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Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting! NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source.If you have any questions, comments, concern, or feedback regarding the USPMT, then please use this thread: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/website-feedback/510156-us-politics-thread |
On April 29 2018 10:01 zlefin wrote:Show nested quote +On April 29 2018 09:06 Kyadytim wrote:On April 29 2018 08:53 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 29 2018 08:41 zlefin wrote:
kydaytim what makes you think it's the market that has led to a failure in effective distribution of basic shelter? (and which basic shelter are you talking about, as there's quite a lot of degrees involved, and i'm not sure which level/aspects of shelter you're referencing) The large numbers of people without homes in ratio to the much larger number of homes without people seems to be a fairly glaring indicator, but Kydaytim is probably building that understanding on a variety of other factors. Are you under the impression that the market hasn't failed in this regard? This is mostly correct, but my overall thinking is a little more judgemental. Ignoring the number of unoccupied homes, though, the market has failed to provide some sort of extra dense housing that's more like dorms in that there's only very small bedrooms and larger communal bathrooms. It hasn't even managed anything close to sufficient beds in homeless shelters. how small a bedroom would you consider acceptable? (area-wise that is; the figures i'm familiar are with for sq ft, but it's easy enough to convert whatever units you're used to)
As I understand it millions of people in the US, the wealthiest country in the entire world, don't have roofs and beds. Asking where the walls should be located seems like a pretty dubious query?
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It is pretty bad that our stance on the homeless is mostly to ignore or arrest them. But given the prevalence of mental illness among the homeless I feel like a lot of them would be in mental hospitals rather than getting free housing. Of course that's still better than being homeless, but try telling that to the people who would rather see that money go towards a military parade or another corporate tax cut.
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On April 28 2018 11:37 hunts wrote:Show nested quote +On April 28 2018 10:46 Ciaus_Dronu wrote:On April 28 2018 08:59 hunts wrote:On April 28 2018 08:55 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 28 2018 08:51 zlefin wrote:
if you want to believe that, ok. It still seems very easy to disagree with to me, given that many of the same counterarguments still stand.
also not sure why you want to belabor the point so; instead of just accepting a reassertion of our prior positions. Because Democrats are on their way to doing poorly in 2018 and losing in 2020 if they can't stop being stubborn about this general dynamic. Meh I'm a straight white male, I'll be mostly fine even under a shitty republican regime. I'd rather a Republican win than have the democratic party taken over by the radical far left people such as bernie. Only in the US does anything Bernie say count as radical far left... Your comment comes across as "I'd rather have the rights of many tossed away even more actively than usual for the US while the deficit goes through the ceiling than spend money to make sure people in my own country are healthy and educated." Sure, I can kinda get that from a purely selfish perspective, but it's not one that I'll ever give weight to. Nor that I think anyone hoping for a functional society should. How, in your honest opinion, would someone like Bernie be close to as damaging as say, the current Republican establishment, for the US as a whole? I am very much for government provided healthcare for everyone, and for higher education to be cheaper or free. What I'm not for, is having the party taken over by those who think all banks should be taken down while having literally no clue what the president can and can't do. I don't want my party taken over by people want to abolish thr police or hang all rich people by the neck.
Zomg I found some Amerikans who want to abolish the police. So the east bay branch of the Democratic Socialists of Ameria (DSA) are having a faction crisis. One half wants technocratic reforms like universal income, universal healthcare, progressive taxation, increased collective bargaining power through legislative change. Normal liberal stuff (you might even say neoliberal stuff since most of it has a sound economic basis). The other half wants to abolish the police and take on Israel.
+ Show Spoiler +
East Bay DSA is having leadership elections. The current leadership’s faction calls itself “Bread and Roses”. Bread and Roses has a clear platform. They want to campaign for universal social welfare programs, like single payer. They want to get DSA more involved with unions and workers in their local communities. They want to work to help people who care about their policy agenda get elected. They are committed to discrete policies that both help ordinary people and are politically feasible. They have a realistic strategy for pursuing those policies. They’re goal-oriented. They make sense.
Against them is a slate called “Unity and Power”. Unity and Power want DSA to focus on opposing Israel and abolishing the police. What does opposing Israel have to do with helping workers negotiate higher wages and benefits from their employers and from the state? Nothing. Do we really think “police abolition” is a position most workers in the United States agree with? These positions aren’t politically advantageous. They make DSA less attractive to workers and ordinary people, not more attractive. There’s no realistic strategy by which “abolishing the police” might be pursued. In Scandinavia, the cops are less likely to be armed and the prisons are much more humane, but there are still cops and there are still prisons. We have a long way to go to get to where Scandinavia is, let alone anywhere beyond that.
So DSA is split between a faction which has realistic goals and a realistic strategy for pursuing them and a faction which thinks that first faction isn’t left wing enough and wants to pursue policies that have no traction in our historical context. Sounds like every left-wing organisation ever, doesn’t it? But that’s not all. The Unity and Power faction has conducted a relentless campaign of bullying and virtue signalling in a bid to assault the character of Bread and Roses and its supporters.
https://benjaminstudebaker.com/2018/04/28/the-left-is-not-a-church/
This guy is spitting hot fire.
Left wing organizations have to get their funding and support from ordinary working people. But most members of left wing organizations are hyper-educated university graduates. Many of them have been to grad school or will eventually go. Many of them are affluent and work in the professions. When left-wing organizations make themselves accountable to their members, they’re not making themselves accountable to ordinary folks–they’re making themselves accountable to comfortable college types. Many of them have nice jobs and health insurance. Many of those that don’t could always turn to their affluent parents in a time of real need. Their material interests aren’t immediately tied to the success of left-wing politics. For them, the left isn’t about making sure they can buy food, pay rent, get access to healthcare and education, and take care of their kids.
For them, the left is a substitute for going to church.
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On April 29 2018 14:13 Wulfey_LA wrote:Show nested quote +On April 28 2018 11:37 hunts wrote:On April 28 2018 10:46 Ciaus_Dronu wrote:On April 28 2018 08:59 hunts wrote:On April 28 2018 08:55 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 28 2018 08:51 zlefin wrote:
if you want to believe that, ok. It still seems very easy to disagree with to me, given that many of the same counterarguments still stand.
also not sure why you want to belabor the point so; instead of just accepting a reassertion of our prior positions. Because Democrats are on their way to doing poorly in 2018 and losing in 2020 if they can't stop being stubborn about this general dynamic. Meh I'm a straight white male, I'll be mostly fine even under a shitty republican regime. I'd rather a Republican win than have the democratic party taken over by the radical far left people such as bernie. Only in the US does anything Bernie say count as radical far left... Your comment comes across as "I'd rather have the rights of many tossed away even more actively than usual for the US while the deficit goes through the ceiling than spend money to make sure people in my own country are healthy and educated." Sure, I can kinda get that from a purely selfish perspective, but it's not one that I'll ever give weight to. Nor that I think anyone hoping for a functional society should. How, in your honest opinion, would someone like Bernie be close to as damaging as say, the current Republican establishment, for the US as a whole? I am very much for government provided healthcare for everyone, and for higher education to be cheaper or free. What I'm not for, is having the party taken over by those who think all banks should be taken down while having literally no clue what the president can and can't do. I don't want my party taken over by people want to abolish thr police or hang all rich people by the neck. Zomg I found some Amerikans who want to abolish the police. So the east bay branch of the Democratic Socialists of Ameria (DSA) are having a faction crisis. One half wants technocratic reforms like universal income, universal healthcare, progressive taxation, increased collective bargaining power through legislative change. Normal liberal stuff (you might even say neoliberal stuff since most of it has a sound economic basis). The other half wants to abolish the police and take on Israel. + Show Spoiler +
East Bay DSA is having leadership elections. The current leadership’s faction calls itself “Bread and Roses”. Bread and Roses has a clear platform. They want to campaign for universal social welfare programs, like single payer. They want to get DSA more involved with unions and workers in their local communities. They want to work to help people who care about their policy agenda get elected. They are committed to discrete policies that both help ordinary people and are politically feasible. They have a realistic strategy for pursuing those policies. They’re goal-oriented. They make sense.
