- cross-posted to:
- progressivepolitics
- cross-posted to:
- progressivepolitics
The Abandon Harris movement that sprouted late last year out of the widespread outrage over the Biden-Harris administration’s support for the ongoing Israeli war on Gaza has officially endorsed the Green Party’s Jill Stein for US president.
The endorsement is the first of its kind for Stein and the Green Party, with the Abandon Harris campaign being the first major Muslim-led political group to endorse her campaign this election cycle. Last month, a smaller group, the Muslim American Public Affairs Council NC, also endorsed Stein.
“We are not choosing between a greater evil and a lesser evil. We are confronting two destructive forces: one currently overseeing a genocide and another equally committed to continuing it. Both are determined to see it through,” the Abandon Harris campaign said in a statement released on Monday.
Absolutely. But the party itself is made up of regular people who got involved on the local level first, in their local parties.
Don’t you want to change the party? Or are you content to sit back and do nothing except help the actual, unapologetic nazis gain power?
The party is a filter, the higher you are allowed to go the more you have to serve the interests of the donors. The DNC cannot change as long as we remain a Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie, there’s no mechanism for it.
The way forward is to not goose-step with either genocidal party that represents the US Empire, but to organize outside it, like joining PSL or FRSO.
The people have more power than you think. It was UNTHINKABLE for 70 years that a major party would even entertain someone who is sympathetic to socialism like Bernie Sanders. Yet they allowed him a national stage in the past two elections. That’s actual cultural and institutional change that is happening quite rapidly actually.
Your expectations and aspirations need to be adjusted to the reality of what levels of change humans are capable of accepting over time.
You saw how the country (and the world) reacted to the election of the first (half) black president, right?
The entirety of this surge of right wing neo-Nazi fervor we are seeing across the world over the past 16 years is a direct result of the deep-seated racism of the people who vote.
The people who don’t vote (and those who vote for a losing but admirable third party) have had no say in the matter. You are respectfully abstaining, and allowing the fascists to dominate.
I contend that those third party voters and nonvoters could have stemmed the tide of fascism we are seeing today. Without you, we are weaker than the fascists. And the fascists will keep on winning.
Bernie has been entirely cast aside by the DNC proper, though. The people love him for being a Social Democrat, not even a Socialist, and yet he has no power over policy.
As Capitalism decays, leftism rises in popularity.
Yes.
No, fascism is rising because Capitalism is decaying. It doesn’t matter if the people who vote are racist, what matters is that Capitalism is declining.
No, liberals are contributing to the rise in fascism by petpetuating Capitalism.
Fascists win when liberals side with them over leftists. Read the first chapter of Blackshirts and Reds.
Thanks for the reply. Honestly, it’s refreshing being able to actually discuss this with someone and not just be dismissed/blocked/banned “for being a shitlib”… Anyway, I appreciate you. I’m listening to your points and considering them before replying myself. I hope that you have the patience to hear me out as well. Feel free to reply to any part of the response below. Curious to hear your thoughts.
He was dismissed by the DNC proper before he even declared his candidacy. The fact that they allowed him to A) Run as a Democrat, and B) Stand on the debate stage, means that something big is happening and they saw that if they didn’t, they would have an internal revolt on their hands.
He actually has a tremendous amount of influence now relative to the rank-and-file Democrats. He chairs the Senate Budget Committee, which is actually a huge deal in our system. It’s astonishing, really, that they would allow a SocDem to control that committee. It shows they know the writing is on the wall and that they know Capitalism is in decay, and that they have to make capitulations otherwise they are doomed.
He has inspired an entire generation (my generation) to get into politics to try to change it from inside. AOC and “The Squad” are a perfect example. Prior to Bernie’s rise in popularity, it would have been UNTHINKABLE that people like them could not only run as Democrats and be supported by the party apparatus, but also win and become influential members of the establishment of the party.
They are the future of the party. It’s no longer the Clinton/Blue Dog/Third Way that are the future of the party. It’s The Squad and SocDems and eventually full-throated Socialists. Because the culture is changing in America. Step by step.
I’ve always contended that Capitalism isn’t exactly in decay, but rather just reverting back to the Feudalism from which it stemmed, which was the plan all along. When Feudalism was “in decay” in the early 1800’s, both Socialism and Capitalism rose in popularity. Capitalism won out because of a number of factors, but it is my contention that a few of the major factors included:
The concept of true democracy was completely foreign to those generations. Humanity hadn’t had actual democracy since the Greeks (and even then, only marginally). We’d lived under Feudalism for centuries until the revolutions of the 1700’s/1800’s. People weren’t used to not having a hierarchy. It was a foreign concept to be able to have an equal say in how the world was organized and run. Unthinkable, for those generations.
