the 2001 AUMF.
IIRC one of our primary disagreements was basically whether the US was salvageable through electing the Democrat party and revolutionary politics were unnecessary. How you feeling about that nowadays?
I mean I probably don't think the US is salvageable either through the Democrats or revolutionary politics, so based on not having a ton of hope either way I'm not going to cut my options in half and demand that we do one or the other, that makes no sense to me.
I'd be curious what odds you'd give each or at least relative to each other including the US collapsing/becoming a nakedly fascist superpower?
I guess I'm also curious if you make a distinction between non-reformist reforms and "vote blue no matter who" type electoralism when you're portioning out your options there?
Nah I won't give odds cause it wouldn't be based on much, and I could easily be wrong. Fighting against systemic forces is hard and has a very low chance of success, that's all I can say with certainty.
And yeah of course I make that distinction, obviously there's no difference for the future of the US when Biden is in power or when Trump is in power, as Biden won't change anything and will just hold space until the next republican is president. I'm only speaking about people on our side.
If I read that from most other posters that would be them saying they don't understand how supporting Clinton, Biden, etc could be detrimental to progress. Also I consider non-reformist reforms to be revolutionary politics.
Oh you do? I'm unclear on how this works then, because I don't think we've ever had a disagreement on Biden or Clinton, it's more like the AOC or Bernie types that we have disagreed about in the past.
Would you say Trump and the republicans are currently enacting some non-reformist reforms but instead of moving society/government from capitalism towards socialism, they're moving government from democracy to autocracy? Or would you not qualify those reforms as non-reformist?
I'm asking because I don't think wombat literally didn't know the meaning of something he could Google in 2 seconds, but rather wanted to know what *you* wanted from them? And yes, I know you have talked about this before. I have some idea of what type of non-reformist reforms you want. For the most part they'll start with things that are already commonplace: socialised healthcare, unemployment benefits, housing. A penal system more focused on rehabilitation than on punishment with prisons where the punishment is the removal of your freedom of movement, not a literal dungeon.
And obviously they don't end there. The Spanish government is enacting further non-reformist reforms as we speak to try to make our housing system work better for inhabitants rather than tourists. The tax system needs to be more progressive and social security more expansive. I am all aboard all of that. But in Spain about 50% of the people voted for socialist-leaning parties. In the US the support is nowhere near that. Maybe for some specific policies, but not if you tag it as socialist first. So I fully agree with Neb here: your country is a lost cause.
On March 28 2025 02:03 Nebuchad wrote: So in this current moment with the journalist being added in the group chat of Hegseth, one very large issue that is worth pointing out is that because of their past choices liberals are going to have a hard time criticizing one of the largest issues in this group chat, which is that there is zero effort made to avoid civilian casualties. The chats go, we see him go into his girlfriend's appartment building, bomb that shit down, the building is down, excellent. If none of this was public there would be some pretense that efforts were made to avoid civilian casualties, but here we see clearly that nothing at all happened. That's a war crime obviously.
We could attack them for that, could we not? But we can't, because in their doomed quest of defending whatever Israel has done, the Democrats and the liberals have made it very clear that doing something like this is entirely okay with them. So now if they attack the Republicans for doing it, it would look massively hypocritical even to their own audience. And so we lose a very human angle of attack on the opposition.
You're absolutely right. Nevermind the whole aspect of Congress not being involved because of the 2001 AUMF.
IIRC one of our primary disagreements was basically whether the US was salvageable through electing the Democrat party and revolutionary politics were unnecessary. How you feeling about that nowadays?
I mean I probably don't think the US is salvageable either through the Democrats or revolutionary politics, so based on not having a ton of hope either way I'm not going to cut my options in half and demand that we do one or the other, that makes no sense to me.
I'd be curious what odds you'd give each or at least relative to each other including the US collapsing/becoming a nakedly fascist superpower?
I guess I'm also curious if you make a distinction between non-reformist reforms and "vote blue no matter who" type electoralism when you're portioning out your options there?
Nah I won't give odds cause it wouldn't be based on much, and I could easily be wrong. Fighting against systemic forces is hard and has a very low chance of success, that's all I can say with certainty.
And yeah of course I make that distinction, obviously there's no difference for the future of the US when Biden is in power or when Trump is in power, as Biden won't change anything and will just hold space until the next republican is president. I'm only speaking about people on our side.
If I read that from most other posters that would be them saying they don't understand how supporting Clinton, Biden, etc could be detrimental to progress. Also I consider non-reformist reforms to be revolutionary politics.
Oh you do? I'm unclear on how this works then, because I don't think we've ever had a disagreement on Biden or Clinton, it's more like the AOC or Bernie types that we have disagreed about in the past.
Yup. I came to non-reformist reforms through exploring abolitionist politics.
Perhaps. I suppose the current iteration and relevant for discussing where we go from here is: what is the capacity for AOC and Bernie types to bring about these sorts of non-reformist reforms within the Democrat party structure and larger US political structure generally?
Feels to be practically none to me and that they'll continue to function much more as sheepdogs into supporting status quo lib politics with some moderate/regular reforms (which in turn enable fascism), especially when it gets a marginally better wrapper with someone like Harris over Biden.
On March 28 2025 02:03 Nebuchad wrote: So in this current moment with the journalist being added in the group chat of Hegseth, one very large issue that is worth pointing out is that because of their past choices liberals are going to have a hard time criticizing one of the largest issues in this group chat, which is that there is zero effort made to avoid civilian casualties. The chats go, we see him go into his girlfriend's appartment building, bomb that shit down, the building is down, excellent. If none of this was public there would be some pretense that efforts were made to avoid civilian casualties, but here we see clearly that nothing at all happened. That's a war crime obviously.
We could attack them for that, could we not? But we can't, because in their doomed quest of defending whatever Israel has done, the Democrats and the liberals have made it very clear that doing something like this is entirely okay with them. So now if they attack the Republicans for doing it, it would look massively hypocritical even to their own audience. And so we lose a very human angle of attack on the opposition.
You're absolutely right. Nevermind the whole aspect of Congress not being involved because of the 2001 AUMF.
IIRC one of our primary disagreements was basically whether the US was salvageable through electing the Democrat party and revolutionary politics were unnecessary. How you feeling about that nowadays?
I mean I probably don't think the US is salvageable either through the Democrats or revolutionary politics, so based on not having a ton of hope either way I'm not going to cut my options in half and demand that we do one or the other, that makes no sense to me.
I'd be curious what odds you'd give each or at least relative to each other including the US collapsing/becoming a nakedly fascist superpower?
I guess I'm also curious if you make a distinction between non-reformist reforms and "vote blue no matter who" type electoralism when you're portioning out your options there?
Nah I won't give odds cause it wouldn't be based on much, and I could easily be wrong. Fighting against systemic forces is hard and has a very low chance of success, that's all I can say with certainty.
And yeah of course I make that distinction, obviously there's no difference for the future of the US when Biden is in power or when Trump is in power, as Biden won't change anything and will just hold space until the next republican is president. I'm only speaking about people on our side.
If I read that from most other posters that would be them saying they don't understand how supporting Clinton, Biden, etc could be detrimental to progress. Also I consider non-reformist reforms to be revolutionary politics.
Oh you do? I'm unclear on how this works then, because I don't think we've ever had a disagreement on Biden or Clinton, it's more like the AOC or Bernie types that we have disagreed about in the past.
Yup. I came to non-reformist reforms through exploring abolitionist politics.
Perhaps. I suppose the current iteration and relevant for discussing where we go from here is: what is the capacity for AOC and Bernie types to bring about these sorts of non-reformist reforms within the Democrat party structure and larger US political structure generally?
Feels to be practically none to me and that they'll continue to function much more as sheepdogs into supporting status quo lib politics with some moderate/regular reforms (which in turn enable fascism), especially when it gets a marginally better wrapper with someone like Harris over Biden.
Yeah it seems quite unlikely. I suppose we just look at whether there's a full on Schumer vs AOC fight at this point. There might be a thin line to walk there where she can obtain some more power without turning the media against her. But it's hard to talk about this confidently from the outside.
On March 29 2025 01:45 Acrofales wrote: Would you say Trump and the republicans are currently enacting some non-reformist reforms but instead of moving society/government from capitalism towards socialism, they're moving government from democracy to autocracy? Or would you not qualify those reforms as non-reformist? + Show Spoiler +
I'm asking because I don't think wombat literally didn't know the meaning of something he could Google in 2 seconds, but rather wanted to know what *you* wanted from them? And yes, I know you have talked about this before. I have some idea of what type of non-reformist reforms you want. For the most part they'll start with things that are already commonplace: socialised healthcare, unemployment benefits, housing. A penal system more focused on rehabilitation than on punishment with prisons where the punishment is the removal of your freedom of movement, not a literal dungeon.
And obviously they don't end there. The Spanish government is enacting further non-reformist reforms as we speak to try to make our housing system work better for inhabitants rather than tourists. The tax system needs to be more progressive and social security more expansive. I am all aboard all of that. But in Spain about 50% of the people voted for socialist-leaning parties. In the US the support is nowhere near that. Maybe for some specific policies, but not if you tag it as socialist first.
So I fully agree with Neb here: your country is a lost cause.
Trump is taking capitalism toward its intended outcomes, so no.
If LibHorizons' plan is hopeless, as is ThirdHorizons, and so is a general strike, what's your prescription?
I see a lot of people planning to flee to Europe or Canada. I don't think people understand that either a successfully naked fascist US or one that implodes doesn't spare pretty much anywhere or anyone. You're looking at global war and or economic collapse pretty much no matter what if socialism doesn't successfully stop the rise of fascism in the US.
There isn't a scenario (save maybe a 180 away from the US and toward China, and even that would be disruptive af, though maybe not catastrophic) where a fascist US peacefully fades into obscurity while preserving the global economy as far as I can tell.
On March 28 2025 02:03 Nebuchad wrote: So in this current moment with the journalist being added in the group chat of Hegseth, one very large issue that is worth pointing out is that because of their past choices liberals are going to have a hard time criticizing one of the largest issues in this group chat, which is that there is zero effort made to avoid civilian casualties. The chats go, we see him go into his girlfriend's appartment building, bomb that shit down, the building is down, excellent. If none of this was public there would be some pretense that efforts were made to avoid civilian casualties, but here we see clearly that nothing at all happened. That's a war crime obviously.
We could attack them for that, could we not? But we can't, because in their doomed quest of defending whatever Israel has done, the Democrats and the liberals have made it very clear that doing something like this is entirely okay with them. So now if they attack the Republicans for doing it, it would look massively hypocritical even to their own audience. And so we lose a very human angle of attack on the opposition.
You're absolutely right. Nevermind the whole aspect of Congress not being involved because of the 2001 AUMF.
IIRC one of our primary disagreements was basically whether the US was salvageable through electing the Democrat party and revolutionary politics were unnecessary. How you feeling about that nowadays?
I mean I probably don't think the US is salvageable either through the Democrats or revolutionary politics, so based on not having a ton of hope either way I'm not going to cut my options in half and demand that we do one or the other, that makes no sense to me.
I'd be curious what odds you'd give each or at least relative to each other including the US collapsing/becoming a nakedly fascist superpower?
I guess I'm also curious if you make a distinction between non-reformist reforms and "vote blue no matter who" type electoralism when you're portioning out your options there?
Nah I won't give odds cause it wouldn't be based on much, and I could easily be wrong. Fighting against systemic forces is hard and has a very low chance of success, that's all I can say with certainty.
And yeah of course I make that distinction, obviously there's no difference for the future of the US when Biden is in power or when Trump is in power, as Biden won't change anything and will just hold space until the next republican is president. I'm only speaking about people on our side.
If I read that from most other posters that would be them saying they don't understand how supporting Clinton, Biden, etc could be detrimental to progress. Also I consider non-reformist reforms to be revolutionary politics.
Oh you do? I'm unclear on how this works then, because I don't think we've ever had a disagreement on Biden or Clinton, it's more like the AOC or Bernie types that we have disagreed about in the past.
Yup. I came to non-reformist reforms through exploring abolitionist politics.
Perhaps. I suppose the current iteration and relevant for discussing where we go from here is: what is the capacity for AOC and Bernie types to bring about these sorts of non-reformist reforms within the Democrat party structure and larger US political structure generally?
Feels to be practically none to me and that they'll continue to function much more as sheepdogs into supporting status quo lib politics with some moderate/regular reforms (which in turn enable fascism), especially when it gets a marginally better wrapper with someone like Harris over Biden.
Yeah it seems quite unlikely. I suppose we just look at whether there's a full on Schumer vs AOC fight at this point. There might be a thin line to walk there where she can obtain some more power without turning the media against her. But it's hard to talk about this confidently from the outside.
Bernie has nothing to lose by making taking Schumer out of leadership his #1 cause right now, leaving AOC space to not be the asshole but be like "hey a lot of his fellow senators are upset, blah blah blah, so they are probably right that it is time for him to step aside" and/or just say positive stuff about whoever is poised to replace him as leader in a progressive direction (I don't know that such a person exists). Then primary him if she isn't going to be on the Presidential ticket in 2028.
This is the sort of strategizing I'd expect LibHorizons to be doing with DPB and other "progressives" but it's starting to seem more like they might not be as much of progressives/social dems as I thought.
No one called ThirdHorizons out on it, but of course none of the policies Harris gave lip service to would be anything more than rhetoric right now if she had won. So it's important to also remember that it's not as if Bernie/AOC type figures winning is in itself enough to accomplish much either.
There is going to be another budget fight within months. Schumer's gotta be gone by then or I think we can safely write off this latest round of controlled opposition from Bernie/AOC as another bit of sheepdogging.
Okay. This could be true and just as easily it could be not true, I have no way of judging any of this. I don't like to state things that I don't know to be correct so I usually stay away from these types of developments.
I don't really understand why you feel the need to insert DPB into this every few posts. He's just some guy.
On March 29 2025 01:45 Acrofales wrote: Would you say Trump and the republicans are currently enacting some non-reformist reforms but instead of moving society/government from capitalism towards socialism, they're moving government from democracy to autocracy? Or would you not qualify those reforms as non-reformist?
I'm asking because I don't think wombat literally didn't know the meaning of something he could Google in 2 seconds, but rather wanted to know what *you* wanted from them? And yes, I know you have talked about this before. I have some idea of what type of non-reformist reforms you want. For the most part they'll start with things that are already commonplace: socialised healthcare, unemployment benefits, housing. A penal system more focused on rehabilitation than on punishment with prisons where the punishment is the removal of your freedom of movement, not a literal dungeon.
And obviously they don't end there. The Spanish government is enacting further non-reformist reforms as we speak to try to make our housing system work better for inhabitants rather than tourists. The tax system needs to be more progressive and social security more expansive. I am all aboard all of that. But in Spain about 50% of the people voted for socialist-leaning parties. In the US the support is nowhere near that. Maybe for some specific policies, but not if you tag it as socialist first. So I fully agree with Neb here: your country is a lost cause.
Well yes, I don’t think they’re desirous but I think you could fairly call the Trump era as it were ‘non-reformist reforms’ given they deviate from prior orthodoxy.
And yeah, as a person who is myself a socialist the problem is how few, or many of my fellows who are otherwise floating around. In certain European countries you can maybe see that cohort being impactful but the US is another kettle of fish entirely.
On March 28 2025 06:44 GreenHorizons wrote: [quote] You're absolutely right. Nevermind the whole aspect of Congress not being involved because of the 2001 AUMF.
IIRC one of our primary disagreements was basically whether the US was salvageable through electing the Democrat party and revolutionary politics were unnecessary. How you feeling about that nowadays?
I mean I probably don't think the US is salvageable either through the Democrats or revolutionary politics, so based on not having a ton of hope either way I'm not going to cut my options in half and demand that we do one or the other, that makes no sense to me.
I'd be curious what odds you'd give each or at least relative to each other including the US collapsing/becoming a nakedly fascist superpower?
I guess I'm also curious if you make a distinction between non-reformist reforms and "vote blue no matter who" type electoralism when you're portioning out your options there?
Nah I won't give odds cause it wouldn't be based on much, and I could easily be wrong. Fighting against systemic forces is hard and has a very low chance of success, that's all I can say with certainty.
And yeah of course I make that distinction, obviously there's no difference for the future of the US when Biden is in power or when Trump is in power, as Biden won't change anything and will just hold space until the next republican is president. I'm only speaking about people on our side.
If I read that from most other posters that would be them saying they don't understand how supporting Clinton, Biden, etc could be detrimental to progress. Also I consider non-reformist reforms to be revolutionary politics.
Oh you do? I'm unclear on how this works then, because I don't think we've ever had a disagreement on Biden or Clinton, it's more like the AOC or Bernie types that we have disagreed about in the past.
Yup. I came to non-reformist reforms through exploring abolitionist politics.
Perhaps. I suppose the current iteration and relevant for discussing where we go from here is: what is the capacity for AOC and Bernie types to bring about these sorts of non-reformist reforms within the Democrat party structure and larger US political structure generally?
Feels to be practically none to me and that they'll continue to function much more as sheepdogs into supporting status quo lib politics with some moderate/regular reforms (which in turn enable fascism), especially when it gets a marginally better wrapper with someone like Harris over Biden.
Yeah it seems quite unlikely. I suppose we just look at whether there's a full on Schumer vs AOC fight at this point. There might be a thin line to walk there where she can obtain some more power without turning the media against her. But it's hard to talk about this confidently from the outside.
Bernie has nothing to lose by making taking Schumer out of leadership his #1 cause right now, leaving AOC space to not be the asshole but be like "hey a lot of his fellow senators are upset, blah blah blah, so they are probably right that it is time for him to step aside" and/or just say positive stuff about whoever is poised to replace him as leader in a progressive direction (I don't know that such a person exists). Then primary him if she isn't going to be on the Presidential ticket in 2028.
This is the sort of strategizing I'd expect LibHorizons to be doing with DPB and other "progressives" but it's starting to seem more like they might not be as much of progressives/social dems as I thought.
No one called ThirdHorizons out on it, but of course none of the policies Harris gave lip service to would be anything more than rhetoric right now if she had won. So it's important to also remember that it's not as if Bernie/AOC type figures winning is in itself enough to accomplish much either.
There is going to be another budget fight within months. Schumer's gotta be gone by then or I think we can safely write off this latest round of controlled opposition from Bernie/AOC as another bit of sheepdogging.
Okay. This could be true and just as easily it could be not true, I have no way of judging any of this. I don't like to state things that I don't know to be correct so I usually stay away from these types of developments.
I don't really understand why you feel the need to insert DPB into this every few posts. He's just some guy.
Not sure exactly what you're referring to, but we could try to develop our understanding together toward one conclusion or the other, and it's sorta imperative that we do in the US. Which is why I mention DPB (and others) as a local example(s) of the sort of progressive Democrat voter(s) that would be critical in implementing any strategy like you're suggesting of non-reformist reforms implemented by politicians like Bernie and AOC.
Quite specifically, DPB has a senator coming up for re-election. We need to decide ASAP if he should be primaried as part of DPB's plan to primary Democrats that insufficiently oppose Trump. Meanwhile we can't even get voters like DPB to develop/adopt some sort of clear rubric under his own plan for assessing which Democrats clear the threshold for sufficiently opposing Trump.
This also serves to show that part of why you "don't know why" we would demand revolutionary politics is because you admittedly and totally understandably don't know these nuances of the realities of implementing non-reformist reforms through politicians like AOC and Bernie in the US.
I mean I probably don't think the US is salvageable either through the Democrats or revolutionary politics, so based on not having a ton of hope either way I'm not going to cut my options in half and demand that we do one or the other, that makes no sense to me.
I'd be curious what odds you'd give each or at least relative to each other including the US collapsing/becoming a nakedly fascist superpower?
I guess I'm also curious if you make a distinction between non-reformist reforms and "vote blue no matter who" type electoralism when you're portioning out your options there?
Nah I won't give odds cause it wouldn't be based on much, and I could easily be wrong. Fighting against systemic forces is hard and has a very low chance of success, that's all I can say with certainty.
And yeah of course I make that distinction, obviously there's no difference for the future of the US when Biden is in power or when Trump is in power, as Biden won't change anything and will just hold space until the next republican is president. I'm only speaking about people on our side.
If I read that from most other posters that would be them saying they don't understand how supporting Clinton, Biden, etc could be detrimental to progress. Also I consider non-reformist reforms to be revolutionary politics.
Oh you do? I'm unclear on how this works then, because I don't think we've ever had a disagreement on Biden or Clinton, it's more like the AOC or Bernie types that we have disagreed about in the past.
Yup. I came to non-reformist reforms through exploring abolitionist politics.
Perhaps. I suppose the current iteration and relevant for discussing where we go from here is: what is the capacity for AOC and Bernie types to bring about these sorts of non-reformist reforms within the Democrat party structure and larger US political structure generally?
Feels to be practically none to me and that they'll continue to function much more as sheepdogs into supporting status quo lib politics with some moderate/regular reforms (which in turn enable fascism), especially when it gets a marginally better wrapper with someone like Harris over Biden.
Yeah it seems quite unlikely. I suppose we just look at whether there's a full on Schumer vs AOC fight at this point. There might be a thin line to walk there where she can obtain some more power without turning the media against her. But it's hard to talk about this confidently from the outside.
Bernie has nothing to lose by making taking Schumer out of leadership his #1 cause right now, leaving AOC space to not be the asshole but be like "hey a lot of his fellow senators are upset, blah blah blah, so they are probably right that it is time for him to step aside" and/or just say positive stuff about whoever is poised to replace him as leader in a progressive direction (I don't know that such a person exists). Then primary him if she isn't going to be on the Presidential ticket in 2028.
This is the sort of strategizing I'd expect LibHorizons to be doing with DPB and other "progressives" but it's starting to seem more like they might not be as much of progressives/social dems as I thought.
No one called ThirdHorizons out on it, but of course none of the policies Harris gave lip service to would be anything more than rhetoric right now if she had won. So it's important to also remember that it's not as if Bernie/AOC type figures winning is in itself enough to accomplish much either.
There is going to be another budget fight within months. Schumer's gotta be gone by then or I think we can safely write off this latest round of controlled opposition from Bernie/AOC as another bit of sheepdogging.
Okay. This could be true and just as easily it could be not true, I have no way of judging any of this. I don't like to state things that I don't know to be correct so I usually stay away from these types of developments.
I don't really understand why you feel the need to insert DPB into this every few posts. He's just some guy.
Not sure exactly what you're referring to, but we could try to develop our understanding together toward one conclusion or the other, and it's sorta imperative that we do in the US. Which is why I mention DPB (and others) as a local example(s) of the sort of progressive Democrat voter(s) that would be critical in implementing any strategy like you're suggesting of non-reformist reforms implemented by politicians like Bernie and AOC.
Quite specifically, DPB has a senator coming up for re-election. We need to decide ASAP if he should be primaried as part of DPB's plan to primary Democrats that insufficiently oppose Trump. Meanwhile we can't even get voters like DPB to develop/adopt some sort of clear rubric under his own plan for assessing which Democrats clear the threshold for sufficiently opposing Trump.
This also serves to show that part of why you "don't know why" we would demand revolutionary politics is because you admittedly and totally understandably don't know these nuances of the realities of implementing non-reformist reforms through politicians like AOC and Bernie in the US.
But that's always going to happen. You will always get a majority of people who don't really invest themselves. Whether DPB is on one side or the other is very very irrelevant.
On March 29 2025 01:45 Acrofales wrote: Would you say Trump and the republicans are currently enacting some non-reformist reforms but instead of moving society/government from capitalism towards socialism, they're moving government from democracy to autocracy? Or would you not qualify those reforms as non-reformist?
I'm asking because I don't think wombat literally didn't know the meaning of something he could Google in 2 seconds, but rather wanted to know what *you* wanted from them? And yes, I know you have talked about this before. I have some idea of what type of non-reformist reforms you want. For the most part they'll start with things that are already commonplace: socialised healthcare, unemployment benefits, housing. A penal system more focused on rehabilitation than on punishment with prisons where the punishment is the removal of your freedom of movement, not a literal dungeon.
And obviously they don't end there. The Spanish government is enacting further non-reformist reforms as we speak to try to make our housing system work better for inhabitants rather than tourists. The tax system needs to be more progressive and social security more expansive. I am all aboard all of that. But in Spain about 50% of the people voted for socialist-leaning parties. In the US the support is nowhere near that. Maybe for some specific policies, but not if you tag it as socialist first. So I fully agree with Neb here: your country is a lost cause.
Well yes, I don’t think they’re desirous but I think you could fairly call the Trump era as it were ‘non-reformist reforms’ given they deviate from prior orthodoxy. + Show Spoiler +
And yeah, as a person who is myself a socialist the problem is how few, or many of my fellows who are otherwise floating around. In certain European countries you can maybe see that cohort being impactful but the US is another kettle of fish entirely.
