this has some similarities to approaches within anti-war/anti-imperialism activism within the us. there are many anti-war orgs that will criticize us aid to israel on the basis that the military aid could be better used for other uses ("money for education, not war and occupation"). the argument is that if we move the overton window slightly left, it is the first step to getting us to the end zone of communism. rally around bernie to defeat trump, because that gets us closer to our goal. if we just get more pro-union democrats in power, then we can rebuild the labor movement, which will be the base for socialist organizing and class consciousness, and on to the march to communism. the third worldist position flatly denies the possibility of collaborationism and instead rejects any legitimizing of labor aristocracy and imperialism.
which leads us to the end question, which strategy is most effective? netflix documentaries like what the health and game changers have probably resulted in quite a few animals not being killed, but they haven't structurally attacked the basis of animal exploitation. maybe bernie being elected might result in a professionalized imperialism that uses drones to assassinate people and fits within the existing legal framework instead of it happening illegally.
the most successful vegan movements have been ones that attack the legitimacy of the animal exploitation system and the most successful communist movements have attacked the legitimacy of imperialism and capitalism without settling for collaboration for short term gains.
1. that i have no interest in socdem/demsoc politics or election horse race.
2. im gonna have to find a nice new hobby for the next 10 months to keep me occupied.
i know that's probably not news to anyone here. it's nice to have it re-asserted in my brain i think. a surprising amount of the people i follow on twitter and elsewhere are gung-ho about sanders and doing buttigieg rats jokes. all seems so rote.
Edited by Chthonic_Goat_666 ()
There was also a Citations Needed episode about Nate Silver and "horse race" stuff about how the "who's up and who's down" shapes people's thinking toward passivity and the status quo. Like even talking about presidential elections with most people who are eager to talk about it feels like talking about sports or something and it's really boring. But y'all knew that already.
Edited by trakfactri ()
Chthonic_Goat_666 posted:2. im gonna have to find a nice new hobby for the next 10 months to keep me occupied.
i know that's probably not news to anyone here. it's nice to have it re-asserted in my brain i think. a surprising amount of the people i follow on twitter and elsewhere are gung-ho about sanders and doing buttigieg rats jokes. all seems so rote.
it's time to catch up on your grindcore releases man
Chthonic_Goat_666 posted:a surprising amount of the people i follow on twitter and elsewhere are gung-ho about sanders and doing buttigieg rats jokes. all seems so rote.
fair enough but at least the meta is funny
Chthonic_Goat_666 posted:all this dnc primary stuff has helped me realise (or re-realise)
1. that i have no interest in socdem/demsoc politics or election horse race.
2. im gonna have to find a nice new hobby for the next 10 months to keep me occupied.
i know that's probably not news to anyone here. it's nice to have it re-asserted in my brain i think. a surprising amount of the people i follow on twitter and elsewhere are gung-ho about sanders and doing buttigieg rats jokes. all seems so rote.
yeah...... the only thing that matters to me about it is the CIA stuff, and the closer it gets to its fruition, the more and more it’s just Ap Lant sweeping in from one side and the Sanders/DSA recuperationists from the other, converting anger at the “intelligence community” into rabid support for anti-socialist “progressive” stuff, the more some part of me wishes we could just fast forward to the part where President _______ has to try to explain the humiliating defeat of the U.S. invasion of ________.
The best outcome of course is that there’s no post-election invasion of someplace by the U.S., but that’s only happening if it’s hit by a meteor or idk, many many nuclear bombs and missiles,
We can’t reduce the harm of capitalism through electing more moral people because the problem with Obama, Bush, and Trump aren’t their moral foundations, it’s the material foundation of the system they sit on top of. If we don’t change the system or the balance of class power, nothing changes.
The real question is whether spending time and money getting Bernie elected to HHIC fundamentally creates or represents a shift in class power.
pogfan1996 posted:The real question is whether spending time and money getting Bernie elected to HHIC fundamentally creates or represents a shift in class power.
Obviously that's not the real question because such a shift is impossible in the amerikkkan context. The empire's dyin', cloud
pogfan1996 posted:One of the dangers of the left’s moral outrage arguments against imperialism is that it can sometimes create an anti-materialist view of capitalism and imperialism. Social democratic reforms aren’t implemented because there are more “good guys” than “bad guys” in office, it’s a response to class power and struggle.
I agree and am also aware such moral outrage can be circumspect or selective to a ridiculous degree, perhaps to the point of inducing moral outrage. And that selectiveness is also the product of material conditions, etc. "New Atheism" comes to mind (I found this forum last year via the Sam Harris essay). Despite that I believe it's a central element of anti-imperialist consciousness and not wholly interchangeable with living standards. Economic conditions aren't thoughts or values, though undeniably influence them very deeply. You can be doing fairly well and yet be caused by any number of material factors/conditions to come to understand why the system that makes or keeps you fairly well-off is very bad.
The real question is whether spending time and money getting Bernie elected to HHIC fundamentally creates or represents a shift in class power.
I'd say no but I was talking about his fans (if this was directed at me) ie categorically assuming or forecasting cynical labour aristocrat mental gymnastics. Most will default to that but I think a mild left-lib nominally taking on what Trump represents can still radicalise people and if you're in an org you should be able and willing to educate them without simultaneously voting for Bernie Sanders or even liking him as a person.
Hm I wonder what this kind of candidate will be like, in power, at the helm of empire. Probably a good thing for the world. After all, decades of social democracy in Western Europe lead to, well, Boris Johnson and probably Marine Le Pen. He’s got my vote!
dimashq posted:Sanders to Chuck Todd: “You want to talk about cozying up to communists around the world? It ain’t me. It’s Donald Trump.”
