US Politics Mega-thread - Page 4329

On August 07 2024 02:38 riotjune wrote:
All Kamala has to do is not have any major fuckups in the next three months.

On August 07 2024 09:58 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
I'd love to see Walz debate Vance. Pretty sure Walz would destroy Vance. Walz is so much more charismatic and able to connect and "real".

Edit: The sofa jab again is fantastic: https://x.com/ndrew_lawrence/status/1820955342626312433

On July 09 2024 03:10 Mohdoo wrote:
GH, I think a lot of this miscommunication is coming from how you use the word “revolution” and what you actually mean by it. People are responding to you as if your solution to everything is “we need to just all run towards politicians with pitch forks and demand universal income and an equitable tax structure”. I think it’s very clear to me that’s not what you are saying.

But it also feels like you are ignoring the fact that people are hugely misunderstanding you. You are clearly using revolution as a term to describe widespread social engagement and subsequent political changes by electing people who subscribe to worker-empowering policies. You view this as a fundamentally new framework for how equity is created and distributed. But when you don’t really address how people are framing your views, it gives the impression you’re just saying “idk I’m just saying democrats and shit heads and we should just kinda generally rush the capital with pitchforks until revolution is achieved”.

The socialist revolution consists of the entire process, on a world scale, through which the socialist mode of production is established and supplants earlier modes of production. Hence just as the bourgeois revolution continued through an entire historical period extending over many years, during which revolutionary changes took place in one country after another, so, it may be expected, will the socialist revolution.

I think it is useful to consider the socialist revolution in this way, because then we have to reflect on the characteristics of a long process in time, passing possibly through several different stages of development as it spreads and gathers momentum. If as participants in the socialist movement we can fill our minds with such an historical sense, then we can the better adapt our passions and hopes to reality, and the better understand our current political and economic problems.

The socialist revolution is the work of generations. There are brilliant successes in its long course, and also disastrous setbacks; ideas and methods which carried all before them give rise, as conditions change through their very agency, to confusions, dogmas and falsehoods; schisms arise, mistakes and even crimes are committed. Such has ever been the history of revolutions, and the socialist revolution proves no exception.

Marxism is the theory of the socialist revolution. And considering revolution as an historical process, we should distinguish the fundamental principles of Marxism – those principles which we may expect to hold good all the time – from their consequences in policies and practices which we may expect to change from time to time; and from ideas and theories which, valid at one stage, in one set of circumstances, need to be revised when that stage is passed.

There are times of transition – and the present appears to be one of them – when it is necessary to review all the ideas and practices inherited from the past in order, in the light of facts and fundamental principles, to reject what is no longer applicable in them and generally to correct and change them for use in the new conditions. The necessity of this may well make itself known in the form of a crisis within the movement, of the revelation of evils plain for all to see as consequences of the old ideas and practices.... The revision then comes about as a bitter learning of lessons, a righting of wrongs, a conclusion forced on us by events, rather than as a calm process of scientifically deducing conclusions from premises.

What is fundamental and permanent in Marxism? What are those ideas we shall not revise, but in the light of which we shall revise other ideas? First of all, the statement of purpose, the goal of socialism. Secondly, the scientific proof of the historical necessity of that purpose. Thirdly, the demonstration of the means to gain it.

First, Marxism formulates the goal of the socialist revolution – the abolition of capitalist private property, the abolition of all exploitation of man by man, the social ownership of the means of production and their planned use for the benefit of the whole of society, leading to abundance and the brotherhood of communism.

Secondly, Marxism does not put forward this goal as a utopia, as a mere vision of what would ideally satisfy people’s needs and make them all happy, but as a goal the practical attainment of which is made necessary by the actual conditions of modern society, and the posing and attainment of which in fact corresponds to objective laws of development operating throughout human history. The development of the social production of the material means of life in the last analysis determines the direction of social development as a whole; and if now the goal of socialism is placed as a practical objective, that is because only under a socialist economy can the contradictions of modern capitalist society be solved and the great modern forces of production be fully utilised.

