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I just had a probably stupid thought on the way home today. There's a movement in Northern California that wants to secede from California and form a new state. This area votes almost totally republican so there's a non zero chance Congress would vote for it, assuming that's even something Congress has the power or inclination to do. This area has almost no industry now that the logging industry is slowly pulling out. Agriculture is almost dead outside of vineyards due to the land being too mountainous to run as large industrial farms. Nearly everyone is on either federal, state, or county welfare programs. The one asset the area has is that, if it was its own state, they could charge taxes to the far richer parts of California that depend on the water collected by the mountains. So basically if there was ever going to be a state government that would accept socialism as an organizing principle, it'd be here. Totally a pipe dream IMO but cool to think about I guess? Mostly I just want to make rich people suffer for their semi-arid almond farms
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Nov 18, 2016 11:20
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Larry Parrish posted:I just had a probably stupid thought on the way home today. There's a movement in Northern California that wants to secede from California and form a new state. This area votes almost totally republican so there's a non zero chance Congress would vote for it, assuming that's even something Congress has the power or inclination to do. Alaska is heavily Republican, and the only reason they have an economy is because everybody earns dividends from oil exploitation. It's not nearly as crazy as it all sounds. Conservatives are often more receptive to socialist policies because, more often than not, they have everything to gain and very little to lose.
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Nov 18, 2016 11:34
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Pener Kropoopkin posted:Alaska is heavily Republican, and the only reason they have an economy is because everybody earns dividends from oil exploitation. It's not nearly as crazy as it all sounds. Conservatives are often more receptive to socialist policies because, more often than not, they have everything to gain and very little to lose. Yeah, that's an interesting insight. Say the dems, or normal left lib progressive minded people, would really want to put a stop to the oil there or the cash crops in North California. But it's like, really what could they do without loving up the average peoples lives who benefit from the of local economies they have. It's a clear example of really just needing to take a step past capitalism to really get anything progressive or sensible done, obviously that's not in the dems interest and probably never will be, so the politics of these areas just becomes stuck in the mud.
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Nov 18, 2016 11:51
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Ironically a huge part of the criticism of Democrats in California is that they're seen as mouthpieces of the big companies that operate out of here. It's gotten so bad lately that people joke that the only difference between California Democrats and Republicans is the letter next to their name, while California Republicans are trusted to put people first Not that it's true since both parties love to bow down to the developers that slowly squeeze out small scale industry and replace it with rows and rows of houses
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Nov 18, 2016 12:05
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And just to make it clear for all the liberal PSL thread watchers: we're not saying that we should microtarget racist-rear end cracker-rear end hillbilly-rear end white boys. The point is that a socialist agenda has significant appeal to anybody who doesn't earn at least a 6 figure income. And, because I can't get enough of pointing this out, 71% of the workers earn less than $50,000 a year. A third earns less than $20,000. That's just the work force, and not the tens of millions of people who are chronically unemployed.
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Nov 18, 2016 13:16
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It just seems so unlikely to convince people that the two party system isn't the way. It's been like that for so long
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Nov 18, 2016 15:30
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My friends are doing a secret santa thing and one of the thing i put in our suggestion list was a foodnotbombs donation, and I offered to multiply their donation if they do it. If my secret santa doesn't do it, I'm gonna donate anyway but this way it might not just be me 
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Nov 18, 2016 17:07
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Larry Parrish posted:This area votes almost totally republican so there's a non zero chance Congress would vote for it, assuming that's even something Congress has the power or inclination to do. In the same sense that I have a non-zero chance of becoming US president, sure. But we're venturing into heady areas of non-standard analysis, now. Typical probability theory does not allow infinitesimals.
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Nov 18, 2016 17:23
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Pener Kropoopkin posted:And just to make it clear for all the liberal PSL thread watchers: we're not saying that we should microtarget racist-rear end cracker-rear end hillbilly-rear end white boys. The point is that a socialist agenda has significant appeal to anybody who doesn't earn at least a 6 figure income. And, because I can't get enough of pointing this out, 71% of the workers earn less than $50,000 a year. A third earns less than $20,000. That's just the work force, and not the tens of millions of people who are chronically unemployed. A left-liberal agenda of the New Deal/Great Society type also has significant appeal to those people. You'll note that this hasn't helped much in the last forty years.
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Nov 18, 2016 17:27
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Doorknob Slobber posted:There's Kshama Sawant in Seattle in terms of non-national people. She's pretty outspoken and awesome but not very well known nationally. Not eligible for president ever.