Hm I wonder what this kind of candidate will be like, in power, at the helm of empire. Probably a good thing for the world. After all, decades of social democracy in Western Europe lead to, well, Boris Johnson and probably Marine Le Pen. He’s got my vote!
they already have trump, a socdem president at least offers the possibility of winding back the clock slightly on some of the most crushing aspects of empire's collapse for proles trapped in the core. if i sound like a broken record it's because i keep having to point out to you knuckleheads that sanders' lack of revolutionary potential is beside the point. people just want to slightly lesson the chance of dying like rabid dogs, denied basic health care or just straight up shot. could he really help change those things? i don't know, and nobody will ever find out because trump's going to win. but like, do you guys saying sanders is the worst option realise you're basically arguing for accelerationism?
Petrol posted:dimashq posted:Sanders to Chuck Todd: “You want to talk about cozying up to communists around the world? It ain’t me. It’s Donald Trump.”
Hm I wonder what this kind of candidate will be like, in power, at the helm of empire. Probably a good thing for the world. After all, decades of social democracy in Western Europe lead to, well, Boris Johnson and probably Marine Le Pen. He’s got my vote!they already have trump, a socdem president at least offers the possibility of winding back the clock slightly on some of the most crushing aspects of empire's collapse for proles trapped in the core. if i sound like a broken record it's because i keep having to point out to you knuckleheads that sanders' lack of revolutionary potential is beside the point. people just want to slightly lesson the chance of dying like rabid dogs, denied basic health care or just straight up shot. could he really help change those things? i don't know, and nobody will ever find out because trump's going to win. but like, do you guys saying sanders is the worst option realise you're basically arguing for accelerationism?
Rhizzone ain’t for cheerleading! Fuck to Amerika
dimashq posted:Fuck to Amerika
one thing we can all agree on
Petrol posted:they already have trump, a socdem president at least offers the possibility of winding back the clock slightly on some of the most crushing aspects of empire's collapse for proles trapped in the core. if i sound like a broken record it's because i keep having to point out to you knuckleheads that sanders' lack of revolutionary potential is beside the point. people just want to slightly lesson the chance of dying like rabid dogs, denied basic health care or just straight up shot. could he really help change those things? i don't know, and nobody will ever find out because trump's going to win. but like, do you guys saying sanders is the worst option realise you're basically arguing for accelerationism?
something i dont understand about this perspective is what, practically speaking, the difference would be between a sanders presidency and the obama presidency, in ways that are tangible and robust enough to matter for planning and decisions about how to organize radical groups, etc. if the answer is that its the same then at least thats descriptive
c_man posted:something i dont understand about this perspective is what, practically speaking, the difference would be between a sanders presidency and the obama presidency, in ways that are tangible and robust enough to matter for planning and decisions about how to organize radical groups, etc. if the answer is that its the same then at least thats descriptive
Chance to dig up Rosa and kill her again. That's what I'm banking on
c_man posted:something i dont understand about this perspective is what, practically speaking, the difference would be between a sanders presidency and the obama presidency,
i'm not sure how that's pertinent to 2020. trump is president, and people are faced with the choice to try and replace him, and if so, with whom. as i've said time and time again, i think it's just tilting at windmills, but the thing about sanders is he presents a unique combination of good policy (as far as these things go) and theoretical electability. whether he could, in practice, be any better than obama is kind of beside the point.
now, does it make sense for any erstwhile revolutionary marxist parties to try and get out the vote for sanders? probably not, but frankly none of those parties make sense to me anyway. they're not going to be the vanguard of a communist revolution so they might as well do something useful. to me, something useful would just be community service type stuff. a soup kitchen. whatever. it's not like they have any power to impact the vote anyway.
AZ_IZ_OT posted:8 years of sanders could lead to capital's strategic apparatuses releasing the floodgates on accumulated superprofits in an attempt to bribe the american masses. which is what invigorates his base. it's what americans want.
Or getting assassinated by the CIA.
Let's see which one history says is more likely:
vimingok posted:Watched a youtube about why Bernie is awesome and concluded most of these folks mean well. Sure a lot of their stances on foreign policy and really existing communism are incomplete and half-baked but that might be due to wanting palpable solutions they can participate in without feeling weird, instead of going nazbol upon discovering imperialist socdem reality like Orwell did in Wigan Pier. So probably a bit unfair to reduce (all of) them to 1st world proles clinging to faded gentility.
https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/2nd-congress/ch07.htm
Lenin: Comrades, Serrati has said that we have not yet invented a sincérometre – that is a new French word that means an instrument for measuring sincerity. Such an instrument has not yet been invented. We do not need such an instrument, but we already have an instrument for judging trends.
...They are all sincere socialists, joking apart, but they are against the dictatorship of the proletariat!
... One does not need to look for a sincerometer and make jokes about it like Comrade Serrati in order to know the simple fact that there is and must be a struggle of tendencies. One tendency is the revolutionaries, the workers who have just come to us, the enemies of the labour aristocracy. The other tendency is the labour aristocracy, which in all the civilised countries is represented by the old leaders.
AZ_IZ_OT posted:8 years of sanders could lead to capital's strategic apparatuses releasing the floodgates on accumulated superprofits in an attempt to bribe the american masses. which is what invigorates his base. it's what americans want.
You're ascribing way too much to a Sanders presidency, that's not going to happen. if the class antagonisms were that severe there wouldn't be any super-profits left to share.
Edited by marlax78 ()