Against them is a slate called “Unity and Power”. Unity and Power want DSA to focus on opposing Israel and abolishing the police. What does opposing Israel have to do with helping workers negotiate higher wages and benefits from their employers and from the state? Nothing. Do we really think “police abolition” is a position most workers in the United States agree with? These positions aren’t politically advantageous. They make DSA less attractive to workers and ordinary people, not more attractive. There’s no realistic strategy by which “abolishing the police” might be pursued. In Scandinavia, the cops are less likely to be armed and the prisons are much more humane, but there are still cops and there are still prisons. We have a long way to go to get to where Scandinavia is, let alone anywhere beyond that.
So DSA is split between a faction which has realistic goals and a realistic strategy for pursuing them and a faction which thinks that first faction isn’t left wing enough and wants to pursue policies that have no traction in our historical context. Sounds like every left-wing organisation ever, doesn’t it? But that’s not all. The Unity and Power faction has conducted a relentless campaign of bullying and virtue signalling in a bid to assault the character of Bread and Roses and its supporters.
This guy is spitting hot fire. Show nested quote +
Left wing organizations have to get their funding and support from ordinary working people. But most members of left wing organizations are hyper-educated university graduates. Many of them have been to grad school or will eventually go. Many of them are affluent and work in the professions. When left-wing organizations make themselves accountable to their members, they’re not making themselves accountable to ordinary folks–they’re making themselves accountable to comfortable college types. Many of them have nice jobs and health insurance. Many of those that don’t could always turn to their affluent parents in a time of real need. Their material interests aren’t immediately tied to the success of left-wing politics. For them, the left isn’t about making sure they can buy food, pay rent, get access to healthcare and education, and take care of their kids.
For them, the left is a substitute for going to church.
I'm not sure there's really an argument being presented here?
I mean an argument between two factions sure, but not one from you?
Regardless, universal income, universal healthcare are not neoliberal policies, at least not US neoliberals.
As to the faction (both of these are definitively to the left of the Democratic party and neoliberals anyway) you seem more apprehensive of, their understanding is that those reforms are products of increased class consciousness but are not ends in themselves. The point of an organization like DSA isn't simply to push reforms, it's to raise awareness to why people are seeking those reforms and helping them understand that it's capitalism driving their problems and the solution is revolution not reform. It's the countless subversions of revolutionary movements with 'good enough' reformist thinking that leads us to our current situation and the problems that come with it.
Also, people don't get to present abolishing the police as an obviously bad idea without substantiating it. Opposing Israel and the ethnic cleansing they are committing in Palestine as well as supporting in Myanmar should be a nobrainer for anyone claiming to be on the left.
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I was merely demonstrating that the 'abolish the police' position isn't strictly limited to this thread. Here are some more fun anecdotes about the 'abolish the police' faction within DSA doxxing the mainstream socialists and digging for incriminating messages.
Let me also be unambiguous on this point: the larger episode which brought these private comments to Twitter is emblematic of the kind of politics that is antithetical to DSA growing into a mass movement that can bring in ordinary people beyond the currently marginal activist left.
Everyone who dug through our private documents and shared them on the internet in order to harm our political project has demonstrated their commitment to creating a toxic, paranoid, and disempowering atmosphere in DSA. These are the tactics of people who have no belief that we can build a mass movement to win a better world — the best they can hope for is an irrelevant, inwardly gazing subculture where activists display their moral correctness, fight in a dirty, unprincipled way over process and structure, and relentlessly surveille and police their peers.
https://medium.com/@jer.gong/dsa-is-at-a-crossroads-60de6a4c84b6
And we had pages and pages of arguments on the merits here. Abolish the police is pure madness. Mainstream socialists are rejecting it out of hand (see the Benjamin quotes above). You aren't owed an explanation as to why your never explained plans are insane. You never even bothered to cite an extant example or policy paper that even thought through the abolish the police scheme.
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On April 29 2018 10:01 zlefin wrote:Show nested quote +On April 29 2018 09:06 Kyadytim wrote:On April 29 2018 08:53 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 29 2018 08:41 zlefin wrote:
kydaytim what makes you think it's the market that has led to a failure in effective distribution of basic shelter? (and which basic shelter are you talking about, as there's quite a lot of degrees involved, and i'm not sure which level/aspects of shelter you're referencing) The large numbers of people without homes in ratio to the much larger number of homes without people seems to be a fairly glaring indicator, but Kydaytim is probably building that understanding on a variety of other factors. Are you under the impression that the market hasn't failed in this regard? This is mostly correct, but my overall thinking is a little more judgemental. Ignoring the number of unoccupied homes, though, the market has failed to provide some sort of extra dense housing that's more like dorms in that there's only very small bedrooms and larger communal bathrooms. It hasn't even managed anything close to sufficient beds in homeless shelters. how small a bedroom would you consider acceptable? (area-wise that is; the figures i'm familiar are with for sq ft, but it's easy enough to convert whatever units you're used to) at any rate; often the lack of such housing has nothing to do with market failure. it's that various laws and regulations prohibit the creation of such housing (at least at rates and sizes that would be affordable in the open market). local zoning boards are often very powerful; and NIMBY-ism affects local politics a great deal. and variuos other land use policies often heavily restrict hte supply of available land to build on, which drives up the price of land, which causes everything to become more expensive.
I don't know. How big is the average college dorm for any given number of occupants? That seems like a reasonable guess for a good size. The specifics of some sort of theoretical extra high density housing (denser than an apartment complex) wasn't really relevant to the idea that the free market will not provide for it.
In my opinion anything related to human suffering when resources are available but not allocated is arguably a result of markets not giving inherent value to humans. Health care? Cheap ways of substantially improving health isn't good for profiting.+ Show Spoiler +I'm pretty sure I shared this earlier in the thread at some point, but it's worth sharing again. Goldman Sachs analysts attempted to address a touchy subject for biotech companies, especially those involved in the pioneering "gene therapy" treatment: cures could be bad for business in the long run.
"Is curing patients a sustainable business model?" analysts ask in an April 10 report entitled "The Genome Revolution."
"The potential to deliver 'one shot cures' is one of the most attractive aspects of gene therapy, genetically-engineered cell therapy and gene editing. However, such treatments offer a very different outlook with regard to recurring revenue versus chronic therapies," analyst Salveen Richter wrote in the note to clients Tuesday. "While this proposition carries tremendous value for patients and society, it could represent a challenge for genome medicine developers looking for sustained cash flow."
Richter cited Gilead Sciences' treatments for hepatitis C, which achieved cure rates of more than 90 percent. The company's U.S. sales for these hepatitis C treatments peaked at $12.5 billion in 2015, but have been falling ever since. Goldman estimates the U.S. sales for these treatments will be less than $4 billion this year, according to a table in the report.
"GILD is a case in point, where the success of its hepatitis C franchise has gradually exhausted the available pool of treatable patients," the analyst wrote. "In the case of infectious diseases such as hepatitis C, curing existing patients also decreases the number of carriers able to transmit the virus to new patients, thus the incident pool also declines … Where an incident pool remains stable (eg, in cancer) the potential for a cure poses less risk to the sustainability of a franchise." www.cnbc.com
Putting this another way, a purely market driven solution, without government grants, will never provide food or housing for people who are homeless and unemployed, because there is no revenue to be gained. Before you even get into zoning laws, NIMBY, and other legal issues, there is an underlying issue that until the government steps in somehow, markets will not provide any sort of social safety net. Markets will not spend 10 dollars for an 11 dollar return by catering to poor people when they can spend 10 dollars for a 12 dollar return from catering to rich people.
