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On April 11 2022 06:47 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On April 11 2022 05:18 Nebuchad wrote:Populism is obviously very good. Elites are engaged in a fight against us, it is good and logical that we fight back. The issue with the far right is of course that they don't hold any populist beliefs. They don't object to the elites because of any kind of class war, they object to the elites because those elites implement a liberal society, and they would rather have elites that implement a "conservative" (fascistic) society. For the average voter who gets convinced by this, I assume some of them don't understand that they are being lied to about the populism. But mostly conservatives aren't humanists, they just care about themselves, and they correctly deduce that in a society where other people are put down because of identity, they are better off. And they just want to be better off, so they want that. On April 11 2022 04:45 Sent. wrote:
Moderate government trying to raise the retirement age to 67 aand maybe people being bored of having the same government for 8 years. Why didn't the far right win at that point? Real populists don't exist in modern European politics. You'd need to look to South America to see populists (Lula is a very obvious populist). In Europe we basically mean demagogue when we say populist, and those "populist" parties on the far right are rife with demagoguery. That said, Melenchon isn't a populist either. He is a socialist. I don't see populism as obviously very good. Mob rule is "populism", and it's definitely not good. Moreover, populist platforms tend to be an incoherent mess, because there's no clear ideology. That makes them completely unpredictable when a new situation arises while in power.
Would you say that someone can be a socialist without being a populist? I don't really see how that would work.
But yes I agree with the rest of the facts you presented. We're not doing too well in Europe or in the US and that's a shame, and populism and demagoguery are used interchangeably, which they shouldn't be.
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On April 11 2022 06:33 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On April 11 2022 05:15 plasmidghost wrote:
Do y'all have any resources to share for the state of Belgian and EU politics? Moving there in August to the Flanders region and wanted to be aware of everything going on politically. Currently a bit nervous that the far-right party VB has decent support there The Vlaams Belang is fairly standard populist right for Europe; similar to Wilders in NL or Le Pen in France, but with the added twist of being anti-Walloon. That's their main thing and the main reason they get votes. That said, NVA is the main Flemish party, and have all of the anti-Walloon nonsense too. Due to the Belgian governmental system, VB is all but guaranteed to never ever govern at a national level (it's also the reason Belgian governments crash and burn so often, and take forever to find coalitions): constitutionally Wallonië and Vlaanderen have to share power. I don't understand all the details and it's a running joke in Belgium that absolutely nobody understands their system. I lived in Leuven for a few months and found life very similar to NL, but with a lower cost of living and better food (and beer). I cycled everywhere, as did everyone else, and public transport worked well too. Not sure how their healthcare system works, but I know for a while people on the border in NL used to visit Belgian hospitals because they had shorter waiting lists for a lot of care. That was a decade or two ago, though. Anyway, I would worry about VB a lot less than the far right in Belgium's neighbors. The NVA is boneheaded enough tho.
That's good to know, thank you!
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On April 11 2022 06:52 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On April 11 2022 06:47 Acrofales wrote:On April 11 2022 05:18 Nebuchad wrote:Populism is obviously very good. Elites are engaged in a fight against us, it is good and logical that we fight back. The issue with the far right is of course that they don't hold any populist beliefs. They don't object to the elites because of any kind of class war, they object to the elites because those elites implement a liberal society, and they would rather have elites that implement a "conservative" (fascistic) society. For the average voter who gets convinced by this, I assume some of them don't understand that they are being lied to about the populism. But mostly conservatives aren't humanists, they just care about themselves, and they correctly deduce that in a society where other people are put down because of identity, they are better off. And they just want to be better off, so they want that. On April 11 2022 04:45 Sent. wrote:
Moderate government trying to raise the retirement age to 67 aand maybe people being bored of having the same government for 8 years. Why didn't the far right win at that point? Real populists don't exist in modern European politics. You'd need to look to South America to see populists (Lula is a very obvious populist). In Europe we basically mean demagogue when we say populist, and those "populist" parties on the far right are rife with demagoguery. That said, Melenchon isn't a populist either. He is a socialist. I don't see populism as obviously very good. Mob rule is "populism", and it's definitely not good. Moreover, populist platforms tend to be an incoherent mess, because there's no clear ideology. That makes them completely unpredictable when a new situation arises while in power. Would you say that someone can be a socialist without being a populist? I don't really see how that would work. But yes I agree with the rest of the facts you presented. We're not doing too well in Europe or in the US and that's a shame, and populism and demagoguery are used interchangeably, which they shouldn't be.
