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On October 29 2024 08:29 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On October 29 2024 08:18 GreenHorizons wrote:On October 29 2024 07:31 WombaT wrote:
If we’re to flip it around to a certain degree, what do liberals do in a hypothetical where Trump just wins the election fair and square and starts to implement pseudo-Fascism?
Interrogation of GH and what he’d propose is of course reasonable, but ultimately he’s on the fringe, his ideology doesn’t have much traction (despite my personal sympathetic leanings) etc.
It feels only fair to ask the same question back for those who believe in liberal democracy, electoralism etc given that it is the actual system most of us operate under, and folks advocate for
I think at this point we pretty much know what liberals do in that hypothetical, they become fascists like liberals did in Nazi Germany. Perhaps, I wouldn’t write off my fellow human I think you’d probably see a lot of people individually willing to take some steps, but in the absence of genuine political activism, lacking the ability to actually organise to do anything of note. So they’d end up either unsure of what to do, or left isolated to do pointless performative professional suicide or whatever. It’s one of the key strengths/weaknesses of liberal electoralism, folks are either happy/unhappy that they get a say every so often at the ballot box, and don’t really build beyond that. It’s the beginning and end of political responsibility for many folks. Revolution is oft associated with violence, but it really doesn’t have to be. A big enough general strike cripples a system with perpetual productivity at its core But I fear in my hypothetical there just isn’t the organisation, the culture or the precedent for such an option to be really on the table.
I should have put a "most will be fascists" in there since some will flee, others radicalize, some will get swept up with the rest of us "undesirables" randomly and so on.
If you go back through the history you see the distinct "choice" that the US made to pursue "liberal democracy" to moderate capitalism over socialism in the late 1800's/early 1900's. You also see the violence it enacted since then to enforce that "choice" on those that disagree domestically and abroad. As well as how class consciousness and organized civil disobedience were systematically stomped out of workers.
On October 29 2024 11:05 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On October 29 2024 08:23 micronesia wrote:On October 29 2024 08:17 WombaT wrote:
You see this pretty clearly in past attempts at socialism, they were very much top-down efforts for the most part. I don’t think that can work without an associated cultural shift, that has to happen prior.
What should advocates do to effect a cultural shift in those who aren't on board yet beyond just insulting them for not already abandoning the existing system? + Show Spoiler +You talk to most folks, ask what their values are and invariably answers tend not to go in the ‘making money for the capitalist machine’. It’s not really something most people value all that much, but yet huge societal import is placed on it.
I’m a big fan of Rawl’s Veil of Ignorance thought experiment, use that.
That’s your gateway to get people in, and beyond that gateway I think you need welcoming community groups etc etc.
Hey it’s hard, you’re fighting against established orthodoxy that’s culturally instilled from an early age, even if indirectly.
I think a kind of default retrenchment to liberal capitalism is just super ingrained in most people. In the same sense gender relations are still asymmetric.
You’re not going to turn that ship round overnight, or over years. But if your advocates are like ‘read theory of fuck off’ it’s never going to happen It's funny, because before I finally started reading I didn't get it. Once I started reading, and interacting with people that refuse to, why people respond like that started making sense.
People want something comparable to the "team sports cheering/jeering, vote for your team, and go about your life" of liberal electoralism from socialism and that's just not how an actual democracy works (that's part of why liberals are poised to lose theirs to Trump).
I can accept that the sort of abrasiveness you describe is real and possibly not the best strategy (it's not the only one people use), but people should also recognize that if a fascist tells you that you didn't do a good job of convincing them not to be a fascist, they could be right, but that still means they're a fascist.
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Every time we mention socialism in this thread, i struggle to see if we are taking Denmark, Cuba, the USSR in 1925, France in 1982 or something that’s never existed.
It really makes the conversation very abstract. The word is unbelievably broad, and while I’m sure many here are very clear what they mean, it’s not always easy to follow.
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On October 29 2024 11:41 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +On October 28 2024 11:46 Introvert wrote:
Harris had a left wing voting record in the senate and the primary. Just because she's pretending that didn't happen now doesn't make it not true. At *best* you could say she's unprincipled. And it shows in her flailing around. How can you be asked twice how you are different than Biden and not have an answer? She doesn't think she should have to work for it Not sure if this was intended as a response to me saying Harris is not some far-left radical, but it merits some discussion. Because yeah, if you go by 2020 primary positions or Senate DW-Nominate score or w/e, she looks pretty progressive, and she's Black and a woman, which supposedly progressives are supposed to be crazy about. And yet progressives never seem to claim her as one of their own, what gives? The 2020 Democratic primary was an interesting contest for a lot of reasons, but a big one is that Democratic political operatives had spent the last 4 years researching and developing every aspect of what they thought an effective presidential campaign to unseat Donald Trump should look like, and in that primary we got to see what they came up with. The answer was, in a word, "Obama." But the really interesting part is which aspects of Obama each campaign chose to replicate. Do you want a well-spoken Harvard alum who's a political outsider? Take a look at Pete Buttigieg, his only political experience is as mayor of a mid-size town in a red state! Do you want a likable Black guy with an extremely round head? Allow me to introduce Cory Booker, he's maybe got as much dad energy as any politician I've seen besides Tim Walz. But Kamala Harris had what I thought was probably the most plausible attempt to clone the Obama phenomenon. She was a clear rising star in her party, and as a California senator she was free to take progressive positions on votes as often as she liked without much backlash, which is important because I think her campaign clearly thought that to replicate Obama, you had to come from the progressive wing of the party. Surely some well-connected establishment guy is never gonna get people energized and excited about all the wonderful things their candidacy could accomplish – "Hope and Change" – the way a progressive could. She endorsed Medicare for All, etc., which seemed calibrated to make sure she was identified as one of the "progressive lane" candidates (although I'm not sure it really worked, even at the time). It turns out the political operatives were wrong anyway, people didn't want an Obama clone at all, or at least not a 2008 Obama clone. I mean, Obama was (and is!) still enormously popular with Democrats, but by then they're thinking of Obama after winning the presidency, who frankly was never all that progressive. Biden might