The cancer infecting the political Left

[Classic-Xer]

(07-28-2020, 10:33 PM)Einzige Wrote: He, also, has no conception of what Marxism actually is- the concept of "cultural Marxism" (or, as the Nazis had it, Kulturbolschewismus) is incoherent. Per Marx:

I had/have no interest in it.

[Einzige]

(07-28-2020, 11:17 PM)Classic-Xer . Wrote: You once described yourself to me as a half Marxist. A far as you personally, you're a Democratic minded capitalist positioned on the Marxist side today. I've warned you long ago that oil and water don't mix. I'd say that you are slightly outnumbered right now and if the current Liberal trend of attracting and gathering more and more poor people (the so called demographics) continues the Democratic capitalists will be significantly outnumbered and unable to support financially or able to hold up institution wise either.

Oil and water literally don't mix, dude - nothing in the Democratic Party platform is either Marxist or conducive to Marxism.

Even the most radical forms of wealth redistribution, far beyond what even Sanders was calling for, is fundamentally capitalist- Capital has always relied on redistribution, whether socially as colonization or individually as inheritance; this Marx called "primary" (or "primitive") accumulation. Capital, when redistributed, simply begins reproducing itself as Capital in other hands.

Marxism calls for the abolition of Capital, not its redistribution. Marxism envisages the abolition of labor, not it's being made more expensive via unionization etc.

Left-liberal Keynesian and MMT theories, even in their most radical forms (even when espoused by self-professed "Marxists" like e.g. Yaris Varoufakis) and actual Marxism are incompatible conceptually. Of course I'm a filthy left-communist and would be derided as an ultra wrecker by orgs like the CPUSA, which front Marx and endorse Democrats, but so be it.

[Classic-Xer]

(07-28-2020, 11:35 PM)Einzige Wrote: Oil and water literally don't mix, dude - nothing in the Democratic Party platform is either Marxist or conducive to Marxism.

Even the most radical forms of wealth redistribution, far beyond what even Sanders was calling for, is fundamentally capitalist- Capital has always relied on redistribution, whether socially as colonization or individually as inheritance; this Marx called "primary" (or "primitive") accumulation. Capital, when redistributed, simply begins reproducing itself as Capital in other hands.

Marxism calls for the abolition of Capital, not its redistribution. Marxism envisages the abolition of labor, not it's being made more expensive via unionization etc.

Left-liberal Keynesian and MMT theories, even in their most radical forms (even when espoused by self-professed "Marxists" like e.g. Yaris Varoufakis) and actual Marxism are incompatible conceptually. Of course I'm a filthy left-communist and would be derided as an ultra wrecker by orgs like the CPUSA, which front Marx and endorse Democrats, but so be it.

We figured that out a while ago. The Democratic party can't win without a relatively cheap army Marxist believers and followers doing the bulk of the work and scaring people into agreeing and voting for them. I'm sorry but the Democratic party is a regime and it has always functioned like a regime but it's time is coming to end.

[Einzige]

(07-29-2020, 12:32 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(07-28-2020, 11:35 PM)Einzige Wrote: Oil and water literally don't mix, dude - nothing in the Democratic Party platform is either Marxist or conducive to Marxism.

Even the most radical forms of wealth redistribution, far beyond what even Sanders was calling for, is fundamentally capitalist- Capital has always relied on redistribution, whether socially as colonization or individually as inheritance; this Marx called "primary" (or "primitive") accumulation. Capital, when redistributed, simply begins reproducing itself as Capital in other hands.

Marxism calls for the abolition of Capital, not its redistribution. Marxism envisages the abolition of labor, not it's being made more expensive via unionization etc.

Left-liberal Keynesian and MMT theories, even in their most radical forms (even when espoused by self-professed "Marxists" like e.g. Yaris Varoufakis) and actual Marxism are incompatible conceptually. Of course I'm a filthy left-communist and would be derided as an ultra wrecker by orgs like the CPUSA, which front Marx and endorse Democrats, but so be it.

