ialdabaoth posted:well hes got my vote
marimite posted:My sense is that the only way a revolution could happen in the US is like it does in Central and South America, by winning an election and then performing a left wing coup.
what
Of course the ease of these has no bearing on whether they will ever actually be implemented, one need only look at 3 consecutive Canadian federal governments all promising clearly stated electoral reform then once in power stating "people are too stupid (because we said so) so we won't do any electoral reform (because it wouldn't benefit us)" or the US where literally everyone knows that electoral colleges are stupid bullshit but they keep doing it anyways because the US is an inverted neoplatonic hellscape where the good and true must always be rejected a priori.
Parenti posted:a lot of very intense young men in glasses told me what's the problem with socialism? don't you know that the military and police are socialism?
this isn't a joke. these people actually said these things to me. it was like twitter posts come to life.
marimite posted:My sense is that the only way a revolution could happen in the US is like it does in Central and South America, by winning an election and then performing a left wing coup. This likely dooms communists to participating in electoral politics, and as long as they can't put forward credible candidates that means critically supporting the least evil candidates available, hopefully while building dual power so that they can grow past being totally irrevelant. It sucks but people don't vote because they're free but because they have a gun to their heads. Boycotting is just refusing to accept reality at this point.
PODEMOS got into a "less evil" coalition government with some social-democrats that implemented an austerity regime and immediately suffered a massive defeat at the polls. In reality, a lot of this Caesarist stuff with class struggle being embodied through a person or peaceful electoral 'reform' is popular crack and hope rather than addressing the problems of a demobilized class society, while the actual demands of the working-class are fixed and not so much based on trying to 'get things done', but bleakness. Not to say that elections are bad or anything. If I understand your comparison to Central and South America, a lot of those places hinged on support from groups that were in struggle for decades. Chavez's small military cell itself was around for like 20 years before they actually went ahead and decided on running in elections. And by basically winning them, he got arrested and basically exposed the incumbent democracy at the time for it's arbitrary, phony, corrupt nature, which reminds me of Lenin's views of what communist electoral runs should seek out in the Tsarist Duma after he gave up his position on boycotting the elections, namely because it was a popular idea in the party.
edit: tldr the eurocommunists had some good points
Parenti posted:a lot of very intense young men in glasses told me what's the problem with socialism? don't you know that the military and police are socialism?
I do this unironically vis-a-vis central planning but with Walmart and Amazon as examples.
Well, I'm interested in Corey Robin's idea that Trump is something of a Jimmy Carter-like president. Carter sort of came out of nowhere, and ran at a time when a stagflation crisis + capital strike were working together to kill the labor unions. Carter ran against labor -- and his own party, which had co-opted labor under FDR -- on a platform of union-busting, deregulation and "top competent management." This makes Carter the first neoliberal president. He failed to navigate the internal tensions within his party, however, setting the stage for Reagan to come in later and complete the restructuring. Reagan also tried to primary Ford in '76 (who does this remind you of?). Four years later his ultra-right-wing politics were ascendant. In 1981, it was curtains for labor when Reagan smashed PATCO.
Anyways, long-time lurker and first-time poster, so I might as well start out with the big prediction that Bernie will take over from the Carter-like Trump who ran against his own party in some ways, and you'll get some kind of restructuring. Notice Bernie doesn't have much to say on Trump's trade barriers. Bernie is a curious inverse of Trump where he offers to use economic nationalism to solve social and cultural problems, rather than using social and cultural nationalism to solve economic problems. Call it "left nationalism" maybe and this is still imperialist, and Bernie Sanders is an imperialist, but it does threaten some of capital's gains in the past half-century which is why he has faced a greater degree of opposition than other presidential candidates.