Populism - the notion that one represents « the people » against « the elites » is a close cousin of demagoguery since the roman republic, because the opposition elites / people is demagogue in itself.
You can totally be socialist without running that old song though that depends a bit what you mean by socialist (i use the term more as strong social democrat than full marxism let’s nationalize everything).
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I agree that you can be a social democrat without being a populist. I don't really see how you can be a socialist without it. Class war is pretty central to socialism. But it's likely that this is the distinction that was being made since a lot of languages, french included, use "socialism" to mean "social democracy" a lot of the time. English doesn't really do that.
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On April 11 2022 07:03 Nebuchad wrote:
I agree that you can be a social democrat without being a populist. I don't really see how you can be a socialist without it. Class war is pretty central to socialism. But it's likely that this is the distinction that was being made since a lot of languages, french included, use "socialism" to mean "social democracy" a lot of the time. English doesn't really do that.
I don’t know; I think you can consider that a class of people is overpriviledged or too influent without getting into full class warfare or populism. The thing with populism is that it postulates the existence of « the people » and those who are not part of it, whether it’s the bourgeoisie or the arabs or the jews or all of them depending of your brand of populism.
I think there is a use for a concept of socialism that is left of your typical social democracy and doesn’t buy into that.
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On April 11 2022 08:08 Biff The Understudy wrote:Show nested quote +On April 11 2022 07:03 Nebuchad wrote:
I agree that you can be a social democrat without being a populist. I don't really see how you can be a socialist without it. Class war is pretty central to socialism. But it's likely that this is the distinction that was being made since a lot of languages, french included, use "socialism" to mean "social democracy" a lot of the time. English doesn't really do that. I don’t know; I think you can consider that a class of people is overpriviledged or too influent without getting into full class warfare or populism. The thing with populism is that it postulates the existence of « the people » and those who are not part of it, whether it’s the bourgeoisie or the arabs or the jews or all of them depending of your brand of populism. I think there is a use for a concept of socialism that is left of your typical social democracy and doesn’t buy into that.
Democratic socialism is left of social democracy, but class consciousness is inextricable from any socialist perspective. You're essentially seeing use for a socialism without socialism, which fits rather neatly into Neb's assessments.
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On April 11 2022 08:33 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On April 11 2022 08:08 Biff The Understudy wrote:On April 11 2022 07:03 Nebuchad wrote:
I agree that you can be a social democrat without being a populist. I don't really see how you can be a socialist without it. Class war is pretty central to socialism. But it's likely that this is the distinction that was being made since a lot of languages, french included, use "socialism" to mean "social democracy" a lot of the time. English doesn't really do that. I don’t know; I think you can consider that a class of people is overpriviledged or too influent without getting into full class warfare or populism. The thing with populism is that it postulates the existence of « the people » and those who are not part of it, whether it’s the bourgeoisie or the arabs or the jews or all of them depending of your brand of populism. I think there is a use for a concept of socialism that is left of your typical social democracy and doesn’t buy into that. Democratic socialism is left of social democracy, but class consciousness is inextricable from any socialist perspective. You're essentially seeing use for a socialism without socialism, which fits rather neatly into Neb's assessments.
I see the use of a socialism without your version of socialism.
It’s as matter of semantics, and in Europe, the word socialism has been used that way for over a century. It just takes more from Jaurès than Marx. For the far left populist, we use the term « communists ». It’s also a debatable use of the term i guess, but it’s rather unavoidable.
Now if you think it’s a wrong use of the term and socialism necessarly seeing society as the struggle of an idealised people against the tyranny of the not-real-people class, I’m fine with it.
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On April 11 2022 09:23 Biff The Understudy wrote:Show nested quote +On April 11 2022 08:33 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 11 2022 08:08 Biff The Understudy wrote:On April 11 2022 07:03 Nebuchad wrote:
I agree that you can be a social democrat without being a populist. I don't really see how you can be a socialist without it. Class war is pretty central to socialism. But it's likely that this is the distinction that was being made since a lot of languages, french included, use "socialism" to mean "social democracy" a lot of the time. English doesn't really do that. I don’t know; I think you can consider that a class of people is overpriviledged or too influent without getting into full class warfare or populism. The thing with populism is that it postulates the existence of « the people » and those who are not part of it, whether it’s the bourgeoisie or the arabs or the jews or all of them depending of your brand of populism. I think there is a use for a concept of socialism that is left of your typical social democracy and doesn’t buy into that. Democratic socialism is left of social democracy, but class consciousness is inextricable from any socialist perspective. You're essentially seeing use for a socialism without socialism, which fits rather neatly into Neb's assessments. I see the use of a socialism without your version of socialism. It’s as matter of semantics, and in Europe, the word socialism has been used that way for over a century. It just takes more from Jaurès than Marx. For the far left populist, we use the term « communists ». It’s also a debatable use of the term i guess, but it’s rather unavoidable. Now if you think it’s a wrong use of the term and socialism necessarly seeing society as the struggle of an idealised people against the tyranny of the not-real-people class, I’m fine with it.