We figured that out a while ago. The Democratic party can't win without a relatively cheap army Marxist believers and followers doing the bulk of the work and scaring people into agreeing and voting for them. I'm sorry but the Democratic party is a regime and it has always functioned like a regime but it's time is coming to end.

Eh? The vast majority of Democratic voters, even of Democratic activists, are basically nonideological, like the overwhelming majority of Americans.

[Ragnarök_62]

(07-29-2020, 01:22 AM)Einzige Wrote:

(07-29-2020, 12:32 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(07-28-2020, 11:35 PM)Einzige Wrote: Oil and water literally don't mix, dude - nothing in the Democratic Party platform is either Marxist or conducive to Marxism.

Even the most radical forms of wealth redistribution, far beyond what even Sanders was calling for, is fundamentally capitalist- Capital has always relied on redistribution, whether socially as colonization or individually as inheritance; this Marx called "primary" (or "primitive") accumulation. Capital, when redistributed, simply begins reproducing itself as Capital in other hands.

Marxism calls for the abolition of Capital, not its redistribution. Marxism envisages the abolition of labor, not it's being made more expensive via unionization etc.

Left-liberal Keynesian and MMT theories, even in their most radical forms (even when espoused by self-professed "Marxists" like e.g. Yaris Varoufakis) and actual Marxism are incompatible conceptually. Of course I'm a filthy left-communist and would be derided as an ultra wrecker by orgs like the CPUSA, which front Marx and endorse Democrats, but so be it.

We figured that out a while ago. The Democratic party can't win without a relatively cheap army Marxist believers and followers doing the bulk of the work and scaring people into agreeing and voting for them. I'm sorry but the Democratic party is a regime and it has always functioned like a regime but it's time is coming to end.

Eh? The vast majority of Democratic voters, even of Democratic activists, are basically nonideological, like the overwhelming majority of Americans.

Well, let's make this easy. For POTUS, the choice is between a Mad Man and a Zombie. As for the 2 parties. They're both Neoliberal/Neocon. The US population has been gaslit to no end. The result, a step, step down towards the next dark age. Until then, let's enjoy our bread and circuses. [cheap junk food], mass/digital media. I'll go for Biden for a better chance for bread.  Like, it's the new national motto:   "It's all about the bejamins"    

When in Rome, do as the Romans do.  In America, do what Americans do. That means you join a tribe like Futbah teams and sort out what kind of junk food you prefer.  After all, even though America hates to admit this reality,  Trump is the personification of the US.
PS.

Marxism, like anything human concept has to account for the fact that  some humans are sociopaths. This reality is why a lots of zealous ideologies warp into nightmares.  History is littered with this stuff.

[Eric the Green]

(07-29-2020, 01:22 AM)Einzige Wrote:

(07-29-2020, 12:32 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(07-28-2020, 11:35 PM)Einzige Wrote: Oil and water literally don't mix, dude - nothing in the Democratic Party platform is either Marxist or conducive to Marxism.

Even the most radical forms of wealth redistribution, far beyond what even Sanders was calling for, is fundamentally capitalist- Capital has always relied on redistribution, whether socially as colonization or individually as inheritance; this Marx called "primary" (or "primitive") accumulation. Capital, when redistributed, simply begins reproducing itself as Capital in other hands.

Marxism calls for the abolition of Capital, not its redistribution. Marxism envisages the abolition of labor, not it's being made more expensive via unionization etc.

Left-liberal Keynesian and MMT theories, even in their most radical forms (even when espoused by self-professed "Marxists" like e.g. Yaris Varoufakis) and actual Marxism are incompatible conceptually. Of course I'm a filthy left-communist and would be derided as an ultra wrecker by orgs like the CPUSA, which front Marx and endorse Democrats, but so be it.