The fundamental problem of using markets to allocate resources is that people with large amounts of disposable income distort the markets, because luxury goods have higher profit margins. I'd argue that the legal structures that get in the way of things such as housing for people working 30 hours a week at minimum wage are a result markets that value the desires of one person who earns $100,000 a year more than the desires of five people who each earn $20,000 a year, not the cause of the markets behaving that way.
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On April 29 2018 14:52 Wulfey_LA wrote:I was merely demonstrating that the 'abolish the police' position isn't strictly limited to this thread. Here are some more fun anecdotes about the 'abolish the police' faction within DSA doxxing the mainstream socialists and digging for incriminating messages. Show nested quote +
Let me also be unambiguous on this point: the larger episode which brought these private comments to Twitter is emblematic of the kind of politics that is antithetical to DSA growing into a mass movement that can bring in ordinary people beyond the currently marginal activist left.
Everyone who dug through our private documents and shared them on the internet in order to harm our political project has demonstrated their commitment to creating a toxic, paranoid, and disempowering atmosphere in DSA. These are the tactics of people who have no belief that we can build a mass movement to win a better world — the best they can hope for is an irrelevant, inwardly gazing subculture where activists display their moral correctness, fight in a dirty, unprincipled way over process and structure, and relentlessly surveille and police their peers.
https://medium.com/@jer.gong/dsa-is-at-a-crossroads-60de6a4c84b6And we had pages and pages of arguments on the merits here. Abolish the police is pure madness. Mainstream socialists are rejecting it out of hand (see the Benjamin quotes above). You aren't owed an explanation as to why your never explained plans are insane. You never even bothered to cite an extant example or policy paper that even thought through the abolish the police scheme.
I don't think anyone suggested it was, so who are you demonstrating it to?
The "pages and pages of arguments" didn't do anything to discredit the merits of abolishing the police. Of course white socialists are rejecting it. The most favorable explanation simply being that it's not a part of their consciousness like it is Black socialists. But they aren't making an argument against abolishing the police anyway, just that it's not a particularly politically effective strategy because of a lack of understanding and appreciation. There's not an argument presented for why we shouldn't or raise it in people's consciousness.
Abolishing the police vs continuing waiting for reforms that will never come or fix the problems, I'd say your position is definitively and by literal definition the one deserving of the description "insane".
What part of the abolish the police 'scheme' did you not understand?
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On April 29 2018 14:38 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On April 29 2018 14:13 Wulfey_LA wrote:On April 28 2018 11:37 hunts wrote:On April 28 2018 10:46 Ciaus_Dronu wrote:On April 28 2018 08:59 hunts wrote:On April 28 2018 08:55 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 28 2018 08:51 zlefin wrote:
if you want to believe that, ok. It still seems very easy to disagree with to me, given that many of the same counterarguments still stand.
also not sure why you want to belabor the point so; instead of just accepting a reassertion of our prior positions. Because Democrats are on their way to doing poorly in 2018 and losing in 2020 if they can't stop being stubborn about this general dynamic. Meh I'm a straight white male, I'll be mostly fine even under a shitty republican regime. I'd rather a Republican win than have the democratic party taken over by the radical far left people such as bernie. Only in the US does anything Bernie say count as radical far left... Your comment comes across as "I'd rather have the rights of many tossed away even more actively than usual for the US while the deficit goes through the ceiling than spend money to make sure people in my own country are healthy and educated." Sure, I can kinda get that from a purely selfish perspective, but it's not one that I'll ever give weight to. Nor that I think anyone hoping for a functional society should. How, in your honest opinion, would someone like Bernie be close to as damaging as say, the current Republican establishment, for the US as a whole? I am very much for government provided healthcare for everyone, and for higher education to be cheaper or free. What I'm not for, is having the party taken over by those who think all banks should be taken down while having literally no clue what the president can and can't do. I don't want my party taken over by people want to abolish thr police or hang all rich people by the neck. Zomg I found some Amerikans who want to abolish the police. So the east bay branch of the Democratic Socialists of Ameria (DSA) are having a faction crisis. One half wants technocratic reforms like universal income, universal healthcare, progressive taxation, increased collective bargaining power through legislative change. Normal liberal stuff (you might even say neoliberal stuff since most of it has a sound economic basis). The other half wants to abolish the police and take on Israel. + Show Spoiler +
East Bay DSA is having leadership elections. The current leadership’s faction calls itself “Bread and Roses”. Bread and Roses has a clear platform. They want to campaign for universal social welfare programs, like single payer. They want to get DSA more involved with unions and workers in their local communities. They want to work to help people who care about their policy agenda get elected. They are committed to discrete policies that both help ordinary people and are politically feasible. They have a realistic strategy for pursuing those policies. They’re goal-oriented. They make sense.
Against them is a slate called “Unity and Power”. Unity and Power want DSA to focus on opposing Israel and abolishing the police. What does opposing Israel have to do with helping workers negotiate higher wages and benefits from their employers and from the state? Nothing. Do we really think “police abolition” is a position most workers in the United States agree with? These positions aren’t politically advantageous. They make DSA less attractive to workers and ordinary people, not more attractive. There’s no realistic strategy by which “abolishing the police” might be pursued. In Scandinavia, the cops are less likely to be armed and the prisons are much more humane, but there are still cops and there are still prisons. We have a long way to go to get to where Scandinavia is, let alone anywhere beyond that.
So DSA is split between a faction which has realistic goals and a realistic strategy for pursuing them and a faction which thinks that first faction isn’t left wing enough and wants to pursue policies that have no traction in our historical context. Sounds like every left-wing organisation ever, doesn’t it? But that’s not all. The Unity and Power faction has conducted a relentless campaign of bullying and virtue signalling in a bid to assault the character of Bread and Roses and its supporters.
This guy is spitting hot fire.
Left wing organizations have to get their funding and support from ordinary working people. But most members of left wing organizations are hyper-educated university graduates. Many of them have been to grad school or will eventually go. Many of them are affluent and work in the professions. When left-wing organizations make themselves accountable to their members, they’re not making themselves accountable to ordinary folks–they’re making themselves accountable to comfortable college types. Many of them have nice jobs and health insurance. Many of those that don’t could always turn to their affluent parents in a time of real need. Their material interests aren’t immediately tied to the success of left-wing politics. For them, the left isn’t about making sure they can buy food, pay rent, get access to healthcare and education, and take care of their kids.
For them, the left is a substitute for going to church.
I'm not sure there's really an argument being presented here? I mean an argument between two factions sure, but not one from you? Regardless, universal income, universal healthcare are not neoliberal policies, at least not US neoliberals. As to the faction (both of these are definitively to the left of the Democratic party and neoliberals anyway) you seem more apprehensive of, their understanding is that those reforms are products of increased class consciousness but are not ends in themselves. The point of an organization like DSA isn't simply to push reforms, it's to raise awareness to why people are seeking those reforms and helping them understand that it's capitalism driving their problems and the solution is revolution not reform. It's the countless subversions of revolutionary movements with 'good enough' reformist thinking that leads us to our current situation and the problems that come with it. Also, people don't get to present abolishing the police as an obviously bad idea without substantiating it. Opposing Israel and the ethnic cleansing they are committing in Palestine as well as supporting in Myanmar should be a nobrainer for anyone claiming to be on the left.