actually have been the closest analog to that Obama, or at least used to stand next to him a lot, and that turned out to be good enough for primary voters (general election voters, too). And Kamala went to work for him as VP, which doesn't make a ton of sense if she was actually some Sanders-like dyed-in-the-wool progressive. Didn't she basically call that guy racist in the first debate? But she was always someone who tried to figure out what voters wanted, and then would try to give them what they want. When all the best minds thought that answer was an Obama clone, that was what she tried to be. Once it was clear they actually just wanted a steady hand establishment guy to calm down all the craziness + Show Spoiler +(a bit like Disney wanted from JJ Abrams around the same time) , she signed on with that project. You can call that "unprincipled" (and, I mean, I probably would) but a Harris defender might counter, what exactly is it you want politicians to do? I mean, our democratic system is supposedly so wise and just and well-designed because politicians are regularly held accountable to voters, so it incentivizes them to give voters what they want in order to stay in office. If the politicians are working hard to figure out what voters want to see and give it to them, isn't that the system working as intended? (Personally I don't buy that the system is so wise and just and well-designed; I wanted someone who endorsed progressive positions out of a sincere deeply-held belief, so I voted Sanders.) But I guess the long and short of it is, Kamala Harris was always essentially an establishment Democrat, in the sense that whatever direction the Democratic Party seemed to be moving in, she'd try to be on the leading edge of it. If the Democrats ever got enough of a mandate to implement some big, progressive reforms on the scale of Obamacare, you can bet she'd be there leading the charge. If the party decided that appealing to centrist voters with tax cuts and balanced budgets was their best path forward, she'd be there leading that charge too. She's not an ideologue, she's certainly not a socialist, GH need not worry about running into her at any meetings, and capitalists need not worry about her seizing the means of production. But in the world of Republican rhetoric, where all Democrats are Marxists until proven innocent (and even then, y'know, better safe than sorry), she's "Comrade Kamala." Which is the same playbook they run against every other Democrat, and like I said before, is almost never rooted in much truth, so changing their policy positions to counter the "Socialist!" attack is of limited value. It wasn't true before, it still won't be true after the change, and they'll keep saying it anyway. And if the attack was working before, it'll probably keep working just about as well, for reasons that apparently don't have much to do with the truth of it.
I hate to give you a short reply to a long one again but oh well.
I could re-interpret the historical facts that you laid out differently then you did. One reason Kamala can't do interviews very well is because she has to think about what she is "supposed" to say. She doesn't give them impression of someone who has thought through any particular issue in detail (famously she makes her staff put together large documents and then doesn't touch them). I know the thread hates him, but this is in exact contrast to someone like DeSantis. You may not like his answers or his style, but more than just about any politician today he always has an answer and he never gets caught fumbling around. He knows what he thinks and he knows what he would do. He doesn't accept false premises and he knows the material. Kamala laughs, stutters, and then doesn't answer the question (again, the "how are you different" question tripped her up TWICE in one day). Kamala has always done what she thinks she had to do to get ahead. That means for the undecided voter that at best, she's a black box. And he record from CA implies she has no problems with going along with the left side of her party. Rather than being some sort of reassurance that she will move the center because that's what it takes, her comfort with the left-wing policy proposals stereotypically associated with her home state are cause for concern.
Of course the answer of why progressives don't like her is because they have insane purity tests(she was a cop!) and she comes off as horribly insincere, not a good look to a political persuasion that values sincerity and displays of empathy.
So I agree, much of what she does is because she's in many ways a soulless politician. But here's the thing, she made a bad deal with the Devil, she didn't even get that much skill in return. And she is still proposing policies that are radical. Her unwillingness to compromise on abortion, even a religious exemption, is either again a lack of serious thought or dangerously authoritarian. So no, if dems want to pretend to be moderate they maybe should pick someone who could at least plausibly pretend to be.
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On October 29 2024 13:28 Biff The Understudy wrote:
Every time we mention socialism in this thread, i struggle to see if we are taking Denmark, Cuba, the USSR in 1925, France in 1982 or something that’s never existed.
It really makes the conversation very abstract. The word is unbelievably broad, and while I’m sure many here are very clear what they mean, it’s not always easy to follow.
In the most general sense I'm talking socialism as a system to pursue conscientização or critical consciousness Critical consciousness focuses on achieving an in-depth understanding of the world, allowing for the perception and exposure of social and political contradictions. Critical consciousness also includes taking action against the oppressive elements in one's life that are illuminated by that understanding And generally aligned with Fanon, Freire, Kwame Ture, and that general flavor of revolutionary socialism.
But at an even more basic level I'm just arguing in favor of socialism being a superior paradigm to pursue a "more perfect union" so to speak than capitalism and liberal democracy.
As far as I can tell outside of the right-wingers, everyone agrees with that premise (socialism>capitalism going forward) at this point. The fighting is around what to do about that.
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On October 29 2024 14:11 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On October 29 2024 13:28 Biff The Understudy wrote:
Every time we mention socialism in this thread, i struggle to see if we are taking Denmark, Cuba, the USSR in 1925, France in 1982 or something that’s never existed.
It really makes the conversation very abstract. The word is unbelievably broad, and while I’m sure many here are very clear what they mean, it’s not always easy to follow. In the most general sense I'm talking socialism as a system to pursue conscientização or critical consciousness Show nested quote +Critical consciousness focuses on achieving an in-depth understanding of the world, allowing for the perception and exposure of social and political contradictions. Critical consciousness also includes taking action against the oppressive elements in one's life that are illuminated by that understanding And generally aligned with Fanon, Freire, Kwame Ture, and that general flavor of revolutionary socialism. But at an even more basic level I'm just arguing in favor of socialism being a superior paradigm to pursue a "more perfect union" so to speak than capitalism and liberal democracy. As far as I can tell outside of the right-wingers, everyone agrees with that premise (socialism>capitalism going forward) at this point. The fighting is around what to do about that. Since your pointing to thinkers and not history I guess the answer to Biffs question is ' something that has never existed'.