Have to strongly disagree with this. Non-reformist reforms are not simply something that "deviates from prior orthodoxy". If I supported policies to turn the US into a Muslim theocracy I wouldn't be supporting non-reformist reforms. You have to intentionally bastardize the term beyond recognition to interpret it to describe what Trump is doing.
On March 29 2025 01:45 Acrofales wrote: Would you say Trump and the republicans are currently enacting some non-reformist reforms but instead of moving society/government from capitalism towards socialism, they're moving government from democracy to autocracy? Or would you not qualify those reforms as non-reformist?
I'm asking because I don't think wombat literally didn't know the meaning of something he could Google in 2 seconds, but rather wanted to know what *you* wanted from them? And yes, I know you have talked about this before. I have some idea of what type of non-reformist reforms you want. For the most part they'll start with things that are already commonplace: socialised healthcare, unemployment benefits, housing. A penal system more focused on rehabilitation than on punishment with prisons where the punishment is the removal of your freedom of movement, not a literal dungeon.
And obviously they don't end there. The Spanish government is enacting further non-reformist reforms as we speak to try to make our housing system work better for inhabitants rather than tourists. The tax system needs to be more progressive and social security more expansive. I am all aboard all of that. But in Spain about 50% of the people voted for socialist-leaning parties. In the US the support is nowhere near that. Maybe for some specific policies, but not if you tag it as socialist first. So I fully agree with Neb here: your country is a lost cause.
Well yes, I don’t think they’re desirous but I think you could fairly call the Trump era as it were ‘non-reformist reforms’ given they deviate from prior orthodoxy. + Show Spoiler +
And yeah, as a person who is myself a socialist the problem is how few, or many of my fellows who are otherwise floating around. In certain European countries you can maybe see that cohort being impactful but the US is another kettle of fish entirely.
Have to strongly disagree with this. Non-reformist reforms are not simply something that "deviates from prior orthodoxy". If I supported policies to turn the US into a Muslim theocracy I wouldn't be supporting non-reformist reforms. You have to intentionally bastardize the term beyond recognition to interpret it to describe what Trump is doing.
What does the term even mean? How does a Trump or a theocratic movement not fit the bill? I’m genuinely unsure here
On March 28 2025 15:27 GreenHorizons wrote: [quote] I'd be curious what odds you'd give each or at least relative to each other including the US collapsing/becoming a nakedly fascist superpower?
I guess I'm also curious if you make a distinction between non-reformist reforms and "vote blue no matter who" type electoralism when you're portioning out your options there?
Nah I won't give odds cause it wouldn't be based on much, and I could easily be wrong. Fighting against systemic forces is hard and has a very low chance of success, that's all I can say with certainty.
And yeah of course I make that distinction, obviously there's no difference for the future of the US when Biden is in power or when Trump is in power, as Biden won't change anything and will just hold space until the next republican is president. I'm only speaking about people on our side.
If I read that from most other posters that would be them saying they don't understand how supporting Clinton, Biden, etc could be detrimental to progress. Also I consider non-reformist reforms to be revolutionary politics.
Oh you do? I'm unclear on how this works then, because I don't think we've ever had a disagreement on Biden or Clinton, it's more like the AOC or Bernie types that we have disagreed about in the past.
Yup. I came to non-reformist reforms through exploring abolitionist politics.
Perhaps. I suppose the current iteration and relevant for discussing where we go from here is: what is the capacity for AOC and Bernie types to bring about these sorts of non-reformist reforms within the Democrat party structure and larger US political structure generally?
Feels to be practically none to me and that they'll continue to function much more as sheepdogs into supporting status quo lib politics with some moderate/regular reforms (which in turn enable fascism), especially when it gets a marginally better wrapper with someone like Harris over Biden.
Yeah it seems quite unlikely. I suppose we just look at whether there's a full on Schumer vs AOC fight at this point. There might be a thin line to walk there where she can obtain some more power without turning the media against her. But it's hard to talk about this confidently from the outside.
Bernie has nothing to lose by making taking Schumer out of leadership his #1 cause right now, leaving AOC space to not be the asshole but be like "hey a lot of his fellow senators are upset, blah blah blah, so they are probably right that it is time for him to step aside" and/or just say positive stuff about whoever is poised to replace him as leader in a progressive direction (I don't know that such a person exists). Then primary him if she isn't going to be on the Presidential ticket in 2028.
This is the sort of strategizing I'd expect LibHorizons to be doing with DPB and other "progressives" but it's starting to seem more like they might not be as much of progressives/social dems as I thought.
No one called ThirdHorizons out on it, but of course none of the policies Harris gave lip service to would be anything more than rhetoric right now if she had won. So it's important to also remember that it's not as if Bernie/AOC type figures winning is in itself enough to accomplish much either.
There is going to be another budget fight within months. Schumer's gotta be gone by then or I think we can safely write off this latest round of controlled opposition from Bernie/AOC as another bit of sheepdogging.
Okay. This could be true and just as easily it could be not true, I have no way of judging any of this. I don't like to state things that I don't know to be correct so I usually stay away from these types of developments.
I don't really understand why you feel the need to insert DPB into this every few posts. He's just some guy.
Not sure exactly what you're referring to, but we could try to develop our understanding together toward one conclusion or the other, and it's sorta imperative that we do in the US. Which is why I mention DPB (and others) as a local example(s) of the sort of progressive Democrat voter(s) that would be critical in implementing any strategy like you're suggesting of non-reformist reforms implemented by politicians like Bernie and AOC.
Quite specifically, DPB has a senator coming up for re-election. We need to decide ASAP if he should be primaried as part of DPB's plan to primary Democrats that insufficiently oppose Trump. Meanwhile we can't even get voters like DPB to develop/adopt some sort of clear rubric under his own plan for assessing which Democrats clear the threshold for sufficiently opposing Trump.
This also serves to show that part of why you "don't know why" we would demand revolutionary politics is because you admittedly and totally understandably don't know these nuances of the realities of implementing non-reformist reforms through politicians like AOC and Bernie in the US.
But that's always going to happen. You will always get a majority of people who don't really invest themselves. Whether DPB is on one side or the other is very very irrelevant.
Presumably he and others are pretty invested when you read some of the lengths they go to arguing with right wingers.
What I'm slowly coming to grips with is just how disconnected people's willingness to spend years and tens of thousands of posts going back and forth with people over various ostensibly political things is from their actual investment in/commitment to political progress.
I'm increasingly realizing that they mostly use this space to gawk and mock at the shallowest levels. I'm not sure how much it's always been that way and how much is just me/my politics maturing. Either way I miss what felt like useful, informative, and interesting political postings and I'd like us to try to reinvigorate that a bit.
On March 29 2025 01:45 Acrofales wrote: Would you say Trump and the republicans are currently enacting some non-reformist reforms but instead of moving society/government from capitalism towards socialism, they're moving government from democracy to autocracy? Or would you not qualify those reforms as non-reformist?
I'm asking because I don't think wombat literally didn't know the meaning of something he could Google in 2 seconds, but rather wanted to know what *you* wanted from them? And yes, I know you have talked about this before. I have some idea of what type of non-reformist reforms you want. For the most part they'll start with things that are already commonplace: socialised healthcare, unemployment benefits, housing. A penal system more focused on rehabilitation than on punishment with prisons where the punishment is the removal of your freedom of movement, not a literal dungeon.
And obviously they don't end there. The Spanish government is enacting further non-reformist reforms as we speak to try to make our housing system work better for inhabitants rather than tourists. The tax system needs to be more progressive and social security more expansive. I am all aboard all of that. But in Spain about 50% of the people voted for socialist-leaning parties. In the US the support is nowhere near that. Maybe for some specific policies, but not if you tag it as socialist first. So I fully agree with Neb here: your country is a lost cause.
Well yes, I don’t think they’re desirous but I think you could fairly call the Trump era as it were ‘non-reformist reforms’ given they deviate from prior orthodoxy. + Show Spoiler +
And yeah, as a person who is myself a socialist the problem is how few, or many of my fellows who are otherwise floating around. In certain European countries you can maybe see that cohort being impactful but the US is another kettle of fish entirely.
Have to strongly disagree with this. Non-reformist reforms are not simply something that "deviates from prior orthodoxy". If I supported policies to turn the US into a Muslim theocracy I wouldn't be supporting non-reformist reforms. You have to intentionally bastardize the term beyond recognition to interpret it to describe what Trump is doing.
What does the term even mean? How does a Trump or a theocratic movement not fit the bill? I’m genuinely unsure here
On March 28 2025 02:03 Nebuchad wrote: So in this current moment with the journalist being added in the group chat of Hegseth, one very large issue that is worth pointing out is that because of their past choices liberals are going to have a hard time criticizing one of the largest issues in this group chat, which is that there is zero effort made to avoid civilian casualties. The chats go, we see him go into his girlfriend's appartment building, bomb that shit down, the building is down, excellent. If none of this was public there would be some pretense that efforts were made to avoid civilian casualties, but here we see clearly that nothing at all happened. That's a war crime obviously.
We could attack them for that, could we not? But we can't, because in their doomed quest of defending whatever Israel has done, the Democrats and the liberals have made it very clear that doing something like this is entirely okay with them. So now if they attack the Republicans for doing it, it would look massively hypocritical even to their own audience. And so we lose a very human angle of attack on the opposition.
You're absolutely right. Nevermind the whole aspect of Congress not being involved because of the 2001 AUMF.
IIRC one of our primary disagreements was basically whether the US was salvageable through electing the Democrat party and revolutionary politics were unnecessary. How you feeling about that nowadays?
I mean I probably don't think the US is salvageable either through the Democrats or revolutionary politics, so based on not having a ton of hope either way I'm not going to cut my options in half and demand that we do one or the other, that makes no sense to me.
I'd be curious what odds you'd give each or at least relative to each other including the US collapsing/becoming a nakedly fascist superpower?
I guess I'm also curious if you make a distinction between non-reformist reforms and "vote blue no matter who" type electoralism when you're portioning out your options there?
What do you mean by ‘non-reformist reforms’? Maybe this is obvious and I’m yet to fully awaken properly!
No offense, but this is one reason why I repeat things so many times.
Non-reformist reforms are basically reforms that move us toward socialism, rather than perpetuating capitalism.
So you asked for information on non-reformist reforms, apparently ignored it, proceeded to pull your own definition from your ass to assert that Trump was doing non-reformist reforms, and are now backtracking asking me to explain to you why you are wrong to believe Trump's or a Muslim theocracy's policies would fit the provided description of non-reformist reforms.
Nah I won't give odds cause it wouldn't be based on much, and I could easily be wrong. Fighting against systemic forces is hard and has a very low chance of success, that's all I can say with certainty.
And yeah of course I make that distinction, obviously there's no difference for the future of the US when Biden is in power or when Trump is in power, as Biden won't change anything and will just hold space until the next republican is president. I'm only speaking about people on our side.
If I read that from most other posters that would be them saying they don't understand how supporting Clinton, Biden, etc could be detrimental to progress. Also I consider non-reformist reforms to be revolutionary politics.
Oh you do? I'm unclear on how this works then, because I don't think we've ever had a disagreement on Biden or Clinton, it's more like the AOC or Bernie types that we have disagreed about in the past.
Yup. I came to non-reformist reforms through exploring abolitionist politics.
Perhaps. I suppose the current iteration and relevant for discussing where we go from here is: what is the capacity for AOC and Bernie types to bring about these sorts of non-reformist reforms within the Democrat party structure and larger US political structure generally?
Feels to be practically none to me and that they'll continue to function much more as sheepdogs into supporting status quo lib politics with some moderate/regular reforms (which in turn enable fascism), especially when it gets a marginally better wrapper with someone like Harris over Biden.
Yeah it seems quite unlikely. I suppose we just look at whether there's a full on Schumer vs AOC fight at this point. There might be a thin line to walk there where she can obtain some more power without turning the media against her. But it's hard to talk about this confidently from the outside.
Bernie has nothing to lose by making taking Schumer out of leadership his #1 cause right now, leaving AOC space to not be the asshole but be like "hey a lot of his fellow senators are upset, blah blah blah, so they are probably right that it is time for him to step aside" and/or just say positive stuff about whoever is poised to replace him as leader in a progressive direction (I don't know that such a person exists). Then primary him if she isn't going to be on the Presidential ticket in 2028.
This is the sort of strategizing I'd expect LibHorizons to be doing with DPB and other "progressives" but it's starting to seem more like they might not be as much of progressives/social dems as I thought.
No one called ThirdHorizons out on it, but of course none of the policies Harris gave lip service to would be anything more than rhetoric right now if she had won. So it's important to also remember that it's not as if Bernie/AOC type figures winning is in itself enough to accomplish much either.
There is going to be another budget fight within months. Schumer's gotta be gone by then or I think we can safely write off this latest round of controlled opposition from Bernie/AOC as another bit of sheepdogging.
Okay. This could be true and just as easily it could be not true, I have no way of judging any of this. I don't like to state things that I don't know to be correct so I usually stay away from these types of developments.
I don't really understand why you feel the need to insert DPB into this every few posts. He's just some guy.
Not sure exactly what you're referring to, but we could try to develop our understanding together toward one conclusion or the other, and it's sorta imperative that we do in the US. Which is why I mention DPB (and others) as a local example(s) of the sort of progressive Democrat voter(s) that would be critical in implementing any strategy like you're suggesting of non-reformist reforms implemented by politicians like Bernie and AOC.
Quite specifically, DPB has a senator coming up for re-election. We need to decide ASAP if he should be primaried as part of DPB's plan to primary Democrats that insufficiently oppose Trump. Meanwhile we can't even get voters like DPB to develop/adopt some sort of clear rubric under his own plan for assessing which Democrats clear the threshold for sufficiently opposing Trump.
This also serves to show that part of why you "don't know why" we would demand revolutionary politics is because you admittedly and totally understandably don't know these nuances of the realities of implementing non-reformist reforms through politicians like AOC and Bernie in the US.
But that's always going to happen. You will always get a majority of people who don't really invest themselves. Whether DPB is on one side or the other is very very irrelevant.
Presumably he and others are pretty invested when you read some of the lengths they go to arguing with right wingers.
What I'm slowly coming to grips with is just how disconnected people's willingness to spend years and tens of thousands of posts going back and forth with people over various ostensibly political things is from their actual investment in/commitment to political progress.
I'm increasingly realizing that they mostly use this space to gawk and mock at the shallowest levels. I'm not sure how much it's always been that way and how much is just me/my politics maturing. Either way I miss what felt like useful, informative, and interesting political postings and I'd like us to try to reinvigorate that a bit.
This is just breathtakingly arrogant, and I’d indeed say ignorant.
Whatever you do, that’s productive and useful, whatever anyone else does is a pointless waste of time. So arguing with right wingers = pointless, spending months saying the Dems support genocide = good praxis
The sheer fucking hubris is unbelievable, and if the actual left needs anything it’s less of that.
It’s not helping, at all.
It’s fucking ridiculous, I almost entirely agree with your analysis and ideas but Jesus Christ you do a great job at alienating people
Nah I won't give odds cause it wouldn't be based on much, and I could easily be wrong. Fighting against systemic forces is hard and has a very low chance of success, that's all I can say with certainty.
And yeah of course I make that distinction, obviously there's no difference for the future of the US when Biden is in power or when Trump is in power, as Biden won't change anything and will just hold space until the next republican is president. I'm only speaking about people on our side.
If I read that from most other posters that would be them saying they don't understand how supporting Clinton, Biden, etc could be detrimental to progress. Also I consider non-reformist reforms to be revolutionary politics.
Oh you do? I'm unclear on how this works then, because I don't think we've ever had a disagreement on Biden or Clinton, it's more like the AOC or Bernie types that we have disagreed about in the past.
Yup. I came to non-reformist reforms through exploring abolitionist politics.
Perhaps. I suppose the current iteration and relevant for discussing where we go from here is: what is the capacity for AOC and Bernie types to bring about these sorts of non-reformist reforms within the Democrat party structure and larger US political structure generally?
Feels to be practically none to me and that they'll continue to function much more as sheepdogs into supporting status quo lib politics with some moderate/regular reforms (which in turn enable fascism), especially when it gets a marginally better wrapper with someone like Harris over Biden.
Yeah it seems quite unlikely. I suppose we just look at whether there's a full on Schumer vs AOC fight at this point. There might be a thin line to walk there where she can obtain some more power without turning the media against her. But it's hard to talk about this confidently from the outside.
Bernie has nothing to lose by making taking Schumer out of leadership his #1 cause right now, leaving AOC space to not be the asshole but be like "hey a lot of his fellow senators are upset, blah blah blah, so they are probably right that it is time for him to step aside" and/or just say positive stuff about whoever is poised to replace him as leader in a progressive direction (I don't know that such a person exists). Then primary him if she isn't going to be on the Presidential ticket in 2028.
This is the sort of strategizing I'd expect LibHorizons to be doing with DPB and other "progressives" but it's starting to seem more like they might not be as much of progressives/social dems as I thought.
No one called ThirdHorizons out on it, but of course none of the policies Harris gave lip service to would be anything more than rhetoric right now if she had won. So it's important to also remember that it's not as if Bernie/AOC type figures winning is in itself enough to accomplish much either.
There is going to be another budget fight within months. Schumer's gotta be gone by then or I think we can safely write off this latest round of controlled opposition from Bernie/AOC as another bit of sheepdogging.
Okay. This could be true and just as easily it could be not true, I have no way of judging any of this. I don't like to state things that I don't know to be correct so I usually stay away from these types of developments.
I don't really understand why you feel the need to insert DPB into this every few posts. He's just some guy.
Not sure exactly what you're referring to, but we could try to develop our understanding together toward one conclusion or the other, and it's sorta imperative that we do in the US. Which is why I mention DPB (and others) as a local example(s) of the sort of progressive Democrat voter(s) that would be critical in implementing any strategy like you're suggesting of non-reformist reforms implemented by politicians like Bernie and AOC.
Quite specifically, DPB has a senator coming up for re-election. We need to decide ASAP if he should be primaried as part of DPB's plan to primary Democrats that insufficiently oppose Trump. Meanwhile we can't even get voters like DPB to develop/adopt some sort of clear rubric under his own plan for assessing which Democrats clear the threshold for sufficiently opposing Trump.
This also serves to show that part of why you "don't know why" we would demand revolutionary politics is because you admittedly and totally understandably don't know these nuances of the realities of implementing non-reformist reforms through politicians like AOC and Bernie in the US.
But that's always going to happen. You will always get a majority of people who don't really invest themselves. Whether DPB is on one side or the other is very very irrelevant.
Presumably he and others are pretty invested when you read some of the lengths they go to arguing with right wingers.
What I'm slowly coming to grips with is just how disconnected people's willingness to spend years and tens of thousands of posts going back and forth with people over various ostensibly political things is from their actual investment in/commitment to political progress.
I'm increasingly realizing that they mostly use this space to gawk and mock at the shallowest levels. I'm not sure how much it's always been that way and how much is just me/my politics maturing. Either way I miss what felt like useful, informative, and interesting political postings and I'd like us to try to reinvigorate that a bit.
At the end of the day it's still the political thread of a gaming forum, the revolution is probably not going to start here. What we can do here is frame issues correctly, be reasonable, display that the left is factually correct in terms of how it analyzes society. It often won't matter, but some people will respond to it. I like to think that some people on this forum are to the left of where they would be if we hadn't posted, I think that's true. Some others aren't, and that's okay too.
On March 28 2025 23:16 GreenHorizons wrote: [quote] If I read that from most other posters that would be them saying they don't understand how supporting Clinton, Biden, etc could be detrimental to progress. Also I consider non-reformist reforms to be revolutionary politics.
Oh you do? I'm unclear on how this works then, because I don't think we've ever had a disagreement on Biden or Clinton, it's more like the AOC or Bernie types that we have disagreed about in the past.
Yup. I came to non-reformist reforms through exploring abolitionist politics.
Perhaps. I suppose the current iteration and relevant for discussing where we go from here is: what is the capacity for AOC and Bernie types to bring about these sorts of non-reformist reforms within the Democrat party structure and larger US political structure generally?
Feels to be practically none to me and that they'll continue to function much more as sheepdogs into supporting status quo lib politics with some moderate/regular reforms (which in turn enable fascism), especially when it gets a marginally better wrapper with someone like Harris over Biden.
Yeah it seems quite unlikely. I suppose we just look at whether there's a full on Schumer vs AOC fight at this point. There might be a thin line to walk there where she can obtain some more power without turning the media against her. But it's hard to talk about this confidently from the outside.
Bernie has nothing to lose by making taking Schumer out of leadership his #1 cause right now, leaving AOC space to not be the asshole but be like "hey a lot of his fellow senators are upset, blah blah blah, so they are probably right that it is time for him to step aside" and/or just say positive stuff about whoever is poised to replace him as leader in a progressive direction (I don't know that such a person exists). Then primary him if she isn't going to be on the Presidential ticket in 2028.
This is the sort of strategizing I'd expect LibHorizons to be doing with DPB and other "progressives" but it's starting to seem more like they might not be as much of progressives/social dems as I thought.
No one called ThirdHorizons out on it, but of course none of the policies Harris gave lip service to would be anything more than rhetoric right now if she had won. So it's important to also remember that it's not as if Bernie/AOC type figures winning is in itself enough to accomplish much either.
There is going to be another budget fight within months. Schumer's gotta be gone by then or I think we can safely write off this latest round of controlled opposition from Bernie/AOC as another bit of sheepdogging.
Okay. This could be true and just as easily it could be not true, I have no way of judging any of this. I don't like to state things that I don't know to be correct so I usually stay away from these types of developments.
I don't really understand why you feel the need to insert DPB into this every few posts. He's just some guy.
Not sure exactly what you're referring to, but we could try to develop our understanding together toward one conclusion or the other, and it's sorta imperative that we do in the US. Which is why I mention DPB (and others) as a local example(s) of the sort of progressive Democrat voter(s) that would be critical in implementing any strategy like you're suggesting of non-reformist reforms implemented by politicians like Bernie and AOC.
Quite specifically, DPB has a senator coming up for re-election. We need to decide ASAP if he should be primaried as part of DPB's plan to primary Democrats that insufficiently oppose Trump. Meanwhile we can't even get voters like DPB to develop/adopt some sort of clear rubric under his own plan for assessing which Democrats clear the threshold for sufficiently opposing Trump.
This also serves to show that part of why you "don't know why" we would demand revolutionary politics is because you admittedly and totally understandably don't know these nuances of the realities of implementing non-reformist reforms through politicians like AOC and Bernie in the US.
But that's always going to happen. You will always get a majority of people who don't really invest themselves. Whether DPB is on one side or the other is very very irrelevant.
Presumably he and others are pretty invested when you read some of the lengths they go to arguing with right wingers.
What I'm slowly coming to grips with is just how disconnected people's willingness to spend years and tens of thousands of posts going back and forth with people over various ostensibly political things is from their actual investment in/commitment to political progress.
I'm increasingly realizing that they mostly use this space to gawk and mock at the shallowest levels. I'm not sure how much it's always been that way and how much is just me/my politics maturing. Either way I miss what felt like useful, informative, and interesting political postings and I'd like us to try to reinvigorate that a bit.
This is just breathtakingly arrogant, and I’d indeed say ignorant.
Whatever you do, that’s productive and useful, whatever anyone else does is a pointless waste of time. So arguing with right wingers = pointless, spending months saying the Dems support genocide = good praxis
The sheer fucking hubris is unbelievable, and if the actual left needs anything it’s less of that.
It’s not helping, at all.
It’s fucking ridiculous, I almost entirely agree with your analysis and ideas but Jesus Christ you do a great job at alienating people
No, I do plenty of "time wasting" too. It's part of mentally recharging for most people.
"arguing with right wingers" is a bit too vague. But yeah, generally it's a waste of time and that's exactly the intention of the right winger (sometimes consciously, sometimes not).
Yes, opposing genocide and pointing out others that aren't is not even radical, unless Israel is doing the genociding.
As far as I can tell, nothing is helping, everyone here is pretty much just waiting for shit to hit the fan for us specifically/personally with no hope/plan beyond the General Strike I support, LibHorizon's plan, or the Third Way plan. None of which anyone here thinks are likely to happen or be successful if they do.
On March 29 2025 01:45 Acrofales wrote: Would you say Trump and the republicans are currently enacting some non-reformist reforms but instead of moving society/government from capitalism towards socialism, they're moving government from democracy to autocracy? Or would you not qualify those reforms as non-reformist?
I'm asking because I don't think wombat literally didn't know the meaning of something he could Google in 2 seconds, but rather wanted to know what *you* wanted from them? And yes, I know you have talked about this before. I have some idea of what type of non-reformist reforms you want. For the most part they'll start with things that are already commonplace: socialised healthcare, unemployment benefits, housing. A penal system more focused on rehabilitation than on punishment with prisons where the punishment is the removal of your freedom of movement, not a literal dungeon.