So, I kind of disagree on this. I think the point of organizations like DSA is to convince people in general to support specific policy positions associated with the idea that capitalism is driving people's problems and expose people to the idea that capitalism is driving their problems. The solution shouldn't be "revolution" but "whatever gets us to our goal as quickly as possible."
Related, is there an option for "never good enough" reformist thinking for people that don't think a revolution can happen any time in the near future and would rather get to the same end result by a series of incremental changes?
Unrelated to the above, but I pretty much agree with you on Israel. Their farthest right party has been part of the ruling coalition since 2001 excluding 2006 to 2009. It's the Israeli equivalent of the Republican party, and like the Republican party it's been lurching farther right and campaigning on scaring Israeli's and claiming that it will protect them.
EDIT: Responding to your latest post, I want to clarify that I'm talking about economic issues only when I'm talking about continual pushing incremental changes. Police scare me shitless and I'm for anything that makes law enforcement less scary.
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On April 29 2018 15:18 Kyadytim wrote:Show nested quote +On April 29 2018 14:38 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 29 2018 14:13 Wulfey_LA wrote:On April 28 2018 11:37 hunts wrote:On April 28 2018 10:46 Ciaus_Dronu wrote:On April 28 2018 08:59 hunts wrote:On April 28 2018 08:55 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 28 2018 08:51 zlefin wrote:
if you want to believe that, ok. It still seems very easy to disagree with to me, given that many of the same counterarguments still stand.
also not sure why you want to belabor the point so; instead of just accepting a reassertion of our prior positions. Because Democrats are on their way to doing poorly in 2018 and losing in 2020 if they can't stop being stubborn about this general dynamic. Meh I'm a straight white male, I'll be mostly fine even under a shitty republican regime. I'd rather a Republican win than have the democratic party taken over by the radical far left people such as bernie. Only in the US does anything Bernie say count as radical far left... Your comment comes across as "I'd rather have the rights of many tossed away even more actively than usual for the US while the deficit goes through the ceiling than spend money to make sure people in my own country are healthy and educated." Sure, I can kinda get that from a purely selfish perspective, but it's not one that I'll ever give weight to. Nor that I think anyone hoping for a functional society should. How, in your honest opinion, would someone like Bernie be close to as damaging as say, the current Republican establishment, for the US as a whole? I am very much for government provided healthcare for everyone, and for higher education to be cheaper or free. What I'm not for, is having the party taken over by those who think all banks should be taken down while having literally no clue what the president can and can't do. I don't want my party taken over by people want to abolish thr police or hang all rich people by the neck. Zomg I found some Amerikans who want to abolish the police. So the east bay branch of the Democratic Socialists of Ameria (DSA) are having a faction crisis. One half wants technocratic reforms like universal income, universal healthcare, progressive taxation, increased collective bargaining power through legislative change. Normal liberal stuff (you might even say neoliberal stuff since most of it has a sound economic basis). The other half wants to abolish the police and take on Israel. + Show Spoiler +
East Bay DSA is having leadership elections. The current leadership’s faction calls itself “Bread and Roses”. Bread and Roses has a clear platform. They want to campaign for universal social welfare programs, like single payer. They want to get DSA more involved with unions and workers in their local communities. They want to work to help people who care about their policy agenda get elected. They are committed to discrete policies that both help ordinary people and are politically feasible. They have a realistic strategy for pursuing those policies. They’re goal-oriented. They make sense.
Against them is a slate called “Unity and Power”. Unity and Power want DSA to focus on opposing Israel and abolishing the police. What does opposing Israel have to do with helping workers negotiate higher wages and benefits from their employers and from the state? Nothing. Do we really think “police abolition” is a position most workers in the United States agree with? These positions aren’t politically advantageous. They make DSA less attractive to workers and ordinary people, not more attractive. There’s no realistic strategy by which “abolishing the police” might be pursued. In Scandinavia, the cops are less likely to be armed and the prisons are much more humane, but there are still cops and there are still prisons. We have a long way to go to get to where Scandinavia is, let alone anywhere beyond that.
So DSA is split between a faction which has realistic goals and a realistic strategy for pursuing them and a faction which thinks that first faction isn’t left wing enough and wants to pursue policies that have no traction in our historical context. Sounds like every left-wing organisation ever, doesn’t it? But that’s not all. The Unity and Power faction has conducted a relentless campaign of bullying and virtue signalling in a bid to assault the character of Bread and Roses and its supporters.
This guy is spitting hot fire.
Left wing organizations have to get their funding and support from ordinary working people. But most members of left wing organizations are hyper-educated university graduates. Many of them have been to grad school or will eventually go. Many of them are affluent and work in the professions. When left-wing organizations make themselves accountable to their members, they’re not making themselves accountable to ordinary folks–they’re making themselves accountable to comfortable college types. Many of them have nice jobs and health insurance. Many of those that don’t could always turn to their affluent parents in a time of real need. Their material interests aren’t immediately tied to the success of left-wing politics. For them, the left isn’t about making sure they can buy food, pay rent, get access to healthcare and education, and take care of their kids.
For them, the left is a substitute for going to church.
I'm not sure there's really an argument being presented here? I mean an argument between two factions sure, but not one from you? Regardless, universal income, universal healthcare are not neoliberal policies, at least not US neoliberals. As to the faction (both of these are definitively to the left of the Democratic party and neoliberals anyway) you seem more apprehensive of, their understanding is that those reforms are products of increased class consciousness but are not ends in themselves. The point of an organization like DSA isn't simply to push reforms, it's to raise awareness to why people are seeking those reforms and helping them understand that it's capitalism driving their problems and the solution is revolution not reform. It's the countless subversions of revolutionary movements with 'good enough' reformist thinking that leads us to our current situation and the problems that come with it. Also, people don't get to present abolishing the police as an obviously bad idea without substantiating it. Opposing Israel and the ethnic cleansing they are committing in Palestine as well as supporting in Myanmar should be a nobrainer for anyone claiming to be on the left. So, I kind of disagree on this. I think the point of organizations like DSA is to convince people in general to support specific policy positions associated with the idea that capitalism is driving people's problems and expose people to the idea that capitalism is driving their problems. The solution shouldn't be "revolution" but "whatever gets us to our goal as quickly as possible." Related, is there an option for "never good enough" reformist thinking for people that don't think a revolution can happen any time in the near future and would rather get to the same end result by a series of incremental changes? Unrelated to the above, but I pretty much agree with you on Israel. Their farthest right party has been part of the ruling coalition since 2001 excluding 2006 to 2009. It's the Israeli equivalent of the Republican party, and like the Republican party it's been lurching farther right and campaigning on scaring Israeli's and claiming that it will protect them. EDIT: Responding to your latest post, I want to clarify that I'm talking about economic issues only when I'm talking about continual pushing incremental changes. Police scare me shitless and I'm for anything that makes law enforcement less scary.
I think it's a fair disagreement, particularly since DSA are more Social Democrats in a lot of cases than they are Democratic Socialists. I'd simply say they should more clearly identify themselves if that's the path they want to follow rather than suggest (with their name) their incremental changes are intended to bring us to socialism when they don't actually want to dismantle capitalism so as to not confuse people looking for organizations aimed at the latter rather than the former.
If your suggestion is that we will reform capitalists out of power and will get to socialism by way of incrementalism I think I'd disagree, depending on what you might mean in a more detailed explanation. I think incorporating DSA like groups into reformist actions is perfectly valid work, but shifting the organization itself toward pursuit of the reforms themselves seems to conflict with the ideological underpinnings of socialism.