Socialism has at its core the relationship between workers and the means of production, which in itself requires at least a rudimentary class consciousness. While I obviously disagree with your caricature of revolutionary socialism/class analysis, you can't have socialism without class consciousness.
Jaurès even in his reformist perspective recognized this, from Jean Jaurès' 1905 The Socialist Aim: Socialists believe that society is divided into two great classes by the present form of property-holding, and that one of these classes, the wage-earning, the proletariat, is obliged to pay to the other, the capitalist, a sort of tax in order to be able to live at all and exercise its faculties to any degree.
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The thing to do, therefore, is to break down this supremacy of one class. The oppressed class must be enfranchised, and with it the whole of society. All differences of class must be abolished by transferring the ownership of the means of production and of life, which is to-day a power of exploitation and oppression in the hands of a single class, from that class to the whole body of citizens, the organised community. For the disorderly and abusive rule of the minority must be substituted the universal co-operation of citizens associated in the joint ownership of the means of labour and liberty. And that is why the essential aim of Socialism, whether collectivist or communist, is to transform capitalist property into social property. www.marxists.org
Without confronting the contradictions of capitalist alienation (which requires class consciousness) you don't have socialism, you have social liberalism.
If we were to try to reductively pinpoint a difference in the class consciousness between revolutionary and reformist analysis I believe it is in the lengths either sees the capitalist class willing to go to oppose both reform and revolution. Put simply, revolutionary minded folks think a historical materialist analysis points to a documented history of imperialists/capitalists resorting to unimaginable brutality to kill reforms and frequently the reformists themselves. Which, as I understand, Jaurès learned the hard way.
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On April 11 2022 12:44 GreenHorizons wrote:
Without confronting the contradictions of capitalist alienation (which requires class consciousness) you don't have socialism, you have social liberalism.
That very much seems like the point here: to have liberalism under the guise of being socialism to maintain the facade of being a leftist. Good way to crowd out more genuine leftist positions, which to their credit the liberal groups have been very successful in doing.
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On April 11 2022 05:15 plasmidghost wrote:
Do y'all have any resources to share for the state of Belgian and EU politics? Moving there in August to the Flanders region and wanted to be aware of everything going on politically. Currently a bit nervous that the far-right party VB has decent support there
Some notes about the Flemish political parties in spoilers below, to not derail the thread too much.
+ Show Spoiler +There are 7 political parties in Flanders. Most of these have a sister party in the French region of the country, Wallonia, so roughly 14 parties in total. There's the 3 traditional parties: Open VLD, Vooruit and CD&V. Open VLD are the liberal democrats, they're the 'rich people party'. Vooruit is the socialist party, so kind of the opposite. And yet the two have had to govern together several times in what we call a 'purple' government. Results were disastrous but out of scope for this post, feel free to google about what Guy Verhofstadt did as PM of Belgium. CD&V are the christian democrats, they are a rather boring centre party, they have a bit of a reputation of doing whatever they can to get more votes. One of their biggest voting blocks are the farmers in Belgium. These 3 traditional parties have been bleeding votes in recent years, kinda similar to how it went in France since Macron turned up with EM. In the latest poll the 3 of them together barely got 33% of votes. The other parties are the Green party, the extreme left (PVDA), extreme right (VB) and NVA. NVA emerged in like the early 2000s, they want to split the country because they feel there is a 'big corridor of money' going from Flanders to Wallonia. A lot of Flemish ppl support this view. Otherwise they're pretty similar to Open VLD and they have been stealing their votes. VB is mostly about immigration. I disagree with Acrofales' earlier post that they mainly want to split the country. That's NVA. However, NVA has been the biggest party in Flanders for a while and kinda failed to get anything done with regards to splitting the country so VB is now using this to steal some voters. "Stop voting for NVA, they're lying to you, we'll get it done instead", etc. But the main point of VB will always be immigration. Belgium has big Moroccon/Turkish communities because we invited them over to help in the mines way back when. And now we have a bunch of 3rd/4th/5th generation "immigrants" who are misunderstood and often clash with "Belgian" youth. Using quotation marks because obviously they're both Belgian at this point, and yet the VB promises to 'send them all back to their country'  The refugee crisis and the terrorist attacks in 2016 boosted the popularity of VB. When it comes to gay rights etc., VB has been quite tame compared to other extreme right parties. Their vice president, Chris Janssens, came out as gay last year and got full support of the party. The extreme left gets barely any votes in Flanders. Hugely popular in the French part of the country though. The fact that the French and Dutch regions vote very differently is the main reason why forming a government is such a difficult task in Belgium. Also why nothing gets done and the country just slowly self-destructs. But welcome to Belgium, enjoy your stay 