And obviously they don't end there. The Spanish government is enacting further non-reformist reforms as we speak to try to make our housing system work better for inhabitants rather than tourists. The tax system needs to be more progressive and social security more expansive. I am all aboard all of that. But in Spain about 50% of the people voted for socialist-leaning parties. In the US the support is nowhere near that. Maybe for some specific policies, but not if you tag it as socialist first. So I fully agree with Neb here: your country is a lost cause.
Well yes, I don’t think they’re desirous but I think you could fairly call the Trump era as it were ‘non-reformist reforms’ given they deviate from prior orthodoxy. + Show Spoiler +
And yeah, as a person who is myself a socialist the problem is how few, or many of my fellows who are otherwise floating around. In certain European countries you can maybe see that cohort being impactful but the US is another kettle of fish entirely.
Have to strongly disagree with this. Non-reformist reforms are not simply something that "deviates from prior orthodoxy". If I supported policies to turn the US into a Muslim theocracy I wouldn't be supporting non-reformist reforms. You have to intentionally bastardize the term beyond recognition to interpret it to describe what Trump is doing.
What does the term even mean? How does a Trump or a theocratic movement not fit the bill? I’m genuinely unsure here
On March 28 2025 02:03 Nebuchad wrote: So in this current moment with the journalist being added in the group chat of Hegseth, one very large issue that is worth pointing out is that because of their past choices liberals are going to have a hard time criticizing one of the largest issues in this group chat, which is that there is zero effort made to avoid civilian casualties. The chats go, we see him go into his girlfriend's appartment building, bomb that shit down, the building is down, excellent. If none of this was public there would be some pretense that efforts were made to avoid civilian casualties, but here we see clearly that nothing at all happened. That's a war crime obviously.
We could attack them for that, could we not? But we can't, because in their doomed quest of defending whatever Israel has done, the Democrats and the liberals have made it very clear that doing something like this is entirely okay with them. So now if they attack the Republicans for doing it, it would look massively hypocritical even to their own audience. And so we lose a very human angle of attack on the opposition.
You're absolutely right. Nevermind the whole aspect of Congress not being involved because of the 2001 AUMF.
IIRC one of our primary disagreements was basically whether the US was salvageable through electing the Democrat party and revolutionary politics were unnecessary. How you feeling about that nowadays?
I mean I probably don't think the US is salvageable either through the Democrats or revolutionary politics, so based on not having a ton of hope either way I'm not going to cut my options in half and demand that we do one or the other, that makes no sense to me.
I'd be curious what odds you'd give each or at least relative to each other including the US collapsing/becoming a nakedly fascist superpower?
I guess I'm also curious if you make a distinction between non-reformist reforms and "vote blue no matter who" type electoralism when you're portioning out your options there?
What do you mean by ‘non-reformist reforms’? Maybe this is obvious and I’m yet to fully awaken properly!
No offense, but this is one reason why I repeat things so many times.
Non-reformist reforms are basically reforms that move us toward socialism, rather than perpetuating capitalism.
So you asked for information on non-reformist reforms, apparently ignored it, proceeded to pull your own definition from your ass to assert that Trump was doing non-reformist reforms, and are now backtracking asking me to explain to you why you are wrong to believe Trump's or a Muslim theocracy's policies would fit the provided description of non-reformist reforms.
Is that what we all saw?
Well, there's two things that are inextricably linked in your mind, but not in wombat's or mine. The first is that non-reformist reforms are, and I quote Wikipedia:
a reform that "is conceived, not in terms of what is possible within the framework of a given system and administration, but in view of what should be made possible in terms of human needs and demands".
And the second is that those human needs and demands are inherently socialist. That's a fair assumption in this thread, but it isn't a universal truth. And just because non-reformist reforms have their origin in socialist thinking, doesn't mean there aren't other ideas of what should be made possible in terms of human needs and demands.
I'll concede that Trump moving the status quo from democracy to autocracy doesn't fit the bill, because the only needs and and demands that fulfills are his own. But wombat's example of a theocracy seems valid. Implementing reforms that move away from a secular and toward a theocratic society fit all the criteria. It is obviously not *your* needs and demands. But there seem to be plenty of humans applauding every move that further breaks the secular humanist status quo in favor of their (misogynistic, bigoted) interpretation of biblical rules.
Now, I obviously disagree with those reforms, but it seems plenty of people whose needs are ostensibly being met by socialist non-reformist reforms also disagree vehemently that those reforms are going in the right direction. The temporarily embarrassed millionaire is a common trope for a reason. Now we could start framing this in some philosophical debate on ethics, and we'd probably quite comfortably conclude that socialism is better at meeting peoples' needs than a theocracy in every conceivable way, but my religious friend would simply answer that that is only so because we only consider our mortal coils. Sparing even one soul an eternity of damnation is worth more than any toil in this life. And that debate has been going round and round in circles for far longer than either of us have been alive.
And there are no doubt other axes we could think of along which the needs and demands of humans could be better met by reforms that break the framework of a given system than by maintaining it.
As for your earlier question to me: I'm fully on board with partial and general strikes. Show the elite that their Amazon deliveries don't get delivered without people to deliver them (yet), that their Ubers don't drive themselves (yet) and that their Facebook likes and retweets don't mean shit if the grocery store isn't being resupplied. People need to go out and demand meaningful change. They need to demand a halt in the creeping fascism from their republican overlords, and support and effective opposition from their democratic enablers. And if your politicians disagree then replace them...
My fear isn't that general strikes and protests won't work. It's that there is no real support for it among the population. They'd rather Trump sticks it to Denmark than that the price of eggs really goes down.
And I also don't disagree that if the US is fucked, the world as we have known it for the last 70ish years is fucked. But I take a kwarkian approach to that: I'll do what I have to to survive that...
On March 29 2025 01:45 Acrofales wrote: Would you say Trump and the republicans are currently enacting some non-reformist reforms but instead of moving society/government from capitalism towards socialism, they're moving government from democracy to autocracy? Or would you not qualify those reforms as non-reformist?
I'm asking because I don't think wombat literally didn't know the meaning of something he could Google in 2 seconds, but rather wanted to know what *you* wanted from them? And yes, I know you have talked about this before. I have some idea of what type of non-reformist reforms you want. For the most part they'll start with things that are already commonplace: socialised healthcare, unemployment benefits, housing. A penal system more focused on rehabilitation than on punishment with prisons where the punishment is the removal of your freedom of movement, not a literal dungeon.
And obviously they don't end there. The Spanish government is enacting further non-reformist reforms as we speak to try to make our housing system work better for inhabitants rather than tourists. The tax system needs to be more progressive and social security more expansive. I am all aboard all of that. But in Spain about 50% of the people voted for socialist-leaning parties. In the US the support is nowhere near that. Maybe for some specific policies, but not if you tag it as socialist first. So I fully agree with Neb here: your country is a lost cause.
Well yes, I don’t think they’re desirous but I think you could fairly call the Trump era as it were ‘non-reformist reforms’ given they deviate from prior orthodoxy. + Show Spoiler +
And yeah, as a person who is myself a socialist the problem is how few, or many of my fellows who are otherwise floating around. In certain European countries you can maybe see that cohort being impactful but the US is another kettle of fish entirely.
Have to strongly disagree with this. Non-reformist reforms are not simply something that "deviates from prior orthodoxy". If I supported policies to turn the US into a Muslim theocracy I wouldn't be supporting non-reformist reforms. You have to intentionally bastardize the term beyond recognition to interpret it to describe what Trump is doing.
What does the term even mean? How does a Trump or a theocratic movement not fit the bill? I’m genuinely unsure here
On March 28 2025 02:03 Nebuchad wrote: So in this current moment with the journalist being added in the group chat of Hegseth, one very large issue that is worth pointing out is that because of their past choices liberals are going to have a hard time criticizing one of the largest issues in this group chat, which is that there is zero effort made to avoid civilian casualties. The chats go, we see him go into his girlfriend's appartment building, bomb that shit down, the building is down, excellent. If none of this was public there would be some pretense that efforts were made to avoid civilian casualties, but here we see clearly that nothing at all happened. That's a war crime obviously.
We could attack them for that, could we not? But we can't, because in their doomed quest of defending whatever Israel has done, the Democrats and the liberals have made it very clear that doing something like this is entirely okay with them. So now if they attack the Republicans for doing it, it would look massively hypocritical even to their own audience. And so we lose a very human angle of attack on the opposition.
You're absolutely right. Nevermind the whole aspect of Congress not being involved because of the 2001 AUMF.
IIRC one of our primary disagreements was basically whether the US was salvageable through electing the Democrat party and revolutionary politics were unnecessary. How you feeling about that nowadays?
I mean I probably don't think the US is salvageable either through the Democrats or revolutionary politics, so based on not having a ton of hope either way I'm not going to cut my options in half and demand that we do one or the other, that makes no sense to me.
I'd be curious what odds you'd give each or at least relative to each other including the US collapsing/becoming a nakedly fascist superpower?
I guess I'm also curious if you make a distinction between non-reformist reforms and "vote blue no matter who" type electoralism when you're portioning out your options there?
What do you mean by ‘non-reformist reforms’? Maybe this is obvious and I’m yet to fully awaken properly!
No offense, but this is one reason why I repeat things so many times.
Non-reformist reforms are basically reforms that move us toward socialism, rather than perpetuating capitalism.
So you asked for information on non-reformist reforms, apparently ignored it, proceeded to pull your own definition from your ass to assert that Trump was doing non-reformist reforms, and are now backtracking asking me to explain to you why you are wrong to believe Trump's or a Muslim theocracy's policies would fit the provided description of non-reformist reforms.
Well, there's two things that are inextricably linked in your mind, but not in wombat's or mine. The first is that non-reformist reforms are, and I quote Wikipedia:
a reform that "is conceived, not in terms of what is possible within the framework of a given system and administration, but in view of what should be made possible in terms of human needs and demands".
And the second is that those human needs and demands are inherently socialist. That's a fair assumption in this thread, but it isn't a universal truth. And just because non-reformist reforms have their origin in socialist thinking, doesn't mean there aren't other ideas of what should be made possible in terms of human needs and demands.
I'll concede that Trump moving the status quo from democracy to autocracy doesn't fit the bill, + Show Spoiler +
because the only needs and and demands that fulfills are his own. But wombat's example of a theocracy seems valid. Implementing reforms that move away from a secular and toward a theocratic society fit all the criteria. It is obviously not *your* needs and demands. But there seem to be plenty of humans applauding every move that further breaks the secular humanist status quo in favor of their (misogynistic, bigoted) interpretation of biblical rules.
Now, I obviously disagree with those reforms, but it seems plenty of people whose needs are ostensibly being met by socialist non-reformist reforms also disagree vehemently that those reforms are going in the right direction. The temporarily embarrassed millionaire is a common trope for a reason. Now we could start framing this in some philosophical debate on ethics, and we'd probably quite comfortably conclude that socialism is better at meeting peoples' needs than a theocracy in every conceivable way, but my religious friend would simply answer that that is only so because we only consider our mortal coils. Sparing even one soul an eternity of damnation is worth more than any toil in this life. And that debate has been going round and round in circles for far longer than either of us have been alive.
And there are no doubt other axes we could think of along which the needs and demands of humans could be better met by reforms that break the framework of a given system than by maintaining it.
As for your earlier question to me: I'm fully on board with partial and general strikes. Show the elite that their Amazon deliveries don't get delivered without people to deliver them (yet), that their Ubers don't drive themselves (yet) and that their Facebook likes and retweets don't mean shit if the grocery store isn't being resupplied. People need to go out and demand meaningful change. They need to demand a halt in the creeping fascism from their republican overlords, and support and effective opposition from their democratic enablers. And if your politicians disagree then replace them...
My fear isn't that general strikes and protests won't work. It's that there is no real support for it among the population. They'd rather Trump sticks it to Denmark than that the price of eggs really goes down.
And I also don't disagree that if the US is fucked, the world as we have known it for the last 70ish years is fucked. But I take a kwarkian approach to that: I'll do what I have to to survive that...
Part of what I've been emphasizing is that the lack of support (or even opposition) for doing anything (especially strikes and beyond) to halt the creeping fascism you describe, is from Democrats and their voters/supporters (here and beyond). Part of the reason is because ultimately they mostly imagine that they can keep throwing oppressed people (or trying to rage, shame, blame them into lying themselves) in front of the trolley until it gets close to time for them to be on the tracks.
Then when they've run out of oppressed people to sacrifice, they can take their "Kwarkian" escape route (fleeing/joining the fascists) to save themselves. This is doomed to fail anyway. That is the point of the Niemoller poem you guys seem to have completely missed.
That's all anyone's prerogative, it's just libs/Dems/ilk don't like being confronted by the stupidity/inhumanity of what they are doing/planning because it conflicts irreconcilably with their self-image. It's also a significant reason why they see no other option but to keep throwing oppressed people on the track with their fascist frenemies or running and hiding to save their own skins.
EDIT: Asinine arguments with right wingers is one place/way where/how they mentally repair their self-image from these confrontations.
On February 05 2025 08:54 Nebuchad wrote: 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.
The first special elections show indications that this analysis is correct. While I enjoy being right, I think it's important to be the bad person in this situation, we can't just let people enjoy things. It is a normal movement of the system that once someone like Trump is elected there is blowback in the other direction, it's not a sign that we're winning back the country it's just the standard thing that always happens happening again. If Dems cruise on that and elections do keep happening, the most likely scenario in my opinion is that they win 2028, and then some fascist wins 2032. I don't think we ought to be comfortable with that.
On February 05 2025 08:54 Nebuchad wrote: 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.
The first special elections show indications that this analysis is correct. While I enjoy being right, I think it's important to be the bad person in this situation, we can't just let people enjoy things. It is a normal movement of the system that once someone like Trump is elected there is blowback in the other direction, it's not a sign that we're winning back the country it's just the standard thing that always happens happening again. If Dems cruise on that and elections do keep happening, the most likely scenario in my opinion is that they win 2028, and then some fascist wins 2032. I don't think we ought to be comfortable with that.
The Democrats lost, but you're probably right afaict (for 2026 anyway).
The NYC mayoral race is a sort of microcosm of this. Cuomo is worse than doing nothing, while Mamdani would genuinely make NYC better, and it's exclusively/specifically Democrats relentlessly standing in the way of that progress to support a serial sexual offender with plenty of other problems.
There's not really a sensible way forward without understanding what's happening there and why.
I'm losing confidence that it's mostly a given that Democrats win in 2026 or 2028. They have a lot in their favor, but if Trump's tariffs don't actually crash the economy or his slashing workers doesn't implode the government by then, Democrats might lose even harder than they already have.
On April 09 2025 13:53 Nebuchad wrote: Economy will probably crash though, at least that's what my Bluesky is telling me I wouldn't know how it works (I have that in common with Trump).
It can crash a little, but after WWII a deliberate effort was made to interconnect the economies of the world in such a way that the destruction of a major one like the US would drag everyone down with it.
I don't know that the world can really let the US economy "crash" completely without global war ensuing. So it's kinda in everyone's interest to just do whatever it takes to get past Trump without that happening.
That said, Impervious made a reasonably convincing case China may be more willing than most to push it.
On April 09 2025 05:38 Biff The Understudy wrote: Ok, so, 104% tarif on everything Chinese, that’s gonna be popular. I don’t see Xi blinking either.
I have to say, I’m kind of happy that China calls Trump’s bs but I just can’t fathom what the economic consequences are going to be. This lunatic is going to plunge us into a 1929 style crisis.
China is a net exporter in this situation, and large and diverse enough where they are overall self-sufficient, so they realistically don't need to trade with the USA like we do in Canada.
They can provide everything they need for their population through internal production or existing trade with other nations. Yea, it'd hurt their industries and growth in the short term, but I think they'll be absolutely fine standing up to the USA, even in a protracted trade war. They also have the authoritarian government needed to actually go through with it..... The USA is a net importer, so they would struggle in the short term if trade was cut off or significantly costlier in this trade war. The USA will have an extremely difficult time replacing their trade with China with trade from other countries, especially with these global tariffs being levied on every country, and it would take years to ramp up domestic production to replace this trade reduction.
I think this is definitely going to hurt the average American more than the average Chinese citizen. Prices at something like Dollar Tree or Walmart are going to go up, which is really going to hurt the Americans who are already worse off. And I can't see Trump or the republican Congress and Senate do anything to help these people. And even if they do something, it wouldn't be enough, nor would it be quick enough. It'd lead to civil unrest far faster in the USA than in China. There isn't really an opposite lever that the USA has on China. China has the cards here.
Some of the key industries in the USA can't survive with a significant import of certain raw goods that the USA doesn't have, or can't develop in a short period of time. A number of industries would run into issues if a trade war lasts more than a few months and current stockpiles of those materials is depleted. This will have an impact on their military, as their military relies on some key materials that China is threatening to cut off. If they do, that will really hurt the USA. While there is definitely some key goods that the USA exports to China that would be difficult to replace, there isn't really a reciprocal situation that I've heard about that is anywhere near as severe, so this is another area where China is holding the cards.
I really think that this is going to hurt both countries in the long run, but China is going to come out of this as the winner. And given how intertwined Canada is with the USA, this is also going to indirectly hurt us too. Given how stubborn Trump is, I don't see him caving quickly, and at this point, I think Xi is probably fed up with Trump enough that he'll keep this up just to spite Trump.
On April 09 2025 16:06 Acrofales wrote: Anybody know what the rules are on indirect trade? Let's say a "new" mobile phone producer sets up shop in Mexico. They are really just Xiaomi, but repackaged in a slightly different case, and called Arrocito. Would these be subject to Chinese tariffs? Or Mexican tariffs?
There are other types of tariffs that would make them subject to Chinese tariffs, but currently they would be processed under the Mexican tariffs. It may not be as common as we think though
When tariffs are levied against a specific country, that country might attempt to circumvent the tariff by rerouting products through a third country to avoid the higher taxes. Research in the aftermath of the 2018 U.S.-China trade war examined this phenomenon, finding that, while tariff circumvention through Vietnam did happen, it wasn’t as widespread as many had initially thought. That said, there still was an increase in tariff circumvention more broadly, and specifically via Chinese-owned firms in Vietnam. The findings suggest that if a country is considering implementing tariffs, a better approach might involve ownership-based duties or firm-specific sanctions instead of blanket tariffs.
At 104% it'll probably be more appealing though. There are other ways around tariffs too. Not to mention the lack of infrastructure to actually assess and process all this.
EDIT: The US doesn't have comparable workarounds for getting the rare earths it depends on though.
But if China decides to further choke off its supply, the ripple effects could be extremely painful across many industries, says Lyle Trytten, a critical minerals expert. “The U.S. does not have the means to create the materials it needs to create the devices it survives on,” he says
On April 09 2025 13:53 Nebuchad wrote: Economy will probably crash though, at least that's what my Bluesky is telling me I wouldn't know how it works (I have that in common with Trump).
I guess we should sorta get an idea of what we would consider a "crash". sufficient to make 2026 mostly a given for Democrats (still looks tough for them in the Senate).
I'm thinking the Dow would have to go under 20k and/or the nasdaq/S&P 500 would need similar drops. What are you thinking?
On April 09 2025 13:53 Nebuchad wrote: Economy will probably crash though, at least that's what my Bluesky is telling me I wouldn't know how it works (I have that in common with Trump).
I guess we should sorta get an idea of what we would consider a "crash". sufficient to make 2026 mostly a given for Democrats (still looks tough for them in the Senate).
I'm thinking the Dow would have to go under 20k and/or the nasdaq/S&P 500 would need similar drops. What are you thinking?
I don't really care.
But obviously a crash is less likely now that most tariffs are paused and the bonds have gone down a bit. The odds of the US killing itself without hurting everyone else have slightly gone up.
On April 09 2025 13:53 Nebuchad wrote: Economy will probably crash though, at least that's what my Bluesky is telling me I wouldn't know how it works (I have that in common with Trump).
I guess we should sorta get an idea of what we would consider a "crash". sufficient to make 2026 mostly a given for Democrats (still looks tough for them in the Senate).
I'm thinking the Dow would have to go under 20k and/or the nasdaq/S&P 500 would need similar drops. What are you thinking?
I don't really care.
But obviously crashes are less likely now that most tariffs are paused and the bonds have gone down a bit. The odds of the US killing itself without hurting everyone else have slightly gone up.
Don't really care about what?
I wonder if he had decided on this before he "truthed" or whatever about it being a good time to buy?
On April 09 2025 13:53 Nebuchad wrote: Economy will probably crash though, at least that's what my Bluesky is telling me I wouldn't know how it works (I have that in common with Trump).
I guess we should sorta get an idea of what we would consider a "crash". sufficient to make 2026 mostly a given for Democrats (still looks tough for them in the Senate).
I'm thinking the Dow would have to go under 20k and/or the nasdaq/S&P 500 would need similar drops. What are you thinking?
I don't really care.
But obviously crashes are less likely now that most tariffs are paused and the bonds have gone down a bit. The odds of the US killing itself without hurting everyone else have slightly gone up.
Don't really care about what?
I wonder if he had decided on this before he "truthed" or whatever about it being a good time to buy?
About what amount of drop would constitute a crash or not ^^'
My best guess is that either someone finally managed to make him admit that the tariffs are impopular so he redirects them as a weapon against China to save face, or the guy who has a bunch invested in bonds and thought he'd make money on that shit himself because the yield was going up and got him to change course. I am annoyed that I have been forced to get a basic understanding of what all of these words mean.
On April 09 2025 13:53 Nebuchad wrote: Economy will probably crash though, at least that's what my Bluesky is telling me I wouldn't know how it works (I have that in common with Trump).
I guess we should sorta get an idea of what we would consider a "crash". sufficient to make 2026 mostly a given for Democrats (still looks tough for them in the Senate).
I'm thinking the Dow would have to go under 20k and/or the nasdaq/S&P 500 would need similar drops. What are you thinking?
I don't really care.
But obviously crashes are less likely now that most tariffs are paused and the bonds have gone down a bit. The odds of the US killing itself without hurting everyone else have slightly gone up.
Don't really care about what?
I wonder if he had decided on this before he "truthed" or whatever about it being a good time to buy?
About what amount of drop would constitute a crash or not ^^'
My best guess is that either someone finally managed to make him admit that the tariffs are impopular so he redirects them as a weapon against China to save face, or the guy who has a bunch invested in bonds and thought he'd make money on that shit himself because the yield was going up and got him to change course. I am annoyed that I have been forced to get a basic understanding of what all of these words mean.
lol. Yeah, I'm not even sure how the increase on China and keeping the 10% tariffs on everyone else works out on the math as far as the volume of trade impacted before and after the pause.
On April 09 2025 13:53 Nebuchad wrote: Economy will probably crash though, at least that's what my Bluesky is telling me I wouldn't know how it works (I have that in common with Trump).
I guess we should sorta get an idea of what we would consider a "crash". sufficient to make 2026 mostly a given for Democrats (still looks tough for them in the Senate).
I'm thinking the Dow would have to go under 20k and/or the nasdaq/S&P 500 would need similar drops. What are you thinking?
I don't really care.
But obviously crashes are less likely now that most tariffs are paused and the bonds have gone down a bit. The odds of the US killing itself without hurting everyone else have slightly gone up.
Don't really care about what?
I wonder if he had decided on this before he "truthed" or whatever about it being a good time to buy?
About what amount of drop would constitute a crash or not ^^'
My best guess is that either someone finally managed to make him admit that the tariffs are impopular so he redirects them as a weapon against China to save face, or the guy who has a bunch invested in bonds and thought he'd make money on that shit himself because the yield was going up and got him to change course. I am annoyed that I have been forced to get a basic understanding of what all of these words mean.
lol. Yeah, I'm not even sure how the increase on China and keeping the 10% tariffs on everyone else works out on the math as far as the volume of trade impacted before and after the pause.
On-topic: do you think a fascist making a total ballsup of the country is a useful recruiting tool? Do you feel people in your surroundings are more open to ideas of socialism now that Trump is fucking everything up? Or are they just defensive and wishing things go back to "normal"?
At this point I'm still convinced that the Dems easily sweep the next elections fwiw. They have the built-in advantage of being the opposition party in the system and Trump is doing and saying a bunch of very silly things that make him lose popularity (of course he's also doing evil things but no one cares as we know). On top of that, he plays with people's money and everything I know about politics tells me that's a huge mistake. Even Jimmy took a pause from owning the libs when he realized that he might only be able to afford to rent the libs.
On April 09 2025 13:53 Nebuchad wrote: Economy will probably crash though, at least that's what my Bluesky is telling me I wouldn't know how it works (I have that in common with Trump).
I guess we should sorta get an idea of what we would consider a "crash". sufficient to make 2026 mostly a given for Democrats (still looks tough for them in the Senate).
I'm thinking the Dow would have to go under 20k and/or the nasdaq/S&P 500 would need similar drops. What are you thinking?