Capitalists are more powerful and pervasive than police, the consequences of their actions more harmful and cruel than the worst police videos we've ever seen (I mean the police are acting on behalf of the capitalists, Eric Garner anyone?). So if you think that more drastic action is required/warranted in the case of criminal/corrupt police, you may want to reconsider your position on the necessity of drastic action instead of incrementalism regarding capitalism.
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On April 29 2018 15:01 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On April 29 2018 14:52 Wulfey_LA wrote:I was merely demonstrating that the 'abolish the police' position isn't strictly limited to this thread. Here are some more fun anecdotes about the 'abolish the police' faction within DSA doxxing the mainstream socialists and digging for incriminating messages.
Let me also be unambiguous on this point: the larger episode which brought these private comments to Twitter is emblematic of the kind of politics that is antithetical to DSA growing into a mass movement that can bring in ordinary people beyond the currently marginal activist left.
Everyone who dug through our private documents and shared them on the internet in order to harm our political project has demonstrated their commitment to creating a toxic, paranoid, and disempowering atmosphere in DSA. These are the tactics of people who have no belief that we can build a mass movement to win a better world — the best they can hope for is an irrelevant, inwardly gazing subculture where activists display their moral correctness, fight in a dirty, unprincipled way over process and structure, and relentlessly surveille and police their peers.
https://medium.com/@jer.gong/dsa-is-at-a-crossroads-60de6a4c84b6And we had pages and pages of arguments on the merits here. Abolish the police is pure madness. Mainstream socialists are rejecting it out of hand (see the Benjamin quotes above). You aren't owed an explanation as to why your never explained plans are insane. You never even bothered to cite an extant example or policy paper that even thought through the abolish the police scheme. I don't think anyone suggested it was, so who are you demonstrating it to? The "pages and pages of arguments" didn't do anything to discredit the merits of abolishing the police. Of course white socialists are rejecting it. The most favorable explanation simply being that it's not a part of their consciousness like it is Black socialists. But they aren't making an argument against abolishing the police anyway, just that it's not a particularly politically effective strategy because of a lack of understanding and appreciation. There's not an argument presented for why we shouldn't or raise it in people's consciousness. Abolishing the police vs continuing waiting for reforms that will never come or fix the problems, I'd say your position is definitively and by literal definition the one deserving of the description "insane". What part of the abolish the police 'scheme' did you not understand?
I mean, the last time we properly went into your "abolish the police" plan, you outright said that it was basically police reform.
If your argument is that police reform will never come because of political cogs, then abolishing them is either a far grander stretch, or a call for civilian revolution.
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On April 29 2018 16:19 WolfintheSheep wrote:Show nested quote +On April 29 2018 15:01 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 29 2018 14:52 Wulfey_LA wrote:I was merely demonstrating that the 'abolish the police' position isn't strictly limited to this thread. Here are some more fun anecdotes about the 'abolish the police' faction within DSA doxxing the mainstream socialists and digging for incriminating messages.
Let me also be unambiguous on this point: the larger episode which brought these private comments to Twitter is emblematic of the kind of politics that is antithetical to DSA growing into a mass movement that can bring in ordinary people beyond the currently marginal activist left.
Everyone who dug through our private documents and shared them on the internet in order to harm our political project has demonstrated their commitment to creating a toxic, paranoid, and disempowering atmosphere in DSA. These are the tactics of people who have no belief that we can build a mass movement to win a better world — the best they can hope for is an irrelevant, inwardly gazing subculture where activists display their moral correctness, fight in a dirty, unprincipled way over process and structure, and relentlessly surveille and police their peers.
https://medium.com/@jer.gong/dsa-is-at-a-crossroads-60de6a4c84b6And we had pages and pages of arguments on the merits here. Abolish the police is pure madness. Mainstream socialists are rejecting it out of hand (see the Benjamin quotes above). You aren't owed an explanation as to why your never explained plans are insane. You never even bothered to cite an extant example or policy paper that even thought through the abolish the police scheme. I don't think anyone suggested it was, so who are you demonstrating it to? The "pages and pages of arguments" didn't do anything to discredit the merits of abolishing the police. Of course white socialists are rejecting it. The most favorable explanation simply being that it's not a part of their consciousness like it is Black socialists. But they aren't making an argument against abolishing the police anyway, just that it's not a particularly politically effective strategy because of a lack of understanding and appreciation. There's not an argument presented for why we shouldn't or raise it in people's consciousness. Abolishing the police vs continuing waiting for reforms that will never come or fix the problems, I'd say your position is definitively and by literal definition the one deserving of the description "insane". What part of the abolish the police 'scheme' did you not understand? I mean, the last time we properly went into your "abolish the police" plan, you outright said that it was basically police reform. If your argument is that police reform will never come because of political cogs, then abolishing them is either a far grander stretch, or a call for civilian revolution.
A big difference between what most are calling for with abolition and what most mean when they say reform is that reformists think they will reform the current people in these positions through a political will they have no intention of manifesting or emboldening and can do so without reforming the power structures themselves.
I don't think most people advocating the abolition of police expect it to come through the political machinations of our current system anyway though. As to the work to be done to encourage a rise in class consciousness and eventually toward a proletariat revolution, I'd hope (though I can only speak for those I know), that abolitionists are aware it's going to be a long slog, longer than an election cycle or two.
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On April 29 2018 15:57 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On April 29 2018 15:18 Kyadytim wrote:On April 29 2018 14:38 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 29 2018 14:13 Wulfey_LA wrote:On April 28 2018 11:37 hunts wrote:On April 28 2018 10:46 Ciaus_Dronu wrote:On April 28 2018 08:59 hunts wrote:On April 28 2018 08:55 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 28 2018 08:51 zlefin wrote:
if you want to believe that, ok. It still seems very easy to disagree with to me, given that many of the same counterarguments still stand.
also not sure why you want to belabor the point so; instead of just accepting a reassertion of our prior positions. Because Democrats are on their way to doing poorly in 2018 and losing in 2020 if they can't stop being stubborn about this general dynamic. Meh I'm a straight white male, I'll be mostly fine even under a shitty republican regime. I'd rather a Republican win than have the democratic party taken over by the radical far left people such as bernie. Only in the US does anything Bernie say count as radical far left... Your comment comes across as "I'd rather have the rights of many tossed away even more actively than usual for the US while the deficit goes through the ceiling than spend money to make sure people in my own country are healthy and educated." Sure, I can kinda get that from a purely selfish perspective, but it's not one that I'll ever give weight to. Nor that I think anyone hoping for a functional society should. How, in your honest opinion, would someone like Bernie be close to as damaging as say, the current Republican establishment, for the US as a whole? I am very much for government provided healthcare for everyone, and for higher education to be cheaper or free. What I'm not for, is having the party taken over by those who think all banks should be taken down while having literally no clue what the president can and can't do. I don't want my party taken over by people want to abolish thr police or hang all rich people by the neck. Zomg I found some Amerikans who want to abolish the police. So the east bay branch of the Democratic Socialists of Ameria (DSA) are having a faction crisis. One half wants technocratic reforms like universal income, universal healthcare, progressive taxation, increased collective bargaining power through legislative change. Normal liberal stuff (you might even say neoliberal stuff since most of it has a sound economic basis). The other half wants to abolish the police and take on Israel. + Show Spoiler +
East Bay DSA is having leadership elections. The current leadership’s faction calls itself “Bread and Roses”. Bread and Roses has a clear platform. They want to campaign for universal social welfare programs, like single payer. They want to get DSA more involved with unions and workers in their local communities. They want to work to help people who care about their policy agenda get elected. They are committed to discrete policies that both help ordinary people and are politically feasible. They have a realistic strategy for pursuing those policies. They’re goal-oriented. They make sense.