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Georgia just did what Colorado did a few pages ago: checked millions of early votes and names from voters rolls, and found just about zero fraud/mistakes. Only 20 people out of 8,200,000 shouldn't have been registered to vote, and only 9 of those even voted.
The article adds more refutation to a second topic, addressing MTG's conspiracy theory about machines changing votes:
"Speaking to reporters, Sterling also knocked back some of the misinformation floating around the critical battleground state, including a false claim amplified by Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene that voting machines were changing votes.
“There is zero evidence of a machine flipping an individual’s vote,” he said. “Are there elderly people whose hands shake and they probably hit the wrong button slightly, and it didn’t review their ballot properly before they printed it – that’s the main situation we have seen.”
Sterling added: “There is literally zero – and I’m saying this to certain congresspeople in the state – zero evidence of machines flipping votes. And that claim was a lie through 2020, it is a lie now.”"
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/10/23/politics/georgia-raffensperger-noncitizens-registered
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On October 29 2024 14:11 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On October 29 2024 13:28 Biff The Understudy wrote:
Every time we mention socialism in this thread, i struggle to see if we are taking Denmark, Cuba, the USSR in 1925, France in 1982 or something that’s never existed.
It really makes the conversation very abstract. The word is unbelievably broad, and while I’m sure many here are very clear what they mean, it’s not always easy to follow. In the most general sense I'm talking socialism as a system to pursue conscientização or critical consciousness Show nested quote +Critical consciousness focuses on achieving an in-depth understanding of the world, allowing for the perception and exposure of social and political contradictions. Critical consciousness also includes taking action against the oppressive elements in one's life that are illuminated by that understanding And generally aligned with Fanon, Freire, Kwame Ture, and that general flavor of revolutionary socialism. But at an even more basic level I'm just arguing in favor of socialism being a superior paradigm to pursue a "more perfect union" so to speak than capitalism and liberal democracy. As far as I can tell outside of the right-wingers, everyone agrees with that premise (socialism>capitalism going forward) at this point. The fighting is around what to do about that.
Interesting take. I doubt that most people agree to the premise socialism>capitalism though.
Many European leaders in the past pointed out vehemently that they are not socialist countries when American discussions revolved around the issue and it gets mentioned that "Scandinavian country is socialist" for example.
My sense is the exact opposite. People have realized that socialism does not work and we need to improve capitalism despite its flaws, as its strengths outperform any other system in regards to benefits for society.
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On another topic: what do you guys think about "Department of Government Efficiency" which supposedly Musk will lead?
Personally I always thought it is most amusing how governments tend to give most mundane names to very nefarious things.
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On October 29 2024 19:39 Razyda wrote:
On another topic: what do you guys think about "Department of Government Efficiency" which supposedly Musk will lead?
Personally I always thought it is most amusing how governments tend to give most mundane names to very nefarious things.
Wouldn't Elon Musk be literally the worst appointee for this, given how shitty and understaffed Twitter became when he arbitrarily fired a ton of useful employees who were actually necessary for the platform to run smoothly?
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On October 29 2024 19:57 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On October 29 2024 19:39 Razyda wrote:
On another topic: what do you guys think about "Department of Government Efficiency" which supposedly Musk will lead?
Personally I always thought it is most amusing how governments tend to give most mundane names to very nefarious things. Wouldn't Elon Musk be literally the worst appointee for this, given how shitty and understaffed Twitter became when he arbitrarily fired a ton of useful employees who were actually necessary for the platform to run smoothly?
That's the right approach if the end goal is to maximise the unit of productivity per worker. This is essentially what leads to enshittification.
If you actually want to have services that are run well and are worth having, then yeah, I agree with you.
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On October 29 2024 19:57 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On October 29 2024 19:39 Razyda wrote:
On another topic: what do you guys think about "Department of Government Efficiency" which supposedly Musk will lead?
Personally I always thought it is most amusing how governments tend to give most mundane names to very nefarious things. Wouldn't Elon Musk be literally the worst appointee for this, given how shitty and understaffed Twitter became when he arbitrarily fired a ton of useful employees who were actually necessary for the platform to run smoothly?
I only mentioned Musk because those 2 are usually mentioned together. My question was more about Department itself, which I think is something which is being sort of "smuggled in" rather brilliantly (who wouldn't want government to be more efficient).
To my understanding (correct me if I am wrong) Trump cannot now go to for example FDA and tell them "say this and that" and if they say "no, because it is not truth" he cant go "oh ok, you are fired then" because they are not exactly his employees, but FDA.
Now consider what sort of power such a department would need to function? I think it is extremely shortsighted by republicans.