We figured that out a while ago. The Democratic party can't win without a relatively cheap army Marxist believers and followers doing the bulk of the work and scaring people into agreeing and voting for them. I'm sorry but the Democratic party is a regime and it has always functioned like a regime but it's time is coming to end.

Eh? The vast majority of Democratic voters, even of Democratic activists, are basically nonideological, like the overwhelming majority of Americans.

How would a Marxist revolution be organized, then, in America? At least within our lifetimes or those of the next generations?

[Eric the Green]

(07-28-2020, 10:33 PM)Einzige Wrote: See the Grundrisse. Marx foresaw the Information Age and was aware how it would alter the structure of capitalist production. It has not fundamentally transformed its method of surplus value extraction, however.

Can "surplus value extraction" be transformed, and into what? Can it ever be ended?

[Eric the Green]

(07-28-2020, 11:22 PM)Einzige Wrote:

(07-28-2020, 11:10 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Capitalism is no monolith. The profit motive can put one set of capitalists against another -- just think of the American Civil War. Just think of Northern railroad interests against Southern railroad interests.  You may dispute whether the slave-owning planter were really capitalists.

Marx called them a "band of warring brothers" for just this reason.

Quote: Question: can a society go from capitalism to Communism without undergoing the Marxist-Leninist style of organization?

Yes. Lenin's vanguardism was adapted for the pre-capitalist, feudal structure of Russia. This is probably why it resulted in State capitalism there. The ideal social form for organization within capitalist society, which all nations today are (yes, including ostensibly "Marxist" ones like China or Cuba) is the workers council.

There were called soviets, IIRC.

Is this to be a state organization, or a workers' organization? 

If such councils are to be organized within capitalist society, doesn't that leave capitalism intact?

[Bob Butler 54]

(07-29-2020, 01:22 AM)Einzige Wrote: Eh? The vast majority of Democratic voters, even of Democratic activists, are basically nonideological, like the overwhelming majority of Americans.

I would say you don't understand their ideology, not that they don't have them. In order to defend your old ideology, you have to deny theirs exist. You cannot go head to head.

I mention my arrow of progress values: democracy, human rights, and equality. Granted, they are working practical details no not abstract philosophy. They are in the real world. Still, there is no doubt they are applying ideals.

[Bob Butler 54]

(07-28-2020, 10:33 PM)Einzige Wrote: Ideas do not form material conditions; material conditions form ideas. This is the essence of materialism.

Scientists create systems of ideas like relativity, Marxism or S&H turning theory.  Engineers create things that put these ideas into practical use.  Being an engineer, I sort of think it a two way street.  I tended to take an idea and make it reality.

(07-28-2020, 10:33 PM)Einzige Wrote:

(07-28-2020, 10:13 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: I will also state that September 11, Katrina, Iraq, the housing bubble collapse and other likely catalysts were not triggers.  They did not make a transition to the new values inevitable.  Not triggers.  Catalysts.  Both sets of values remained active and seemingly viable.  You have to know the S&H theory to see the handwriting on the wall, to know what is coming.

I deny there's much difference between the two sets of values, tbh.

If you are not involving yourself with the two ideal systems involved in the latest crisis, you are a poor student of turning theory.  Marxism was last a viable set of values when the New Deal was a new deal.  As the result of Marxist theory as it practically gets put in practice became clear, it became a non starter.  Not a factor.

(07-28-2020, 10:33 PM)Einzige Wrote:

(07-28-2020, 10:13 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: Again, you cannot count in observations from the last age to tell you anything about this one.  Last age had lots of crisis wars and profit from them and their aftermath.  Now?  Put the observation that capitalists need crises for profits during the Information Age on hold pending their making a profit off a crisis.  In the meantime, think, do not assume.

