Synergy posted:pogfan1996 posted:When you look at the history of Supreme Court decisions, they aren't driven by the opinions of the individual members of the SC or by interpretation of law. The main driving force has been class conflict, class power, and the needs of us imperialism.
maybe i'm misunderstanding what you're saying here, but there have been some relatively big decisions that have been made mostly along party lines. labor disputes, voting, immigration, abortion, etc.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/06/18/us/politics/supreme-court-decisions.html
i can't in good conscience vote for one of these ghouls but at the same time i have a hard time telling people these decisions don't matter when i'm not personally affected by them
Absolutely, thanks for asking. The main role of the supreme court is to provide a stabilizing influence and act as a way to push through changes that benefit the ruling class. The supreme court has a couple different mechanisms to prop up the mythology of judges and interpretation of law, and one of the most important is case selection. The sc only hears about 2% of the cases submitted to it and a vote of 4 of the 9 justices is required for a case to make it. This innately has its own stabilizing bias, the push is to accept cases that have far-reaching effects on society and will fulfill the mission of the supreme court.
It is most interesting to look at times when there was class volatility to see the impact of how social movements outside the court created shifts in legal thinking. Roe v Wade was 7-2, with 6 of the justices being nominated by Republicans. As an example, Lewis Powell voted in agreement with Roe v Wade and his political history is extremely conservative so it isn't like these were moderate justices that went along with it.
On the other side is how communism was outlawed within the US and then re-legalized once the communist movement was sufficiently suppressed. The Smith Act was brought to the SC 5 times before it started to be overturned, and it was largely because the class power balance shifted in favor of the american ruling class. Most of the justices that upheld the convictions for being CPUSA members were nominated by FDR. Once enough stability was brought to the us, there was the expansion of first amendment rights since it no longer presented a threat to the stability of the economic and social order.
The main driving force behind every progressive court decision wasn't the individual justices, the law arguments, or the executive/legislative branch nomination process, it is social movements outside the court threatening to destabilize society unless certain changes are made.
edit: I haven't been able to find a class view of US legal history at all, my knowledge of it is from a couple bourgeois legal history books paired with my understanding of US history. This seems like an area that really needs to be fleshed out but I haven't found any person or book that has tackled it yet.
Edited by pogfan1996 ()
look at the reality on the ground right now: how much has Ginsberg's presence actually mattered when the existing patriarchal culture is determined hell or high water to have control over women's bodies? sure the Trump era supreme court ruled that fake pregnancy centers that lie to and terrorize vulnerable women were ruled as protected under free speech, but even before all this shit a liberal supreme court never stopped all the stupid bullshit states have been doing to weasel out of whatever obligations they wanted to. what does the abstract right to reproductive health matter in a political system where no one vulnerable can actually afford health care of any kind at all, and states can just defund and shut down legitimate clinics?
you can't rule away oppression, even a ruling that explicitly favors your politics is just abstract words on a page that are then interpreted by the existing oppressive state apparatus. these things can be used as supportive leverage for a political movement, absolutely, but they're not the backbone of how you win. the law of the land can state that people of colour have the right to vote, or attend the same schools, but those words on a page didn't dispel kkk cop barricades or flip a switch in white people's brains that stopped them being racist monsters. what actually mattered was a people's movement of bodies in the streets protecting each other to oppose racial apartheid, and even then, y'know, white supremacy supposedly isn't enforced by any law but look out your fucking window.
the catastrophic harm we see focused on vulnerable people isn't because of one seat changing sides on the supreme court, it isn't because of one decision or another that could have swung the other way, those changes are a reflection of the current needs and goals of power, not their determinant.
there's a podcast (sorry lol) that goes deep into the relationships between power and law and how power always wins, done by actual lawyers, and it's really good. great for a present day facts crash course in how you can not and will not win through bourgeois institutions, they are not there to help and you won't trick them. for example this episode goes into detail about how the horrific violence at Riker's was harshly condemned by the courts and state apparatus, and how it didn't actually change a single god damn thing: https://www.alabseries.com/episodes/episode-9-mikes-charnel-house-for-children
i also highly recommend their coverage of how sanctions actually work, another good lesson in how the true bloodthirsty objectives of power are always accomplished even if on paper they might pretend to have humanitarian exemptions.
vimingok posted:Black people in the US think Biden's the best shot for defeating Trump which is also their priority in this election. Most of them like Sanders as a person as well as his policies (despite all the supposed "manufactured" consent making "people" think he is Self-Hating Jew Stalin) but believe those policies are unrealistic, or won't benefit them, or garner much interest from most white people, or some combination of those. If all of the above aren't MSM lies, communists everywhere should support Biden for President, even if they think he will lose.
wtf..
It's a fair analysis to my mind and it emphasises the question why a majority of black people think Biden would be more likely to beat Trump while supporting Sanders' policies in and of themselves. According to the book 'Identity Crisis - The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the Meaning of America', whites favoured Trump 2016 due to racial/immigration, not necessarily economic issues; and blacks favoured Clinton for many of the same reasons they seem to be now choosing Biden over Sanders. So why didn't Sanders' campaign take these things into account? Why the relentless hammering on about vague 99-vs-1% talking points while the bare minimum of formal recognition on the subject of Trump's connection to race?