I don't really care.
But obviously crashes are less likely now that most tariffs are paused and the bonds have gone down a bit. The odds of the US killing itself without hurting everyone else have slightly gone up.
Don't really care about what?
I wonder if he had decided on this before he "truthed" or whatever about it being a good time to buy?
About what amount of drop would constitute a crash or not ^^'
My best guess is that either someone finally managed to make him admit that the tariffs are impopular so he redirects them as a weapon against China to save face, or the guy who has a bunch invested in bonds and thought he'd make money on that shit himself because the yield was going up and got him to change course. I am annoyed that I have been forced to get a basic understanding of what all of these words mean.
lol. Yeah, I'm not even sure how the increase on China and keeping the 10% tariffs on everyone else works out on the math as far as the volume of trade impacted before and after the pause.
On-topic: do you think a fascist making a total ballsup of the country is a useful recruiting tool? Do you feel people in your surroundings are more open to ideas of socialism now that Trump is fucking everything up? Or are they just defensive and wishing things go back to "normal"?
Both. The Democrat meetings I've been to have devolved into a sputtering mess. The DSA meetings are looking slightly better, as organizing various things gets easier when the weather isn't so bad. The random people I start conversations with when I'm out and about are very much wanting things to stay/return to normal.
I interact with a lot of frontline workers and that's where I'd say I've seen the most noticeable uptick in interest, but it's modest at best.
I've tried a lot of different things, and I've seen exponentially more things tried, I am at a loss for how to get people to behave in proportion to the severity of what we're witnessing.
I recently realized that the Maryland man that the Trump admin kidnapped and locked in a foreign prison was only discovered to be there by his wife/family as a result of catching a glimpse of him in some of the propaganda released bragging about kidnapping/imprisoning people.
If that was the only thing Trump had done I would think we needed to be in the streets and there would be no shortage of people to join me. The reality is that the people that would can't afford to and the people that can afford to don't bother. The handful of the people that can afford to that bother to show up do it for these 50501 protests where they are aggressively opposed to being disruptive/impactful. (EDIT: I should say that there are/have been a spattering of more radical actions, but we need so much more.)
On September 26 2021 06:39 Belisarius wrote: All of which is why the voting rights bill was so important. If the US is a full neofascist state in 12 years time with a 43% R popular vote, I think this year will go down as the last chance you had to hit the brakes.
Gerrymandering is just so unbelievably poisonous to democracy. To stop it, you have to overtake it. Biden came alongside, but then he chickened out and let two random senators decide the trajectory of the next 20 years.
The R's now seem free to accelerate into the distance, limited only by the sheer incompetence of the candidates they're cheating into office.
Does a voting rights bill fix it? The nature of US politics is that Republicans will inevitably be back in power sooner or later, and so far they don’t seem to face any penalty in public opinion to openly despising rule of law and aspiring to violent takeovers. Gerrymandering is fucked but it’s a pretty slow way to seize power compared to, you know, just doing it.
I mean, GH pointed out that “we need the Republican Party actually” is ridiculous for a Democrat to think. Which seems right to me. Nothing about the modern Republican Party seems capable of becoming compatible with democracy, let alone interested in doing so, and the public seems apathetic at best.
Gorsameth pointed out we need two parties in our system, which seems right to me too. What disturbs me is that “the Republican Party is irredeemable and cannot realistically be reformed or replaced” and “our system cannot function without 2 parties” aren’t incompatible statements, but the implication of both being true is catastrophic.
It feels like we’re all doing the math on our current velocity toward the cliff and distance from it and maximum braking force, but the math isn’t actually very hard. We just keep recalculating because the result we keep getting is unfathomable.
Which got updated a bit later with something else I've been thinking about even more:
If your math is coming out differently I’d love if you’d show your work.
EDIT: I'd rather there not be a fascist speedrunning us toward WW3 though if that wasn't obvious.
On April 10 2025 03:09 Nebuchad wrote: At this point I'm still convinced that the Dems easily sweep the next elections fwiw. They have the built-in advantage of being the opposition party in the system and Trump is doing and saying a bunch of very silly things that make him lose popularity (of course he's also doing evil things but no one cares as we know). On top of that, he plays with people's money and everything I know about politics tells me that's a huge mistake. Even Jimmy took a pause from owning the libs when he realized that he might only be able to afford to rent the libs.
The main reason I can hold out hope is that Trump isn't actually on the ballot in 2026. You're right about the advantages, but they also had many of those/others going into 2024. As we know though, Democrats winning is just all of us losing in a different way.
So, one thing that I'd like to address is how to balance the equation of elevating the lowest common denominators, basically people who've been hit by the bad circumstance stick and how much we should let people hit with the opposite run free and do their thing. I think the very nature of genetic variability creates a non-equal set up and trying to correct for that might be stifling for many people to the point where the system will be broken or worked around. You'll get bad actors as well, just like with the our current capitalist system. So how do you balance these, to me at least, seemingly incompatible - or at least difficult to align - ideas?
On April 23 2025 22:36 Uldridge wrote: So, one thing that I'd like to address is how to balance the equation of elevating the lowest common denominators, basically people who've been hit by the bad circumstance stick and how much we should let people hit with the opposite run free and do their thing. I think the very nature of genetic variability creates a non-equal set up and trying to correct for that might be stifling for many people to the point where the system will be broken or worked around. You'll get bad actors as well, just like with the our current capitalist system. So how do you balance these, to me at least, seemingly incompatible - or at least difficult to align - ideas?
As a socialist, what would you suggest/like to do about them?
I don't really know. There's tendency for people to form hierarchies. There's also tendencies for people to lead and other to take less responsibility. Not everyone wants to bare the same burden. Some people get extremely stressed if they have to take on too much responsibility for them to handle.
I think these are fine as long as the people that make decisions in systems aren't necessarily driven to be compensated more than others. You don't get there easily, because humans are very comparing and as soon as the "but I did more than him" idea seeps in you're screwed. But then you also have the fact that they might get favors (i.e. idol forming), like preferential treatment, or who knows what. How far do you go in a model where everyone part of a system is equal owner? Do you let that slide? Do you let these advantages build (creep) up? Do you beat these down? Having a decentralized idea of progression is very difficult to tackle. Let's say we try to digitally innovate our factory and someone has a very innovative idea, but people are against it because it disrupts their workflow. How do you solve for this? At the moment I don't see the checks and balances being made to fix this problem. So things the only way forward will be very very slowly, or not at all. Or am I missing something?
On April 23 2025 23:00 Uldridge wrote: I don't really know. There's tendency for people to form hierarchies. There's also tendencies for people to lead and other to take less responsibility. Not everyone wants to bare the same burden. Some people get extremely stressed if they have to take on too much responsibility for them to handle.
I think these are fine as long as the people that make decisions in systems aren't necessarily driven to be compensated more than others. You don't get there easily, because humans are very comparing and as soon as the "but I did more than him" idea seeps in you're screwed. But then you also have the fact that they might get favors (i.e. idol forming), like preferential treatment, or who knows what. How far do you go in a model where everyone part of a system is equal owner? Do you let that slide? Do you let these advantages build (creep) up? Do you beat these down? Having a decentralized idea of progression is very difficult to tackle. Let's say we try to digitally innovate our factory and someone has a very innovative idea, but people are against it because it disrupts their workflow. How do you solve for this? At the moment I don't see the checks and balances being made to fix this problem. So things the only way forward will be very very slowly, or not at all. Or am I missing something?
You touched on one of Neb's prefered vectors, so I suspect he'll have more to say, but I would start with this:
Musk and Trump help us take notice that the status quo of capitalism is failing pretty catastrophically in this department, correct?
I'm aware the current system is just revamped feudalism, yes. If you're suggesting we need a different system, I'm all for it because I do not like it at all so you don't need to convince me.
But you're not addressing the central theme that I'm positing humans have tendencies to create Musks and Trumps and Tailor Swifts and Hasans and Michael Schumachers and whatever. Somehow we can't help ourselves. We could argue this is a vice of the oppressed, wanting so badly to be part of the oppressor class, but maybe it's deeper than that. I don't know.
Let's start from a different framework. Suppose you have an egalitarian system. There are no oppressors. Can you think of a case where under such a system the dynamic of oppressor<->oppressed starts to take place? If so, what do you do about that? Let's think one level deeper about the oppressor<->oppressed system; what is underlying reason for this to exist? What human expression, desire, ambition causes this to surface? You don't just start with a "this is the king" situation, you arrive there somehow, yes?
On April 23 2025 23:37 Uldridge wrote: I'm aware the current system is just revamped feudalism, yes. If you're suggesting we need a different system, I'm all for it + Show Spoiler +
because I do not like it at all so you don't need to convince me.
Presumably it's socialism.
But you're not addressing the central theme that I'm positing humans have tendencies to create Musks and Trumps and Tailor Swifts and Hasans and Michael Schumachers and whatever. Somehow we can't help ourselves. We could argue this is a vice of the oppressed, wanting so badly to be part of the oppressor class, but maybe it's deeper than that. I don't know.+ Show Spoiler +
Let's start from a different framework. Suppose you have an egalitarian system. There are no oppressors. Can you think of a case where under such a system the dynamic of oppressor<->oppressed starts to take place? If so, what do you do about that? Let's think one level deeper about the oppressor<->oppressed system; what is underlying reason for this to exist? What human expression, desire, ambition causes this to surface? You don't just start with a "this is the king" situation, you arrive there somehow, yes?
This phenomena comes up frequently in socialist works. I've discussed this before and political education is critical. Not just so people do what we have learned are best practices, but to recognize when and how to hold each other accountable, as well as remedy the damages caused when we fall short.
this is the video that's missing with the particularly relevant part starting at ~2:55
I've since read more Fanon and think it's a good recommendation, but I could certainly appreciate complaints about it being a bit more inaccessible than Freire or Memmi's "The Colonizer and the Colonized".
Generally speaking, socialism doesn't make every problem humans face go away, it provides us a better foundation from which to build towards better remediation than capitalism.
While I'm generally uninterested in these 'but what about human nature' style discussions, I would say a lot of it has to do with outdated evolutionary responses to times of prolonged scarcity and fleeting abundance. Like other behaviors (violence for example), we'll have to learn how to resist some impulses, hold people that don't accountable, and remedy the damage caused when people fail to do either/both.
I'd say yes to curbing outdated human impulses as much possible in favor of, except when it's resulting for some individuals in extreme stress. You can't just "tuck away" human genetic variation and personalities to obtain an ideal situation, but that's something that goes for every system. However, I'd say it's more of a pitfall for an "equality for all" system than a "free for all" system.
On April 23 2025 23:00 Uldridge wrote: I don't really know. There's tendency for people to form hierarchies.
I think that's maybe something we can work on, at least that's an avenue that I'm interested in. It has always seemed pretty easy for me to argue that social hierarchies, just about everyone of them really, are detrimental to humans. We see countless examples in our real lives, from things that impact entire countries or the whole world, to things that impact individuals and companies. So there's a teaching process that can happen there I imagine, in which we make a clear distinction between a social hierarchy and expertise, or a social hierarchy and authority. In the same way that the concept of empathy classes that is IIRC in Denmark is interesting, I believe this is interesting too.
On April 23 2025 23:37 Uldridge wrote: I'm aware the current system is just revamped feudalism, yes. If you're suggesting we need a different system, I'm all for it + Show Spoiler +
because I do not like it at all so you don't need to convince me.
Presumably it's socialism.
But you're not addressing the central theme that I'm positing humans have tendencies to create Musks and Trumps and Tailor Swifts and Hasans and Michael Schumachers and whatever. Somehow we can't help ourselves. We could argue this is a vice of the oppressed, wanting so badly to be part of the oppressor class, but maybe it's deeper than that. I don't know.+ Show Spoiler +
Let's start from a different framework. Suppose you have an egalitarian system. There are no oppressors. Can you think of a case where under such a system the dynamic of oppressor<->oppressed starts to take place? If so, what do you do about that? Let's think one level deeper about the oppressor<->oppressed system; what is underlying reason for this to exist? What human expression, desire, ambition causes this to surface? You don't just start with a "this is the king" situation, you arrive there somehow, yes?
This phenomena comes up frequently in socialist works. I've discussed this before and political education is critical. Not just so people do what we have learned are best practices, but to recognize when and how to hold each other accountable, as well as remedy the damages caused when we fall short.
I've since read more Fanon and think it's a good recommendation, but I could certainly appreciate complaints about it being a bit more inaccessible than Freire or Memmi's "The Colonizer and the Colonized".
Generally speaking, socialism doesn't make every problem humans face go away, it provides us a better foundation from which to build towards better remediation than capitalism.
While I'm generally uninterested in these 'but what about human nature' style discussions, I would say a lot of it has to do with outdated evolutionary responses to times of prolonged scarcity and fleeting abundance. Like other behaviors (violence for example), we'll have to learn how to resist some impulses, hold people that don't accountable, and remedy the damage caused when people fail to do either/both.
I'd say yes to curbing outdated human impulses as much possible in favor of, except when it's resulting for some individuals in extreme stress. You can't just "tuck away" human genetic variation and personalities to obtain an ideal situation, but that's something that goes for every system. However, I'd say it's more of a pitfall for an "equality for all" system than a "free for all" system.
I'll check the vid out, thanks.
That's part of why I started with Musk and Trump, they are plenty of a problem in a "free for all" system. Possibly big enough to break it for everyone permanently.
The US is supposed to be an "equity for all" system btw. That's what the "with liberty and justice for all" in the pledge is supposed to reference, but Trump and Musk are demonstrating are bullshit.
On April 24 2025 02:53 Nebuchad wrote: I think that's maybe something we can work on, at least that's an avenue that I'm interested in. It has always seemed pretty easy for me to argue that social hierarchies, just about everyone of them really, are detrimental to humans. We see countless examples in our real lives, from things that impact entire countries or the whole world, to things that impact individuals and companies. So there's a teaching process that can happen there I imagine, in which we make a clear distinction between a social hierarchy and expertise, or a social hierarchy and authority. In the same way that the concept of empathy classes that is IIRC in Denmark is interesting, I believe this is interesting too.
Empathy is a very weird thing. I'm not sure it can be taught necessarily. One can be made aware of it, but it can just as well be used as a weapon. I think it's very difficult to organize people when there isn't people pulling other people along to start doing things. I think it's very difficult to engage everyone as meaningfully as they "should be".
You say you think social hierarchies are detrimental, why is that? Because there's winners and losers in this way? If the top of the pyramid is always accountable and isn't sectioned off of the base of the pyramid, it might just be the most beneficial thing there is.
My base claim is basically the following: having people find their own purpose/responsibilities is very difficult in larger communities starting from a few thousand people onwards. There's just too many things to account for as an individual so where do you draw the line? Small communities tend to be socialist in nature because it's self evident. Everyone is accountable for everyone. We could argue to fraction larger communities in subcommunities but this might tribalize things. The socialist model might just be too empathic for globally organized systems, but I'd like to see the arguments for why it's not.
On April 24 2025 03:25 GreenHorizons wrote: That's part of why I started with Musk and Trump, they are plenty of a problem in a "free for all" system. Possibly big enough to break it for everyone permanently.
The US is supposed to be an "equity for all" system btw. That's what the "with liberty and justice for all" in the pledge is supposed to reference, but Trump and Musk are demonstrating are bullshit.
It's quite clear that words and actions clearly do not align here. You don't need to show the most recent examples of the system being broken (again) that the "equity for all" clearly isn't true.
I tend to agree that, to put it crudely our societies are ‘too big’, too atomised for some of those mechanisms to function properly.
Or perhaps, too small.
For some folks, their meaningful, small-scale connection on the regular may be their nuclear family unit, work colleagues, and then effectively nothing, then a big, abstract jump up to nation states with millions of inhabitants and connections formed through things like media.
Socialism doesn’t necessarily have to crack the code to perfection here, merely do a better job than what we have currently.
I haven’t slept in 48 hours because my incredibly incompetent busy GP fucked up my medication for the umpteenth time, despite umpteenth complaints I literally can’t sleep if they drop the balls so I’m having issues articulating it, I can sorta see it in my brain.
Rather than a kind of linear set of relations often predicated on power as you scale up, instead you have clusters of communities, or workers more intimately tethered together and feeding upwards into some conception of a greater national (or international) ‘good’ as it were.
Yeah you’ll still have natural hierarchies emerge within constituent parts, but they’ll be more intimate in natures and subject to a more multifaceted form of scrutiny. The borough feeds into the city, feeds into the region, etc etc.
It’s certainly trickier to model and conceptualise, and I’ve likely done a sterling awful job of outlining how I see it, but equally I’ll just abuse for the thousandth time employ that Rawlsian ‘Veil of Ignorance’, or break things down to base principles and consider what the alternative/current status quo is.
GPs being overworked making mistakes is also a sign of the system falling apart. Can you calculate the dosage yourself? Maybe find a competent pharmacist who can do it for you? Hope you find some sleep soon!
On April 24 2025 02:53 Nebuchad wrote: I think that's maybe something we can work on, at least that's an avenue that I'm interested in. It has always seemed pretty easy for me to argue that social hierarchies, just about everyone of them really, are detrimental to humans. We see countless examples in our real lives, from things that impact entire countries or the whole world, to things that impact individuals and companies. So there's a teaching process that can happen there I imagine, in which we make a clear distinction between a social hierarchy and expertise, or a social hierarchy and authority. In the same way that the concept of empathy classes that is IIRC in Denmark is interesting, I believe this is interesting too.
Empathy is a very weird thing. I'm not sure it can be taught necessarily. One can be made aware of it, but it can just as well be used as a weapon. I think it's very difficult to organize people when there isn't people pulling other people along to start doing things. I think it's very difficult to engage everyone as meaningfully as they "should be".
You say you think social hierarchies are detrimental, why is that? Because there's winners and losers in this way? If the top of the pyramid is always accountable and isn't sectioned off of the base of the pyramid, it might just be the most beneficial thing there is.
My base claim is basically the following: having people find their own purpose/responsibilities is very difficult in larger communities starting from a few thousand people onwards. There's just too many things to account for as an individual so where do you draw the line? Small communities tend to be socialist in nature because it's self evident. Everyone is accountable for everyone. We could argue to fraction larger communities in subcommunities but this might tribalize things. The socialist model might just be too empathic for globally organized systems, but I'd like to see the arguments for why it's not.
On April 24 2025 03:25 GreenHorizons wrote: That's part of why I started with Musk and Trump, they are plenty of a problem in a "free for all" system. Possibly big enough to break it for everyone permanently.
The US is supposed to be an "equity for all" system btw. That's what the "with liberty and justice for all" in the pledge is supposed to reference, but Trump and Musk are demonstrating are bullshit.
It's quite clear that words and actions clearly do not align here. You don't need to show the most recent examples of the system being broken (again) that the "equity for all" clearly isn't true.
One reason for pointing out the contradictions with Musk and Trump is to reiterate that we don't need socialism to be perfect. In fact, we know it won't be, it will have to be updated based on new information as time goes on.
As to your base claim, aren't people currently supposed to be "finding their own purpose/responsibilities" in an ostensibly free society?
So we're starting from society already botching this task of ostensibly free people freely choosing their purpose/responsibilities and subversively replacing that with whatever you think we have now. What makes that subversive replacement for the lie of "free people, choosing freely", better than socialism at this task in your opinion?
On April 24 2025 22:11 Uldridge wrote: You say you think social hierarchies are detrimental, why is that? Because there's winners and losers in this way? If the top of the pyramid is always accountable and isn't sectioned off of the base of the pyramid, it might just be the most beneficial thing there is.
I just can't think of any example where that is the case, really. The standard mechanism appears to be that it creates a separation between the people on top and the people on the bottom, and then the people on top have a tendency to work not to benefit our society, but to maintain their position on top of the societal model, sometimes for added reasons but as a general rule mainly because of the benefits that they gain from being on top of the system.
Throughout history it seems to me that we can draw very clear parallels between social hierarchies becoming less rigid and things improving for humans, and social hierarchies becoming more rigid and things getting worse for humans. I'm sure you can think of examples yourself so I'm only writing this to be academic, lives saved by the end of slavery, lives saved by the legalization of abortion, conditions improved when monarchies are replaced by democracies and conditions worsened when dictators get in power.
We can also see that it works as an explanation mechanically, because the way the privilege of being on top is shown is mainly by denying something to some humans. It's not that you can do something, it's that others don't get to do it, and you get to. How could those mechanics possibly not be detrimental to the other humans in question?
It just feels intuitive and quite simple to argue that social hierarchies are bad for humans, and honestly I just think it's true, like it's a factual claim about reality, I don't think it's my opinion. Usually when I get a rightwinger on this topic they're not arguing against that claim, the main thing that they counter is that forming social hierarchies is human nature and we can't live without them.
On April 24 2025 23:52 GreenHorizons wrote: One reason for pointing out the contradictions with Musk and Trump is to reiterate that we don't need socialism to be perfect. In fact, we know it won't be, it will have to be updated based on new information as time goes on.
As to your base claim, aren't people currently supposed to be "finding their own purpose/responsibilities" in an ostensibly free society?
So we're starting from society already botching this task of ostensibly free people freely choosing their purpose/responsibilities and subversively replacing that with whatever you think we have now. What makes that subversive replacement for the lie of "free people, choosing freely", better than socialism at this task in your opinion?
I'm not claiming it's better, I'm even agreeing it's worse. I also don't believe we need it to be perfect from the get go. My current understanding, as is yours but feel free to correct me, is that we currently live in some kind of neo feudalism where capitalism somehow paved the way for this new elite ultra rich (it has never gone away and was just revamped for their benefit), but people claim all sorts of smooth talking point for these ultra wealthy (which, by my standards is already when you have 1 million $$ plus by the way, but that's a fuzzy and arbitrary cutoff as I'm sure one could make a cost benefit analysis of everyday life to see what is needed to make one's life more than comfortable enough in today's standards) that living standards have improved immensly and one has never been more free when looking back. Meanwhile I'm sitting here, yes, fully employed (so, secure), but having to pay off a loan to a bank because I wanted a house with a garden for my kids and wife and I have to take care of my kids and I have to keep up with all these demands from work and school and yadda yadda yadda I can barely keep up. I don't feel especially trapped and I'm not especially high class, but I do have a house. But things are limited, especially when compared to those who have multiple millions and can basically live lavishly and whatever, but do I actually want that? Not necessarily. I want to be able to, without a smidge of uncertaintly, be able to live securely, work on something that matters, feed and raise my children and all that jazz. I'm managing mostly, but I just hope I can keep it alll up. And there are many people who are in a worse position and I hope we find ways to elevate them to at least positions of relative security. I kind of got stuck on a tangent here, sorry about that.
So what am I actually claiming here (to get back on topic)? I think socialism has one very strong advantage and that's shared responsibility creates purpose. If you're going for the same end goal, then you find meaning in just that. That's why religion is so powerful to so many people, it's a shared experience. It also strengthens one of our fundamentals as humans: being social. Modern society has never been more alienating due to its segmenting in part caused by the internet (but also globalisation and ease of travel). I think "freedom" is a hoax, a carrot held in front of ordinary people, perhaps even the ultra rich. A shared delusion which can never be fulfilled because it's a Nirvana. People are never free. They always have some responsibility or vice or one thing or another they're tied to. The lie was that we could choose what we wanted to be all along, when in reality it doesn't really matter. Tinderfying society was a mistake.
On April 25 2025 00:37 Nebuchad wrote: I just can't think of any example where that is the case, really. The standard mechanism appears to be that it creates a separation between the people on top and the people on the bottom, and then the people on top have a tendency to work not to benefit our society, but to maintain their position on top of the societal model, sometimes for added reasons but as a general rule mainly because of the benefits that they gain from being on top of the system.
Throughout history it seems to me that we can draw very clear parallels between social hierarchies becoming less rigid and things improving for humans, and social hierarchies becoming more rigid and things getting worse for humans. I'm sure you can think of examples yourself so I'm only writing this to be academic, lives saved by the end of slavery, lives saved by the legalization of abortion, conditions improved when monarchies are replaced by democracies and conditions worsened when dictators get in power.
We can also see that it works as an explanation mechanically, because the way the privilege of being on top is shown is mainly by denying something to some humans. It's not that you can do something, it's that others don't get to do it, and you get to. How could those mechanics possibly not be detrimental to the other humans in question?
It just feels intuitive and quite simple to argue that social hierarchies are bad for humans, and honestly I just think it's true, like it's a factual claim about reality, I don't think it's my opinion. Usually when I get a rightwinger on this topic they're not arguing against that claim, the main thing that they counter is that forming social hierarchies is human nature and we can't live without them.
I don't have any examples, but perhaps for small villages where the elder/leader needs to make good decisions on behalf of the village or they get ousted/forced to step down. It's a direct accountability we desperately need in modern democracies.