There's no hard and fast division between the "Information Age" and the "Industrial Age". Hell, Marx called the development of network capitalism back in 1857:

Quote:... But, once adopted into the production process of capital, the means of labour passes through different metamorphoses, whose culmination is the machine, or rather, an automatic system of machinery (system of machinery: the automatic one is merely its most complete, most adequate form, and alone transforms machinery into a system), set in motion by an automaton, a moving power that moves itself; this automaton consisting of numerous mechanical and intellectual organs, so that the workers themselves are cast merely as its conscious linkages.

An impressive foresight of how computers would evolve from a time well before computers.  Give Marx a brownie point or two.

However, nukes, insurgent conflict and computers have changed the basic pattern of civilization.  Notably, violent triggers are rare to nonexistent in major democracies.  No revolutions.  This kind of changes how cultures improve and was not anticipated by Marx.  It renders his whole system obsolete.

(07-28-2020, 10:33 PM)Einzige Wrote: For whatever reason, people treat Marx like a Bronze Age thinker who couldn't forsee the transition to a knowledge economy (which he called the General Intellect):

Not a Bronze Age thinker.  The Bronze Age was back in the Agricultural Age, and Marx was definitely an Industrial Age thinker.

(07-28-2020, 10:33 PM)Einzige Wrote:

(07-28-2020, 10:13 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: Also, I see the S&H turnings as a mechanism for how cultures change.  A crisis is the time when the much debated two sets of values from the unravelling are resolved in favor of the new values.  A trigger is an event which makes this process inevitable.  The regeneracy is the time frame when the federal government fully embraces the new values, though it only begins a several year trial and error process as the new values are tried and tuned.  This time the two sets of values debated are the red and the blue.  Did you notice that Marxism is not one of the two?  Did you notice that the blue is the new set?

Blue is part of the old set.

Again, blue is the newer of the two value systems at odds in the current crisis.  That statement show you are hopelessly ignorant of the S&H turning approach to viewing history.

(07-28-2020, 10:33 PM)Einzige Wrote:

(07-28-2020, 10:13 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: Thus, we are not working from the same perspective at all.  You are working from an Industrial Age perspective based on Industrial Age observations on how things work, and are pathetically out of date in the Information Age.

See the Grundrisse. Marx foresaw the Information Age and was aware how it would alter the structure of capitalist production. It has not fundamentally transformed its method of surplus value extraction, however.

It seems he did not anticipate how it would effect the changes in values.  Absurdly rare triggers.  None observed.  No revolutions.  This lack of anticipation is not surprising given his time, but renders his whole system obsolete.

[Bob Butler 54]

(07-29-2020, 05:11 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(07-28-2020, 10:33 PM)Einzige Wrote: See the Grundrisse. Marx foresaw the Information Age and was aware how it would alter the structure of capitalist production. It has not fundamentally transformed its method of surplus value extraction, however.

Can "surplus value extraction" be transformed, and into what? Can it ever be ended?

One way would be to cut way back on how our current culture treats consumption as happiness.  You make things that absorb critical resources less important.

I think by sticking the weasel word 'surplus' in there, you might cause resource greed to be 'ended', but you ask a good question.

A very green attitude if you can correctly unpack the excess verbiage.

Back in the day I took a Mentor aircraft up and played laser tag with another Mentor.  Very entertaining.  Perhaps the ultimate sport.  As the Mentor was designed as a trainer for pre fighter pilots, it was a hot little thing.  Rather resource intensive, however.  Burned lots of fuel.  Was not easy on the plane.  A little later a Mentor had a wing fall off.  Aircraft dogfighting would be right out in a 'minimize surplus value extraction' culture.

[David Horn]

(07-29-2020, 07:05 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(07-29-2020, 01:22 AM)Einzige Wrote: Eh? The vast majority of Democratic voters, even of Democratic activists, are basically nonideological, like the overwhelming majority of Americans.

I would say you don't understand their ideology, not that they don't have them.  In order to defend your old ideology, you have to deny theirs exist.  You cannot go head to head.