There's another post I want to do on white nationalists / fascists but I'd like to expand that into an article-length format. But my basic feeling is that they're repeating a lot of mistakes the New Left made back in the late '60s and early '70s -- which back then was something of a reaction to the collapse of institutions on the left including the Communist Party and the labor unions. I think for whatever reason known only to the reactionary brain, they sensed that the current way of doing things cannot continue, and did so before the (broad, popular) left did -- and opted to head the left off at the pass with their street mobilizations in 2017. This was a pre-emptive counter-revolution but it was a disaster, culminating with them killing a woman on national television, inadvertently setting in motion the Bernie "revolution" we're about to see take place.
Petrol posted:Welcome. I like the cut of your gib and want to hear more, even though I think you are wrong (Trump will be re-elected).
Thanks. I should write that article but that's a whole different thing.
Well, one thing I'm interested in is the velocity of money, which is how fast money changes hands. The rate is abysmal, even though years of QE have pumped a lot of money into the financial system to keep up growth. At the same time, personal savings rates are stuck at rates half of what they were in the early 1980s. So you can't blame people saving their money for the slowing down in the velocity of money. What's happening is that the bottom sectors of the economy spend 100%-110% of what they receive while the top spends 5-10%. As the top 1% get the new money, and the distribution of income skews toward the top in such an extreme way, the U.S. begins to devour its own consumer base, which is where the capitalists' effective demand comes from in the first place.
Anyways, I'm not an expert on this stuff and might be wrong, but have just absorbed bits and pieces from various sources. What Bernie seems to be proposing is new banking rules along with stimulative fiscal policy instead of monetary policy; designed to get banks lending again instead of using the money for speculation. Also I'm just playing out a scenario in my head because I think leftists too easily go "oh, he'll fail and people will radicalize" -- but what if he succeeds? You actually do get a restructuring of the U.S. economy while Sean McElwee, senior advisor for policy to the president, is down in the White House basement snorting blow up his nose before media prep seshes. The Red Scare girls get a weekly HBO show after Bill Maher retires, etc. etc. etc. Now I am trying to create an image of a Hell future to torment all of you, yes.
sovnarkoman posted:no way the name bronfman is real lol
if my memory serves me, the bronfman dynasty made their fortune in seagrams whiskey and also owned the montreal expos
Edited by serafiym ()
serafiym posted:bernie sanders or some sort of centrist democrat will probably pursue detente with Cuba so i'm going to cast my vote in the name of anti-imperialism on the side of the Dems no matter what. berniebros who abstain from this election will just prove to me that the cracker petty bourgeoisie is truly hopeless even in the neocolonial hellscape.
are you making jokes
Skylark posted:Im voting for Bernie sanders and drinking tap water out of a plastic waterbottle
drink your tapwater straight out of a tap or i will seriously consider downvoting u
The question of whether to elect left of center politicians belongs to the era of mass communist and socialist parties in the first world. Back then coalition politics meant something because national politics were still negotiable within the general agreement on imperialism and the welfare state. Today's imperialism makes national politics on behalf of the working class impossible, any left of center politician will simply be forced into the role of manager of capitalism. The only partial exception is in resource rich countries in the third world where the growth of China made social democracy possible for a bit longer though that has ended as well. There is only room for the far right in national politics, because if they fail this time they'll simply succeed next time when the left becomes the new caretaker of neoliberalism. Keynesianism is a fantasy, Bernie or Corbyn can talk about stimulating the economy through consumption and infrastructure all they want but capital will not invest if profit rates are not there and the only way to change that is to drive down the cost of labor by force. Socialists can help beat back the tide when liberals call on them as the sheepdog to round up the disgruntled petty-bourgeois but they only sow the seeds of their doom next time. Even the most reactionary regime won't drive labor costs for the majority of the white first world to the level of China or Bangladesh, the complete innefectuality of Abenomics showed that.
The end point is inevitably the end of national politics. Something very reactionary will replace it but only Steve Bannon seems to have an idea of what that is. But what will replace that, if humanity survives, is the progressive end of national politics. Sanders will be remembered about as well as Kerensky when that world comes into being, though Kerensky was far more radical.
ialdabaoth posted:Skylark posted:Im voting for Bernie sanders and drinking tap water out of a plastic waterbottle
drink your tapwater straight out of a tap or i will seriously consider downvoting u
straight out of a taP? like a dog?? Gtfo.
ialdabaoth posted:drink your tapwater straight out of a tap or i will seriously consider downvoting u
kitchen tap or bathroom tap
trakfactri posted:Petrol posted:Welcome. I like the cut of your gib and want to hear more, even though I think you are wrong (Trump will be re-elected).