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On October 29 2024 13:34 Introvert wrote:Show nested quote +On October 29 2024 11:41 ChristianS wrote:On October 28 2024 11:46 Introvert wrote:
Harris had a left wing voting record in the senate and the primary. Just because she's pretending that didn't happen now doesn't make it not true. At *best* you could say she's unprincipled. And it shows in her flailing around. How can you be asked twice how you are different than Biden and not have an answer? She doesn't think she should have to work for it Not sure if this was intended as a response to me saying Harris is not some far-left radical, but it merits some discussion. Because yeah, if you go by 2020 primary positions or Senate DW-Nominate score or w/e, she looks pretty progressive, and she's Black and a woman, which supposedly progressives are supposed to be crazy about. And yet progressives never seem to claim her as one of their own, what gives? The 2020 Democratic primary was an interesting contest for a lot of reasons, but a big one is that Democratic political operatives had spent the last 4 years researching and developing every aspect of what they thought an effective presidential campaign to unseat Donald Trump should look like, and in that primary we got to see what they came up with. The answer was, in a word, "Obama." But the really interesting part is which aspects of Obama each campaign chose to replicate. Do you want a well-spoken Harvard alum who's a political outsider? Take a look at Pete Buttigieg, his only political experience is as mayor of a mid-size town in a red state! Do you want a likable Black guy with an extremely round head? Allow me to introduce Cory Booker, he's maybe got as much dad energy as any politician I've seen besides Tim Walz. But Kamala Harris had what I thought was probably the most plausible attempt to clone the Obama phenomenon. She was a clear rising star in her party, and as a California senator she was free to take progressive positions on votes as often as she liked without much backlash, which is important because I think her campaign clearly thought that to replicate Obama, you had to come from the progressive wing of the party. Surely some well-connected establishment guy is never gonna get people energized and excited about all the wonderful things their candidacy could accomplish – "Hope and Change" – the way a progressive could. She endorsed Medicare for All, etc., which seemed calibrated to make sure she was identified as one of the "progressive lane" candidates (although I'm not sure it really worked, even at the time). It turns out the political operatives were wrong anyway, people didn't want an Obama clone at all, or at least not a 2008 Obama clone. I mean, Obama was (and is!) still enormously popular with Democrats, but by then they're thinking of Obama after winning the presidency, who frankly was never all that progressive. Biden might actually have been the closest analog to that Obama, or at least used to stand next to him a lot, and that turned out to be good enough for primary voters (general election voters, too). And Kamala went to work for him as VP, which doesn't make a ton of sense if she was actually some Sanders-like dyed-in-the-wool progressive. Didn't she basically call that guy racist in the first debate? But she was always someone who tried to figure out what voters wanted, and then would try to give them what they want. When all the best minds thought that answer was an Obama clone, that was what she tried to be. Once it was clear they actually just wanted a steady hand establishment guy to calm down all the craziness + Show Spoiler +(a bit like Disney wanted from JJ Abrams around the same time) , she signed on with that project. You can call that "unprincipled" (and, I mean, I probably would) but a Harris defender might counter, what exactly is it you want politicians to do? I mean, our democratic system is supposedly so wise and just and well-designed because politicians are regularly held accountable to voters, so it incentivizes them to give voters what they want in order to stay in office. If the politicians are working hard to figure out what voters want to see and give it to them, isn't that the system working as intended? (Personally I don't buy that the system is so wise and just and well-designed; I wanted someone who endorsed progressive positions out of a sincere deeply-held belief, so I voted Sanders.) But I guess the long and short of it is, Kamala Harris was always essentially an establishment Democrat, in the sense that whatever direction the Democratic Party seemed to be moving in, she'd try to be on the leading edge of it. If the Democrats ever got enough of a mandate to implement some big, progressive reforms on the scale of Obamacare, you can bet she'd be there leading the charge. If the party decided that appealing to centrist voters with tax cuts and balanced budgets was their best path forward, she'd be there leading that charge too. She's not an ideologue, she's certainly not a socialist, GH need not worry about running into her at any meetings, and capitalists need not worry about her seizing the means of production. But in the world of Republican rhetoric, where all Democrats are Marxists until proven innocent (and even then, y'know, better safe than sorry), she's "Comrade Kamala." Which is the same playbook they run against every other Democrat, and like I said before, is almost never rooted in much truth, so changing their policy positions to counter the "Socialist!" attack is of limited value. It wasn't true before, it still won't be true after the change, and they'll keep saying it anyway. And if the attack was working before, it'll probably keep working just about as well, for reasons that apparently don't have much to do with the truth of it. I hate to give you a short reply to a long one again but oh well. I could re-interpret the historical facts that you laid out differently then you did. One reason Kamala can't do interviews very well is because she has to think about what she is "supposed" to say. She doesn't give them impression of someone who has thought through any particular issue in detail (famously she makes her staff put together large documents and then doesn't touch them). I know the thread hates him, but this is in exact contrast to someone like DeSantis. You may not like his answers or his style, but more than just about any politician today he always has an answer and he never gets caught fumbling around. He knows what he thinks and he knows what he would do. He doesn't accept false premises and he knows the material. Kamala laughs, stutters, and then doesn't answer the question (again, the "how are you different" question tripped her up TWICE in one day). Kamala has always done what she thinks she had to do to get ahead. That means for the undecided voter that at best, she's a black box. And he record from CA implies she has no problems with going along with the left side of her party. Rather than being some sort of reassurance that she will move the center because that's what it takes, her comfort with the left-wing policy proposals stereotypically associated with her home state are cause for concern. Of course the answer of why progressives don't like her is because they have insane purity tests(she was a cop!) and she comes off as horribly insincere, not a good look to a political persuasion that values sincerity and displays of empathy. So I agree, much of what she does is because she's in many ways a soulless politician. But here's the thing, she made a bad deal with the Devil, she didn't even get that much skill in return. And she is still proposing policies that are radical. Her unwillingness to compromise on abortion, even a religious exemption, is either again a lack of serious thought or dangerously authoritarian. So no, if dems want to pretend to be moderate they maybe should pick someone who could at least plausibly pretend to be.
De Santis also dodges questions all the time, and very blatantly so. Look up any random CNN interview and you'll see him instantly dodge questions right from the start, not even pretending to answer them (for anyone who's actually listening to his words). That's what politicians do, why would Harris not use the same strategy? It's been THE thing to do for many decades. Blame her for that if you like, but then blame everyone equally and fairly. De Santis is no better. Trump is no better. And the only reason why someone like Trump doesn't often stumble over his words is... no, wait. He does. All the time. That's precisely why he uses baby level of speaking patterns so he can ramble on about nothing for hours at a time without his brain overheating.
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On October 29 2024 18:22 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On October 29 2024 14:11 GreenHorizons wrote:On October 29 2024 13:28 Biff The Understudy wrote:
Every time we mention socialism in this thread, i struggle to see if we are taking Denmark, Cuba, the USSR in 1925, France in 1982 or something that’s never existed.
It really makes the conversation very abstract. The word is unbelievably broad, and while I’m sure many here are very clear what they mean, it’s not always easy to follow. In the most general sense I'm talking socialism as a system to pursue conscientização or critical consciousness Critical consciousness focuses on achieving an in-depth understanding of the world, allowing for the perception and exposure of social and political contradictions. Critical consciousness also includes taking action against the oppressive elements in one's life that are illuminated by that understanding And generally aligned with Fanon, Freire, Kwame Ture, and that general flavor of revolutionary socialism. But at an even more basic level I'm just arguing in favor of socialism being a superior paradigm to pursue a "more perfect union" so to speak than capitalism and liberal democracy. As far as I can tell outside of the right-wingers, everyone agrees with that premise (socialism>capitalism going forward) at this point. The fighting is around what to do about that. Since your pointing to thinkers and not history I guess the answer to Biffs question is ' something that has never existed'.