I mention my arrow of progress values:  democracy, human rights, and equality.  Granted, they are working practical details no not abstract philosophy.  They are in the real world.  Still, there is no doubt they are applying ideals.

In one regard, most Americans don't really have ideologies. It's not an aversion to the idea of ideology so much as the lack of awareness needed to form one.  Most Americans are fully content to live their lives in an oblivious fog until something comes along to disrupt it.  I'm not sure that the response qualifies as ideology. 

We here are not unique in actually having strong abstract beliefs, but we are rather rare.

[pbrower2a]

(07-29-2020, 12:32 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(07-28-2020, 11:35 PM)Einzige Wrote: Oil and water literally don't mix, dude - nothing in the Democratic Party platform is either Marxist or conducive to Marxism.

Even the most radical forms of wealth redistribution, far beyond what even Sanders was calling for, is fundamentally capitalist- Capital has always relied on redistribution, whether socially as colonization or individually as inheritance; this Marx called "primary" (or "primitive") accumulation. Capital, when redistributed, simply begins reproducing itself as Capital in other hands.

Marxism calls for the abolition of Capital, not its redistribution. Marxism envisages the abolition of labor, not it's being made more expensive via unionization etc.

Left-liberal Keynesian and MMT theories, even in their most radical forms (even when espoused by self-professed "Marxists" like e.g. Yaris Varoufakis) and actual Marxism are incompatible conceptually. Of course I'm a filthy left-communist and would be derided as an ultra wrecker by orgs like the CPUSA, which front Marx and endorse Democrats, but so be it.

We figured that out a while ago. The Democratic party can't win without a relatively cheap army Marxist believers and followers doing the bulk of the work and scaring people into agreeing and voting for them. I'm sorry but the Democratic party is a regime and it has always functioned like a regime but it's time is coming to end.

To both of you:

1. Einzige -- orthodox Marxism-Leninism is dead. It has no viable derivative in the United States. Even fascism of the neo-Nazi and KKK types (the two are merging) has more mass support in America. Those are sick people, the leaders of fascist cliques typically sociopaths  and the followers hard to find unless as duplicates. Government ownership of productive capacity is even becoming irrelevant as much of the value created in America is intellectual property, the result not so much of material creation as of imagination and staging. 

But KKK and Nazi fascism are  nearly dead. Trump-style fascism is relevant to the extent that Trump has taken fascistic themes (hurt national pride, fear of pollution by 'alien' culture, economic distress, dread of change that leaves many behind, and a mythologized history) along with support from rapacious elites who want to take everything away from the rest of Humanity -- including its freedom.      

2. Classic X'er: the Marxist threat exists largely in your mind. You really ought to go out more and listen to what people say. The best arguments against Donald Trump are now from conservatives who recognize his threat to the political traditions that prevent the political thuggery that has destroyed democracies. Donald Trump really is a horrible person, a man with neither heroic personality nor a moral compass.

[Bob Butler 54]

(07-29-2020, 09:17 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(07-29-2020, 07:05 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(07-29-2020, 01:22 AM)Einzige Wrote: Eh? The vast majority of Democratic voters, even of Democratic activists, are basically nonideological, like the overwhelming majority of Americans.

I would say you don't understand their ideology, not that they don't have them.  In order to defend your old ideology, you have to deny theirs exist.  You cannot go head to head.

I mention my arrow of progress values:  democracy, human rights, and equality.  Granted, they are working practical details no not abstract philosophy.  They are in the real world.  Still, there is no doubt they are applying ideals.

In one regard, most Americans don't really have ideologies. It's not an aversion to the idea of ideology so much as the lack of awareness needed to form one.  Most Americans are fully content to live their lives in an oblivious fog until something comes along to disrupt it.  I'm not sure that the response qualifies as ideology. 

We here are not unique in actually having strong abstract beliefs, but we are rather rare.

Have you watched the news lately? Have you noted the Black Lives Matter protests? A bunch of people favoring equality? Have you noted the people not wearing masks, speaking of rights and freedom?