I think US communists should at least consider voting for Biden within the context of black voters' consequentialist reasoning about his odds against Trump vs those of Bernie.
TRUMP VICTORY
2020 presidential results in the case the communist/dsa/rhizzone voting bloc (including ALL trostyists) votes for Biden (who is 13 1/2 points less on the evil scale):
TRUMP VICTORY
lo posted:a few years ago i saw this Australian film that i forget the title of about a 19th century aboriginal man who kills a white farmer in self defence and then goes on the run because he doesn't want to be murdered.
i haven't actually seen it but i immediately thought of the chant of jimmie blacksmith
vimingok posted:So why didn't Sanders' campaign take these things into account? Why the relentless hammering on about vague 99-vs-1% talking points while the bare minimum of formal recognition on the subject of Trump's connection to race?
this is a perfectly reasonable question, and it's interesting to imagine that if sanders had been a better campaigner, it could have been him eventually losing to trump instead of biden
vimingok posted:I think US communists should at least consider voting for Biden within the context of black voters' consequentialist reasoning about his odds against Trump vs those of Bernie.
lol
And ok, I have 0 direct experience of US politics but I've seen this exact same reasoning from liberal upper caste Hindu family members who won't vote for Congress, or vote for the CPI(M) as usual, or vote 'none' because lol, I have the right to vote and sophisticated opinions about politics. Meanwhile Muslims turned out in record numbers in 2019 to vote Congress, at least in constituencies where BJP candidates weren't threatening to kill them in public speeches, on national media, if they didn't vote BJP. The consensus seemed to be 'I don't want people who hate me and my family staying in power, even if their opponents probably hate me but in secret'. Muslims I know, while not poor or disadvantaged, far from it, were unanimous on voting for Congress. So I took all of that into consideration when deciding whether to vote and made my decision and reasons for it as public as I could. It's nothing to brag about, but imo it's the most logical choice for a communist in these circumstances. If you're a communist with 1 vote and communist parties have no formal power or influence in your country, you should use that vote to support whoever superexploited minorities want to support, especially if the conservative party candidate's political base wants to kill and enslave those superexploited minorities.
Edit: I voted for Stalin.
Edited by vimingok ()
Flying_horse_in_saudi_arabia posted:vimingok posted:So why didn't Sanders' campaign take these things into account? Why the relentless hammering on about vague 99-vs-1% talking points while the bare minimum of formal recognition on the subject of Trump's connection to race?
this is a perfectly reasonable question, and it's interesting to imagine that if sanders had been a better campaigner, it could have been him eventually losing to trump instead of biden
Yes he might have lost to Trump if he/his people reached out to black, Hispanic, Muslim etc. people on the issues they urgently care about that are specifically related to Trump + his base, as opposed to the safest left-populist rhetoric designed not to piss off all those Trump voters who silently await magic socdem words that will make them not racist like in the good 1930s timeline. But during that process something resembling a mass left movement could have emerged instead of white people having breakdowns and proclaiming their indifference about the outcome to trigger their lib parents. I don't mean to downplay the role of media and the Dem machine which I now see may have come across like that in my other post but if they were so inherently effective 74% of black people wouldn't be supporting Bernie's policies.
dizastar posted:just butting in to say that the immigration fearmongering is dependant on economics... euro-amerikan labor aristocrats dont want people to come off the boat to steal 'their' 'jobs', this was in line with the isolationism promise about bringing the jobs back, reducing unemployment and so on. If immigration is an issue in the w€$t its directly because of economics, they wouldnt care about no caravans if the narrative about said caravans being in a direct causal relationship with massified (white) pauperism didnt exist
Anti-immigration is related to economics but I was talking about leftists attributing Trump voters' choices to general immiseration while completely ignoring the race/class factor which is central as that book demonstrates. They want socdem policies for "hard-working"/white people only but are heavily against them if intended universally.
about the main theme of your post about afrikans favoring biden meaning communists over the U$ should be militant about getting him in office and so on well you know... this brings us to the eternal mythology around ethnic minorities and their supposed pick when it comes to the puppet show that is bi-party electoral politics in western countries.
I'm going by my experience in India which probably doesn't translate to the US situation. Muslims don't like the Congress but it's the same deal with black people wrt democrats, i.e. at least they won't literally threaten to murder us if we don't vote for them. I wasn't joking when I said that, I have an extremely hard time believing Muslims on the receiving end of it don't think it's important to get the current bourgeois/fascist party out of power no matter who replaces them. To be clear, the Muslims I know personally are not on the receiving end of it, being wealthy or upper middle. But they felt voting for Congress is important and I don't think they were merely parroting bourgeois propaganda, even if their view lines up with a (supine and terminally ill) side of it.
toyot posted:you aren't reading reporting out from the black masses, you're reading the new york times trying to convince the black masses to participate in the bourgeois election, using a black petty-booj face to launder what racist white men say, that what black people need to do, is vote their troubles away.