Yeah. That’s my point a little bit. And since most of us haven’t read those authors, we are talking without a clear reference over what any of that means, which dooms the conversation imo.
I find though that the cultivated confusion about the word socialism is one of the reason the political debate in the US is so sterile. Republicans voluntarily entertain the confusion between « slightly more like Denmark » and « Moscow 1928 » and the progressives never explain if they want a completely new utopian system that has never existed, or again, if we are talking increasing taxes and getting what most advanced countries already have, such as free healthcare, free education and so on.
Then everybody goes on talking with their definition in mind.
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On October 29 2024 21:06 Biff The Understudy wrote:Show nested quote +On October 29 2024 18:22 Gorsameth wrote:On October 29 2024 14:11 GreenHorizons wrote:On October 29 2024 13:28 Biff The Understudy wrote:
Every time we mention socialism in this thread, i struggle to see if we are taking Denmark, Cuba, the USSR in 1925, France in 1982 or something that’s never existed.
It really makes the conversation very abstract. The word is unbelievably broad, and while I’m sure many here are very clear what they mean, it’s not always easy to follow. In the most general sense I'm talking socialism as a system to pursue conscientização or critical consciousness Critical consciousness focuses on achieving an in-depth understanding of the world, allowing for the perception and exposure of social and political contradictions. Critical consciousness also includes taking action against the oppressive elements in one's life that are illuminated by that understanding And generally aligned with Fanon, Freire, Kwame Ture, and that general flavor of revolutionary socialism. But at an even more basic level I'm just arguing in favor of socialism being a superior paradigm to pursue a "more perfect union" so to speak than capitalism and liberal democracy. As far as I can tell outside of the right-wingers, everyone agrees with that premise (socialism>capitalism going forward) at this point. The fighting is around what to do about that. Since your pointing to thinkers and not history I guess the answer to Biffs question is ' something that has never existed'. Yeah. That’s my point a little bit. And since most of us haven’t read those authors, we are talking without a clear reference over what any of that means, which dooms the conversation imo. I find though that the cultivated confusion about the word socialism is one of the reason the political debate in the US is so sterile. Republicans voluntarily entertain the confusion between « slightly more like Denmark » and « Moscow 1928 » and the progressives never explain if they want a completely new utopian system that has never existed, + Show Spoiler + or again, if we are talking increasing taxes and getting what most advanced countries already have, such as free healthcare, free education and so on.
Then everybody goes on talking with their definition in mind.
Which is a major reason I've spent 7+ years trying to get you guys to read some of them. It also demonstrates how the inquiries are just bad faith sealioning.
Seems like the US is getting forced into the choice of fascism or something new that hasn't existed and most US voters favor fascism over their fear of something new/reading socialists instead of hundreds of pages of oBlade type arguments.
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On October 29 2024 21:26 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On October 29 2024 21:06 Biff The Understudy wrote:On October 29 2024 18:22 Gorsameth wrote:On October 29 2024 14:11 GreenHorizons wrote:On October 29 2024 13:28 Biff The Understudy wrote:
Every time we mention socialism in this thread, i struggle to see if we are taking Denmark, Cuba, the USSR in 1925, France in 1982 or something that’s never existed.
It really makes the conversation very abstract. The word is unbelievably broad, and while I’m sure many here are very clear what they mean, it’s not always easy to follow. In the most general sense I'm talking socialism as a system to pursue conscientização or critical consciousness Critical consciousness focuses on achieving an in-depth understanding of the world, allowing for the perception and exposure of social and political contradictions. Critical consciousness also includes taking action against the oppressive elements in one's life that are illuminated by that understanding And generally aligned with Fanon, Freire, Kwame Ture, and that general flavor of revolutionary socialism. But at an even more basic level I'm just arguing in favor of socialism being a superior paradigm to pursue a "more perfect union" so to speak than capitalism and liberal democracy. As far as I can tell outside of the right-wingers, everyone agrees with that premise (socialism>capitalism going forward) at this point. The fighting is around what to do about that. Since your pointing to thinkers and not history I guess the answer to Biffs question is ' something that has never existed'. Yeah. That’s my point a little bit. And since most of us haven’t read those authors, we are talking without a clear reference over what any of that means, which dooms the conversation imo. I find though that the cultivated confusion about the word socialism is one of the reason the political debate in the US is so sterile. Republicans voluntarily entertain the confusion between « slightly more like Denmark » and « Moscow 1928 » and the progressives never explain if they want a completely new utopian system that has never existed, + Show Spoiler + or again, if we are talking increasing taxes and getting what most advanced countries already have, such as free healthcare, free education and so on.
Then everybody goes on talking with their definition in mind. Which is a major reason I've spent 7+ years trying to get you guys to read some of them. It also demonstrates how the inquiries are just bad faith sealioning. Seems like the US is getting forced into the choice of fascism or something new that hasn't existed and most US voters favor fascism over their fear of something new/reading socialists instead of hundreds of pages of oBlade type arguments.
That's an important point. People are more likely to vote in favor of what they know than what they don't know (even if both options are hypothetically equal in effect). It's a very common human bias.
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On October 29 2024 21:26 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On October 29 2024 21:06 Biff The Understudy wrote:On October 29 2024 18:22 Gorsameth wrote:On October 29 2024 14:11 GreenHorizons wrote:On October 29 2024 13:28 Biff The Understudy wrote:
Every time we mention socialism in this thread, i struggle to see if we are taking Denmark, Cuba, the USSR in 1925, France in 1982 or something that’s never existed.