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Nov 18, 2016 18:18
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SSJ_naruto_2003 posted:It just seems so unlikely to convince people that the two party system isn't the way. It's been like that for so long It's not a matter of convincing people we need more than two parties, but that First-to-the-Post elections naturally leads to 2 dominant parties. As for changing away from First-to-the-Post, apparently people in Britain have been trying to scrap it for decades with zero luck.
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Nov 18, 2016 18:28
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SirPhoebos posted:It's not a matter of convincing people we need more than two parties, but that First-to-the-Post elections naturally leads to 2 dominant parties. This isn't actually true. This phenomenon is called "Duverger's Law" by academics but outside the United States it's just not true at all. Inside the US, we only actually have two parties because they are granted all sorts of accommodations and third parties are systematically repressed in the way you'd see in "authoritarian" nations and made to jump through hoops that the two parties actually just don't have to do. It's got less to do with convincing people to do a certain kind of electoral politics, than it has with convincing them to do any sort of politics at all -- which the overwhelming majority of people don't do, because they [correctly] identify it as a waste of their time that will do nothing for them. Which points to the sort of politics that leftists need to find and build.
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Nov 18, 2016 18:46
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I think if people on the left made an effort to really get active within the Democratic party, the whole debate about the two party system becomes moot. There are definitely benefits to getting rid of it, but the current system can be worked with to pretty good effect if the Democratic party can be reformed.
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Nov 18, 2016 19:00
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Tacky-rear end Rococco posted:A left-liberal agenda of the New Deal/Great Society type also has significant appeal to those people. You'll note that this hasn't helped much in the last forty years. Yeah, it doesn't help if you don't campaign on those policies for decades.
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Nov 18, 2016 19:04
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Barracuda Bang! posted:I think if people on the left made an effort to really get active within the Democratic party, the whole debate about the two party system becomes moot. There are definitely benefits to getting rid of it, but the current system can be worked with to pretty good effect if the Democratic party can be reformed. The Democrats are the graveyard of social movements. They will likely go the way of the Whigs very soon in any case.
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Nov 18, 2016 20:25
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DOCTOR ZIMBARDO posted:The Democrats are the graveyard of social movements Then how about we join and loot their corpses
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Nov 18, 2016 21:38
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Pener Kropoopkin posted:Yeah, it doesn't help if you don't campaign on those policies for decades. Dems have repeatedly campaigned on e.g. universal healthcare, which happens to be the single biggest thing any leftist or pseudo-leftist can offer people in the 50-100K range. DOCTOR ZIMBARDO posted:They will likely go the way of the Whigs very soon in any case. Wanna read your hallucinatory fanfic.
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Nov 18, 2016 21:45
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The democrats no longer have any ground game anyway So what useful thing do you have left besides an elitist set of bylaws designed to suppress the parties voters in favor of the establishment.
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Nov 18, 2016 21:46
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Tacky-rear end Rococco posted:Dems have repeatedly campaigned on e.g. universal healthcare, which happens to be the single biggest thing any leftist or pseudo-leftist can offer people in the 50-100K range. and yet they trip over their dicks constantly and never get anything
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Nov 18, 2016 22:07
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Tacky-rear end Rococco posted:Dems have repeatedly campaigned on e.g. universal healthcare, which happens to be the single biggest thing any leftist or pseudo-leftist can offer people in the 50-100K range. and when they had the chance to pass universal healthcare they immediatly capitulated to the insurance companies
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Nov 18, 2016 22:15
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Karl Barks posted:and yet they trip over their dicks constantly and never get anything It's true, Democrats all have grotesquely oversized penises. Especially the women.
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Nov 18, 2016 22:18
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Tacky-rear end Rococco posted:Dems have repeatedly campaigned on e.g. universal healthcare, which happens to be the single biggest thing any leftist or pseudo-leftist can offer people in the 50-100K range. I dunno man there was a Dem president for the last eight years, one that had a majority in both the house and senate for two years at the beginning of his term, and all that came was loving obamacare. On top of that, even though it's nowhere close to what is needed it's going to be repealed by Trump because the Dem party is allergic to holding any meaningfully progressive positions (see: Hillary 2016)
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Nov 18, 2016 22:31
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Odobenidae posted:I dunno man there was a Dem president for the last eight years, one that had a majority in both the house and senate for two years at the beginning of his term, and all that came was loving obamacare. On top of that, even though it's nowhere close to what is needed it's going to be repealed by Trump because the Dem party is allergic to holding any meaningfully progressive positions (see: Hillary 2016) Everything I've posted is in the context of a back-and-forth with PK. To recap: PK: Socialism has a ton to offer everybody making less than six figures, there is lots of room to make inroads. TAR: So does left-liberalism of the Roosevelt type, but nobody has figured out how to make that work in my lifetime. PK: The Dems stopped campaigning on that stuff. TAR: No they did not. Why universal healthcare has been foiled twice in memory is a complicated issue, much too complicated to be discussed here, where the answer will always be "malice and incompetence on the part of Democrats." And it may be that socialism has room to grow just by championing the same issues that left-liberals have simply because, for instance, repeated disappointments have made left-liberal promises ring hollow in voters' ears. But "the whole of the working class and the great majority of the middle class would benefit from socialism" is a bit of a silly thing to point out, because if it were anywhere near that easy, we'd be on our fifth New Deal by now.