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On April 11 2022 14:02 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On April 11 2022 12:44 GreenHorizons wrote:
Without confronting the contradictions of capitalist alienation (which requires class consciousness) you don't have socialism, you have social liberalism. That very much seems like the point here: to have liberalism under the guise of being socialism to maintain the facade of being a leftist. Good way to crowd out more genuine leftist positions, which to their credit the liberal groups have been very successful in doing.
Imho social democracy (or «liberalism» in the bastardized US understanding of words) is actually feasible to implement/strenghten whiteout overthrowing the system.
People that support this are not grifters or are somehow trying to hide their evil capitalistic plans. They just don’t believe in socialism/communism as feasible systems. They believe in regulated capitalism, more heavily regulated than it is today with more redistribution via taxes and other means.
That doesn’t make them «not leftists», it just makes them responsible people not willing to burn everything down because they drank too much of their pure-ideology-juice.
Sure there are people that are only in it for the political gain and couldn't give a shit for the actual cause, but thats the same for absolutely every political ideology from far-left to far-right.
If your system needs to abolish an existing democracy (no matter for how long) to implement itself or needs totally rational or selfless human actors striving for the «greater good», it’s a horrible system that would crash and burn when it hits the first bump in the road.
Imho it’s not even worth to discuss these as a whole aside from taking some ideas/inspirations.
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Tbh I don't really view the discussion of class consciousness as being that interesting, because I don't really view this as an opinion that one can have or not have. It is really just a fact about reality that class war exists, and you can either accept it or not.
Velr, the issue that I have with social democracy is that it's extremely vulnerable to neoliberalism. France had a pretty strong social democracy for a decent while, and it looks like Macron will succeed in implementing neoliberalism in just ten years. While the average person that doesn't follow politics barely realizes that the system has changed. Scares the fuck out of me. And people like Sanders or Corbyn show us that the opposite isn't true, in the countries that have had neoliberalism for a while it's very hard to come back to social democracy.
As you may remember (or not), I don't particularly favor abolishing the existing democracy. There's no particular reason why, once a social democracy has managed to be implemented in a country that has a decent amount of power over the world, that country can't continue to go further left, as long as its citizens are on board. You can continue to push the system left while in a social democracy, you don't have to limit your own ambitions if you don't want to because someone convinced you that better things aren't possible.
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On April 11 2022 06:52 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On April 11 2022 06:47 Acrofales wrote:On April 11 2022 05:18 Nebuchad wrote:Populism is obviously very good. Elites are engaged in a fight against us, it is good and logical that we fight back. The issue with the far right is of course that they don't hold any populist beliefs. They don't object to the elites because of any kind of class war, they object to the elites because those elites implement a liberal society, and they would rather have elites that implement a "conservative" (fascistic) society. For the average voter who gets convinced by this, I assume some of them don't understand that they are being lied to about the populism. But mostly conservatives aren't humanists, they just care about themselves, and they correctly deduce that in a society where other people are put down because of identity, they are better off. And they just want to be better off, so they want that. On April 11 2022 04:45 Sent. wrote:
Moderate government trying to raise the retirement age to 67 aand maybe people being bored of having the same government for 8 years. Why didn't the far right win at that point? Real populists don't exist in modern European politics. You'd need to look to South America to see populists (Lula is a very obvious populist). In Europe we basically mean demagogue when we say populist, and those "populist" parties on the far right are rife with demagoguery. That said, Melenchon isn't a populist either. He is a socialist. I don't see populism as obviously very good. Mob rule is "populism", and it's definitely not good. Moreover, populist platforms tend to be an incoherent mess, because there's no clear ideology. That makes them completely unpredictable when a new situation arises while in power. Would you say that someone can be a socialist without being a populist? I don't really see how that would work. But yes I agree with the rest of the facts you presented. We're not doing too well in Europe or in the US and that's a shame, and populism and demagoguery are used interchangeably, which they shouldn't be.