Against them is a slate called “Unity and Power”. Unity and Power want DSA to focus on opposing Israel and abolishing the police. What does opposing Israel have to do with helping workers negotiate higher wages and benefits from their employers and from the state? Nothing. Do we really think “police abolition” is a position most workers in the United States agree with? These positions aren’t politically advantageous. They make DSA less attractive to workers and ordinary people, not more attractive. There’s no realistic strategy by which “abolishing the police” might be pursued. In Scandinavia, the cops are less likely to be armed and the prisons are much more humane, but there are still cops and there are still prisons. We have a long way to go to get to where Scandinavia is, let alone anywhere beyond that.
So DSA is split between a faction which has realistic goals and a realistic strategy for pursuing them and a faction which thinks that first faction isn’t left wing enough and wants to pursue policies that have no traction in our historical context. Sounds like every left-wing organisation ever, doesn’t it? But that’s not all. The Unity and Power faction has conducted a relentless campaign of bullying and virtue signalling in a bid to assault the character of Bread and Roses and its supporters.
This guy is spitting hot fire.
Left wing organizations have to get their funding and support from ordinary working people. But most members of left wing organizations are hyper-educated university graduates. Many of them have been to grad school or will eventually go. Many of them are affluent and work in the professions. When left-wing organizations make themselves accountable to their members, they’re not making themselves accountable to ordinary folks–they’re making themselves accountable to comfortable college types. Many of them have nice jobs and health insurance. Many of those that don’t could always turn to their affluent parents in a time of real need. Their material interests aren’t immediately tied to the success of left-wing politics. For them, the left isn’t about making sure they can buy food, pay rent, get access to healthcare and education, and take care of their kids.
For them, the left is a substitute for going to church.
I'm not sure there's really an argument being presented here? I mean an argument between two factions sure, but not one from you? Regardless, universal income, universal healthcare are not neoliberal policies, at least not US neoliberals. As to the faction (both of these are definitively to the left of the Democratic party and neoliberals anyway) you seem more apprehensive of, their understanding is that those reforms are products of increased class consciousness but are not ends in themselves. The point of an organization like DSA isn't simply to push reforms, it's to raise awareness to why people are seeking those reforms and helping them understand that it's capitalism driving their problems and the solution is revolution not reform. It's the countless subversions of revolutionary movements with 'good enough' reformist thinking that leads us to our current situation and the problems that come with it. Also, people don't get to present abolishing the police as an obviously bad idea without substantiating it. Opposing Israel and the ethnic cleansing they are committing in Palestine as well as supporting in Myanmar should be a nobrainer for anyone claiming to be on the left. So, I kind of disagree on this. I think the point of organizations like DSA is to convince people in general to support specific policy positions associated with the idea that capitalism is driving people's problems and expose people to the idea that capitalism is driving their problems. The solution shouldn't be "revolution" but "whatever gets us to our goal as quickly as possible." Related, is there an option for "never good enough" reformist thinking for people that don't think a revolution can happen any time in the near future and would rather get to the same end result by a series of incremental changes? Unrelated to the above, but I pretty much agree with you on Israel. Their farthest right party has been part of the ruling coalition since 2001 excluding 2006 to 2009. It's the Israeli equivalent of the Republican party, and like the Republican party it's been lurching farther right and campaigning on scaring Israeli's and claiming that it will protect them. EDIT: Responding to your latest post, I want to clarify that I'm talking about economic issues only when I'm talking about continual pushing incremental changes. Police scare me shitless and I'm for anything that makes law enforcement less scary. I think it's a fair disagreement, particularly since DSA are more Social Democrats in a lot of cases than they are Democratic Socialists. I'd simply say they should more clearly identify themselves if that's the path they want to follow rather than suggest (with their name) their incremental changes are intended to bring us to socialism when they don't actually want to dismantle capitalism so as to not confuse people looking for organizations aimed at the latter rather than the former. If your suggestion is that we will reform capitalists out of power and will get to socialism by way of incrementalism I think I'd disagree, depending on what you might mean in a more detailed explanation. I think incorporating DSA like groups into reformist actions is perfectly valid work, but shifting the organization itself toward pursuit of the reforms themselves seems to conflict with the ideological underpinnings of socialism. Capitalists are more powerful and pervasive than police, the consequences of their actions more harmful and cruel than the worst police videos we've ever seen (I mean the police are acting on behalf of the capitalists, Eric Garner anyone?). So if you think that more drastic action is required/warranted in the case of criminal/corrupt police, you may want to reconsider your position on the necessity of drastic action instead of incrementalism regarding capitalism.
I'm not really on board with the idea of the working class rising up in a singular revolt. For that to happen, things would have to get a lot worse, which I'd rather not see.
The United States as a country has been generally moving in a more socialist direction through swinging back and forth between extremes. During the railroad development era of the late 1890s and early 1900s, labor unions really became an economic force, but it was followed by the gilded age and the robber barons. Following that we had the new deal, and then we swung back towards capitalism with Reaganomics. Somewhere in there was the anti trust laws and the major anti trust cases, but it's kind of late and I don't want to take the time to look them up.
Successful incremental reforms make it harder for people to make the case for a working class revolt, because the number of people comfortable with their situation increases. That leads to people not fighting to maintain those reforms, so we see stuff like the modern right to work laws and stuff. That in turn leads to a backlash like the teacher strikes, which I expect will lead to good things.
Given that trend, things are a lot better for all workers on average now than in the late 1800s, even after accounting for general quality of life improvements over that period. Workplace safety laws, overtime, Social Security, Medicare, the ACA, and such. I believe the country would have to see a sudden, extremely sharp decline in the quality of life for a very large number of people before a sufficient number of people would be willing to take the step of risking everything on an attempt to make sweeping changes. Something like the entire country having to deal with even more absurd tax cuts than were passed in December and subsequent massive cuts to social spending.
The general idea here is that the trend over the past century or so has been that incremental reforms have been working. They're slow, but they're working well enough that unless the country breaks the cycle on the low ebb, things aren't going to get bad enough for worker revolt. While I wouldn't be opposed to a worker revolt, given the end result I would like to see of a state similar to Norway or Sweden, I'd rather actively work to get there by continually pushing policy in that direction as opposed to watching things get worse until the only real choice is some massive uprising.
I guess the tl;dr here is that
A) I don't actually want pure socialism, because a capitalist market is better for some things. I'd rather have something like Scandinavian nations
and B) While it will take longer, I think the overall cost in human suffering of constantly making any possible changes that move things towards the desired goal is less than that of things getting bad enough that the nation basically sees a revolution.
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On April 29 2018 16:34 Kyadytim wrote:Show nested quote +On April 29 2018 15:57 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 29 2018 15:18 Kyadytim wrote:On April 29 2018 14:38 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 29 2018 14:13 Wulfey_LA wrote:On April 28 2018 11:37 hunts wrote:On April 28 2018 10:46 Ciaus_Dronu wrote:On April 28 2018 08:59 hunts wrote:On April 28 2018 08:55 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 28 2018 08:51 zlefin wrote:
if you want to believe that, ok. It still seems very easy to disagree with to me, given that many of the same counterarguments still stand.