The socialists and anarchists used terrorism and violence to try to influence the masses, which always has the opposite of the desired effect. Nobody likes a bully (unless it’s “their” bully). Rule by fear does not work, long-term.
The Capitalists, on the other hand, offered the illusion of self-determination, the illusion of freedom of choice. Capitalists didn’t have to bomb people to get them to join their cause. They just had to pay them. They did have the challenge, however, to organize the new system so that the serfs (workers) could only survive by working for the lords (the capitalists), just as they did under feudalism. Give the serfs the illusion of freedom by allowing them the “freedom” to choose a different master who may afford them some marginally better conditions, or the “opportunity” to become a master themselves by going into debt to the king (the rich capitalists/banking institutions), and feed them the hope that eventually they could pay off that debt if they were “successful” at exploiting other serfs and earning a profit off their “cheap” labor.
Obviously, the Feudal Aristocracy saw that the Capitalists were “their kind of people” and therefore the money and the power won out for Capitalism. Socialists could have used that same playbook, but we were blinded by our own passion and compassion for our fellow human beings.
I firmly believe that had humanity not been so resigned to hierarchy in the first place, more and longer lasting revolutions and democracies would have sprung up even in the face of that power.
The failure of the AES experiments, in my opinion, is that they have emulated the tactics of the feudalists, using violence and establishing their own authoritarian hierarchy, in order to give the people, who weren’t used to democracy in the first place, something familiar. The contradiction between our socialist ideals and the establishment of a hierarchy used to force those ideals down the throats of people who aren’t culturally prepared for the changes (and therefore who are antagonistic to the changes, as all humans are to all changes), irreparably cracks and weakens the system, necessitating more and more force to maintain itself. Add to that the outside influences working at every moment to thwart the socialist efforts, and the internal mismanagement and cults-of-personality that lead to policies that created famines, and you can see why it all failed. Violence is never a long-term solution.
Now that we have had a century or so of cultural changes such that democracy is the expected “norm” I believe that a move further to the left is not only inevitable, but achievable through nonviolent means. Through further cultural shifts, we could change the system over time. This generation is ready. The boomers were not. Gen-X was open to the idea. Millennials are socialists, by and large. Gen-Z are fucking communists and ready to fucking go.
But that will take some leadership and guidance and yes, some “force” from the existing hierarchy in the form of laws that encourage leftward movement and respect for our fellow human beings.
And it will take time. A lot of leftists are passionate (admirably so, of course), and impatient, and want change immediately, and are willing to kill to get it.
My opinion is that violent revolutions are short-lived and generally have resulted in much worse outcomes than the conditions they were initially revolting from. For instance, look at the French Revolutions, or the American Revolution. The Russian revolutions are another example. The Korean, Vietnamese, and Cuban revolutions were all thwarted by the forces that arose from the previously mentioned violent revolutions.
If we truly believe in the general purposes of our cause (to make life better for everyone), then we have to look for a solution that will last millennia. That will only come from cultural change, and lasting cultural change is one in which the majority of the people are culturally inclined to not be fucking dicks to each other, and that comes from a lack of scarcity. Capitalism has given us that lack of scarcity. And now it’s time to use it to our social advantage.
The left needs to stop living in the past. Yes, learn some lessons from those dead men, but take a look at the current generations and plan for the future. We’re not going back to the glory days of socialist uprisings and guillotines. We just aren’t. Face that reality. Embrace the hope for the future.
I read it more as Bernie never standing a risk to the system, he’s a Social Democrat at most.
The establishment Dems have the squad in a chokehold, they have treated Rashida Tlaib like garbage, and this is just for SocDems! It will never become a party for Socialism.
This isn’t accurate. Socialism never took a foothold until the 1900s, pre-Marx there were minor Utopian projects but that’s it. Capitalism isn’t reverting to feudalism, it’s advancing towards Socialism as monopolist syndicates are intricately related with one another, making themselves ripe for central planning once the proletariat siezes them. Meanwhile, competition is going away and disparity is rising. Read Marx, it’ll do you good.
Democracy wasn’t “discovered,” it was a natural evolution upon technological advancement. Read Why do Marxists Fail to Bring the “Worker’s Paradise?” Organizational structures aren’t random ideas but come into existence to support the Mode of Production.
This is just generally wrong. Read Blackshirts and Reds.