On April 25 2025 01:29 Uldridge wrote: I don't have any examples, but perhaps for small villages where the elder/leader needs to make good decisions on behalf of the village or they get ousted/forced to step down. It's a direct accountability we desperately need in modern democracies.
Okay sure but that's not really a hierarchy then is it? Or at least it's a very soft one. The power primarily lies in the people, and the elder is working for them. If we're doing a market socialism, something similar would happen for larger companies, they would elect a manager and then if he doesn't make good decisions on behalf of the company he could be replaced in the next election.
The risk is then you create a managerial class and they agree with each other to offer more or less the same stuff rather than to fight each other for the spot, as happened for "left" and "right" politicians in a lot of social democracies. That's something companies would have to fight against, probably a union would still be necessary for large companies even with the democracy in place. Either way, surely it can't be as bad as getting to the stage of Musk and friends.
I'm finding it really hard to have this discussion to order my thoughts in some structured layout. Would very much enjoy some more free form talk on something like discord. Do we have a discord?
On April 24 2025 22:49 Uldridge wrote: GPs being overworked making mistakes is also a sign of the system falling apart. Can you calculate the dosage yourself? Maybe find a competent pharmacist who can do it for you? Hope you find some sleep soon!
I’m all for worker solidarity with the very, very specific exception of the receptionists at my GP. I’ve had nothing but acceptable thru good experiences with every other facet of the NHS I’ve ever dealt with, and that’s been quite a few. To the gulag I say!
Introvert => "Don't forget the guy that firebombed the Governor's mansion in Pennsylvania. Or the Palm Springs bomber. And the congressional shooter. That post is a perfect distillation. Left-wing political violence is a hoax and when it isn't it's justified. See also: radical students who "disrupt" campuses. The left has absolutely no room to complain about anything, Jan 6 included. They don't object to violence at all."
We're touching on one the main fictions of liberalism here, which is that political violence is bad. This is realistically speaking an impossible opinion, every societal model ever has included some violence, what people do is they define out of the word "violence" the violence that they are comfortable with and then they conclude that "violence" is bad. Taking someone's liberty is a violent act, doing so because the guy has committed a murder is also a violent act, just one that we've decided is fine. Evicting someone because they can't pay rent is violent. And so on.
The reason why far right violence is bad isn't because it's violent, it's because it's far right. Violence against fascists is also violent, but fighting against fascism is healthy and good for society, and therefore that violence is fine. Having that opinion is a sign that you understand politics, not a sign that you "lose credibility" because you're "hypocritical" or whatever conservatives tell themselves.
On May 26 2025 21:19 Nebuchad wrote: Introvert => "Don't forget the guy that firebombed the Governor's mansion in Pennsylvania. Or the Palm Springs bomber. And the congressional shooter. That post is a perfect distillation. Left-wing political violence is a hoax and when it isn't it's justified. See also: radical students who "disrupt" campuses. The left has absolutely no room to complain about anything, Jan 6 included. They don't object to violence at all."
We're touching on one the main fictions of liberalism here, which is that political violence is bad. This is realistically speaking an impossible opinion, every societal model ever has included some violence, what people do is they define out of the world "violence" the violence that they are comfortable with and then they conclude that "violence" is bad. Taking someone's liberty is a violent act, doing so because the guy has committed a murder is also a violent act, just one that we've decided is fine. Evicting someone because they can't pay rent is violent. And so on.
The reason why far right violence is bad isn't because it's violent, it's because it's far right. Violence against fascists is also violent, but fighting against fascism is healthy and good for society, and therefore that violence is fine. Having that opinion is a sign that you understand politics, not a sign that you "lose credibility" because you're "hypocritical" or whatever conservatives tell themselves.
You can’t be a hypocrite for a view you don’t hold. Tends to be a problem I find quite consistently :p Bit irksome but ah well
I think a problem with the liberal thru conservative worldview is a sense that things are static, that we’ve collectively ‘cracked it’ as it were in terms of societal structures. Even though many such structures were informed by it, or at least the threat of violence. And a seeming belief in inalienable progress, or at least stasis. If one holds the view that structures that maintain the peace have to function properly, or violence ends up back on the table, it’s not advocacy for violence it’s an acknowledgment of why and how our societies were formed.
We’ve thousands of years of history to look at, progress and stability ebbs and flows, and indeed can go backwards. It’s presumptuous in the extreme to just assume that our current epoch is immune.
It’s not as if the majority of people are rigidly pacifistic either, far from it. Respect to those who live it but it’s a tiny, tiny minority.
Most people are OK with it, thresholds of acceptability will be the divergence, and fair enough. But just don’t clutch your pearls and make out otherwise.
I mean Osama Bin Laden was a bit of a megacunt to put it lightly, you had street parties when he snuffed it. Clearly it’s fine for most sensibilities, sometimes. But there’s an argument that it wasn’t Seal Team 6, but Luigi Mangione who killed a person responsible for more premature American deaths. Not necessarily one that folks have to agree with, but if you hold some kind of adjacent view, it’s celebrated on a similar framework.
Ultimately people would much, much rather people weren’t dying unnecessarily to maximise shareholder value and renumeration packages than having vigilantes gunning down CEOs.
One thing I'll never understand is how you can watch the american electorate so disatisfied with their governance that they keep voting for the party that isn't in power every chance they get and conclude "Americans are a rightwing country, they like this kind of governance".
On June 17 2025 20:55 Nebuchad wrote: One thing I'll never understand is how you can watch the american electorate so disatisfied with their governance that they keep voting for the party that isn't in power every chance they get and conclude "Americans are a rightwing country, they like this kind of governance".
Probably multiple things at play.
There's likely some sort of Stockholm syndrome at play it seems. Something like 9 out of 10 voters are picking the same party every election regardless of their performances and both parties are right wing.
That said, most people actually want a further left country than they think they have (which is actually much further right than they realize), this goes back to at least that wealth distribution survey
At a societal level, people literally (sometimes due to willful ignorance) don't know how to bring about the sort of government capable and willing to work in good faith toward just the inequality people already think is the case, let alone to bring about their ideal. This significantly contributes to the futility where the Stockholm syndrome aspect thrives.
Also probably much more meaningful than when, say, AOC did it, because AOC did it while they weren't really paying a lot of attention. Here they all lined up behind Cuomo and gave it their best effort, and he lost anyway.
On June 25 2025 15:12 Nebuchad wrote: Beautiful result.
Also probably much more meaningful than when, say, AOC did it, because AOC did it while they weren't really paying a lot of attention. Here they all lined up behind Cuomo and gave it their best effort, and he lost anyway.
Yeah, I definitely think it’s a very promising development
On June 25 2025 15:12 Nebuchad wrote: Beautiful result.
Also probably much more meaningful than when, say, AOC did it, because AOC did it while they weren't really paying a lot of attention. Here they all lined up behind Cuomo and gave it their best effort, and he lost anyway.
Yeah, I definitely think it’s a very promising development for sure. I guess the next task is to ensure it’s not an anomaly but is something that galvanises similar change elsewhere.
One of the very direct outcomes that could happen here, outside of the important possibility that it galvanizes change elsewhere, depends on how he did with the jewish electorate. Unless he got torched there (and he probably didn't I'm assuming), we might finally lose the insanely racist notion that in order to appeal to jewish voters you need to be a supporter of genocide and ethnostates.
On June 25 2025 21:57 Nebuchad wrote: One of the very direct outcomes that could happen here, outside of the important possibility that it galvanizes change elsewhere, depends on how he did with the jewish electorate. Unless he got torched there (and he probably didn't I'm assuming), we might finally lose the insanely racist notion that in order to appeal to jewish voters you need to be a supporter of genocide and ethnostates.
I have my reservations about it all, but this is promising.
Cuomo won't say he's not running in the general yet, and there will be a long list of excuses for why NYC is the only place this can work. But that won't really work with the Jewish electorate, since NYC has the most Jewish voters.
Also worth noting that Lander was the more traditional "progressive" representative. So it wasn't just leaning left over leaning center right, it was going big left with some specific policies people can imagine getting done and helping their lives within the term they're voting the politician into that's winning this election.
EDIT: Also chips away at the "Democrats need to nominate slightly less old (than Biden) white guys with centrist politics" thinking.
NYT story: who cares lol. More important: NYT got the story by collaborating with a known white supremacist, Jordan Lasker, falsely calling him an academic when his only academic paper was so trash it got his coauthor, a tenured professor, fired, and protecting his identity.
As far as I remember the NYT isn't Fox News, they're liberal media, right? That's the methods they're ready to use when the left is winning. Hopefully the people who talked about how libs are ready to go along with the left and only the left is doing divisive stuff are still watching, and they also saw the many NY dems who decided not to endorse their own primary winner.
"There is no massive untapped progressive voter base. As shown by the lack of progressives winning primaries and elections."
I would suggest that this is a terrible metric to judge where the voter base is. Currently both parties in the US support billionaires, and yet you can get 41% of people to say nice things about someone who kills one.
It is hard to fight against an established political party, no matter where your views are, from the left; because the party obtains support from the wealthy, the capitalists, the media, the entire system. Much easier to do it from the right because they'll get support from a bunch of fascist billionaires whenever they start a podcast. It isn't a surprise that you're getting these results in primary elections, you shouldn't draw big conclusions on Americans based on something that isn't a surprise.
On top of that you also have a large amount of naive people who have been convinced that they can't have nice things and that it is the adult, pragmatic thing to vote against their own interests, in both parties.
Poll after poll will show that almost every single progressive priority has majority support in the US. Contrary to popular belief, Americans aren't exceptional, they're people, they have the same views and positions than any other people, unless those views are modified and changed by a process called conditioning (Punish Yourself, CNN War).
If you think we need to go after the conditioning first, I can hear it. But then it starts with you, because this notion that Americans as a general rule care about hurting trans people more than they care about being able to afford their groceries or their healthcare, well, it's an insane notion. You definitely got conditioned into believing it.
It's hard to fight against established parties. Harder in the US, doesn't mean it is due to whatever billionaire podcasts or that voters are self sabotaging.
THE established parties in the US are made up with tones of different ideologies split. Look at Arnold, he's more centralist than MAGA. That's just normal and people are still voting with compromise, rather than only accept the extreme ends with no compromise.
Hell even Trump policies are more aligned with Kennedy. The idea that Trump is alt or far right is completely irrelevant. His policies are somewhat even pro big gov/state capitalism, despite him also promoting free market.
Things just haven't gotten to a state like Germany where far right is the one getting the votes and the gov needs to use whatever weapons against it despite the voters voting them.
More and more political assassins are of course a sign US do have a subset of radical voters but at least most voters still lean on compromising.
I figure I could make it more convenient for people to resist the temptation to bicker with Sartres by just roughly matching word counts (this is actually less words than the recent oBlade spat) with something preferable and discussing it with those interested.
I believe Rosa Luxemburg's pamphlet on whether capitalism can be reformed or if revolution is necessary is a reasonable place to start.
Rosa Luxemburg's Reform or Revolution
Introduction
At first view the title of this work may be found surprising. Can the Social-Democracy be against reforms? Can we contrapose the social revolution, the transformation of the existing order, our final goal, to social reforms? Certainly not. The daily struggle for reforms, for the amelioration of the condition of the workers within the framework of the existing social order, and for democratic institutions, offers to the Social-Democracy the only means of engaging in the proletarian class war and working in the direction of the final goal – the conquest of political power and the suppression of wage labour. Between social reforms and revolution there exists for the Social Democracy an indissoluble tie. The struggle for reforms is its means; the social revolution, its aim.
It is in Eduard Bernstein’s theory, presented in his articles on Problems of Socialism, Neue Zeit of 1897–98, and in his book Die Voraussetzungen des Socialismus und die Aufgaben der Sozialdemokratie[1] that we find, for the first time, the opposition of the two factors of the labour movement. His theory tends to counsel us to renounce the social transformation, the final goal of Social-Democracy and, inversely, to make of social reforms, the means of the class struggle, its aim. Bernstein himself has very clearly and characteristically formulated this viewpoint when he wrote: “The Final goal, no matter what it is, is nothing; the movement is everything.”
But since the final goal of socialism constitutes the only decisive factor distinguishing the Social-Democratic movement from bourgeois democracy and from bourgeois radicalism, the only factor transforming the entire labour movement from a vain effort to repair the capitalist order into a class struggle against this order, for the suppression of this order – the question: “Reform or Revolution?” as it is posed by Bernstein, equals for the Social-Democracy the question: “To be or not to be?” In the controversy with Bernstein and his followers, everybody in the Party ought to understand clearly it is not a question of this or that method of struggle, or the use of this or that set of tactics, but of the very existence of the Social-Democratic movement.
Upon a casual consideration of Bernstein’s theory, this may appear like an exaggeration. Does he not continually mention the Social-Democracy and its aims? Does he not repeat again and again, in very explicit language, that he too strives toward the final goal of socialism, but in another way? Does he not stress particularly that he fully approves of the present practice of the Social-Democracy?
That is all true, to be sure. It is also true that every new movement, when it first elaborates its theory and policy, begins by finding support in the preceding movement, though it may be in direct contradiction with the latter. It begins by suiting itself to the forms found at hand and by speaking the language spoken hereto. In time the new grain breaks through the old husk. The new movement finds its forms and its own language.
To expect an opposition against scientific socialism at its very beginning, to express itself clearly, fully and to the last consequence on the subject of its real content: to expect it to deny openly and bluntly the theoretic basis of the Social-Democracy – would amount to underrating the power of scientific socialism. Today he who wants to pass as a socialist, and at the same time declare war on Marxian doctrine, the most stupendous product of the human mind in the century, must begin with involuntary esteem for Marx. He must begin by acknowledging himself to be his disciple, by seeking in Marx’s own teachings the points of support for an attack on the latter, while he represents this attack as a further development of Marxian doctrine. On this account, we must, unconcerned by its outer forms, pick out the sheathed kernel of Bernstein’s theory. This is a matter of urgent necessity for the broad layers of the industrial proletariat in our Party.
No coarser insult, no baser aspersion, can be thrown against the workers than the remarks: “Theocratic controversies are only for academicians.” Some time ago Lassalle said: “Only when science and the workers, these opposite poles of society, become one, will they crush in their arms of steel all obstacles to culture.” The entire strength of the modern labour movement rests on theoretic knowledge.
But doubly important is this knowledge for the workers in the present case, because it is precisely they and their influence in the movement that are in the balance here. It is their skin that is being brought to market. The opportunist theory in the Party, the theory formulated by Bernstein, is nothing else than an unconscious attempt to assure predominance to the petty-bourgeois elements that have entered our Party, to change the policy and aims of our Party in their direction. The question of reform or revolution, of the final goal and the movement, is basically, in another form, but the question of the petty-bourgeois or proletarian character of the labour movement.
It is, therefore, in the interest of the proletarian mass of the Party to become acquainted, actively and in detail, with the present theoretic controversy with opportunism. As long as theoretic knowledge remains the privilege of a handful of “academicians” in the Party, the latter will face the danger of going astray. Only when the great mass of workers take the keen and dependable weapons of scientific socialism in their own hands, will all the petty-bourgeois inclinations, all the opportunistic currents, come to naught. The movement will then find itself on sure and firm ground. “Quantity will do it”
On July 07 2026 22:12 GreenHorizons wrote: I figure I could make it more convenient for people to resist the temptation to bicker with Sartres by just roughly matching word counts (this is actually less words than the recent oBlade spat) with something preferable and discussing it with those interested.
I believe Rosa Luxemburg's pamphlet on whether capitalism can be reformed or if revolution is necessary is a reasonable place to start.
At first view the title of this work may be found surprising. Can the Social-Democracy be against reforms? Can we contrapose the social revolution, the transformation of the existing order, our final goal, to social reforms? Certainly not. The daily struggle for reforms, for the amelioration of the condition of the workers within the framework of the existing social order, and for democratic institutions, offers to the Social-Democracy the only means of engaging in the proletarian class war and working in the direction of the final goal – the conquest of political power and the suppression of wage labour. Between social reforms and revolution there exists for the Social Democracy an indissoluble tie. The struggle for reforms is its means; the social revolution, its aim.
It is in Eduard Bernstein’s theory, presented in his articles on Problems of Socialism, Neue Zeit of 1897–98, and in his book Die Voraussetzungen des Socialismus und die Aufgaben der Sozialdemokratie[1] that we find, for the first time, the opposition of the two factors of the labour movement. His theory tends to counsel us to renounce the social transformation, the final goal of Social-Democracy and, inversely, to make of social reforms, the means of the class struggle, its aim. Bernstein himself has very clearly and characteristically formulated this viewpoint when he wrote: “The Final goal, no matter what it is, is nothing; the movement is everything.”
But since the final goal of socialism constitutes the only decisive factor distinguishing the Social-Democratic movement from bourgeois democracy and from bourgeois radicalism, the only factor transforming the entire labour movement from a vain effort to repair the capitalist order into a class struggle against this order, for the suppression of this order – the question: “Reform or Revolution?” as it is posed by Bernstein, equals for the Social-Democracy the question: “To be or not to be?” In the controversy with Bernstein and his followers, everybody in the Party ought to understand clearly it is not a question of this or that method of struggle, or the use of this or that set of tactics, but of the very existence of the Social-Democratic movement.
Upon a casual consideration of Bernstein’s theory, this may appear like an exaggeration. Does he not continually mention the Social-Democracy and its aims? Does he not repeat again and again, in very explicit language, that he too strives toward the final goal of socialism, but in another way? Does he not stress particularly that he fully approves of the present practice of the Social-Democracy?
That is all true, to be sure. It is also true that every new movement, when it first elaborates its theory and policy, begins by finding support in the preceding movement, though it may be in direct contradiction with the latter. It begins by suiting itself to the forms found at hand and by speaking the language spoken hereto. In time the new grain breaks through the old husk. The new movement finds its forms and its own language.
To expect an opposition against scientific socialism at its very beginning, to express itself clearly, fully and to the last consequence on the subject of its real content: to expect it to deny openly and bluntly the theoretic basis of the Social-Democracy – would amount to underrating the power of scientific socialism. Today he who wants to pass as a socialist, and at the same time declare war on Marxian doctrine, the most stupendous product of the human mind in the century, must begin with involuntary esteem for Marx. He must begin by acknowledging himself to be his disciple, by seeking in Marx’s own teachings the points of support for an attack on the latter, while he represents this attack as a further development of Marxian doctrine. On this account, we must, unconcerned by its outer forms, pick out the sheathed kernel of Bernstein’s theory. This is a matter of urgent necessity for the broad layers of the industrial proletariat in our Party.
No coarser insult, no baser aspersion, can be thrown against the workers than the remarks: “Theocratic controversies are only for academicians.” Some time ago Lassalle said: “Only when science and the workers, these opposite poles of society, become one, will they crush in their arms of steel all obstacles to culture.” The entire strength of the modern labour movement rests on theoretic knowledge.
But doubly important is this knowledge for the workers in the present case, because it is precisely they and their influence in the movement that are in the balance here. It is their skin that is being brought to market. The opportunist theory in the Party, the theory formulated by Bernstein, is nothing else than an unconscious attempt to assure predominance to the petty-bourgeois elements that have entered our Party, to change the policy and aims of our Party in their direction. The question of reform or revolution, of the final goal and the movement, is basically, in another form, but the question of the petty-bourgeois or proletarian character of the labour movement.
It is, therefore, in the interest of the proletarian mass of the Party to become acquainted, actively and in detail, with the present theoretic controversy with opportunism. As long as theoretic knowledge remains the privilege of a handful of “academicians” in the Party, the latter will face the danger of going astray. Only when the great mass of workers take the keen and dependable weapons of scientific socialism in their own hands, will all the petty-bourgeois inclinations, all the opportunistic currents, come to naught. The movement will then find itself on sure and firm ground. “Quantity will do it”
If it is true that theories are only the images of the phenomena of the exterior world in the human consciousness, it must be added, concerning Eduard Bernstein’s system, that theories are sometimes inverted images. Think of a theory of instituting socialism by means of social reforms in the face of the complete stagnation of the reform movement in Germany. Think of a theory of trade union control. Consider the theory of winning a majority in Parliament, after the revision of the constitution of Saxony and in view of the most recent attempts against universal suffrage. However, the pivotal point of Bernstein’s system is not located in his conception of the practical tasks of the Social-Democracy. It is found in his stand on the course of the objective development of capitalist society, which, in turn is closely bound to his conception of the practical tasks of the Social-Democracy.
According to Bernstein, a general decline of capitalism seems to be increasingly improbable because, on the one hand, capitalism shows a greater capacity of adaptation, and, on the other hand, capitalist production becomes more and more varied.
The capacity of capitalism to adapt itself, says Bernstein, is manifested first in the disappearance of general crises, resulting from the development of the credit system, employers’ organisations, wider means of communication and informational services. It shows itself secondly, in the tenacity of the middle classes, which hails from the growing differentiation of the branches of production and the elevation of vast layers of the proletariat to the level of the middle class. It is furthermore proved, argues Bernstein, by the amelioration of the economic and political situation of the proletariat as a result of its trade union activity.
From this theoretic stand is derived the following general conclusion about the practical work of the Social-Democracy. The latter must not direct its daily activity toward the conquest of political power, but toward the betterment of the condition of the working class, within the existing order. It must not expect to institute socialism as a result of a political and social crisis, but should build socialism by means of the progressive extension of social control and the gradual application of the principle of co-operation.
Bernstein himself sees nothing new in his theories. On the contrary, he believes them to be in agreement with certain declarations of Marx and Engels. Nevertheless, it seems to us that it is difficult to deny that they are in formal contradiction with the conceptions of scientific socialism.
If Bernstein’s revisionism merely consisted in affirming that the march of capitalist development is slower than was thought before, he would merely be presenting an argument for adjourning the conquest of power by the proletariat, on which everybody agreed up to now. Its only consequence would be a slowing up of the pace of the struggle.
But that is not the case. What Bernstein questions is not the rapidity of the development of capitalist society, but the march of the development itself and, consequently, the very possibility of a change to socialism.
Socialist theory up to now declared that the point of departure for a transformation to socialism would be a general and catastrophic crisis. We must distinguish in this outlook two things: the fundamental idea and its exterior form.
The fundamental idea consists of the affirmation that capitalism, as a result of its own inner contradictions, moves toward a point when it will be unbalanced, when it will simply become impossible. There were good reasons for conceiving that juncture in the form of a catastrophic general commercial crisis. But that is of secondary importance when the fundamental idea is considered.
The scientific basis of socialism rests, as is well known, on three principal results of capitalist development. First, on the growing anarchy of capitalist economy, leading inevitably to its ruin. Second, on the progressive socialisation of the process of production, which creates the germs of the future social order. And third, on the increased organisation and consciousness of the proletarian class, which constitutes the active factor in the coming revolution.
Bernstein pulls away from the first of the three fundamental supports of scientific socialism. He says that capitalist development does not lead to a general economic collapse.
He does not merely reject a certain form of the collapse. He rejects the very possibility of collapse. He says textually: “One could claim that by collapse of the present society is meant something else than a general commercial crisis, worse than all others, that is a complete collapse of the capitalist system brought about as a result of its own contradictions.” And to this he replies: “With the growing development of society a complete and almost general collapse of the present system of production becomes more and more improbable, because capitalist development increases on the one hand the capacity of adaptation and, on the other – that is at the same time, the differentiation of industry.” (Neue Zeit, 1897-98, vol.18, pg.555)
But then the question arises: Why and how, in that case, can we attain the final goal? According to scientific socialism, the historic necessity of the socialist revolution manifests itself above all in the growing anarchy of capitalism, which drives the system into an impasse. But if one admits with Bernstein that capitalist development does not move in the direction of its own ruin, then socialism ceases to be objectively necessary. There remain the other two mainstays of the scientific explanation of socialism, which are also said to be consequences of capitalism itself: the socialisation of the process of production and the growing consciousness of the proletariat. It is these two matters that Bernstein has in mind when he says: “The suppression of the theory of collapse does not in any way deprive socialist doctrine of the power of persuasion. For, examined closely, what are all factors enumerated by us that make for the suppression or the modification of the former crises? Nothing else, in fact, than the conditions, or even in party the germs, of the socialisation of production and exchange.” (Ibid., pg.554)
Very little reflection is needed to understand that here too we face a false conclusion. Where lies the importance of all the phenomena that are said by Bernstein to be the means of capitalist adaptation – cartels, the credit system, the development of means of communication, the amelioration of the situation of the working class, etc.? Obviously, in that they suppress or, at least, attenuate the internal contradictions of capitalist economy, and stop the development or the aggravation of these contradictions. Thus the suppression of crises can only mean the suppression of the antagonism between production and exchange on the capitalist base. The amelioration of the situation of the working class, or the penetration of certain fractions of the class into middle layers, can only mean the attenuation of the antagonism between Capital and Labour. But if the mention factors suppress the capitalist contradictions and consequently save the system from ruin, if they enable capitalism to maintain itself – and that is why Bernstein calls them “means of adaptation” – how can cartels, the credit system, trade unions, etc., be at the same time “the conditions and even, in part, the germs” of socialism? Obviously only in the sense that they express most clearly the social character of production.