It really makes the conversation very abstract. The word is unbelievably broad, and while I’m sure many here are very clear what they mean, it’s not always easy to follow. In the most general sense I'm talking socialism as a system to pursue conscientização or critical consciousness Critical consciousness focuses on achieving an in-depth understanding of the world, allowing for the perception and exposure of social and political contradictions. Critical consciousness also includes taking action against the oppressive elements in one's life that are illuminated by that understanding And generally aligned with Fanon, Freire, Kwame Ture, and that general flavor of revolutionary socialism. But at an even more basic level I'm just arguing in favor of socialism being a superior paradigm to pursue a "more perfect union" so to speak than capitalism and liberal democracy. As far as I can tell outside of the right-wingers, everyone agrees with that premise (socialism>capitalism going forward) at this point. The fighting is around what to do about that. Since your pointing to thinkers and not history I guess the answer to Biffs question is ' something that has never existed'. Yeah. That’s my point a little bit. And since most of us haven’t read those authors, we are talking without a clear reference over what any of that means, which dooms the conversation imo. I find though that the cultivated confusion about the word socialism is one of the reason the political debate in the US is so sterile. Republicans voluntarily entertain the confusion between « slightly more like Denmark » and « Moscow 1928 » and the progressives never explain if they want a completely new utopian system that has never existed, + Show Spoiler + or again, if we are talking increasing taxes and getting what most advanced countries already have, such as free healthcare, free education and so on.
Then everybody goes on talking with their definition in mind. Which is a major reason I've spent 7+ years trying to get you guys to read some of them. It also demonstrates how the inquiries are just bad faith sealioning. Seems like the US is getting forced into the choice of fascism or something new that hasn't existed and most US voters favor fascism over their fear of something new/reading socialists instead of hundreds of pages of oBlade type arguments.
I know, but you have to realize that there are little chance anyone here is interested in another poster’s thought quite enough to read 2000 pages to understand what they are talking about. I am quite certain that you wouldn’t do it for me, and that’s really quite normal.
So saying, go read my sources is not really a way to go in a discussion, because we could all do that. If I yold you: “you would understand me better if you read Spinoza and its commentary by Deleuze - and I believe you would - so your enquiries about what i say are done in bad faith” you would not take me very seriously.
What I understand a bit from seven years of and and off discussion - and really, correct me if i am wrong - is that you think your ideas are deeper and worth more time and attention than any of us here. And that really limits the possibility of exchange.
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At the very least I've read their wikis and will probably attempt a reading of Freires Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
Kwame Ture and Fanon seem like very interesting people aswell, might try The Wretched of The Earth.
But I have to say that none of these ideas seem as 'new' to me as I've heard them discussed before and actually seemingly more or less agree with them. I'll try to go into it as a naive baby though. If nothing else, the time in which it was written as the experiences that are able to come to this type of formulation will be interesting of themselves.
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On October 29 2024 21:26 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On October 29 2024 21:06 Biff The Understudy wrote:On October 29 2024 18:22 Gorsameth wrote:On October 29 2024 14:11 GreenHorizons wrote:On October 29 2024 13:28 Biff The Understudy wrote:
Every time we mention socialism in this thread, i struggle to see if we are taking Denmark, Cuba, the USSR in 1925, France in 1982 or something that’s never existed.
It really makes the conversation very abstract. The word is unbelievably broad, and while I’m sure many here are very clear what they mean, it’s not always easy to follow. In the most general sense I'm talking socialism as a system to pursue conscientização or critical consciousness Critical consciousness focuses on achieving an in-depth understanding of the world, allowing for the perception and exposure of social and political contradictions. Critical consciousness also includes taking action against the oppressive elements in one's life that are illuminated by that understanding And generally aligned with Fanon, Freire, Kwame Ture, and that general flavor of revolutionary socialism. But at an even more basic level I'm just arguing in favor of socialism being a superior paradigm to pursue a "more perfect union" so to speak than capitalism and liberal democracy. As far as I can tell outside of the right-wingers, everyone agrees with that premise (socialism>capitalism going forward) at this point. The fighting is around what to do about that. Since your pointing to thinkers and not history I guess the answer to Biffs question is ' something that has never existed'. Yeah. That’s my point a little bit. And since most of us haven’t read those authors, we are talking without a clear reference over what any of that means, which dooms the conversation imo. I find though that the cultivated confusion about the word socialism is one of the reason the political debate in the US is so sterile. Republicans voluntarily entertain the confusion between « slightly more like Denmark » and « Moscow 1928 » and the progressives never explain if they want a completely new utopian system that has never existed, + Show Spoiler + or again, if we are talking increasing taxes and getting what most advanced countries already have, such as free healthcare, free education and so on.
Then everybody goes on talking with their definition in mind. Which is a major reason I've spent 7+ years trying to get you guys to read some of them. It also demonstrates how the inquiries are just bad faith sealioning. Seems like the US is getting forced into the choice of fascism or something new that hasn't existed and most US voters favor fascism over their fear of something new/reading socialists instead of hundreds of pages of oBlade type arguments.
When you're asked how Democrats ought to respond to a hypothetical scenario where Trump steals the election, and your answer is simply "revolutionary socialism" with zero explanation of what that would look like or how that would solve the problem, you can't just blame everyone else and expect to be taken seriously. Your unwillingness to provide a clear and comprehensive answer is not our fault, and it seems you're more interested in being dismissive than trying to persuade people who are open-minded and wanting to hear you out.
If you're going to assert that the solution to a problem is socialism, the burden of proof is on you to make the argument for why and how it would solve the problem. When people ask you to clarify things and you just label the request as "sealioning" - as if we're trolling or being overly harassing towards you, instead of simply asking for more information - I guess that allows you to feel like you're keeping the moral high ground without ever needing to examine or discuss the viability or practicality of your position. That probably feels safe for you, but you're never going to convince anybody that your solution makes sense, let alone convert anyone.