This is a very “ideas focused” view of history, rather than a materialist focus. The aforementioned text on Marxism and the mythical “worker’s paradise” is a perfect into to Historical Materialism.
The Capitalists overpowered the Feudal Aristocracy with their vastly superior productive mechanisms. It wasn’t about ideas but literal structures.
Hierarchy is fine, organization almost requires it, certainly at scale.
You are analyzing AES as an idealist, not a materialist. Socialism isn’t good because it’s morally superior, but because production requires it if we are to continue to advance technologically.
Reform cannot work, this is a solved problem. The State and Revolution is a good text going over why.
This is absurd. The Russian, Cuban, Korean, Vietnamese, French, and American revolutions drastically improved on previous conditions, they were not “thwarted.” Look up metrics like life expectancy and democratization, life expectancy doubled in the USSR and multiplied by 1.5 in Cuba post-revolution. This is a whitewashing of just how monstrous previous regimes before revolution was.
Not entirely wrong in analysis of material conditions, but putting the emphasis on culture and not the Mode of Production is misguided.
Your problem is that you are ignoring the lessons of the past. Reform cannot work. AES is by no means perfect, but you are throwing out all of the advancements in theory and practice over time and embracing Utopianism and Idealism, which were dominant pre-Marx and subsequently disproven.
Please read the article on the “Worker’s Paradise,” it’s 20 minutes, if nothing else. Blackshirts and Reds will also be eye-opening for you, as should State and Revolution, but those are full books.
Appreciate the response. I don’t have time right now to read through it fully, but I will soon. And I will check out the references you mention as well. Thanks again for being a nice person.
Hey there! I read through Worker’s Paradise and have some thoughts I’d like to discuss if you have the time:
The author does not elaborate on the reasoning for their assertion that voting will never bring into manifestation the will of the workers, except to say:
The Soviet Union lacked the communication infrastructure to be able to allow democracy to actually be able to control the entirety of the huge system. Which is true, for the Soviet Union. At that time.
We have the technology today. We have the computers. We have the AI which can quickly and easily determine the most efficient options for our democratic processes to choose from.
Why do they think big industry can ONLY be developed through market competition? What is the reasoning behind that? (Aside from what they have seen happen in the past, for older generations of people with very different material conditions to our own today?)
This is true. So why are you all so against voting in the United States’ two-party system, when that very voting will continue to allow incredibly high levels of economic development and the GRADUAL socialization of industry and society?
The market has created that large-scale infrastructure. Let’s use it to make the world better.
Then what is it all for? Why do anything if it doesn’t lead to an eventual utopia where everyone has their needs met and we can just hang out in parks and play games all day? Isn’t that what the whole point of this thing is?? Is that NOT what we are striving for?
Marx himself wanted that utopia. We have the means of achieving it today, because, as the author says, we allowed the market to create that large-scale infrastructure. The process worked. We’re here now, and now we inherently deserve to be able to have a say in what we do with it. Because we’re sentient beings. We deserve to have control over our own lives.
This article is merely a defense of capitalism (and the way that China has structured itself in particular). There’s logic behind it, of course, and that’s clearly laid out. But it’s based on presuppositions. It’s based on the idea that this is the ONLY way to achieve that utopia.
In fact, the article itself basically says “resign yourself to the idea of never having control over your life, because you’re never going to create a utopia, so you might as well just be content being a cog in the wheel of the system and be thankful that we who are in control continue to allow you to live” which is no better than the slavery system that (I thought) we (and marx) are trying to get society away from!
This is because Reform or Revolution is a “solved question” elsewhere. In a 20 minute article, there’s not much room to go over everything.
Yes, that’s why as the PRC continues to develop and socialize, it becomes more capable of democratization. The point isn’t that the USSR wasn’t democratic. It was, just not a fantasy.
Markets are efficient at centralization. It isn’t only possible via markets, it just comes with slower growth and recessions. More on that in Socialism Developed China, Not Capitalism.
Because the bourgeois state cannot simply be reformed. The State and Revolution is the clearest overview of why.
Yes, let’s overthrow the bourgeoisie so this can happen! Exactly.
The point is to continue advancing, not to come up with an idea and force it into reality. That’s the difference between Utopian and Scientific Socialism. We still want all of what you said.
Marx was anti-utopian. You are correct in saying we can socialize now, but haven’t analyzed the means.
It’s a defense of socialist markets as a means of stabilizing growth towards Communism (not utopia).
No, it says building Communism takes time even after siezing the means of production. Check out the other texts I linked.
Are there any modern texts that aren’t written by people who lived in completely different circumstances with completely different technology, and who aren’t currently dead?