But by presenting it in its capitalist form, the same factors render superfluous, inversely, in the same measure, the transformation of this socialised production into socialist production. That is why they can be the germs or conditions of a socialist order only in a theoretic sense and not in an historic sense. They are phenomena which, in the light of our conception of socialism, we know to be related to socialism but which, in fact, not only do not lead to a socialist revolution but render it, on the contrary, superfluous.
There remains one force making for socialism – the class consciousness of the proletariat. But it, too, is in the given case no the simple intellectual reflection of the growing contradictions of capitalism and its approaching decline. It is now no more than an ideal whose force of persuasion rests only on the perfection attributed to it.
We have here, in brief, the explanation of the socialist programme by means of “pure reason.” We have here, to use simpler language, an idealist explanation of socialism. The objective necessity of socialism, the explanation of socialism as the result of the material development of society, falls to the ground.
Revisionist theory thus places itself in a dilemma. Either the socialist transformation is, as was admitted up to now, the consequence of the internal contradictions of capitalism, and with the growth of capitalism will develop its inner contradictions, resulting inevitably, at some point, in its collapse, (in that case the “means of adaptation” are ineffective and the theory of collapse is correct); or the “means of adaptation” will really stop the collapse of the capitalist system and thereby enable capitalism to maintain itself by suppressing its own contradictions. In that case socialism ceases to be an historic necessity. It then becomes anything you want to call it, but it is no longer the result of the material development of society.
The dilemma leads to another. Either revisionism is correct in its position on the course of capitalist development, and therefore the socialist transformation of society is only a utopia, or socialism is not a utopia, and the theory of “means of adaptation” is false. There is the question in a nutshell.
On July 07 2026 22:12 GreenHorizons wrote: I figure I could make it more convenient for people to resist the temptation to bicker with Sartres by just roughly matching word counts (this is actually less words than the recent oBlade spat) with something preferable and discussing it with those interested.
I believe Rosa Luxemburg's pamphlet on whether capitalism can be reformed or if revolution is necessary is a reasonable place to start.
Rosa Luxemburg's Reform or Revolution
Introduction
At first view the title of this work may be found surprising. Can the Social-Democracy be against reforms? Can we contrapose the social revolution, the transformation of the existing order, our final goal, to social reforms? Certainly not. The daily struggle for reforms, for the amelioration of the condition of the workers within the framework of the existing social order, and for democratic institutions, offers to the Social-Democracy the only means of engaging in the proletarian class war and working in the direction of the final goal – the conquest of political power and the suppression of wage labour. Between social reforms and revolution there exists for the Social Democracy an indissoluble tie. The struggle for reforms is its means; the social revolution, its aim.
It is in Eduard Bernstein’s theory, presented in his articles on Problems of Socialism, Neue Zeit of 1897–98, and in his book Die Voraussetzungen des Socialismus und die Aufgaben der Sozialdemokratie[1] that we find, for the first time, the opposition of the two factors of the labour movement. His theory tends to counsel us to renounce the social transformation, the final goal of Social-Democracy and, inversely, to make of social reforms, the means of the class struggle, its aim. Bernstein himself has very clearly and characteristically formulated this viewpoint when he wrote: “The Final goal, no matter what it is, is nothing; the movement is everything.”
But since the final goal of socialism constitutes the only decisive factor distinguishing the Social-Democratic movement from bourgeois democracy and from bourgeois radicalism, the only factor transforming the entire labour movement from a vain effort to repair the capitalist order into a class struggle against this order, for the suppression of this order – the question: “Reform or Revolution?” as it is posed by Bernstein, equals for the Social-Democracy the question: “To be or not to be?” In the controversy with Bernstein and his followers, everybody in the Party ought to understand clearly it is not a question of this or that method of struggle, or the use of this or that set of tactics, but of the very existence of the Social-Democratic movement.
Upon a casual consideration of Bernstein’s theory, this may appear like an exaggeration. Does he not continually mention the Social-Democracy and its aims? Does he not repeat again and again, in very explicit language, that he too strives toward the final goal of socialism, but in another way? Does he not stress particularly that he fully approves of the present practice of the Social-Democracy?
That is all true, to be sure. It is also true that every new movement, when it first elaborates its theory and policy, begins by finding support in the preceding movement, though it may be in direct contradiction with the latter. It begins by suiting itself to the forms found at hand and by speaking the language spoken hereto. In time the new grain breaks through the old husk. The new movement finds its forms and its own language.
To expect an opposition against scientific socialism at its very beginning, to express itself clearly, fully and to the last consequence on the subject of its real content: to expect it to deny openly and bluntly the theoretic basis of the Social-Democracy – would amount to underrating the power of scientific socialism. Today he who wants to pass as a socialist, and at the same time declare war on Marxian doctrine, the most stupendous product of the human mind in the century, must begin with involuntary esteem for Marx. He must begin by acknowledging himself to be his disciple, by seeking in Marx’s own teachings the points of support for an attack on the latter, while he represents this attack as a further development of Marxian doctrine. On this account, we must, unconcerned by its outer forms, pick out the sheathed kernel of Bernstein’s theory. This is a matter of urgent necessity for the broad layers of the industrial proletariat in our Party.
No coarser insult, no baser aspersion, can be thrown against the workers than the remarks: “Theocratic controversies are only for academicians.” Some time ago Lassalle said: “Only when science and the workers, these opposite poles of society, become one, will they crush in their arms of steel all obstacles to culture.” The entire strength of the modern labour movement rests on theoretic knowledge.
But doubly important is this knowledge for the workers in the present case, because it is precisely they and their influence in the movement that are in the balance here. It is their skin that is being brought to market. The opportunist theory in the Party, the theory formulated by Bernstein, is nothing else than an unconscious attempt to assure predominance to the petty-bourgeois elements that have entered our Party, to change the policy and aims of our Party in their direction. The question of reform or revolution, of the final goal and the movement, is basically, in another form, but the question of the petty-bourgeois or proletarian character of the labour movement.
It is, therefore, in the interest of the proletarian mass of the Party to become acquainted, actively and in detail, with the present theoretic controversy with opportunism. As long as theoretic knowledge remains the privilege of a handful of “academicians” in the Party, the latter will face the danger of going astray. Only when the great mass of workers take the keen and dependable weapons of scientific socialism in their own hands, will all the petty-bourgeois inclinations, all the opportunistic currents, come to naught. The movement will then find itself on sure and firm ground. “Quantity will do it”
If it is true that theories are only the images of the phenomena of the exterior world in the human consciousness, it must be added, concerning Eduard Bernstein’s system, that theories are sometimes inverted images. Think of a theory of instituting socialism by means of social reforms in the face of the complete stagnation of the reform movement in Germany. Think of a theory of trade union control. Consider the theory of winning a majority in Parliament, after the revision of the constitution of Saxony and in view of the most recent attempts against universal suffrage. However, the pivotal point of Bernstein’s system is not located in his conception of the practical tasks of the Social-Democracy. It is found in his stand on the course of the objective development of capitalist society, which, in turn is closely bound to his conception of the practical tasks of the Social-Democracy.
According to Bernstein, a general decline of capitalism seems to be increasingly improbable because, on the one hand, capitalism shows a greater capacity of adaptation, and, on the other hand, capitalist production becomes more and more varied.
The capacity of capitalism to adapt itself, says Bernstein, is manifested first in the disappearance of general crises, resulting from the development of the credit system, employers’ organisations, wider means of communication and informational services. It shows itself secondly, in the tenacity of the middle classes, which hails from the growing differentiation of the branches of production and the elevation of vast layers of the proletariat to the level of the middle class. It is furthermore proved, argues Bernstein, by the amelioration of the economic and political situation of the proletariat as a result of its trade union activity.
From this theoretic stand is derived the following general conclusion about the practical work of the Social-Democracy. The latter must not direct its daily activity toward the conquest of political power, but toward the betterment of the condition of the working class, within the existing order. It must not expect to institute socialism as a result of a political and social crisis, but should build socialism by means of the progressive extension of social control and the gradual application of the principle of co-operation.
Bernstein himself sees nothing new in his theories. On the contrary, he believes them to be in agreement with certain declarations of Marx and Engels. Nevertheless, it seems to us that it is difficult to deny that they are in formal contradiction with the conceptions of scientific socialism.
If Bernstein’s revisionism merely consisted in affirming that the march of capitalist development is slower than was thought before, he would merely be presenting an argument for adjourning the conquest of power by the proletariat, on which everybody agreed up to now. Its only consequence would be a slowing up of the pace of the struggle.
But that is not the case. What Bernstein questions is not the rapidity of the development of capitalist society, but the march of the development itself and, consequently, the very possibility of a change to socialism.
Socialist theory up to now declared that the point of departure for a transformation to socialism would be a general and catastrophic crisis. We must distinguish in this outlook two things: the fundamental idea and its exterior form.
The fundamental idea consists of the affirmation that capitalism, as a result of its own inner contradictions, moves toward a point when it will be unbalanced, when it will simply become impossible. There were good reasons for conceiving that juncture in the form of a catastrophic general commercial crisis. But that is of secondary importance when the fundamental idea is considered.
The scientific basis of socialism rests, as is well known, on three principal results of capitalist development. First, on the growing anarchy of capitalist economy, leading inevitably to its ruin. Second, on the progressive socialisation of the process of production, which creates the germs of the future social order. And third, on the increased organisation and consciousness of the proletarian class, which constitutes the active factor in the coming revolution.
Bernstein pulls away from the first of the three fundamental supports of scientific socialism. He says that capitalist development does not lead to a general economic collapse.
He does not merely reject a certain form of the collapse. He rejects the very possibility of collapse. He says textually: “One could claim that by collapse of the present society is meant something else than a general commercial crisis, worse than all others, that is a complete collapse of the capitalist system brought about as a result of its own contradictions.” And to this he replies: “With the growing development of society a complete and almost general collapse of the present system of production becomes more and more improbable, because capitalist development increases on the one hand the capacity of adaptation and, on the other – that is at the same time, the differentiation of industry.” (Neue Zeit, 1897-98, vol.18, pg.555)
But then the question arises: Why and how, in that case, can we attain the final goal? According to scientific socialism, the historic necessity of the socialist revolution manifests itself above all in the growing anarchy of capitalism, which drives the system into an impasse. But if one admits with Bernstein that capitalist development does not move in the direction of its own ruin, then socialism ceases to be objectively necessary. There remain the other two mainstays of the scientific explanation of socialism, which are also said to be consequences of capitalism itself: the socialisation of the process of production and the growing consciousness of the proletariat. It is these two matters that Bernstein has in mind when he says: “The suppression of the theory of collapse does not in any way deprive socialist doctrine of the power of persuasion. For, examined closely, what are all factors enumerated by us that make for the suppression or the modification of the former crises? Nothing else, in fact, than the conditions, or even in party the germs, of the socialisation of production and exchange.” (Ibid., pg.554)
Very little reflection is needed to understand that here too we face a false conclusion. Where lies the importance of all the phenomena that are said by Bernstein to be the means of capitalist adaptation – cartels, the credit system, the development of means of communication, the amelioration of the situation of the working class, etc.? Obviously, in that they suppress or, at least, attenuate the internal contradictions of capitalist economy, and stop the development or the aggravation of these contradictions. Thus the suppression of crises can only mean the suppression of the antagonism between production and exchange on the capitalist base. The amelioration of the situation of the working class, or the penetration of certain fractions of the class into middle layers, can only mean the attenuation of the antagonism between Capital and Labour. But if the mention factors suppress the capitalist contradictions and consequently save the system from ruin, if they enable capitalism to maintain itself – and that is why Bernstein calls them “means of adaptation” – how can cartels, the credit system, trade unions, etc., be at the same time “the conditions and even, in part, the germs” of socialism? Obviously only in the sense that they express most clearly the social character of production.
But by presenting it in its capitalist form, the same factors render superfluous, inversely, in the same measure, the transformation of this socialised production into socialist production. That is why they can be the germs or conditions of a socialist order only in a theoretic sense and not in an historic sense. They are phenomena which, in the light of our conception of socialism, we know to be related to socialism but which, in fact, not only do not lead to a socialist revolution but render it, on the contrary, superfluous.
There remains one force making for socialism – the class consciousness of the proletariat. But it, too, is in the given case no the simple intellectual reflection of the growing contradictions of capitalism and its approaching decline. It is now no more than an ideal whose force of persuasion rests only on the perfection attributed to it.
We have here, in brief, the explanation of the socialist programme by means of “pure reason.” We have here, to use simpler language, an idealist explanation of socialism. The objective necessity of socialism, the explanation of socialism as the result of the material development of society, falls to the ground.
Revisionist theory thus places itself in a dilemma. Either the socialist transformation is, as was admitted up to now, the consequence of the internal contradictions of capitalism, and with the growth of capitalism will develop its inner contradictions, resulting inevitably, at some point, in its collapse, (in that case the “means of adaptation” are ineffective and the theory of collapse is correct); or the “means of adaptation” will really stop the collapse of the capitalist system and thereby enable capitalism to maintain itself by suppressing its own contradictions. In that case socialism ceases to be an historic necessity. It then becomes anything you want to call it, but it is no longer the result of the material development of society.
The dilemma leads to another. Either revisionism is correct in its position on the course of capitalist development, and therefore the socialist transformation of society is only a utopia, or socialism is not a utopia, and the theory of “means of adaptation” is false. There is the question in a nutshell.
No way this isn't more intellectually stimulating (moreso if people actually discussed it) than the umpteenth shitpost flinging contest with oBlade and the like?
Part One Chapter II The Adaptation of Capital
According to Bernstein, the credit system, the perfected means of communication and the new capitalist combines are the important factors that forward the adaptation of capitalist economy.
Credit has diverse applications in capitalism. Its two most important functions are to extend production and to facilitate exchange. When the inner tendency of capitalist production to extend boundlessly strikes against the restricted dimensions of private property, credit appears as a means of surmounting these limits in a particular capitalist manner. Credit, through shareholding, combines in one magnitude of capital a large number of individual capitals. It makes available to each capitalist the use of other capitalists’ money – in the form of industrial credit. As commercial credit it accelerates the exchange of commodities and therefore the return of capital into production, and thus aids the entire cycle of the process of production. The manner in which these two principle functions of credit influence the formation of crises is quite obvious. If it is true that crises appear as a result of the contradiction existing between the capacity of extension, the tendency of production to increase, and the restricted consumption capacity of the market, credit is precisely, in view of what was stated above, the specific means that makes this contradiction break out as often as possible. To begin with, it increases disproportionately the capacity of the extension of production and thus constitutes an inner motive force that is constantly pushing production to exceed the limits of the market. But credit strikes from two sides. After having (as a factor of the process of production) provoked overproduction, credit (as a factor of exchange) destroys, during the crisis, the very productive forces it itself created. At the first symptom of the crisis, credit melts away. It abandons exchange where it would still be found indispensable, and appearing instead, ineffective and useless, there where some exchange still continues, it reduces to a minimum the consumption capacity of the market.
Besides having these two principal results, credit also influences the formation of crises in the following ways. It constitutes the technical means of making available to an entrepreneur the capital of other owners. It stimulates at the same time the bold and unscrupulous utilisation of the property of others. That is, it leads to speculation. Credit not only aggravates the crisis in its capacity as a dissembled means of exchange, it also helps to bring and extend the crisis by transforming all exchange into an extremely complex and artificial mechanism that, having a minimum of metallic money as a real base, is easily disarranged at the slightest occasion.
We see that credit, instead of being an instrument for the suppression or the attenuation of crises, is on the contrary a particularly mighty instrument for the formation of crises. It cannot be anything else. Credit eliminates the remaining rigidity of capitalist relationships. It introduces everywhere the greatest elasticity possible. It renders all capitalist forces extensible, relative and mutually sensitive to the highest degree. Doing this, it facilitates and aggravates crises, which are nothing more or less than the periodic collisions of the contradictory forces of capitalist economy.
That leads us to another question. Why does credit generally have the appearance of a “means of adaptation” of capitalism? No matter what the relation or form in which this “adaptation” is represented by certain people, it can obviously consist only of the power to suppress one of the several antagonistic relations of capitalist economy, that is, of the power to suppress or weaken one of these contradictions, and allow liberty of movement, at one point or another, to the other fettered productive forces. In fact, it is precisely credit that aggravates these contradictions to the highest degree. It aggravates the antagonism between the mode of production and the mode of exchange by stretching production to the limit and at the same time paralysing exchange at the smallest pretext. It aggravates the antagonism between the mode of production and the mode of appropriation by separating production from ownership, that is, by transforming the capital employed in production into “social” capital and at the same time transforming a part of the profit, in the form of interest on capital, into a simple title of ownership. It aggravates the antagonism existing between the property relations (ownership) and the relations of production by putting into a small number of hands immense productive forces and expropriating large numbers of small capitalists. Lastly, it aggravates the antagonism existing between social character of production and private capitalist ownership by rendering necessary the intervention of the State in production.
In short, credit reproduces all the fundamental antagonisms of the capitalist world. It accentuates them. It precipitates their development and thus pushes the capitalist world forward to its own destruction. The prime act of capitalist adaptation, as far as credit is concerned, should really consist in breaking and suppressing credit. In fact, credit is far from being a means of capitalist adaptation. It is, on the contrary, a means of destruction of the most extreme revolutionary significance. Has not this revolutionary character of credit actually inspired plans of “socialist” reform? As such, it has had some distinguished proponents, some of whom (Isaac Pereira in France), were, as Marx put it, half prophets, half rogues.
Just as fragile is the second “means of adaptation”: employers’ organisations. According to Bernstein, such organisations will put an end to anarchy of production and do away with crises through their regulation of production. The multiple repercussions of the development of cartels and trusts have not been considered too carefully up to now. But they predict a problem that can only be solved with the aid of Marxist theory.
One thing is certain. We could speak of a damming up of capitalist anarchy through the agency of capitalist combines only in the measure that cartels, trusts, etc., become, even approximately, the dominant form of production. But such a possibility is excluded by the very nature of cartels. The final economic aim and result of combines is the following. Through the suppression of competition in a given branch of production, the distribution of the mass of profit realised on the market is influenced in such a manner that there is an increase of the share going to this branch of industry. Such organisation of the field can increase the rate of profit in one branch of industry at the expense of another. That is precisely why it cannot be generalised, for when it is extended to all important branches of industry, this tendency suppresses its own influence.
Furthermore, within the limits of their practical application the result of combines is the very opposite of suppression of industrial anarchy. Cartels ordinarily succeed in obtaining an increase of profit, in the home market, by producing at a lower rate of profit for the foreign market, thus utilising the supplementary portions of capital which they cannot utilise for domestic needs. That is to say, they sell abroad cheaper than at home. The result is the sharpening of competition abroad – the very opposite of what certain people want to find. That is well demonstrated by the history of the world sugar industry.
Generally speaking, combines treated as a manifestation of the capitalist mode of production, can only be considered a definite phase of capitalist development. Cartels are fundamentally nothing else than a means resorted to by the capitalist mode of production for the purpose of holding back the fatal fall of the rate of profit in certain branches of production. What method do cartels employ for this end? That of keeping inactive a part of the accumulated capital. That is, they use the same method which in another form is employed in crises. The remedy and the illness resemble each other like two drops of water. Indeed the first can be considered the lesser evil only up to a certain point. When the outlets of disposal begin to shrink, and the world market has been extended to its limit and has become exhausted through the competition of the capitalist countries – and sooner or later that is bound to come – then the forced partial idleness of capital will reach such dimensions that the remedy will become transformed into a malady, and capital, already pretty much “socialised” through regulation, will tend to revert again to the form of individual capital. In the face of the increased difficulties of finding markets, each individual portion of capital will prefer to take its chances alone. At that time, the large regulating organisations will burst like soap bubbles and give way to aggravated competition.
In a general way, cartels, just like credit, appear therefore as a determined phase of capitalist development, which in the last analysis aggravates the anarchy of the capitalist world and expresses and ripens its internal contradictions. Cartels aggravate the antagonism existing between the mode of production and exchange by sharpening the struggle between the producer and consumer, as is the case especially in the United States. They aggravate, furthermore, the antagonism existing between the mode of production and the mode of appropriation by opposing, in the most brutal fashion, to the working class the superior force of organised capital, and thus increasing the antagonism between Capital and Labour.
Finally, capitalist combinations aggravate the contradiction existing between the international character of capitalist world economy and the national character of the State – insofar as they are always accompanied by a general tariff war, which sharpens the differences among the capitalist States. We must add to this the decidedly revolutionary influence exercised by cartels on the concentration of production, technical progress, etc.
In other words, when evaluated from the angle of their final effect on capitalist economy, cartels and trusts fail as “means of adaptation.” They fail to attenuate the contradictions of capitalism. On the contrary, they appear to be an instrument of greater anarchy. They encourage the further development of the internal contradictions of capitalism. They accelerate the coming of a general decline of capitalism.
But if the credit system, cartels, and the rest do not suppress the anarchy of capitalism, why have we not had a major commercial crisis for two decades, since 1873? Is this not a sign that, contrary to Marx’s analysis the capitalist mode of production has adapted itself – at least, in a general way – to the needs of society? Hardly had Bernstein rejected, in 1898, Marx’s theory of crises, when a profound general crisis broke out in 1900, while seven years later, a new crisis beginning in the United States, hit the world market. Facts proved the theory of “adaptation” to be false. They showed at the same time that the people who abandoned Marx’s theory of crisis only because no crisis occurred within a certain space of time merely confused the essence of this theory with one of its secondary exterior aspects – the ten-year cycle. The description of the cycle of modern capitalist industry as a ten-year period was to Marx and Engels, in 1860 and 1870, only a simple statement of facts. It was not based on a natural law but on a series of given historic circumstances that were connected with the rapidly spreading activity of young capitalism.
The crisis of 1825 was in effect, the result of extensive investment of capital in the construction of roads, canals, gas works, which took place during the preceding decade, particularly in England, where the crisis broke out. The following crisis of 1836-1839 was similarly the result of heavy investments in the construction of means of transportation. The crisis of 1847 was provoked by the feverish building of railroads in England (from 1844 to 1847, in three years, the British Parliament gave railway concessions to the value of 15 billion dollars). In each of the three mentioned cases, a crisis came after new bases for capitalist development were established. In 1857, the same result was brought by the abrupt opening of new markets for European industry in America and Australia, after the discovery of the gold mines, and the extensive construction of railway lines, especially in France, where the example of England was then closely imitated. (From 1852 to 1856, new railway lines to the value of 1,250 million francs were built in France alone). And finally we have the great crisis of 1873 – a direct consequence of the firm boom of large industry in Germany and Austria, which followed the political events of 1866 and 1871.
So that up to now, the sudden extension of the domain of capitalist economy, and not its shrinking, was each time the cause of the commercial crisis. That the international crisis repeated themselves precisely every ten years was a purely exterior fact, a matter of chance. The Marxist formula for crises as presented by Engels in Anti-Dühring and by Marx in the first and third volumes of Capital, applies to all crises only in the measure that it uncovers their international mechanism and their general basic causes.
Crises may repeat themselves every five or ten years, or even every eight or twenty years. But what proves best the falseness of Bernstein’s theory is that it is in the countries having the greatest development of the famous “means of adaptation” – credit, perfected communications and trusts – that the last crisis (1907-1908) was most violent.
The belief that capitalist production could “adapt” itself to exchange presupposes one of two things: either the world market can spread unlimitedly, or on the contrary the development of the productive forces is so fettered that it cannot pass beyond the bounds of the market. The first hypothesis constitutes a material impossibility. The second is rendered just as impossible by the constant technical progress that daily creates new productive forces in all branches.
There remains still another phenomenon which, says Bernstein, contradicts the course of capitalist development as it is indicated above. In the “steadfast phalanx” of middle-size enterprises, Bernstein sees a sign that the development of large industry does not move in a revolutionary direction, and is not as effective from the angle of the concentration of industry as was expected by the “theory” of collapse. He is here, however, the victim of his own lack of understanding. For to see the progressive disappearance of large industry is to misunderstand sadly the nature of this process.
According to Marxist theory, small capitalists play in the general course of capitalist development the role of pioneers of technical change. They possess that role in a double sense. They initiate new methods of production in well-established branches of industry; they are instrumental in the creation of new branches of production not yet exploited by the big capitalist. It is false to imagine that the history of the middle-size capitalist establishments proceeds rectilinearly in the direction of their progressive disappearance. The course of this development is on the contrary purely dialectical and moves constantly among contradictions. The middle capitalist layers find themselves, just like the workers, under the influence of two antagonistic tendencies, one ascendant, the other descendant. In this case, the descendent tendency is the continued rise of the scale of production, which overflows periodically the dimensions of the average size parcels of capital and removes them repeatedly from the terrain of world competition.