People may not define their motivations as ideological. They may see their actions as practical. It is still ideological behavior in my book. We may have different ideas of how the word ought to be defined, but you'd have to be blind to not notice their behavior.

[Bob Butler 54]

(07-29-2020, 09:19 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: 1. Einzige -- orthodox Marxism-Leninism is dead. It has no viable derivative in the United States. Even fascism of the neo-Nazi and KKK types (the two are merging) has more mass support in America. Those are sick people, the leaders of fascist cliques typically sociopaths  and the followers hard to find unless as duplicates.

Duplicates? I have a vision out of the Star Wars Clone Wars of a bunch of identical people populating a Klan rally.

Ugh.

[Classic-Xer]

(07-29-2020, 09:19 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: To both of you:

1. Einzige -- orthodox Marxism-Leninism is dead. It has no viable derivative in the United States. Even fascism of the neo-Nazi and KKK types (the two are merging) has more mass support in America. Those are sick people, the leaders of fascist cliques typically sociopaths  and the followers hard to find unless as duplicates. Government ownership of productive capacity is even becoming irrelevant as much of the value created in America is intellectual property, the result not so much of material creation as of imagination and staging. 

But KKK and Nazi fascism are  nearly dead. Trump-style fascism is relevant to the extent that Trump has taken fascistic themes (hurt national pride, fear of pollution by 'alien' culture, economic distress, dread of change that leaves many behind, and a mythologized history) along with support from rapacious elites who want to take everything away from the rest of Humanity -- including its freedom.      

2. Classic X'er: the Marxist threat exists largely in your mind. You really ought to go out more and listen to what people say. The best arguments against Donald Trump are now from conservatives who recognize his threat to the political traditions that prevent the political thuggery that has destroyed democracies. Donald Trump really is a horrible person, a man with neither heroic personality nor a moral compass.

I'm going to agree with you and say, the Marxist threat is not a threat to me personally or the American right because the entire American right believes in might makes right. Bob is right, the Democratic party can't go head to head with the America right. Dude, the American right got rid of the British, crushed the Confederacy and the KKK, crushed Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, Toppled the Soviet Union and so forth. Donald Trump ain't that bad of a person. He's stubborn, he's gruff, he's not the perfect human being, he's not a saint and doesn't pretend to be one and above all, he doesn't give a shit about what the liberal elites think about of him. Dude, the liberal Washington elite and the liberal media elite and the liberal global elite are all fucking with America right now and America is going to hand them their asses back to them on a silver plate and leave the chips fall. The way I see it, the Democratic party is pretty boxed in at this point due to its significant loss of believers.

[Classic-Xer]

(07-29-2020, 10:43 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(07-29-2020, 09:17 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(07-29-2020, 07:05 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(07-29-2020, 01:22 AM)Einzige Wrote: Eh? The vast majority of Democratic voters, even of Democratic activists, are basically nonideological, like the overwhelming majority of Americans.

I would say you don't understand their ideology, not that they don't have them.  In order to defend your old ideology, you have to deny theirs exist.  You cannot go head to head.

I mention my arrow of progress values:  democracy, human rights, and equality.  Granted, they are working practical details no not abstract philosophy.  They are in the real world.  Still, there is no doubt they are applying ideals.

In one regard, most Americans don't really have ideologies. It's not an aversion to the idea of ideology so much as the lack of awareness needed to form one.  Most Americans are fully content to live their lives in an oblivious fog until something comes along to disrupt it.  I'm not sure that the response qualifies as ideology. 

We here are not unique in actually having strong abstract beliefs, but we are rather rare.

Have you watched the news lately?  Have you noted the Black Lives Matter protests?  A bunch of people favoring equality?  Have you noted the people not wearing masks, speaking of rights and freedom?