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Nov 18, 2016 22:49
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I don't know how to explain it very well. But it seems to be the trend now for dems to just point the finger at a centrist ideology and it's leaders and feel satisfied with that. I think it loses the big picture of how globalized capitalism is forcing both major parties hands in a big way. I feel like it's just how the Dems have been forced to operate after Keynesianism appeared to poo poo itself in after the 70s. I've tried to pay attention to the Dem thread.There's no real conscious discussion about this as far as I can tell, other than bringing up the New Deal and mistakenly claiming it as benevolent liberal philanthropy.
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Nov 18, 2016 22:49
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Tacky-rear end Rococco posted:Everything I've posted is in the context of a back-and-forth with PK. To recap: where do you think the perception that democrats are just another big business party comes from? do you think it's completely false? I think there is no narrative coming from democrats that makes any sense. who is the enemy? doesn't seem like it's the rich, or the banks. the response to the financial crisis proves that. they want to put a nice smile on a hugely evil force, and I think people pick up on that.
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Nov 18, 2016 22:56
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Tacky-rear end Rococco posted:Why universal healthcare has been foiled twice in memory is a complicated issue, much too complicated to be discussed here, where the answer will always be "malice and incompetence on the part of Democrats." Yeah.. I think this is the ideological road block left liberals have though. Can it really just simply be explained by 'malice and incompetence?' Or is there something else going on that marxists can explain.
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Nov 18, 2016 22:59
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Deimus posted:Or is there something else going on that marxists can explain. "Marxists" can "explain" literally anything, because they have gotten ahold of the one true prism through which to view the objective reality of human affairs. Marx could explain it, sure, were he here. His investigations into (actually existing) class antagonisms were in depth, subtle, and deeply insightful. But having read dozens of citations from people in this thread I haven't seen any author who could bring a tenth of that kind of firepower to bear on questions of how the American republic has gone off the rails in the last half century. Allusions to Marx and half-baked attempts to imitate his methods of analysis do not suffice. I might ask, what is it about Marxian thinking that you think explains America's unique failure among wealthy nations to pass universal healthcare better than the dozens of alternatives? Karl Barks posted:I think there is no narrative coming from democrats that makes any sense. who is the enemy? doesn't seem like it's the rich, or the banks. the response to the financial crisis proves that. they want to put a nice smile on a hugely evil force, and I think people pick up on that. I think the complete lack of narrative on anything other than cultural issues is crucial to left-liberalism's failure, yeah. It looked like they'd be able to skate by in another presidential election based on identity politics and the sheer nastiness of the alternatives, but nope, the crisis is upon us.
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Nov 18, 2016 23:52
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Just a reminder here, that Democrats' "universal healthcare" plans were to force a mandate on employers to provide health insurance, and then to force everyone else to buy private insurance out of pocket. Yet what Americans really reject is "socialist" healthcare. lmao Even if Medicare was expanded to cover everyone, and we had a single payer system - that wouldn't really be socialized healthcare because it would still rely on private practitioners. I know this sounds like splitting hairs, but "universal healthcare" can literally mean anything, and Democrats weren't even willing to push for single payer until Bernie came along. So enough with this red herring.
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Nov 19, 2016 01:06
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Tacky-rear end Rococco posted:
I'm not entirely knowledgeable on the subject. And I might just be playing semantics but I don't know if it's 'the contemporary lack of theoretical firepower', it may be more of the lack of the captive audience. With that in mind, I mean we all kinda know the compounded history at least. The relative success of American capitalism that took advantage after Bretton Woods. Trotsky started the everlasting trend of skewing Soviet history (The hysteria of 'see socialism doesn't work!' crap). The american communist party completely left as a husk. American working-class Real Wage had an endless upward trend until the 70s and stagnated since: 'Discipline Labor'. etc etc. I feel all these things kind of combine to form a lack of a real discussion about universal health care, among other things, no captive audience for fundamental ideological change here. Deimus fucked around with this message at 01:23 on Nov 19, 2016 |
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Nov 19, 2016 01:10
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One of the better things about Marxist dialectics, is that it pays to have a very clear and specific definition of terms. If you assume that any kind of government policy is "socialism" then you're going to be led into making a ton of false assumptions, based on a complete misunderstanding.