What are the black masses saying? I mean about Trump staying in power and what that means in this specific juncture of time/circumstances.
In what universe did voting for the lesser evil work out for India from 1992-2019? Your example is even worse since at least the Democrats have a stable structure for mobilizing comprador bourgeoisie from the black nation to round up voters through community organizations and some chance of winning given the undemocratic structure of the American electoral system, even that has collapsed for the Congress which is no more than a minor party. Also the complexity of the meaning of voting is even more important in India where there is not even a minimal imperialist social contract with the citizenry. This is not about muslims but covers the flaws in your uncritical repetition of bourgeois media framing of the relationship between voting and belief/desire.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321723750_Democracy_in_the_Slums_Meanings_of_Voting_Among_the_Poor_of_Chennai
I could expand on the point that's already been made about how power actually works and how the totality is prior to and determines the particular but come on, the concept of lesser evil voting is one of the most crude forms of it and I come here to get away from laying out the fundamental problems of liberalism and appearance over essence every single time I talk.
Edited by babyhueypnewton ()
vimingok posted:I've a feeling whatever I say to you next Cars is going to get interpreted nastily.
Dude I'm not being nasty to you, I'm being nasty to your sources, I'm saying over and over that the stuff you're reading is trash and the discussion you're bringing to us belongs on some beardo DSA-adjacent group chat, we're never voting for Obama Vice President and telling posters here to do it because a Trot said so in the New York Times is like telling us to come to this rager at your cousin's because he's Pavlov-trained his dog to shit in red Solos.
vimingok posted:What are the black masses saying?
probably something like "please stop locking us in prison and extra judicially murdering us and denying us housing and medical care" whcih frankly, im not sure is an issue joe "i fought to make sure delaware was the last state in the USA to desegregate its schools and my best friend in the senate was strom thurmond" biden will be willing to compromise on
vimingok posted:But during that process something resembling a mass left movement could have emerged instead of white people having breakdowns and proclaiming their indifference about the outcome to trigger their lib parents.
Biden and Trump are exactly the same and our votes in the US presidential election do not matter. I'm not indifferent to that fact, I'm angry about it. If I were "indifferent," I would vote for Trump because I would materially benefit more in the next four years by indifferently participating in open fascism. I'd guess that easily a hundred million people in this country feel the same way I do about whether our votes matter, and your comment about "triggering lib parents" infantilizes all of them. including the black ones
babyhueypnewton posted:The communist parties in India used the same logic to defend the Congress for years while it created the conditions of Hindu nationalism that destroyed it.
They defended the Congress in the sense they allied with it against their own revolutionary elements. But that was part of the secret genius agreement in states where they got in or close to power. Congress would call off their thugs and police and leave those states, in return CPI would collaborate with INC in the centre and disavow violent revolution or extra-legal/democratic seizure of the central government. Which is when the Naxalites and the CCCRs split off. None of them defended neoliberalisation or soft Hindutva, which was very far from enough no doubt.
swampman posted:this page is like watching koko the gorilla fail to chokeslam that kitten but instead treat it with tender affection
vimingok posted:None of them defended neoliberalisation or soft Hindutva, which was very far from enough no doubt.
this is just obviously wrong, the cpi-m & left front governments have had years of aggressively pursuing neoliberal development & sez land acquisition on the state level
blinkandwheeze posted:vimingok posted:None of them defended neoliberalisation or soft Hindutva, which was very far from enough no doubt.
this is just obviously wrong, the cpi-m & left front governments have had years of aggressively pursuing neoliberal development & sez land acquisition on the state level
They weren't aggressively pursuing it they had no choice as the two communist state governments in a neoliberal country. Maybe cite one or two instances for what you have in mind.
vimingok posted:blinkandwheeze posted:vimingok posted:None of them defended neoliberalisation or soft Hindutva, which was very far from enough no doubt.
this is just obviously wrong, the cpi-m & left front governments have had years of aggressively pursuing neoliberal development & sez land acquisition on the state level
They weren't aggressively pursuing it they had no choice as the two communist state governments in a neoliberal country. Maybe cite one or two instances for what you have in mind.
That's the whole point...
Short term compromises have long term consequences, you cannot create a long term revolutionary movement out of short term reformism because there is always something to be compromised on, nor can you choose moments of reformism and long term revolutionary politics because the long term is an emergent property of the aggregation of the short term and imposes itself on the possibilities of the future short term of political choice (as you identify). No one denied the sincerity of liberals or even leftists who support the CPI-M. But capitalism never stops and the state has its own properties as a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, if you want to be in power you have "no choice" but to be its agent and associate yourself with all of its features, not just the ones you think are progressive.
That is the history of the slow collapse of the Congress and the rise of hindutva since the emergency. Do you really believe Narasimha Rao was helpless during the Babri Mosque riots? Even if that were true, which it isn't, who else but the Congress created the conditions for it? India is one of those countries where the "left" implemented neoliberalism, there's really no excuse for thinking so crudely about the lesser evil like Americans do.