Thanks. I should write that article but that's a whole different thing.
Well, one thing I'm interested in is the velocity of money, which is how fast money changes hands. The rate is abysmal, even though years of QE have pumped a lot of money into the financial system to keep up growth. At the same time, personal savings rates are stuck at rates half of what they were in the early 1980s. So you can't blame people saving their money for the slowing down in the velocity of money. What's happening is that the bottom sectors of the economy spend 100%-110% of what they receive while the top spends 5-10%. As the top 1% get the new money, and the distribution of income skews toward the top in such an extreme way, the U.S. begins to devour its own consumer base, which is where the capitalists' effective demand comes from in the first place.
Anyways, I'm not an expert on this stuff and might be wrong, but have just absorbed bits and pieces from various sources. What Bernie seems to be proposing is new banking rules along with stimulative fiscal policy instead of monetary policy; designed to get banks lending again instead of using the money for speculation. Also I'm just playing out a scenario in my head because I think leftists too easily go "oh, he'll fail and people will radicalize" -- but what if he succeeds? You actually do get a restructuring of the U.S. economy while Sean McElwee, senior advisor for policy to the president, is down in the White House basement snorting blow up his nose before media prep seshes. The Red Scare girls get a weekly HBO show after Bill Maher retires, etc. etc. etc. Now I am trying to create an image of a Hell future to torment all of you, yes.
Capitalism doesn't need a consumer base, production itself is sufficient demand
workers’ consumption is not the largest sector of ‘demand’ in a capitalist economy; it is productive capital consumption. Gross domestic product or expenditure is a measure of annual demand for ‘wants, needs and desires’. In the US, consumption would seem to constitute 70% of GDP. However, if you look at ‘gross product’ which includes all the intermediate value-added products not counted in GDP, then consumption is only 36% of the total product; the rest constitutes demand from capital for parts, materials, intermediate goods and services. It is investment by capitalists that is the swing factor and driver of demand, not consumption by workers.
https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2018/04/02/marxs-law-of-value-a-debate-between-david-harvey-and-michael-roberts/
The irrelevance of use value to capitalism is one of its great ironies and the growth of debt fueled consumption is not a sign of the necessity of a mass consumer base ignored by neoliberal ideologues but their increasing irrelevance to the power of finance capital as the destination for profitabile investment. Sanders cannot succeed because what he is proposing already failed in 1973, there is nothing new which he and others are happy to point out. That the "Green New Deal" would seem moderate to Eisenhower or Nixon or whatever is not a sign the "overton window" has shifted, that is an empty concept which itself needs to be explained. It is a sign that reality has shifted and that certain forms of consensus with the labor aristocracy are no longer possible. In fact, I much prefer the term "consumer aristocracy"
https://kersplebedeb.com/posts/anti-imperialist-combeack-an-interview-with-torkil-lauesen/
Since it highlights that the struggle over consumption and consumer debt is a major battleground over the spoils of imperialism where both sides are aware of their interests whereas production is secondary. Labor aristocracy really meant something when guaranteed (white male) lifetime employment came with a suburban house and a union to mediate capital and labor, it sounds ridiculous now which is why it is so misused. But the nature of social democracy as the popular form of imperialism hasn't changed.
shriekingviolet posted:ialdabaoth posted:drink your tapwater straight out of a tap or i will seriously consider downvoting u
kitchen tap or bathroom tap
i dont care which taP you drink straight out of like a dog, as long as you drink straight out of it like a dog
Belphegor posted:U know what's good? cold Water straight from the garden hose
this is really good but you gotta wait a while for it, drink from the hose too soon you'll get that warm stagnant soup that's been sitting in there since god knows when and it's a real Experience