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On October 29 2024 13:34 Introvert wrote:Show nested quote +On October 29 2024 11:41 ChristianS wrote:On October 28 2024 11:46 Introvert wrote:
Harris had a left wing voting record in the senate and the primary. Just because she's pretending that didn't happen now doesn't make it not true. At *best* you could say she's unprincipled. And it shows in her flailing around. How can you be asked twice how you are different than Biden and not have an answer? She doesn't think she should have to work for it Not sure if this was intended as a response to me saying Harris is not some far-left radical, but it merits some discussion. Because yeah, if you go by 2020 primary positions or Senate DW-Nominate score or w/e, she looks pretty progressive, and she's Black and a woman, which supposedly progressives are supposed to be crazy about. And yet progressives never seem to claim her as one of their own, what gives? The 2020 Democratic primary was an interesting contest for a lot of reasons, but a big one is that Democratic political operatives had spent the last 4 years researching and developing every aspect of what they thought an effective presidential campaign to unseat Donald Trump should look like, and in that primary we got to see what they came up with. The answer was, in a word, "Obama." But the really interesting part is which aspects of Obama each campaign chose to replicate. Do you want a well-spoken Harvard alum who's a political outsider? Take a look at Pete Buttigieg, his only political experience is as mayor of a mid-size town in a red state! Do you want a likable Black guy with an extremely round head? Allow me to introduce Cory Booker, he's maybe got as much dad energy as any politician I've seen besides Tim Walz. But Kamala Harris had what I thought was probably the most plausible attempt to clone the Obama phenomenon. She was a clear rising star in her party, and as a California senator she was free to take progressive positions on votes as often as she liked without much backlash, which is important because I think her campaign clearly thought that to replicate Obama, you had to come from the progressive wing of the party. Surely some well-connected establishment guy is never gonna get people energized and excited about all the wonderful things their candidacy could accomplish – "Hope and Change" – the way a progressive could. She endorsed Medicare for All, etc., which seemed calibrated to make sure she was identified as one of the "progressive lane" candidates (although I'm not sure it really worked, even at the time). It turns out the political operatives were wrong anyway, people didn't want an Obama clone at all, or at least not a 2008 Obama clone. I mean, Obama was (and is!) still enormously popular with Democrats, but by then they're thinking of Obama after winning the presidency, who frankly was never all that progressive. Biden might actually have been the closest analog to that Obama, or at least used to stand next to him a lot, and that turned out to be good enough for primary voters (general election voters, too). And Kamala went to work for him as VP, which doesn't make a ton of sense if she was actually some Sanders-like dyed-in-the-wool progressive. Didn't she basically call that guy racist in the first debate? But she was always someone who tried to figure out what voters wanted, and then would try to give them what they want. When all the best minds thought that answer was an Obama clone, that was what she tried to be. Once it was clear they actually just wanted a steady hand establishment guy to calm down all the craziness + Show Spoiler +(a bit like Disney wanted from JJ Abrams around the same time) , she signed on with that project. You can call that "unprincipled" (and, I mean, I probably would) but a Harris defender might counter, what exactly is it you want politicians to do? I mean, our democratic system is supposedly so wise and just and well-designed because politicians are regularly held accountable to voters, so it incentivizes them to give voters what they want in order to stay in office. If the politicians are working hard to figure out what voters want to see and give it to them, isn't that the system working as intended? (Personally I don't buy that the system is so wise and just and well-designed; I wanted someone who endorsed progressive positions out of a sincere deeply-held belief, so I voted Sanders.) But I guess the long and short of it is, Kamala Harris was always essentially an establishment Democrat, in the sense that whatever direction the Democratic Party seemed to be moving in, she'd try to be on the leading edge of it. If the Democrats ever got enough of a mandate to implement some big, progressive reforms on the scale of Obamacare, you can bet she'd be there leading the charge. If the party decided that appealing to centrist voters with tax cuts and balanced budgets was their best path forward, she'd be there leading that charge too. She's not an ideologue, she's certainly not a socialist, GH need not worry about running into her at any meetings, and capitalists need not worry about her seizing the means of production. But in the world of Republican rhetoric, where all Democrats are Marxists until proven innocent (and even then, y'know, better safe than sorry), she's "Comrade Kamala." Which is the same playbook they run against every other Democrat, and like I said before, is almost never rooted in much truth, so changing their policy positions to counter the "Socialist!" attack is of limited value. It wasn't true before, it still won't be true after the change, and they'll keep saying it anyway. And if the attack was working before, it'll probably keep working just about as well, for reasons that apparently don't have much to do with the truth of it. I hate to give you a short reply to a long one again but oh well. I could re-interpret the historical facts that you laid out differently then you did. One reason Kamala can't do interviews very well is because she has to think about what she is "supposed" to say. She doesn't give them impression of someone who has thought through any particular issue in detail (famously she makes her staff put together large documents and then doesn't touch them). I know the thread hates him, but this is in exact contrast to someone like DeSantis. You may not like his answers or his style, but more than just about any politician today he always has an answer and he never gets caught fumbling around. He knows what he thinks and he knows what he would do. He doesn't accept false premises and he knows the material. Kamala laughs, stutters, and then doesn't answer the question (again, the "how are you different" question tripped her up TWICE in one day). Kamala has always done what she thinks she had to do to get ahead. That means for the undecided voter that at best, she's a black box. And he record from CA implies she has no problems with going along with the left side of her party. Rather than being some sort of reassurance that she will move the center because that's what it takes, her comfort with the left-wing policy proposals stereotypically associated with her home state are cause for concern. Of course the answer of why progressives don't like her is because they have insane purity tests(she was a cop!) and she comes off as horribly insincere, not a good look to a political persuasion that values sincerity and displays of empathy. So I agree, much of what she does is because she's in many ways a soulless politician. But here's the thing, she made a bad deal with the Devil, she didn't even get that much skill in return. And she is still proposing policies that are radical. Her unwillingness to compromise on abortion, even a religious exemption, is either again a lack of serious thought or dangerously authoritarian. So no, if dems want to pretend to be moderate they maybe should pick someone who could at least plausibly pretend to be.