also not sure why you want to belabor the point so; instead of just accepting a reassertion of our prior positions. Because Democrats are on their way to doing poorly in 2018 and losing in 2020 if they can't stop being stubborn about this general dynamic. Meh I'm a straight white male, I'll be mostly fine even under a shitty republican regime. I'd rather a Republican win than have the democratic party taken over by the radical far left people such as bernie. Only in the US does anything Bernie say count as radical far left... Your comment comes across as "I'd rather have the rights of many tossed away even more actively than usual for the US while the deficit goes through the ceiling than spend money to make sure people in my own country are healthy and educated." Sure, I can kinda get that from a purely selfish perspective, but it's not one that I'll ever give weight to. Nor that I think anyone hoping for a functional society should. How, in your honest opinion, would someone like Bernie be close to as damaging as say, the current Republican establishment, for the US as a whole? I am very much for government provided healthcare for everyone, and for higher education to be cheaper or free. What I'm not for, is having the party taken over by those who think all banks should be taken down while having literally no clue what the president can and can't do. I don't want my party taken over by people want to abolish thr police or hang all rich people by the neck. Zomg I found some Amerikans who want to abolish the police. So the east bay branch of the Democratic Socialists of Ameria (DSA) are having a faction crisis. One half wants technocratic reforms like universal income, universal healthcare, progressive taxation, increased collective bargaining power through legislative change. Normal liberal stuff (you might even say neoliberal stuff since most of it has a sound economic basis). The other half wants to abolish the police and take on Israel. + Show Spoiler +
East Bay DSA is having leadership elections. The current leadership’s faction calls itself “Bread and Roses”. Bread and Roses has a clear platform. They want to campaign for universal social welfare programs, like single payer. They want to get DSA more involved with unions and workers in their local communities. They want to work to help people who care about their policy agenda get elected. They are committed to discrete policies that both help ordinary people and are politically feasible. They have a realistic strategy for pursuing those policies. They’re goal-oriented. They make sense.
Against them is a slate called “Unity and Power”. Unity and Power want DSA to focus on opposing Israel and abolishing the police. What does opposing Israel have to do with helping workers negotiate higher wages and benefits from their employers and from the state? Nothing. Do we really think “police abolition” is a position most workers in the United States agree with? These positions aren’t politically advantageous. They make DSA less attractive to workers and ordinary people, not more attractive. There’s no realistic strategy by which “abolishing the police” might be pursued. In Scandinavia, the cops are less likely to be armed and the prisons are much more humane, but there are still cops and there are still prisons. We have a long way to go to get to where Scandinavia is, let alone anywhere beyond that.
So DSA is split between a faction which has realistic goals and a realistic strategy for pursuing them and a faction which thinks that first faction isn’t left wing enough and wants to pursue policies that have no traction in our historical context. Sounds like every left-wing organisation ever, doesn’t it? But that’s not all. The Unity and Power faction has conducted a relentless campaign of bullying and virtue signalling in a bid to assault the character of Bread and Roses and its supporters.
This guy is spitting hot fire.
Left wing organizations have to get their funding and support from ordinary working people. But most members of left wing organizations are hyper-educated university graduates. Many of them have been to grad school or will eventually go. Many of them are affluent and work in the professions. When left-wing organizations make themselves accountable to their members, they’re not making themselves accountable to ordinary folks–they’re making themselves accountable to comfortable college types. Many of them have nice jobs and health insurance. Many of those that don’t could always turn to their affluent parents in a time of real need. Their material interests aren’t immediately tied to the success of left-wing politics. For them, the left isn’t about making sure they can buy food, pay rent, get access to healthcare and education, and take care of their kids.
For them, the left is a substitute for going to church.
I'm not sure there's really an argument being presented here? I mean an argument between two factions sure, but not one from you? Regardless, universal income, universal healthcare are not neoliberal policies, at least not US neoliberals. As to the faction (both of these are definitively to the left of the Democratic party and neoliberals anyway) you seem more apprehensive of, their understanding is that those reforms are products of increased class consciousness but are not ends in themselves. The point of an organization like DSA isn't simply to push reforms, it's to raise awareness to why people are seeking those reforms and helping them understand that it's capitalism driving their problems and the solution is revolution not reform. It's the countless subversions of revolutionary movements with 'good enough' reformist thinking that leads us to our current situation and the problems that come with it. Also, people don't get to present abolishing the police as an obviously bad idea without substantiating it. Opposing Israel and the ethnic cleansing they are committing in Palestine as well as supporting in Myanmar should be a nobrainer for anyone claiming to be on the left. So, I kind of disagree on this. I think the point of organizations like DSA is to convince people in general to support specific policy positions associated with the idea that capitalism is driving people's problems and expose people to the idea that capitalism is driving their problems. The solution shouldn't be "revolution" but "whatever gets us to our goal as quickly as possible." Related, is there an option for "never good enough" reformist thinking for people that don't think a revolution can happen any time in the near future and would rather get to the same end result by a series of incremental changes? Unrelated to the above, but I pretty much agree with you on Israel. Their farthest right party has been part of the ruling coalition since 2001 excluding 2006 to 2009. It's the Israeli equivalent of the Republican party, and like the Republican party it's been lurching farther right and campaigning on scaring Israeli's and claiming that it will protect them. EDIT: Responding to your latest post, I want to clarify that I'm talking about economic issues only when I'm talking about continual pushing incremental changes. Police scare me shitless and I'm for anything that makes law enforcement less scary. I think it's a fair disagreement, particularly since DSA are more Social Democrats in a lot of cases than they are Democratic Socialists. I'd simply say they should more clearly identify themselves if that's the path they want to follow rather than suggest (with their name) their incremental changes are intended to bring us to socialism when they don't actually want to dismantle capitalism so as to not confuse people looking for organizations aimed at the latter rather than the former. If your suggestion is that we will reform capitalists out of power and will get to socialism by way of incrementalism I think I'd disagree, depending on what you might mean in a more detailed explanation. I think incorporating DSA like groups into reformist actions is perfectly valid work, but shifting the organization itself toward pursuit of the reforms themselves seems to conflict with the ideological underpinnings of socialism. Capitalists are more powerful and pervasive than police, the consequences of their actions more harmful and cruel than the worst police videos we've ever seen (I mean the police are acting on behalf of the capitalists, Eric Garner anyone?). So if you think that more drastic action is required/warranted in the case of criminal/corrupt police, you may want to reconsider your position on the necessity of drastic action instead of incrementalism regarding capitalism. I'm not really on board with the idea of the working class rising up in a singular revolt. For that to happen, things would have to get a lot worse, which I'd rather not see. The United States as a country has been generally moving in a more socialist direction through swinging back and forth between extremes. During the railroad development era of the late 1890s and early 1900s, labor unions really became an economic force, but it was followed by the gilded age and the robber barons. Following that we had the new deal, and then we swung back towards capitalism with Reaganomics. Somewhere in there was the anti trust laws and the major anti trust cases, but it's kind of late and I don't want to take the time to look them up. Successful incremental reforms make it harder for people to make the case for a working class revolt, because the number of people comfortable with their situation increases. That leads to people not fighting to maintain those reforms, so we see stuff like the modern right to work laws and stuff. That in turn leads to a backlash like the teacher strikes, which I expect will lead to good things. Given that trend, things are a lot better for all workers on average now than in the late 1800s, even after accounting for general quality of life improvements over that period. Workplace safety laws, overtime, Social Security, Medicare, the ACA, and such. I believe the country would have to see a sudden, extremely sharp decline in the quality of life for a very large number of people before a sufficient number of people would be willing to take the step of risking everything on an attempt to make sweeping changes. Something like the entire country having to deal with even more absurd tax cuts than were passed in December and subsequent massive cuts to social spending. The general idea here is that the trend over the past century or so has been that incremental reforms have been working. They're slow, but they're working well enough that unless the country breaks the cycle on the low ebb, things aren't going to get bad enough for worker revolt. While I wouldn't be opposed to a worker revolt, given the end result I would like to see of a state similar to Norway or Sweden, I'd rather actively work to get there by continually pushing policy in that direction as opposed to watching things get worse until the only real choice is some massive uprising. I guess the tl;dr here is that A) I don't actually want pure socialism, because a capitalist market is better for some things. I'd rather have something like Scandinavian nations and B) While it will take longer, I think the overall cost in human suffering of constantly making any possible changes that move things towards the desired goal is less than that of things getting bad enough that the nation basically sees a revolution.