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Nov 19, 2016 01:16
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Tacky-rear end Rococco posted:Marx could explain it, sure, were he here. His investigations into (actually existing) class antagonisms were in depth, subtle, and deeply insightful. But having read dozens of citations from people in this thread I haven't seen any author who could bring a tenth of that kind of firepower to bear on questions of how the American republic has gone off the rails in the last half century. Allusions to Marx and half-baked attempts to imitate his methods of analysis do not suffice. I was going to be a smart rear end but Thomas Ferguson is good for capital investing in parties overall and the Dem adoption of neoliberalism in Right turn: The Decline of the Democrats and the Future of American Politics Idk if he's a Marxist but it's a pretty good materialist analysis in my view.
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Nov 19, 2016 03:32
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Where is the future of American politics going, anyway? The Republicans are in power for a long time, the Democrats are becoming more and more out of touch with the populace, the people feel like they have no say whatsoever in state and federal policy, and morale is at an all time low. I don't know if there's going to be a happy end to all of this, at the very least we'll have some sort of political revolution, and if we don't we stagnate until something inevitably crumbles.
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Nov 19, 2016 04:49
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Pollyanna posted:Where is the future of American politics going, anyway? until the people open their hearts to lenin, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6X1URP5eg6I the reaction of liberals to this election has made me come to appreciate (unironically) purges & gulag as a necessity rather than a tragedy.
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Nov 19, 2016 07:27
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Nov 19, 2016 08:40
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Karl Barks posted:where do you think the perception that democrats are just another big business party comes from? do you think it's completely false? The narrative was that they aren't the republicans, which doesn't work out so great with various economic, geopolitical and climate crises looming.
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Nov 19, 2016 14:51
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Tacky-rear end Rococco posted:Wanna read your hallucinatory fanfic. Democrats are a regional party with a lock on big municipal governments and nothing else. The Democrats are more like a governance consulting firm, or a department of government that sorts out electoral officials, than a mass-based political party. The Republicans are a lot of nasty things but they operate a political party, not a sinecure for Hamilton fans.
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Nov 19, 2016 16:48
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relevant as always https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ch07.htm V.I. Lenin posted:Parliamentarianism has become “historically obsolete”. That is true in the propaganda sense. However, everybody knows that this is still a far cry from overcoming it in practice. Capitalism could have been declared—and with full justice—to be “historically obsolete” many decades ago, but that does not at all remove the need for a very long and very persistent struggle on the basis of capitalism. Parliamentarianism is “historically obsolete” from the standpoint of world history, i.e., the era of bourgeois parliamentarianism is over, and the era of the proletarian dictatorship has begun. That is incontestable. But world history is counted in decades. Ten or twenty years earlier or later makes no difference when measured with the yardstick of world history; from the standpoint of world history it is a trifle that cannot be considered even approximately. But for that very reason, it is a glaring theoretical error to apply the yardstick of world history to practical politics.
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Nov 19, 2016 18:51
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Tacky-rear end Rococco posted:"Marxists" can "explain" literally anything, because they have gotten ahold of the one true prism through which to view the objective reality of human affairs. it's less any specific aspect of marxism that explains it than the historical circumstance. western europe established universal programs almost uniformly in the wake of wwii, when the soviet union's prestige and influence was at its peak. to combat the appeal of soviet power as part of the rebuilding process these universal health care systems were created as a means of ensuring baseline public welfare. the united states didn't suffer the losses europe did and the economy boomed due to a lack of infrastructure damage so growth was such that a program here wasn't seen as necessary
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Nov 19, 2016 18:54
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Homework Explainer posted:it's less any specific aspect of marxism that explains it than the historical circumstance. western europe established universal programs almost uniformly in the wake of wwii, when the soviet union's prestige and influence was at its peak. to combat the appeal of soviet power as part of the rebuilding process these universal health care systems were created as a means of ensuring baseline public welfare. the united states didn't suffer the losses europe did and the economy boomed due to a lack of infrastructure damage so growth was such that a program here wasn't seen as necessary That might be a good explanation if the question were why Western Europe has universal healthcare and the US does not.
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Nov 19, 2016 21:25
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Tacky-rear end Rococco posted:That might be a good explanation if the question were why Western Europe has universal healthcare and the US does not. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHPltbD-4QA
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Nov 19, 2016 22:03
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