Thirdly, the goal being set and its necessity and attainability proved, Marxism states the indispensable means to attain the goal – in other words, what social forces must be set in motion and what action they must take. Socialism will only be gained by waging the working-class struggle. The forces to gain it are the working class in alliance with all the working people. The condition for gaining it is the conquest of power by these forces. And to wage this struggle and achieve the conquest of power, the working class must have its own independent political party.

Of course, whole books have been written, and more need to be written, explaining, justifying and elaborating the principles of Marxism, and the materialist dialectical method which is employed in them. But the above seems to me their essence.

As the socialist revolution develops, it is clearly the job of Marxist organisations to conclude from the new facts what is necessary to be done in the light of their Marxist principles. And what we have perhaps especially to guard against is fixed ideas about the means for gaining socialism and for building it, that is, fixed ideas about the methods of working-class struggle, the nature and policies of a socialist state, and the nature and methods of work of working-class parties. In times of transition, we have to criticise and revise not our fundamental principles but the conclusions we draw from them. This in turn brings with it, and cannot be effected without, changes in sentiments, in moral ideas, in standards and attitudes.

On August 07 2024 09:58 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
I'd love to see Walz debate Vance. Pretty sure Walz would destroy Vance. Walz is so much more charismatic and able to connect and "real".

Edit: The sofa jab again is fantastic: https://x.com/ndrew_lawrence/status/1820955342626312433

On August 07 2024 12:19 Introvert wrote:


Is it "real" to repeat flagrantly false things, like the couch story? As long as we all know what we're dealing with here. I mean Trump and Kamala lie enough as it is, but it's certainly an odd jab when it doesn't have any basis in reality at all.

On August 07 2024 12:19 Introvert wrote:


Is it "real" to repeat flagrantly false things, like the couch story? As long as we all know what we're dealing with here. I mean Trump and Kamala lie enough as it is, but it's certainly an odd jab when it doesn't have any basis in reality at all.

On August 07 2024 13:01 WombaT wrote:

He was just using a common vernacular expression and not alluding to any kind of story at all!

Being serious I mean, I don’t think most people actually believe it anyway, but it’s still a bit of craic anyway. Bit like ‘David Cameron fucked a pig’ . Me and my peer group had this discussion and despite enjoying it as a meme, none of us actually believed that he was involved in porking a member of the species we get that cut from.

It’s really not something I particularly care about in a climate of the opposition party chatting shite about Jewish Space LazersTM and claiming Barack Obama wasn’t eligible to be President.

Something I care even less about as riots still abound in the UK, including my native city, sparked off by utter fabrications about British Muslims.

It’s absolute small fry stuff, and far too many people for far too long either perpetrated truly egregious and harmful lies, or were happy to be silent bystanders for calls for a return to truth and decorum now of all times to ring anything but extremely hollow.

On August 07 2024 13:34 Introvert wrote:


One reason I mentioned it at all is because, as I know from my years here, there are ABSOLUTELY people reading that and believing it. 100%. Second, I think it's an odd disconnect. The "when they go low we go high" was never actually true, but it's kind of interesting to watch it be thrown off, and thrown off so gleefully! But perhaps I can chalk this up to the sugar high dems still riding. The relief to go from someone always inarticulate and literally incoherent to someone merely inarticulate and often incoherent is huge. and it must be nice to finally be able to say the quiet part out loud and stop lying to myself: Joe Biden is not mentally fit to be president for 4 more years. For most of his presidency they've been pretending otherwise. I'd feel happy too.

On August 07 2024 13:29 Introvert wrote:


The thing I find amusing is how left-wing twitter actually bought the story for so long. The point I was making though was more specific. I don't get how Walz can be all these great things and the type of person who traffics in what would seem to be, as you imply by this post, a very Trumpian type of thing. And reveling in it! What is that saying? Maybe you two aren't so different after all! And I think you realize what you are doing with that sentence at the end saying essentially that Vance deserves it for being tied to Trump. I'm just curious what makes that "real" and how is that connecting to anyone, again besides silly people on twitter.

I mean if it were humor I would expect it to be funny. As a righty I'm used to jokes at my side's expense, that's not really the problem. I wonder how many people here actually thought the story was real until I pointed it out?