I'm torn because this is far more interesting than the typical conversation but I'm also pretty busy. As such I can't really go in depth about why I have a different view, but to the point on DSA, that's not a Democratic Socialist ideology you're describing, it's a Social Democrat one. DSA's job (as I understand Democratic Socialism) is to bring you from where you are, to where I am.
So to Wulfey's point on DSA, it's a legitimate disagreement, but only one side is actually presenting a Democratic Socialist perspective. The DSA faction Wulfey is describing wants to not be Democratic Socialists, which is fine, but doesn't make sense (and is actually contrary to their stated ideological goals imo) to do it under the DSA label.
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Though I clashed with GH over the ATP thing, I think people got the wrong end of the stick. GH's main point has always been that the reforms necessary to fix the police in the US at this point are so sweeping and thorough that they'll never happen, meaning that the best solution is to scrap the entire institution and start over from brass tacks. Even if what you built in their place is basically the same institution (though I know GH would prefer something else), the idea is you would have the opportunity to fix the structural issues plaguing the current establishment.
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On April 29 2018 17:31 iamthedave wrote:
Though I clashed with GH over the ATP thing, I think people got the wrong end of the stick. GH's main point has always been that the reforms necessary to fix the police in the US at this point are so sweeping and thorough that they'll never happen, meaning that the best solution is to scrap the entire institution and start over from brass tacks. Even if what you built in their place is basically the same institution (though I know GH would prefer something else), the idea is you would have the opportunity to fix the structural issues plaguing the current establishment.
And what happens during the time between scrapping the entire institution and the rebuild being along far enough for them to operate?
"its ok, we only expect 6 to 8 months of complete and utter lawless anarchy".
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On April 29 2018 17:49 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On April 29 2018 17:31 iamthedave wrote:
Though I clashed with GH over the ATP thing, I think people got the wrong end of the stick. GH's main point has always been that the reforms necessary to fix the police in the US at this point are so sweeping and thorough that they'll never happen, meaning that the best solution is to scrap the entire institution and start over from brass tacks. Even if what you built in their place is basically the same institution (though I know GH would prefer something else), the idea is you would have the opportunity to fix the structural issues plaguing the current establishment. And what happens during the time between scrapping the entire institution and the rebuild being along far enough for them to operate? "its ok, we only expect 6 to 8 months of complete and utter lawless anarchy".
You really think without police society would instantly descend into 'complete and utter lawless anarchy'? I think you have a terribly distorted idea of what police, especially in this country actually do or don't do for that matter.
To the point of the practical application of the idea, disarming them (taking away their guns) would work wonders to clear out their ranks voluntarily.
Completely unrelated but still worth checking out (beyond the media highlights) is Michelle Wolf's WHCD monologue. probably NSFW but neither is the president. It was better than I expected when the Sarah Sanders thing was the only part circulating.
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On April 29 2018 18:07 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On April 29 2018 17:49 Gorsameth wrote:On April 29 2018 17:31 iamthedave wrote:
Though I clashed with GH over the ATP thing, I think people got the wrong end of the stick. GH's main point has always been that the reforms necessary to fix the police in the US at this point are so sweeping and thorough that they'll never happen, meaning that the best solution is to scrap the entire institution and start over from brass tacks. Even if what you built in their place is basically the same institution (though I know GH would prefer something else), the idea is you would have the opportunity to fix the structural issues plaguing the current establishment. And what happens during the time between scrapping the entire institution and the rebuild being along far enough for them to operate? "its ok, we only expect 6 to 8 months of complete and utter lawless anarchy". You really think without police society would instantly descend into 'complete and utter lawless anarchy'? I think you have a terribly distorted idea of what police, especially in this country actually do or don't do for that matter. To the point of the practical application of the idea, disarming them (taking away their guns) would work wonders to clear out their ranks voluntarily. It goes both ways. I think you have no idea how much crime is prevented by the police, even a bad one.
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On April 29 2018 18:21 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On April 29 2018 18:07 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 29 2018 17:49 Gorsameth wrote:On April 29 2018 17:31 iamthedave wrote:
Though I clashed with GH over the ATP thing, I think people got the wrong end of the stick. GH's main point has always been that the reforms necessary to fix the police in the US at this point are so sweeping and thorough that they'll never happen, meaning that the best solution is to scrap the entire institution and start over from brass tacks. Even if what you built in their place is basically the same institution (though I know GH would prefer something else), the idea is you would have the opportunity to fix the structural issues plaguing the current establishment. And what happens during the time between scrapping the entire institution and the rebuild being along far enough for them to operate? "its ok, we only expect 6 to 8 months of complete and utter lawless anarchy". You really think without police society would instantly descend into 'complete and utter lawless anarchy'? I think you have a terribly distorted idea of what police, especially in this country actually do or don't do for that matter. To the point of the practical application of the idea, disarming them (taking away their guns) would work wonders to clear out their ranks voluntarily. It goes both ways. I think you have no idea how much crime is prevented by the police, even a bad one.
That's not an answer to the question though?
I'd agree that neither of us really know how much crime is prevented by police, not unrelated to their refusal to provide information that would help us deduce that. Though I'm not arguing we need them or society will instantly collapse.
If you're going to make that argument, you're going to need something more than an assertion I didn't disagree with.
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On April 29 2018 18:07 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On April 29 2018 17:49 Gorsameth wrote:On April 29 2018 17:31 iamthedave wrote:
Though I clashed with GH over the ATP thing, I think people got the wrong end of the stick. GH's main point has always been that the reforms necessary to fix the police in the US at this point are so sweeping and thorough that they'll never happen, meaning that the best solution is to scrap the entire institution and start over from brass tacks. Even if what you built in their place is basically the same institution (though I know GH would prefer something else), the idea is you would have the opportunity to fix the structural issues plaguing the current establishment. And what happens during the time between scrapping the entire institution and the rebuild being along far enough for them to operate? "its ok, we only expect 6 to 8 months of complete and utter lawless anarchy". You really think without police society would instantly descend into 'complete and utter lawless anarchy'? I think you have a terribly distorted idea of what police, especially in this country actually do or don't do for that matter.
Not exactly complete and utter lawless anarchy, but the few times when the police have gone on strike from duty, either in the US or UK, it reportedly resulted in increased crime and civil disorder until authority over criminal law was reestablished.
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On April 29 2018 18:38 Tachion wrote:Show nested quote +On April 29 2018 18:07 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 29 2018 17:49 Gorsameth wrote:On April 29 2018 17:31 iamthedave wrote:
Though I clashed with GH over the ATP thing, I think people got the wrong end of the stick. GH's main point has always been that the reforms necessary to fix the police in the US at this point are so sweeping and thorough that they'll never happen, meaning that the best solution is to scrap the entire institution and start over from brass tacks. Even if what you built in their place is basically the same institution (though I know GH would prefer something else), the idea is you would have the opportunity to fix the structural issues plaguing the current establishment. And what happens during the time between scrapping the entire institution and the rebuild being along far enough for them to operate? "its ok, we only expect 6 to 8 months of complete and utter lawless anarchy". You really think without police society would instantly descend into 'complete and utter lawless anarchy'? I think you have a terribly distorted idea of what police, especially in this country actually do or don't do for that matter. Not exactly complete and utter lawless anarchy, but the few times when the police have gone on strike from duty, either in the US or UK, it reportedly resulted in increased crime and civil disorder until authority over criminal law was reestablished.
So definitely not complete and utter lawless anarchy?
I am curious what events and reports you're referencing though?
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EPT