The ascendant tendency is, first, the periodic depreciation of the existing capital, which lowers again, for a certain time, the scale of production in proportion to the value of the necessary minimum amount of capital. It is represented, besides, by the penetration of capitalist production into new spheres. The struggle of the average size enterprise against big Capital cannot be considered a regularly proceeding battle in which the troops of the weaker party continue to melt away directly and quantitatively. It should be rather regarded as a periodic mowing down of the small enterprises, which rapidly grow up again, only to be mowed down once more by large industry. The two tendencies play ball with the middle capitalist layers. The descending tendency must win in the end.
The very opposite is true about the development of the working class. The victory of the descending tendency must not necessarily show itself in an absolute numerical diminution of the middle-size enterprises. It must show itself, first in the progressive increase of the minimum amount of capital necessary for the functioning of the enterprises in the old branches of production; second in the constant diminution of the interval of time during which the small capitalists conserve the opportunity to exploit the new branches of production. The result as far as the small capitalist is concerned, is a progressively shorter duration of his stay in the new industry and a progressively more rapid change in the methods of production as a field for investment. For the average capitalist strata, taken as a whole, there is a process of more and more rapid social assimilation and dissimilation.
Bernstein knows this perfectly well. He himself comments on this. But what he seems to forget is that this very thing is the law of the movement of the average capitalist enterprise. If one admits that small capitalists are pioneers of technical progress, and if it true that the latter is the vital pulse of the capitalist economy, then it is manifest that small capitalists are an integral part of capitalist development, which can only disappear together with it [capitalist development]. The progressive disappearance of the middle-size enterprise – in the absolute sense considered by Bernstein – means not, as he thinks, the revolutionary course of capitalist development, but precisely the contrary, the cessation, the slowing up of development. “The rate of profit, that is to say, the relative increase of capital,” said Marx, “is important first of all for new investors of capital, grouping themselves independently. And as soon as the formation of capital falls exclusively into a handful of big capitalists, the revivifying fire of production is extinguished. It dies away.”
The posted excerpts are impenetrable, and I say this with English my native language and a PhD.
If they have something good to say, say it.
Here's an example:
We see that credit, instead of being an instrument for the suppression or the attenuation of crises, is on the contrary a particularly mighty instrument for the formation of crises. It cannot be anything else. Credit eliminates the remaining rigidity of capitalist relationships. It introduces everywhere the greatest elasticity possible. It renders all capitalist forces extensible, relative and mutually sensitive to the highest degree. Doing this, it facilitates and aggravates crises, which are nothing more or less than the periodic collisions of the contradictory forces of capitalist economy.
Reading that very carefully, I get from a whole paragraph that "credit makes capitalism worse by extending its reach", with zero detail, and none of how it does that. And this is a paragraph I would consider myself sympathetic to. For example, I think something certainly feels wrong if we have a lot of people struggling financially against credit card bills, but also credit is used extensively by the rich to improve their position. If it were truly a tool to "attenuate crises" of finance, then we should have less of the former, and none of the latter, so yeah, I can kinda see it.
But why am I, the furthest thing from an expert, doing the work to make the arguments for a text good enough to live in the archive?
The posted excerpts are impenetrable, and I say this with English my native language and a PhD.
If they have something good to say, say it.
Here's an example:
We see that credit, instead of being an instrument for the suppression or the attenuation of crises, is on the contrary a particularly mighty instrument for the formation of crises. It cannot be anything else. Credit eliminates the remaining rigidity of capitalist relationships. It introduces everywhere the greatest elasticity possible. It renders all capitalist forces extensible, relative and mutually sensitive to the highest degree. Doing this, it facilitates and aggravates crises, which are nothing more or less than the periodic collisions of the contradictory forces of capitalist economy.
Reading that very carefully, I get from a whole paragraph that "credit makes capitalism worse by extending its reach", with zero detail, and none of how it does that. And this is a paragraph I would consider myself sympathetic to. For example, I think something certainly feels wrong if we have a lot of people struggling financially against credit card bills, but also credit is used extensively by the rich to improve their position. If it were truly a tool to "attenuate crises" of finance, then we should have less of the former, and none of the latter, so yeah, I can kinda see it.
But why am I, the furthest thing from an expert, doing the work to make the arguments for a text good enough to live in the archive?
A part of me gets the attitude that Turbo is presenting here in that I firmly believe that politics are very simple. Since we live in a world that is skewed to the right, the correct answer tends to just be whatever the left is saying, and it's almost always obviously the case. A corollary of that is that we should be able to present things in a very simple way, and this long post seems a bit long and difficult (I skimmed through it).
This reminded me of how I felt when I saw a bunch of socialists criticize populism on Bluesky the other day, following the Platner debacle. Like, no. Populism is good. Populism is the opposite of elitism, and elitism is bad. Keep it simple.
On July 15 2026 23:46 Nebuchad wrote: A part of me gets the attitude that Turbo is presenting here in that I firmly believe that politics are very simple. Since we live in a world that is skewed to the right, the correct answer tends to just be whatever the left is saying, and it's almost always obviously the case. A corollary of that is that we should be able to present things in a very simple way, and this long post seems a bit long and difficult (I skimmed through it).
This reminded me of how I felt when I saw a bunch of socialists criticize populism on Bluesky the other day, following the Platner debacle. Like, no. Populism is good. Populism is the opposite of elitism, and elitism is bad. Keep it simple.
I get it too. I was just using that requested pithiness to point out what Turbo was doing.
To be fair, a lot of political writing from 100+ years ago is verbose and hard to read. In part, because they were discovering/establishing ideas we take for granted nowadays (in part, because we've had 100+ years for them to play out as Turbo alluded to).
Which socialists, what criticisms? From what I understand, Bluesky is overwhelmingly liberals?
On July 16 2026 03:02 GreenHorizons wrote: I get it too. I was just using that requested pithiness to point out what Turbo was doing.
I dunno if I'm misreading something here, but it feels like you have an expectation of complete submission (probably more to the Doctrine than to yourself) from anyone willing to engage before you do the same. Seems kind of cultish. You're not some victim of me trying to "do something" because I came in here and made a genuine effort to curiously read some of the grand texts from the archives you suggested are important, came away thinking "this is obfuscatory tripe", and said as much.
In reality I clicked the blogs button because I wanted to re-read my own cringey blogpost from years and years ago about Brood War and thought I might be able to get there that way, and then I saw the Socialism blog had got a bump and so I went and read the few latest posts in it, and gave some of the posted texts a bit of a curious read.
My goal is not to undermine those old authors in some insidious fashion, and what I said about being sympathetic that credit seems like a fucked system from a number of directions was genuine. I'm just wondering what the point is in archives of impenetrable text that, yeah I don't care what you say, even back then were surely written more to sound smart rather than be smart.
Like, I read a bit of Žižek when one of his books ended up on my desk through happenstance, and that was written a lot later but has all the same issues. Fuck if I could understand much of it. Feels like these are texts designed for the reader to impart their own meaning upon the impressionist text that sits on the page, and any argument they make is mostly in spirit. Kind of like how people treat the Bible I guess.
Full disclaimer, I object to most capital-P Philosophy as being vague nonsense, not just socialist/communist stuff.
but it feels like you have an expectation of complete submission (probably more to the Doctrine than to yourself) from anyone willing to engage before you do the same. Seems kind of cultish. You're not some victim of me trying to "do something" because I came in here and made a genuine effort to curiously read some of the grand texts from the archives you suggested are important, came away thinking "this is obfuscatory tripe", and said as much.
In reality I clicked the blogs button because I wanted to re-read my own cringey blogpost from years and years ago about Brood War and thought I might be able to get there that way, and then I saw the Socialism blog had got a bump and so I went and read the few latest posts in it, and gave some of the posted texts a bit of a curious read.
My goal is not to undermine those old authors in some insidious fashion, and what I said about being sympathetic that credit seems like a fucked system from a number of directions was genuine. I'm just wondering what the point is in archives of impenetrable text that, yeah I don't care what you say, even back then were surely written more to sound smart rather than be smart.
Like, I read a bit of Žižek when one of his books ended up on my desk through happenstance, and that was written a lot later but has all the same issues. Fuck if I could understand much of it. Feels like these are texts designed for the reader to impart their own meaning upon the impressionist text that sits on the page, and any argument they make is mostly in spirit. Kind of like how people treat the Bible I guess.
Full disclaimer, I object to most capital-P Philosophy as being vague nonsense, not just socialist/communist stuff.
Most certainly.
To me it seems obvious you're engaging in bad faith. If Neb wants to engage with you believing otherwise, in demonstration of their preferred approach, I welcome that under these circumstances. I'd be happy to be wrong (and/or be shown some value in it).
There's a lot of boring reasons for the specific text, but the general concept is just that pretty much any socialist text is a better use of anyone's "reading political TL posts" brain power than engaging with rightwing shitposting and it serves as a rather literal representation of an alternative.
On July 16 2026 03:02 GreenHorizons wrote: I get it too. I was just using that requested pithiness to point out what Turbo was doing.
To be fair, a lot of political writing from 100+ years ago is verbose and hard to read. In part, because they were discovering/establishing ideas we take for granted nowadays (in part, because we've had 100+ years for them to play out as Turbo alluded to).
Which socialists, what criticisms? From what I understand, Bluesky is overwhelmingly liberals?
Decent amount of liberals, decent amount of leftists. As it should be, in my opinion. You can get piled for a leftist view but you can also get piled for a liberal view, and oBlade type people don't last long. As a point of comparison, the trans sport cringe stuff that was in the thread a few days ago would have played out very differently. At least in my feed, I guess I curate my own experience to some extent.
On July 16 2026 17:44 GreenHorizons wrote: To me it seems obvious you're engaging in bad faith.
Okay, so you were actually making an accusation along these lines and I wasn't misreading it, lol But I'm not actually here to have that slapfight, nor to try to argue for capitalism and liberalism. I won't pretend I'm some committed, card-carrying socialist either, just a curious person who goes with the flow really. I thought you posting what you consider some authoratitive/compelling texts on the topic was a more positive direction than complaining about what other people choose to post about, and I tried to give them a read.
Yeah, I bounced off the texts, and I'll bounce from your blog after this post given I'm not welcome. Just saying though, I haven't read any say, Hayek, but I imagine if someone here posted some excerpts of his I'd find it similarly annoying to read.
On July 16 2026 17:44 GreenHorizons wrote: To me it seems obvious you're engaging in bad faith.
Okay, so you were actually making an accusation along these lines and I wasn't misreading it, lol But I'm not actually here to have that slapfight, nor to try to argue for capitalism and liberalism. I won't pretend I'm some committed, card-carrying socialist either, just a curious person who goes with the flow really. I thought you posting what you consider some authoratitive/compelling texts on the topic was a more positive direction than complaining about what other people choose to post about, and I tried to give them a read.
Yeah, I bounced off the texts, and I'll bounce from your blog after this post given I'm not welcome. Just saying though, I haven't read any say, Hayek, but I imagine if someone here posted some excerpts of his I'd find it similarly annoying to read.
In my opinion going with the flow is more in line with the general attitude of liberalism than you realize. Very few people who defend capitalism do it because they think it's good, especially nowadays where it is quite obviously not the case. Most people defend it because it's just dramatically easier to just let things happen around you than it is to participate. There are areas of my life where I've done the same thing, super easy to relate.
This is part of my issue with how you engage with the thread, GH, btw. You don't really need to convince liberals to hold your position, you just need to change the world. Then, once the world is changed, the easy thing to do that doesn't involve having to participate will be to agree with your position, so the liberals of that new world will agree with your position. Problem solved
On July 16 2026 03:02 GreenHorizons wrote: I get it too. I was just using that requested pithiness to point out what Turbo was doing.
To be fair, a lot of political writing from 100+ years ago is verbose and hard to read. In part, because they were discovering/establishing ideas we take for granted nowadays (in part, because we've had 100+ years for them to play out as Turbo alluded to).
Which socialists, what criticisms? From what I understand, Bluesky is overwhelmingly liberals?
Decent amount of liberals, decent amount of leftists. As it should be, in my opinion. You can get piled for a leftist view but you can also get piled for a liberal view, and oBlade type people don't last long. As a point of comparison, the trans sport cringe stuff that was in the thread a few days ago would have played out very differently. At least in my feed, I guess I curate my own experience to some extent.
I was asking for specifics because I genuinely wanted to know. An example of a "bunch of socialists criticiz[ing] populism on Bluesky the other day" would be informative. There were certainly mistakes made with Platner, but most of the anti-populism stuff I've seen was from liberals that prefer to call themselves leftists. That said, there are socialist arguments critical of populism, I just have a hard time imagining that's what you were reading on Bluesky. I could see your K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid) point could apply to either though.
Well yeah usually it's liberals who criticize populism we're used to that, I was surprised to find a little more of it from leftists than I expected, sometimes with the same incorrect definition that liberals use. But yeah sorry I didn't keep examples obviously. Must have been some in the replies of the kirby lady if you really want to go for it.
On July 16 2026 17:44 GreenHorizons wrote: To me it seems obvious you're engaging in bad faith.
Okay, so you were actually making an accusation along these lines and I wasn't misreading it, lol But I'm not actually here to have that slapfight, nor to try to argue for capitalism and liberalism. I won't pretend I'm some committed, card-carrying socialist either, just a curious person who goes with the flow really. I thought you posting what you consider some authoratitive/compelling texts on the topic was a more positive direction than complaining about what other people choose to post about, and I tried to give them a read.
Yeah, I bounced off the texts, and I'll bounce from your blog after this post given I'm not welcome. Just saying though, I haven't read any say, Hayek, but I imagine if someone here posted some excerpts of his I'd find it similarly annoying to read.
In my opinion going with the flow is more in line with the general attitude of liberalism than you realize. Very few people who defend capitalism do it because they think it's good, especially nowadays where it is quite obviously not the case. Most people defend it because it's just dramatically easier to just let things happen around you than it is to participate. There are areas of my life where I've done the same thing, super easy to relate.
This is part of my issue with how you engage with the thread, GH, btw. You don't really need to convince liberals to hold your position, you just need to change the world. Then, once the world is changed, the easy thing to do that doesn't involve having to participate will be to agree with your position, so the liberals of that new world will agree with your position. Problem solved
I generally agree and have made this point myself, so I don't really try to convince people (Turbo being an example) around here anymore.
I admit I had higher hopes for posters here being a part of solving those problems than I should have, so I can only blame myself for that disappointment.
On July 07 2026 22:12 GreenHorizons wrote: I figure I could make it more convenient for people to resist the temptation to bicker with Sartres by just roughly matching word counts (this is actually less words than the recent oBlade spat) with something preferable and discussing it with those interested.
I believe Rosa Luxemburg's pamphlet on whether capitalism can be reformed or if revolution is necessary is a reasonable place to start.
Rosa Luxemburg's Reform or Revolution
Introduction
At first view the title of this work may be found surprising. Can the Social-Democracy be against reforms? Can we contrapose the social revolution, the transformation of the existing order, our final goal, to social reforms? Certainly not. The daily struggle for reforms, for the amelioration of the condition of the workers within the framework of the existing social order, and for democratic institutions, offers to the Social-Democracy the only means of engaging in the proletarian class war and working in the direction of the final goal – the conquest of political power and the suppression of wage labour. Between social reforms and revolution there exists for the Social Democracy an indissoluble tie. The struggle for reforms is its means; the social revolution, its aim.
It is in Eduard Bernstein’s theory, presented in his articles on Problems of Socialism, Neue Zeit of 1897–98, and in his book Die Voraussetzungen des Socialismus und die Aufgaben der Sozialdemokratie[1] that we find, for the first time, the opposition of the two factors of the labour movement. His theory tends to counsel us to renounce the social transformation, the final goal of Social-Democracy and, inversely, to make of social reforms, the means of the class struggle, its aim. Bernstein himself has very clearly and characteristically formulated this viewpoint when he wrote: “The Final goal, no matter what it is, is nothing; the movement is everything.”
But since the final goal of socialism constitutes the only decisive factor distinguishing the Social-Democratic movement from bourgeois democracy and from bourgeois radicalism, the only factor transforming the entire labour movement from a vain effort to repair the capitalist order into a class struggle against this order, for the suppression of this order – the question: “Reform or Revolution?” as it is posed by Bernstein, equals for the Social-Democracy the question: “To be or not to be?” In the controversy with Bernstein and his followers, everybody in the Party ought to understand clearly it is not a question of this or that method of struggle, or the use of this or that set of tactics, but of the very existence of the Social-Democratic movement.
Upon a casual consideration of Bernstein’s theory, this may appear like an exaggeration. Does he not continually mention the Social-Democracy and its aims? Does he not repeat again and again, in very explicit language, that he too strives toward the final goal of socialism, but in another way? Does he not stress particularly that he fully approves of the present practice of the Social-Democracy?
That is all true, to be sure. It is also true that every new movement, when it first elaborates its theory and policy, begins by finding support in the preceding movement, though it may be in direct contradiction with the latter. It begins by suiting itself to the forms found at hand and by speaking the language spoken hereto. In time the new grain breaks through the old husk. The new movement finds its forms and its own language.
To expect an opposition against scientific socialism at its very beginning, to express itself clearly, fully and to the last consequence on the subject of its real content: to expect it to deny openly and bluntly the theoretic basis of the Social-Democracy – would amount to underrating the power of scientific socialism. Today he who wants to pass as a socialist, and at the same time declare war on Marxian doctrine, the most stupendous product of the human mind in the century, must begin with involuntary esteem for Marx. He must begin by acknowledging himself to be his disciple, by seeking in Marx’s own teachings the points of support for an attack on the latter, while he represents this attack as a further development of Marxian doctrine. On this account, we must, unconcerned by its outer forms, pick out the sheathed kernel of Bernstein’s theory. This is a matter of urgent necessity for the broad layers of the industrial proletariat in our Party.
No coarser insult, no baser aspersion, can be thrown against the workers than the remarks: “Theocratic controversies are only for academicians.” Some time ago Lassalle said: “Only when science and the workers, these opposite poles of society, become one, will they crush in their arms of steel all obstacles to culture.” The entire strength of the modern labour movement rests on theoretic knowledge.
But doubly important is this knowledge for the workers in the present case, because it is precisely they and their influence in the movement that are in the balance here. It is their skin that is being brought to market. The opportunist theory in the Party, the theory formulated by Bernstein, is nothing else than an unconscious attempt to assure predominance to the petty-bourgeois elements that have entered our Party, to change the policy and aims of our Party in their direction. The question of reform or revolution, of the final goal and the movement, is basically, in another form, but the question of the petty-bourgeois or proletarian character of the labour movement.
It is, therefore, in the interest of the proletarian mass of the Party to become acquainted, actively and in detail, with the present theoretic controversy with opportunism. As long as theoretic knowledge remains the privilege of a handful of “academicians” in the Party, the latter will face the danger of going astray. Only when the great mass of workers take the keen and dependable weapons of scientific socialism in their own hands, will all the petty-bourgeois inclinations, all the opportunistic currents, come to naught. The movement will then find itself on sure and firm ground. “Quantity will do it”
If it is true that theories are only the images of the phenomena of the exterior world in the human consciousness, it must be added, concerning Eduard Bernstein’s system, that theories are sometimes inverted images. Think of a theory of instituting socialism by means of social reforms in the face of the complete stagnation of the reform movement in Germany. Think of a theory of trade union control. Consider the theory of winning a majority in Parliament, after the revision of the constitution of Saxony and in view of the most recent attempts against universal suffrage. However, the pivotal point of Bernstein’s system is not located in his conception of the practical tasks of the Social-Democracy. It is found in his stand on the course of the objective development of capitalist society, which, in turn is closely bound to his conception of the practical tasks of the Social-Democracy.
According to Bernstein, a general decline of capitalism seems to be increasingly improbable because, on the one hand, capitalism shows a greater capacity of adaptation, and, on the other hand, capitalist production becomes more and more varied.
The capacity of capitalism to adapt itself, says Bernstein, is manifested first in the disappearance of general crises, resulting from the development of the credit system, employers’ organisations, wider means of communication and informational services. It shows itself secondly, in the tenacity of the middle classes, which hails from the growing differentiation of the branches of production and the elevation of vast layers of the proletariat to the level of the middle class. It is furthermore proved, argues Bernstein, by the amelioration of the economic and political situation of the proletariat as a result of its trade union activity.
From this theoretic stand is derived the following general conclusion about the practical work of the Social-Democracy. The latter must not direct its daily activity toward the conquest of political power, but toward the betterment of the condition of the working class, within the existing order. It must not expect to institute socialism as a result of a political and social crisis, but should build socialism by means of the progressive extension of social control and the gradual application of the principle of co-operation.
Bernstein himself sees nothing new in his theories. On the contrary, he believes them to be in agreement with certain declarations of Marx and Engels. Nevertheless, it seems to us that it is difficult to deny that they are in formal contradiction with the conceptions of scientific socialism.
If Bernstein’s revisionism merely consisted in affirming that the march of capitalist development is slower than was thought before, he would merely be presenting an argument for adjourning the conquest of power by the proletariat, on which everybody agreed up to now. Its only consequence would be a slowing up of the pace of the struggle.
But that is not the case. What Bernstein questions is not the rapidity of the development of capitalist society, but the march of the development itself and, consequently, the very possibility of a change to socialism.
Socialist theory up to now declared that the point of departure for a transformation to socialism would be a general and catastrophic crisis. We must distinguish in this outlook two things: the fundamental idea and its exterior form.
The fundamental idea consists of the affirmation that capitalism, as a result of its own inner contradictions, moves toward a point when it will be unbalanced, when it will simply become impossible. There were good reasons for conceiving that juncture in the form of a catastrophic general commercial crisis. But that is of secondary importance when the fundamental idea is considered.
The scientific basis of socialism rests, as is well known, on three principal results of capitalist development. First, on the growing anarchy of capitalist economy, leading inevitably to its ruin. Second, on the progressive socialisation of the process of production, which creates the germs of the future social order. And third, on the increased organisation and consciousness of the proletarian class, which constitutes the active factor in the coming revolution.
Bernstein pulls away from the first of the three fundamental supports of scientific socialism. He says that capitalist development does not lead to a general economic collapse.
He does not merely reject a certain form of the collapse. He rejects the very possibility of collapse. He says textually: “One could claim that by collapse of the present society is meant something else than a general commercial crisis, worse than all others, that is a complete collapse of the capitalist system brought about as a result of its own contradictions.” And to this he replies: “With the growing development of society a complete and almost general collapse of the present system of production becomes more and more improbable, because capitalist development increases on the one hand the capacity of adaptation and, on the other – that is at the same time, the differentiation of industry.” (Neue Zeit, 1897-98, vol.18, pg.555)
But then the question arises: Why and how, in that case, can we attain the final goal? According to scientific socialism, the historic necessity of the socialist revolution manifests itself above all in the growing anarchy of capitalism, which drives the system into an impasse. But if one admits with Bernstein that capitalist development does not move in the direction of its own ruin, then socialism ceases to be objectively necessary. There remain the other two mainstays of the scientific explanation of socialism, which are also said to be consequences of capitalism itself: the socialisation of the process of production and the growing consciousness of the proletariat. It is these two matters that Bernstein has in mind when he says: “The suppression of the theory of collapse does not in any way deprive socialist doctrine of the power of persuasion. For, examined closely, what are all factors enumerated by us that make for the suppression or the modification of the former crises? Nothing else, in fact, than the conditions, or even in party the germs, of the socialisation of production and exchange.” (Ibid., pg.554)
Very little reflection is needed to understand that here too we face a false conclusion. Where lies the importance of all the phenomena that are said by Bernstein to be the means of capitalist adaptation – cartels, the credit system, the development of means of communication, the amelioration of the situation of the working class, etc.? Obviously, in that they suppress or, at least, attenuate the internal contradictions of capitalist economy, and stop the development or the aggravation of these contradictions. Thus the suppression of crises can only mean the suppression of the antagonism between production and exchange on the capitalist base. The amelioration of the situation of the working class, or the penetration of certain fractions of the class into middle layers, can only mean the attenuation of the antagonism between Capital and Labour. But if the mention factors suppress the capitalist contradictions and consequently save the system from ruin, if they enable capitalism to maintain itself – and that is why Bernstein calls them “means of adaptation” – how can cartels, the credit system, trade unions, etc., be at the same time “the conditions and even, in part, the germs” of socialism? Obviously only in the sense that they express most clearly the social character of production.
But by presenting it in its capitalist form, the same factors render superfluous, inversely, in the same measure, the transformation of this socialised production into socialist production. That is why they can be the germs or conditions of a socialist order only in a theoretic sense and not in an historic sense. They are phenomena which, in the light of our conception of socialism, we know to be related to socialism but which, in fact, not only do not lead to a socialist revolution but render it, on the contrary, superfluous.