I’m not 100% sure what we’re disagreeing on here. I mean, certainly on the DeSantis praise, and I think that part might be a symptom of liberals and conservatives having some pretty different values wrt this specifically. Like, I remember in the 2012 Republican primary Gingrich got a question at one of the debates about his honestly despicable personal history with his past wives. Gingrich got an obviously very practiced mean look on his face, a bit of fire in his voice, and started talking about how unacceptable it was for them to ask about that, the media was so obviously biased against him but he wasn’t gonna sit there and take it. To me, it looked like a transparent attempt to act peevish and mean as a deflection; to Republican voters, apparently, that was a really strong answer. I think he was even leading the primary for a bit after that?
I often got the same vibe from DeSantis – he clearly thought it appeals to his base if he regularly goes on angry tirades instead of answering the question, and I suspect some of those same instances were watched somewhere by an Introvert who thought “yeah, he’s alright, he doesn’t accept false premises and knows the material.” But he could never compete with Trump for the voters who admire unprovoked peevishness, and I think there were a lot of voters like me that thought it seemed strange and unnecessarily vile. More than that, it seemed like it was insincere, manufactured vileness, which is even more off-putting (“weird,” in a word, though I know that label is old news at this point).
I’m sure there are similar phenomena with Harris, things that seem obviously off-putting to you and other conservative voters but seem fine to me. Like, the whole “coconut tree” thing and “unburdened by things that have been” was something I originally saw in a GOP attack ad, which I really didn’t understand. It’s a little whimsical, I guess, but the point she’s making is pretty normal (even a bit bland) and the way she’s making it is cute, maybe even verging on likable (which, for me at least, she often struggles a little to hit).
I haven’t seen the “how are you different from Biden” thing you keep mentioning but if I were a political adviser I’d say “that question is a trap, you should not be spending any time criticizing Biden or communicating to Biden fans that they might not like you. Dodge the question, stay on message, pivot and attack.” It sounds like she did that, which maybe isn’t the most honest but sounds like decent political instincts to me.
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Northern Ireland26036 Posts
On October 29 2024 12:07 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On October 29 2024 08:29 WombaT wrote:On October 29 2024 08:18 GreenHorizons wrote:On October 29 2024 07:31 WombaT wrote:
If we’re to flip it around to a certain degree, what do liberals do in a hypothetical where Trump just wins the election fair and square and starts to implement pseudo-Fascism?
Interrogation of GH and what he’d propose is of course reasonable, but ultimately he’s on the fringe, his ideology doesn’t have much traction (despite my personal sympathetic leanings) etc.
It feels only fair to ask the same question back for those who believe in liberal democracy, electoralism etc given that it is the actual system most of us operate under, and folks advocate for
I think at this point we pretty much know what liberals do in that hypothetical, they become fascists like liberals did in Nazi Germany. Perhaps, I wouldn’t write off my fellow human I think you’d probably see a lot of people individually willing to take some steps, but in the absence of genuine political activism, lacking the ability to actually organise to do anything of note. So they’d end up either unsure of what to do, or left isolated to do pointless performative professional suicide or whatever. It’s one of the key strengths/weaknesses of liberal electoralism, folks are either happy/unhappy that they get a say every so often at the ballot box, and don’t really build beyond that. It’s the beginning and end of political responsibility for many folks. Revolution is oft associated with violence, but it really doesn’t have to be. A big enough general strike cripples a system with perpetual productivity at its core But I fear in my hypothetical there just isn’t the organisation, the culture or the precedent for such an option to be really on the table. I should have put a "most will be fascists" in there since some will flee, others radicalize, some will get swept up with the rest of us "undesirables" randomly and so on. If you go back through the history you see the distinct "choice" that the US made to pursue "liberal democracy" to moderate capitalism over socialism in the late 1800's/early 1900's. You also see the violence it enacted since then to enforce that "choice" on those that disagree domestically and abroad. As well as how class consciousness and organized civil disobedience were systematically stomped out of workers. Show nested quote +On October 29 2024 11:05 WombaT wrote:On October 29 2024 08:23 micronesia wrote:On October 29 2024 08:17 WombaT wrote:
You see this pretty clearly in past attempts at socialism, they were very much top-down efforts for the most part. I don’t think that can work without an associated cultural shift, that has to happen prior.
What should advocates do to effect a cultural shift in those who aren't on board yet beyond just insulting them for not already abandoning the existing system? + Show Spoiler +You talk to most folks, ask what their values are and invariably answers tend not to go in the ‘making money for the capitalist machine’. It’s not really something most people value all that much, but yet huge societal import is placed on it.
I’m a big fan of Rawl’s Veil of Ignorance thought experiment, use that.
That’s your gateway to get people in, and beyond that gateway I think you need welcoming community groups etc etc.
Hey it’s hard, you’re fighting against established orthodoxy that’s culturally instilled from an early age, even if indirectly.
I think a kind of default retrenchment to liberal capitalism is just super ingrained in most people. In the same sense gender relations are still asymmetric.
You’re not going to turn that ship round overnight, or over years. But if your advocates are like ‘read theory of fuck off’ it’s never going to happen It's funny, because before I finally started reading I didn't get it. Once I started reading, and interacting with people that refuse to, why people respond like that started making sense. People want something comparable to the "team sports cheering/jeering, vote for your team, and go about your life" of liberal electoralism from socialism and that's just not how an actual democracy works (that's part of why liberals are poised to lose theirs to Trump). I can accept that the sort of abrasiveness you describe is real and possibly not the best strategy (it's not the only one people use), but people should also recognize that if a fascist tells you that you didn't do a good job of convincing them not to be a fascist, they could be right, but that still means they're a fascist.
I do largely agree, I think I’m arguing just to hit my argument addiction quota, especially on the bolded point.
I think an ignorance of history, or perhaps a misconception that we’ve ’solved’ these issues accounts for certain pushback. That the current orthodoxy and norms is, minus a few tweaks kind of having reached the final destination as it were.
Still waiting for Francis Fukuyama’s follow-up ‘The End of History 2.0 - For Real This Time’. In fairness to the lad, he did admit he’d kinda rather got that one rather wrong.
It’s that kinda mentality that yeah history is littered with revolution, some of it violence but such options are off the table now because we’ve reached a period where they’re no longer necessary.
Or alternatively people like the idea of a more just society, but just don’t want to do much about it.
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EPT