I don't really see the dichotomy, because I don't think socialists have to necessarily overthrow the "elite" in a glorious revolution. I guess if your idea of socialism is that only anarcho-communism really ticks all the boxes, then yes, it is necessarily populist. I don't think Melenchon thinks that, and I don't think Melenchon is a populist. I do think Melenchon is a socialist (on the scale from 0 to anarcho-communism, he's a democratic socialist). The difference is that he favors progressive taxes, blocking the transfer of generational wealth, inhibiting the political power of corporations and other such measures that do not explicitly target one class or another.
Lula, as an opposite, is a populist in that his political stance is very much one of "us" vs "them". The main difference being that inequality is absurdly out of control in South America (and I guess the Americas in general, with the exception of Canada), so making it about economic class warfare is more of a winning strategy than in most of Europe, where decades of social democracy have somewhat limited the increase in inequality. The other difference is that for some reason the disgruntled middle class like to kick down instead of up, blaming poor immigrants for the problems rather than those in power. Which means that the mantle of the disenfranchised populares has been picked up by the far right rather than the (far) left.
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On April 11 2022 23:01 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On April 11 2022 06:52 Nebuchad wrote:On April 11 2022 06:47 Acrofales wrote:On April 11 2022 05:18 Nebuchad wrote:Populism is obviously very good. Elites are engaged in a fight against us, it is good and logical that we fight back. The issue with the far right is of course that they don't hold any populist beliefs. They don't object to the elites because of any kind of class war, they object to the elites because those elites implement a liberal society, and they would rather have elites that implement a "conservative" (fascistic) society. For the average voter who gets convinced by this, I assume some of them don't understand that they are being lied to about the populism. But mostly conservatives aren't humanists, they just care about themselves, and they correctly deduce that in a society where other people are put down because of identity, they are better off. And they just want to be better off, so they want that. On April 11 2022 04:45 Sent. wrote:
Moderate government trying to raise the retirement age to 67 aand maybe people being bored of having the same government for 8 years. Why didn't the far right win at that point? Real populists don't exist in modern European politics. You'd need to look to South America to see populists (Lula is a very obvious populist). In Europe we basically mean demagogue when we say populist, and those "populist" parties on the far right are rife with demagoguery. That said, Melenchon isn't a populist either. He is a socialist. I don't see populism as obviously very good. Mob rule is "populism", and it's definitely not good. Moreover, populist platforms tend to be an incoherent mess, because there's no clear ideology. That makes them completely unpredictable when a new situation arises while in power. Would you say that someone can be a socialist without being a populist? I don't really see how that would work. But yes I agree with the rest of the facts you presented. We're not doing too well in Europe or in the US and that's a shame, and populism and demagoguery are used interchangeably, which they shouldn't be. I don't really see the dichotomy, because I don't think socialists have to necessarily overthrow the "elite" in a glorious revolution. I guess if your idea of socialism is that only anarcho-communism really ticks all the boxes, then yes, it is necessarily populist. I don't think Melenchon thinks that, and I don't think Melenchon is a populist. I do think Melenchon is a socialist (on the scale from 0 to anarcho-communism, he's a democratic socialist). The difference is that he favors progressive taxes, blocking the transfer of generational wealth, inhibiting the political power of corporations and other such measures that do not explicitly target one class or another. Lula, as an opposite, is a populist in that his political stance is very much one of "us" vs "them". The main difference being that inequality is absurdly out of control in South America (and I guess the Americas in general, with the exception of Canada), so making it about economic class warfare is more of a winning strategy than in most of Europe, where decades of social democracy have somewhat limited the increase in inequality. The other difference is that for some reason the disgruntled middle class like to kick down instead of up, blaming poor immigrants for the problems rather than those in power. Which means that the mantle of the disenfranchised populares has been picked up by the far right rather than the (far) left.
These things kind of do and are meant to target particular classes though, like noone who lives around the poverty line is going to have the stuff they leave their kids taxed. Thats an example of something exclusively aimed at the upper classes. Corporate power too, the people with corporate power are not the middle or lower classes, they're basically exclusively the upper class.