There remains one force making for socialism – the class consciousness of the proletariat. But it, too, is in the given case no the simple intellectual reflection of the growing contradictions of capitalism and its approaching decline. It is now no more than an ideal whose force of persuasion rests only on the perfection attributed to it.
We have here, in brief, the explanation of the socialist programme by means of “pure reason.” We have here, to use simpler language, an idealist explanation of socialism. The objective necessity of socialism, the explanation of socialism as the result of the material development of society, falls to the ground.
Revisionist theory thus places itself in a dilemma. Either the socialist transformation is, as was admitted up to now, the consequence of the internal contradictions of capitalism, and with the growth of capitalism will develop its inner contradictions, resulting inevitably, at some point, in its collapse, (in that case the “means of adaptation” are ineffective and the theory of collapse is correct); or the “means of adaptation” will really stop the collapse of the capitalist system and thereby enable capitalism to maintain itself by suppressing its own contradictions. In that case socialism ceases to be an historic necessity. It then becomes anything you want to call it, but it is no longer the result of the material development of society.
The dilemma leads to another. Either revisionism is correct in its position on the course of capitalist development, and therefore the socialist transformation of society is only a utopia, or socialism is not a utopia, and the theory of “means of adaptation” is false. There is the question in a nutshell.
No way this isn't more intellectually stimulating (moreso if people actually discussed it) than the umpteenth shitpost flinging contest with oBlade and the like?
According to Bernstein, the credit system, the perfected means of communication and the new capitalist combines are the important factors that forward the adaptation of capitalist economy.
Credit has diverse applications in capitalism. Its two most important functions are to extend production and to facilitate exchange. When the inner tendency of capitalist production to extend boundlessly strikes against the restricted dimensions of private property, credit appears as a means of surmounting these limits in a particular capitalist manner. Credit, through shareholding, combines in one magnitude of capital a large number of individual capitals. It makes available to each capitalist the use of other capitalists’ money – in the form of industrial credit. As commercial credit it accelerates the exchange of commodities and therefore the return of capital into production, and thus aids the entire cycle of the process of production. The manner in which these two principle functions of credit influence the formation of crises is quite obvious. If it is true that crises appear as a result of the contradiction existing between the capacity of extension, the tendency of production to increase, and the restricted consumption capacity of the market, credit is precisely, in view of what was stated above, the specific means that makes this contradiction break out as often as possible. To begin with, it increases disproportionately the capacity of the extension of production and thus constitutes an inner motive force that is constantly pushing production to exceed the limits of the market. But credit strikes from two sides. After having (as a factor of the process of production) provoked overproduction, credit (as a factor of exchange) destroys, during the crisis, the very productive forces it itself created. At the first symptom of the crisis, credit melts away. It abandons exchange where it would still be found indispensable, and appearing instead, ineffective and useless, there where some exchange still continues, it reduces to a minimum the consumption capacity of the market.
Besides having these two principal results, credit also influences the formation of crises in the following ways. It constitutes the technical means of making available to an entrepreneur the capital of other owners. It stimulates at the same time the bold and unscrupulous utilisation of the property of others. That is, it leads to speculation. Credit not only aggravates the crisis in its capacity as a dissembled means of exchange, it also helps to bring and extend the crisis by transforming all exchange into an extremely complex and artificial mechanism that, having a minimum of metallic money as a real base, is easily disarranged at the slightest occasion.
We see that credit, instead of being an instrument for the suppression or the attenuation of crises, is on the contrary a particularly mighty instrument for the formation of crises. It cannot be anything else. Credit eliminates the remaining rigidity of capitalist relationships. It introduces everywhere the greatest elasticity possible. It renders all capitalist forces extensible, relative and mutually sensitive to the highest degree. Doing this, it facilitates and aggravates crises, which are nothing more or less than the periodic collisions of the contradictory forces of capitalist economy.
That leads us to another question. Why does credit generally have the appearance of a “means of adaptation” of capitalism? No matter what the relation or form in which this “adaptation” is represented by certain people, it can obviously consist only of the power to suppress one of the several antagonistic relations of capitalist economy, that is, of the power to suppress or weaken one of these contradictions, and allow liberty of movement, at one point or another, to the other fettered productive forces. In fact, it is precisely credit that aggravates these contradictions to the highest degree. It aggravates the antagonism between the mode of production and the mode of exchange by stretching production to the limit and at the same time paralysing exchange at the smallest pretext. It aggravates the antagonism between the mode of production and the mode of appropriation by separating production from ownership, that is, by transforming the capital employed in production into “social” capital and at the same time transforming a part of the profit, in the form of interest on capital, into a simple title of ownership. It aggravates the antagonism existing between the property relations (ownership) and the relations of production by putting into a small number of hands immense productive forces and expropriating large numbers of small capitalists. Lastly, it aggravates the antagonism existing between social character of production and private capitalist ownership by rendering necessary the intervention of the State in production.
In short, credit reproduces all the fundamental antagonisms of the capitalist world. It accentuates them. It precipitates their development and thus pushes the capitalist world forward to its own destruction. The prime act of capitalist adaptation, as far as credit is concerned, should really consist in breaking and suppressing credit. In fact, credit is far from being a means of capitalist adaptation. It is, on the contrary, a means of destruction of the most extreme revolutionary significance. Has not this revolutionary character of credit actually inspired plans of “socialist” reform? As such, it has had some distinguished proponents, some of whom (Isaac Pereira in France), were, as Marx put it, half prophets, half rogues.
Just as fragile is the second “means of adaptation”: employers’ organisations. According to Bernstein, such organisations will put an end to anarchy of production and do away with crises through their regulation of production. The multiple repercussions of the development of cartels and trusts have not been considered too carefully up to now. But they predict a problem that can only be solved with the aid of Marxist theory.
One thing is certain. We could speak of a damming up of capitalist anarchy through the agency of capitalist combines only in the measure that cartels, trusts, etc., become, even approximately, the dominant form of production. But such a possibility is excluded by the very nature of cartels. The final economic aim and result of combines is the following. Through the suppression of competition in a given branch of production, the distribution of the mass of profit realised on the market is influenced in such a manner that there is an increase of the share going to this branch of industry. Such organisation of the field can increase the rate of profit in one branch of industry at the expense of another. That is precisely why it cannot be generalised, for when it is extended to all important branches of industry, this tendency suppresses its own influence.
Furthermore, within the limits of their practical application the result of combines is the very opposite of suppression of industrial anarchy. Cartels ordinarily succeed in obtaining an increase of profit, in the home market, by producing at a lower rate of profit for the foreign market, thus utilising the supplementary portions of capital which they cannot utilise for domestic needs. That is to say, they sell abroad cheaper than at home. The result is the sharpening of competition abroad – the very opposite of what certain people want to find. That is well demonstrated by the history of the world sugar industry.
Generally speaking, combines treated as a manifestation of the capitalist mode of production, can only be considered a definite phase of capitalist development. Cartels are fundamentally nothing else than a means resorted to by the capitalist mode of production for the purpose of holding back the fatal fall of the rate of profit in certain branches of production. What method do cartels employ for this end? That of keeping inactive a part of the accumulated capital. That is, they use the same method which in another form is employed in crises. The remedy and the illness resemble each other like two drops of water. Indeed the first can be considered the lesser evil only up to a certain point. When the outlets of disposal begin to shrink, and the world market has been extended to its limit and has become exhausted through the competition of the capitalist countries – and sooner or later that is bound to come – then the forced partial idleness of capital will reach such dimensions that the remedy will become transformed into a malady, and capital, already pretty much “socialised” through regulation, will tend to revert again to the form of individual capital. In the face of the increased difficulties of finding markets, each individual portion of capital will prefer to take its chances alone. At that time, the large regulating organisations will burst like soap bubbles and give way to aggravated competition.
In a general way, cartels, just like credit, appear therefore as a determined phase of capitalist development, which in the last analysis aggravates the anarchy of the capitalist world and expresses and ripens its internal contradictions. Cartels aggravate the antagonism existing between the mode of production and exchange by sharpening the struggle between the producer and consumer, as is the case especially in the United States. They aggravate, furthermore, the antagonism existing between the mode of production and the mode of appropriation by opposing, in the most brutal fashion, to the working class the superior force of organised capital, and thus increasing the antagonism between Capital and Labour.
Finally, capitalist combinations aggravate the contradiction existing between the international character of capitalist world economy and the national character of the State – insofar as they are always accompanied by a general tariff war, which sharpens the differences among the capitalist States. We must add to this the decidedly revolutionary influence exercised by cartels on the concentration of production, technical progress, etc.
In other words, when evaluated from the angle of their final effect on capitalist economy, cartels and trusts fail as “means of adaptation.” They fail to attenuate the contradictions of capitalism. On the contrary, they appear to be an instrument of greater anarchy. They encourage the further development of the internal contradictions of capitalism. They accelerate the coming of a general decline of capitalism.
But if the credit system, cartels, and the rest do not suppress the anarchy of capitalism, why have we not had a major commercial crisis for two decades, since 1873? Is this not a sign that, contrary to Marx’s analysis the capitalist mode of production has adapted itself – at least, in a general way – to the needs of society? Hardly had Bernstein rejected, in 1898, Marx’s theory of crises, when a profound general crisis broke out in 1900, while seven years later, a new crisis beginning in the United States, hit the world market. Facts proved the theory of “adaptation” to be false. They showed at the same time that the people who abandoned Marx’s theory of crisis only because no crisis occurred within a certain space of time merely confused the essence of this theory with one of its secondary exterior aspects – the ten-year cycle. The description of the cycle of modern capitalist industry as a ten-year period was to Marx and Engels, in 1860 and 1870, only a simple statement of facts. It was not based on a natural law but on a series of given historic circumstances that were connected with the rapidly spreading activity of young capitalism.
The crisis of 1825 was in effect, the result of extensive investment of capital in the construction of roads, canals, gas works, which took place during the preceding decade, particularly in England, where the crisis broke out. The following crisis of 1836-1839 was similarly the result of heavy investments in the construction of means of transportation. The crisis of 1847 was provoked by the feverish building of railroads in England (from 1844 to 1847, in three years, the British Parliament gave railway concessions to the value of 15 billion dollars). In each of the three mentioned cases, a crisis came after new bases for capitalist development were established. In 1857, the same result was brought by the abrupt opening of new markets for European industry in America and Australia, after the discovery of the gold mines, and the extensive construction of railway lines, especially in France, where the example of England was then closely imitated. (From 1852 to 1856, new railway lines to the value of 1,250 million francs were built in France alone). And finally we have the great crisis of 1873 – a direct consequence of the firm boom of large industry in Germany and Austria, which followed the political events of 1866 and 1871.
So that up to now, the sudden extension of the domain of capitalist economy, and not its shrinking, was each time the cause of the commercial crisis. That the international crisis repeated themselves precisely every ten years was a purely exterior fact, a matter of chance. The Marxist formula for crises as presented by Engels in Anti-Dühring and by Marx in the first and third volumes of Capital, applies to all crises only in the measure that it uncovers their international mechanism and their general basic causes.
Crises may repeat themselves every five or ten years, or even every eight or twenty years. But what proves best the falseness of Bernstein’s theory is that it is in the countries having the greatest development of the famous “means of adaptation” – credit, perfected communications and trusts – that the last crisis (1907-1908) was most violent.
The belief that capitalist production could “adapt” itself to exchange presupposes one of two things: either the world market can spread unlimitedly, or on the contrary the development of the productive forces is so fettered that it cannot pass beyond the bounds of the market. The first hypothesis constitutes a material impossibility. The second is rendered just as impossible by the constant technical progress that daily creates new productive forces in all branches.
There remains still another phenomenon which, says Bernstein, contradicts the course of capitalist development as it is indicated above. In the “steadfast phalanx” of middle-size enterprises, Bernstein sees a sign that the development of large industry does not move in a revolutionary direction, and is not as effective from the angle of the concentration of industry as was expected by the “theory” of collapse. He is here, however, the victim of his own lack of understanding. For to see the progressive disappearance of large industry is to misunderstand sadly the nature of this process.
According to Marxist theory, small capitalists play in the general course of capitalist development the role of pioneers of technical change. They possess that role in a double sense. They initiate new methods of production in well-established branches of industry; they are instrumental in the creation of new branches of production not yet exploited by the big capitalist. It is false to imagine that the history of the middle-size capitalist establishments proceeds rectilinearly in the direction of their progressive disappearance. The course of this development is on the contrary purely dialectical and moves constantly among contradictions. The middle capitalist layers find themselves, just like the workers, under the influence of two antagonistic tendencies, one ascendant, the other descendant. In this case, the descendent tendency is the continued rise of the scale of production, which overflows periodically the dimensions of the average size parcels of capital and removes them repeatedly from the terrain of world competition.
The ascendant tendency is, first, the periodic depreciation of the existing capital, which lowers again, for a certain time, the scale of production in proportion to the value of the necessary minimum amount of capital. It is represented, besides, by the penetration of capitalist production into new spheres. The struggle of the average size enterprise against big Capital cannot be considered a regularly proceeding battle in which the troops of the weaker party continue to melt away directly and quantitatively. It should be rather regarded as a periodic mowing down of the small enterprises, which rapidly grow up again, only to be mowed down once more by large industry. The two tendencies play ball with the middle capitalist layers. The descending tendency must win in the end.
The very opposite is true about the development of the working class. The victory of the descending tendency must not necessarily show itself in an absolute numerical diminution of the middle-size enterprises. It must show itself, first in the progressive increase of the minimum amount of capital necessary for the functioning of the enterprises in the old branches of production; second in the constant diminution of the interval of time during which the small capitalists conserve the opportunity to exploit the new branches of production. The result as far as the small capitalist is concerned, is a progressively shorter duration of his stay in the new industry and a progressively more rapid change in the methods of production as a field for investment. For the average capitalist strata, taken as a whole, there is a process of more and more rapid social assimilation and dissimilation.
Bernstein knows this perfectly well. He himself comments on this. But what he seems to forget is that this very thing is the law of the movement of the average capitalist enterprise. If one admits that small capitalists are pioneers of technical progress, and if it true that the latter is the vital pulse of the capitalist economy, then it is manifest that small capitalists are an integral part of capitalist development, which can only disappear together with it [capitalist development]. The progressive disappearance of the middle-size enterprise – in the absolute sense considered by Bernstein – means not, as he thinks, the revolutionary course of capitalist development, but precisely the contrary, the cessation, the slowing up of development. “The rate of profit, that is to say, the relative increase of capital,” said Marx, “is important first of all for new investors of capital, grouping themselves independently. And as soon as the formation of capital falls exclusively into a handful of big capitalists, the revivifying fire of production is extinguished. It dies away.”
On to the next chapter, though if anyone wants to discuss a preceding one that's obviously welcomed.
Part One Chapter III The Realisation of Socialism through Social Reforms
Bernstein rejects the “theory of collapse” as an historic road toward socialism. Now what is the way to a socialist society that is proposed by his “theory of adaptation to capitalism”? Bernstein answers this question only by allusion. Konrad Schmidt, however, attempts to deal with this detail in the manner of Bernstein. According to him, “the trade union struggle for hours and wages and the political struggle for reforms will lead to a progressively more extensive control over the conditions of production,” and “as the rights of the capitalist proprietor will be diminished through legislation, he will be reduced in time to the role of a simple administrator.” “The capitalist will see his property lose more and more value to himself” till finally “the direction and administration of exploitation will be taken from him entirely” and “collective exploitation” instituted.
Therefore trade unions, social reforms and, adds Bernstein, the political democratisation of the State are the means of the progressive realisation of socialism.
But the fact is that the principal function of trade unions (and this was best explained by Bernstein himself in Neue Zeit in 1891) consists in providing the workers with a means of realising the capitalist law of wages, that is to say, the sale of their labour power at current market prices. Trade unions enable the proletariat to utilise at each instant, the conjuncture of the market. But these conjunctures – (1) the labour demand determined by the state of production, (2) the labour supply created by the proletarianisation of the middle strata of society and the natural reproduction of the working classes, and (3) the momentary degree of productivity of labour – these remain outside of the sphere of influence of the trade unions. Trade unions cannot suppress the law of wages. Under the most favourable circumstances, the best they can do is to impose on capitalist exploitation the “normal” limit of the moment. They have not, however, the power to suppress exploitation itself, not even gradually.
Schmidt, it is true, sees the present trade union movement in a “feeble initial stage.” He hopes that “in the future” the “trade union movement will exercise a progressively increased influence over the regulation of production.” But by the regulation of production we can only understand two things: intervention in the technical domain of the process of production and fixing the scale of production itself. What is the nature of the influence exercised by trade unions in these two departments? It is clear that in the technique of production, the interest of the capitalist agrees, up to a certain point, with the progress and development of capitalist economy. It is his own interest that pushes him to make technical improvements. But the isolated worker finds himself in a decidedly different position. Each technical transformation contradicts his interests. It aggravates his helpless situation by depreciating the value of his labour power and rendering his work more intense, more monotonous and more difficult.
Insofar as trade unions can intervene in the technical department of production, they can only oppose technical innovation. But here they do not act in the interest of the entire working class and its emancipation, which accords rather with technical progress and, therefore, with the interest of the isolated capitalist. They act here in a reactionary direction. And in fact, we find efforts on the part of workers to intervene in the technical part of production not in the future, where Schmidt looks for it, but in the past of the trade union movement. Such efforts characterised the old phase of English trade unionism (up to 1860), when the British organisations were still tied to medieval “corporative” vestiges and found inspiration in the outworn principle of “a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s labour,” as expressed by Webb in his History of Trade Unionism.
On the other hand, the effort of the labour unions to fix the scale of production and the prices of commodities is a recent phenomenon. Only recently have we witnessed such attempts – and again in England. In their nature and tendencies, these efforts resemble those dealt with above. What does the active participation of trade unions in fixing the scale and cost of production amount to? It amounts to a cartel of the workers and entrepreneurs in a common stand against the consumer and especially rival entrepreneurs. In no way is the effect of this any different from that of ordinary employers’ associations. Basically we no longer have here a struggle between Labour and Capital, but the solidarity of Capital and Labour against the total consumers. Considered for its social worth, it is seen to be a reactionary move that cannot be a stage in the struggle for the emancipation of the proletariat, because it connotes the very opposite of the class struggle. Considered from the angle of practical application, it is found to be a utopia which, as shown by a rapid examination, cannot be extended to the large branches of industry producing for the world market.
So that the scope of trade unions is limited essentially to a struggle for an increase of wages and the reduction of labour time, that is to say, to efforts at regulating capitalist exploitation as they are made necessary by the momentary situation of the old world market. But labour unions can in no way influence the process of production itself. Moreover, trade union development moves – contrary to what is asserted by Konrad Schmidt – in the direction of a complete detachment of the labour market from any immediate relation to the rest of the market.
That is shown by the fact that even attempts to relate labour contracts to the general situation of production by means of a system of sliding wage scales have been outmoded with historic development. The British labour unions are moving farther and farther away from such efforts.
Even within the effective boundaries of its activity the trade union movement cannot spread in the unlimited way claimed for it by the theory of adaptation. On the contrary, if we examine the large factors of social development, we see that we are not moving toward an epoch marked by a victorious development of trade unions, but rather toward a time when the hardships of labour unions will increase. Once industrial development has attained its highest possible pint and capitalism has entered its descending phase on the world market, the trade union struggle will become doubly difficult. In the first place, the objective conjuncture of the market will be less favourable to the sellers of labour power, because the demand for labour power will increase at a slower rate and labour supply more rapidly than at present. In the second place, the capitalists themselves, in order to make up for losses suffered on the world market, will make even greater efforts than at present to reduce the part of the total product going to the workers (in the form of wages). The reduction of wages is, as pointed out by Marx, one of the principal means of retarding the fall of profit. The situation in England already offers us a picture of the beginning of the second stage of trade union development. Trade union action is reduced of necessity to the simple defence of already realised gains, and even that is becoming more and more difficult. Such is the general trend of things in our society. The counterpart of this tendency should be the development of the political side of the class struggle.
Konrad Schmidt commits the same error of historic perspective when he deals with social reforms. He expects that social reforms, like trade union organisations, will “dictate to the capitalists the only conditions under which they will be able to employ labour power.” Seeing reform in this light, Bernstein calls labour legislation a piece of “social control,” and as such, a piece of socialism. Similarly, Konrad Schmidt always uses the term “social control” when he refers to labour protection laws. Once he has thus happily transformed the State into society, he confidently adds: “That is to say, the rising working class.” As a result of this trick of substitution, the innocent labour laws enacted by the German Federal Council are transformed into transitory socialist measures supposedly enacted by the German proletariat.
The mystification is obvious. We know that the present State is not “society” representing the “rising working class.” It is itself the representative of capitalist society. It is a class state. Therefore its reform measures are not an application of “social control,” that is, the control of society working freely in its own labour process. They are forms of control applied by the class organisation of Capital to the production of Capital. The so-called social reforms are enacted in the interests of Capital. Yes, Bernstein and Konrad Schmidt see at present only “feeble beginnings” of this control. They hope to see a long succession of reforms in the future, all favouring the working class. But here they commit a mistake similar to their belief in the unlimited development of the trade union movement.
A basic condition for the theory of the gradual realisation of socialism through social reforms is a certain objective development of capitalist property and of the State. Konrad Schmidt says that the capitalist proprietor tends to lose his special rights with historic development, and is reduced to the role of a simple administrator. He thinks that the expropriation of the means of production cannot possibly be effected as a single historic act. He therefore resorts to the theory of expropriation by stages. With this in mind, he divides the right to property into (1) the right of “sovereignty” (ownership) – which he attributes to a thing called “society” and which he wants to extend – and (2) its opposite, the simple right of use, held by the capitalist, but which is supposedly being reduced in the hands of the capitalists to the mere administration of their enterprises.
This interpretation is either a simple play on words, and in that case the theory of gradual expropriation has no real basis, or it is a true picture of judicial development, in which case, as we shall see, the theory of gradual expropriation is entirely false.
The division of the right of property into several component rights, an arrangement serving Konrad Schmidt as a shelter wherein he may construct his theory of “expropriation by stages,” characterised feudal society, founded on natural economy. In feudalism, the total product was shared among the social classes of the time on the basis of the personal relations existing between the feudal lord and his serfs or tenants. The decomposition of property into several partial rights reflected the manner of distribution of the social wealth of that period. With the passage to the production of commodities and the dissolution of all personal bonds among the participants in the process of production, the relation between men and things (that is to say, private property) became reciprocally stronger. Since the division is no longer made on the basis of personal relations but through exchange, the different rights to a share in the social wealth are no longer measured as fragments of property rights having a common interest. They are measured according to the values brought by each on the market.
The first change introduced into juridical relations with the advance of commodity production in the medieval city communes, was the development of absolute private property. The latter appeared in the very midst of the feudal juridical relations. This development has progressed at a rapid pace in capitalist production. The more the process of production is socialised, the more the process of distribution (division of wealth) rests on exchange. And the more private property becomes inviolable and closed, the more capitalist property becomes transformed from the right to the product of one’s own labour to the simple right to appropriate somebody else’s labour. As long as the capitalist himself manages his own factory, distribution is still, up to a certain point, tied to his personal participation in the process of production. But as the personal management on the part of the capitalist becomes superfluous – which is the case in the share-holding societies today – the property of capital, so far as its right to share in the distribution (division of wealth) is concerned, becomes separated from any personal relation with production. It now appears in its purest form. The capitalist right to property reaches its most complete development in capital held in the shape of shares and industrial credit.
So that Konrad Schmidt’s historic schema, tracing the transformation of the capitalist “from a proprietor to a simple administrator,” belies the real historic development. In historic reality, on the contrary, the capitalist tends to change from a proprietor and administrator to a simple proprietor. What happens here to Konrad Schmidt, happened to Goethe:
What is, he sees as in a dream. What no longer is, becomes for him reality.
Just as Schmidt’s historic schema travels, economically, backwards from a modern share-holding society to an artisan’s shop, so, juridically, he wishes to lead back the capitalist world into the old feudal shell of the Middle Ages.
Also from this point of view, “social control” appears in reality under a different aspect than seen by Konrad Schmidt. What functions today as “social control” – labour legislation, the control of industrial organisations through share holding, etc. – has absolutely nothing to do with his “supreme ownership.” Far from being, as Schmidt believes, a reduction of capitalist ownership, his “social control,” is, on the contrary, a protection of such ownership. Or, expressed from the economic viewpoint, it is not a threat to capitalist exploitation, but simply the regulation of exploitation. When Bernstein asks if there is more or less of socialism in a labour protective law, we can assure him that, in the best of labour protective laws, there is no more “socialism” than in a municipal ordinance regulating the cleaning of streets or the lighting of street lamps.
EPT
But in the case of Cuba (and other existing socialist states), the state is a very real, very totalitarian entity that I would definitely not want to have in charge.