People may not define their motivations as ideological.  They may see their actions as practical.  It is still ideological behavior in my book.  We may have different ideas of how the word ought to be defined, but you'd have to be blind to not notice their behavior.

Black Lives Matter is a liberal collective of sorts that's goals are determined by a majority. Have you noticed that there are thousands of them out their breaking the laws pertaining to allowable crowd size and social distancing and mask wearing and tolerating the presence of  groups of violent and destructive people as Americans are being forced to live with all the restrictions placed on their business's, their jobs, their churches, their personal lives and so forth, Dude, the American people can't even bury its dead or get married and so forth as Black Lives Matter does what? You don't see the American back lash that building up across the country right now. Fox news isn't talking to me right now. Fox news us talking to a new audience right now. Hint: A center left audience who I assume are letting go of CNN and MSNBC and the National news outlets.

[pbrower2a]

(07-28-2020, 11:28 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(07-28-2020, 10:33 PM)Einzige Wrote: He, also, has no conception of what Marxism actually is- the concept of "cultural Marxism" (or, as the Nazis had it, Kulturbolschewismus) is incoherent. Per Marx:

I had/have no interest in it.

The Nazis excoriated modern art and music as degenerate -- breaking from conventional molds easy for the Common Man to accept. Of course, art that devolves to popular taste at its lowest level, convention with some unimaginative use of symbols, is Kitsch, "art" intended to soothe and charm an audience that prefers to do little thinking when it encounters images. 

Modern art, then even Impressionist art (eighty years ago people had yet to recognize Impressionist painting as the second-greatest era of painting, second only to  the Renaissance, at least as is shown in bidding wars for art pieces up for sale), intends to jar people out of their complacency about the 'real' world in which they live.  Abstraction is the reality behind nature, and expressionism conveys unsettling ideas. The movie starlet that a studio presents as a virgin is all too often a harlot in real life. Military glory has pain and dismemberment as the reality behind it. Decadence lies behind the alleged grandeur. Jazz recognizes that the highly-refined classical music is not the only expression of life, and atonal music suggests uncomfortable chaos. This is all inconsistent with the over-simplified world of the fascists (including Nazis and the KKK).   

Under a totalitarian regime, thought is to become simple -- because life is glorification of official ideals and repudiation of anything that gets in the way. (It is paradoxical, but although Lenin fostered modern art as an expression of political as well as technological progress, Stalin's socialist realism also became an oversimplification of aesthetic expressions of his ideology, so 'modern' art and music had to go into hiatus under Stalin in favore of hackneyed expressions of the official ideology of Stalinism). 

For the Nazis art was either comforting conventionality easily marketed to people who little think of art (again, Kitsch), classical expressions that suggested continuity from various stages of German history that the Nazis couldn't bring themselves to loathe, overt propaganda... or trouble. The German Nation and of course Volk were to be honored and never brought to question.  Military glory was an objective in its own right, and of course the Fuehrer himself and his inner circle were to be seen as unqualified heroes. Many of the creators and promoters of modern culture were Jews, so that was good enough cause to despise it. Modern art was, of course, trouble.

[Classic-Xer]

(07-29-2020, 04:17 AM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote:

(07-29-2020, 01:22 AM)Einzige Wrote:

(07-29-2020, 12:32 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(07-28-2020, 11:35 PM)Einzige Wrote: Oil and water literally don't mix, dude - nothing in the Democratic Party platform is either Marxist or conducive to Marxism.

Even the most radical forms of wealth redistribution, far beyond what even Sanders was calling for, is fundamentally capitalist- Capital has always relied on redistribution, whether socially as colonization or individually as inheritance; this Marx called "primary" (or "primitive") accumulation. Capital, when redistributed, simply begins reproducing itself as Capital in other hands.

Marxism calls for the abolition of Capital, not its redistribution. Marxism envisages the abolition of labor, not it's being made more expensive via unionization etc.