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On April 12 2022 00:08 Zambrah wrote:Show nested quote +On April 11 2022 23:01 Acrofales wrote:On April 11 2022 06:52 Nebuchad wrote:On April 11 2022 06:47 Acrofales wrote:On April 11 2022 05:18 Nebuchad wrote:Populism is obviously very good. Elites are engaged in a fight against us, it is good and logical that we fight back. The issue with the far right is of course that they don't hold any populist beliefs. They don't object to the elites because of any kind of class war, they object to the elites because those elites implement a liberal society, and they would rather have elites that implement a "conservative" (fascistic) society. For the average voter who gets convinced by this, I assume some of them don't understand that they are being lied to about the populism. But mostly conservatives aren't humanists, they just care about themselves, and they correctly deduce that in a society where other people are put down because of identity, they are better off. And they just want to be better off, so they want that. On April 11 2022 04:45 Sent. wrote:
Moderate government trying to raise the retirement age to 67 aand maybe people being bored of having the same government for 8 years. Why didn't the far right win at that point? Real populists don't exist in modern European politics. You'd need to look to South America to see populists (Lula is a very obvious populist). In Europe we basically mean demagogue when we say populist, and those "populist" parties on the far right are rife with demagoguery. That said, Melenchon isn't a populist either. He is a socialist. I don't see populism as obviously very good. Mob rule is "populism", and it's definitely not good. Moreover, populist platforms tend to be an incoherent mess, because there's no clear ideology. That makes them completely unpredictable when a new situation arises while in power. Would you say that someone can be a socialist without being a populist? I don't really see how that would work. But yes I agree with the rest of the facts you presented. We're not doing too well in Europe or in the US and that's a shame, and populism and demagoguery are used interchangeably, which they shouldn't be. I don't really see the dichotomy, because I don't think socialists have to necessarily overthrow the "elite" in a glorious revolution. I guess if your idea of socialism is that only anarcho-communism really ticks all the boxes, then yes, it is necessarily populist. I don't think Melenchon thinks that, and I don't think Melenchon is a populist. I do think Melenchon is a socialist (on the scale from 0 to anarcho-communism, he's a democratic socialist). The difference is that he favors progressive taxes, blocking the transfer of generational wealth, inhibiting the political power of corporations and other such measures that do not explicitly target one class or another. Lula, as an opposite, is a populist in that his political stance is very much one of "us" vs "them". The main difference being that inequality is absurdly out of control in South America (and I guess the Americas in general, with the exception of Canada), so making it about economic class warfare is more of a winning strategy than in most of Europe, where decades of social democracy have somewhat limited the increase in inequality. The other difference is that for some reason the disgruntled middle class like to kick down instead of up, blaming poor immigrants for the problems rather than those in power. Which means that the mantle of the disenfranchised populares has been picked up by the far right rather than the (far) left. These things kind of do and are meant to target particular classes though, like noone who lives around the poverty line is going to have the stuff they leave their kids taxed. Thats an example of something exclusively aimed at the upper classes. Corporate power too, the people with corporate power are not the middle or lower classes, they're basically exclusively the upper class.
There's still a categorical difference between advocating a policy for everyone that affects some people more than others (which is pretty much always the case for any policy) vs advocating nationalising the means of production (a fairly recent example would be Evo Morales (re)nationalization of quite a lot of industries, most famously the hydrocarbon industry: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/lessons-from-bolivia-renationalising-hydrocarbon-indust/)
Insofar as I know Iberdrola, Petrobras and other foreign companies are still fighting in court, but got nothing in return for the nationalization. This is probably only fair, as Bolivia got next to nothing for the denationalization (some select Bolivians got very very rich tho), but it's a very different type of policy.
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I think your definition of fighting the elites is a bit narrow, you can be doing things that hurt them before you're in full blown revolutionary mode. Efforts to unionize are already populist; they knew they were engaging in a fight against us when they broke those unions, those who claim them back ought to recognize the same reality.
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Maybe you should create a China thread for those kinds of posts Jimmi.
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So again I will ask, can you vote in the French election Nebuchad?
Are you, or are you not, voting for Le Pen? If not, who and why?
Also...imagine describing France as a neoliberal system. At that point the word has no meaning, much like how some people throw "you all on the left" around. It's no longer a descriptor of a set of policies, but a tribal rallying call and identity against an "other". How would you define neoliberalism?
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EPT