Left-liberal Keynesian and MMT theories, even in their most radical forms (even when espoused by self-professed "Marxists" like e.g. Yaris Varoufakis) and actual Marxism are incompatible conceptually. Of course I'm a filthy left-communist and would be derided as an ultra wrecker by orgs like the CPUSA, which front Marx and endorse Democrats, but so be it.

We figured that out a while ago. The Democratic party can't win without a relatively cheap army Marxist believers and followers doing the bulk of the work and scaring people into agreeing and voting for them. I'm sorry but the Democratic party is a regime and it has always functioned like a regime but it's time is coming to end.

Eh? The vast majority of Democratic voters, even of Democratic activists, are basically nonideological, like the overwhelming majority of Americans.

Well, let's make this easy. For POTUS, the choice is between a Mad Man and a Zombie. As for the 2 parties. They're both Neoliberal/Neocon. The US population has been gaslit to no end. The result, a step, step down towards the next dark age. Until then, let's enjoy our bread and circuses. [cheap junk food], mass/digital media. I'll go for Biden for a better chance for bread.  Like, it's the new national motto:   "It's all about the bejamins"    

When in Rome, do as the Romans do.  In America, do what Americans do. That means you join a tribe like Futbah teams and sort out what kind of junk food you prefer.  After all, even though America hates to admit this reality,  Trump is the personification of the US.
PS.

Marxism, like anything human concept has to account for the fact that  some humans are sociopaths. This reality is why a lots of zealous ideologies warp into nightmares.  History is littered with this stuff.

Trump's not a mad man. He's to stoic, to cunning and to calculated to be a mad man. So, you go ahead and vote for the zombie and get used to the idea of fighting for a loaf of bread or paying twice as much for a loaf that can't be manufactured as much or get to your grocery store until its disinfected and cleansed or sold until its disinfected and cleansed and so on. Dude, the guy has 83 million followers on twitter that the dude who owns Facebook bans and doesn't worry about losing as customers. You better wake up and stop thinking like a Democrat and start thinking like an American who knows they're dealing with a crisis right vs sitting in the bleachers watching one right now. Do what Rani did if you can't accept voting for a Republican, vote Libertarian instead of voting for a zombie and find yourself being stuck with a two bit liberal candidate who doesn't deserve to be president that the country doesn't recognize as being legit.

[Bob Butler 54]

(07-29-2020, 12:42 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Black Lives Matter is a liberal collective of sorts that's goals are determined by a majority. Have you noticed that there are thousands of them out their breaking the laws pertaining to allowable crowd size and social distancing and mask wearing and tolerating the presence of  groups of violent and destructive people as Americans are being forced to live with all the restrictions placed on their business's, their jobs, their churches, their personal lives and so forth, Dude, the American people can't even bury its dead or get married and so forth as Black Lives Matter does what? You don't see the American back lash that building up across the country right now. Fox news isn't talking to me right now. Fox news us talking to a new audience right now. Hint: A center left audience who I assume are letting go of CNN and MSNBC and the National news outlets.

I have been assuming that you can treat the situation as having three motivations, which can be attributed to Black Lives Matter, the Boogaloo Bois, and the looters. In practice, they overlap. You get people with multiple motives. Of the three, only the looters are non ideological. You have BLM promote life and equality, and the BB promoting violence and conflict. Not compatible. I have noted a similarity in everything but language between the Boogaloo Bois and the Marxists. The existing alliance between democracy and capitalism is supposedly hopelessly broken, and only violence can solve the problem. Even then, the Boogaloo Bois are out there doing it, while the Marxists are too few and too scattered to make themselves felt.

I am watching the increasing popularity of those supporting a scientific approach to the virus and a law and order response to racist violent policing. Lots of red people are moving blue for at least one election cycle. I am assuming this is showing up not just in the polls, but in where they get their news and what they believe. Black lives, all lives and the science really matter.

Of course your ideological blindness and unwillingness to see reality might lead you to other conclusions.