01-10-2019, 10:21 AM
(01-09-2019, 11:49 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: (background comments redacted solely for brevity)
How long would a proletarian revolution make it before it ran into the American Right? I'm not going to have a hard time adapting to the use of an AR-15 or a real weapon of war? Right now, I'd expect the polling numbers to be in the workers not receiving there paychecks favor. How long is going to be before opinions of blues change when their lavish lifestyles begin to be revealed and their personal intent begins to be questioned by those who are suffering because of Chuck and Nancy's complete lack of suffering and concerns relating to working class people. I mean, is 5 billion for a needed border wall really worth the anguish that their causing by holding out and saying no to the wall? Does the new Senator from Arizona have plans to be a two term senator or is she one of them blues who is more interested pleasing Chuck and Nancy than interested in representing the voters of Arizona. Well, you can kiss her good bye in six years because the illegal immigrant crisis will be undeniable in six years and the idea of eliminating certain blues by force will be stronger than it is today as well.
As I recall, proletarian revolutions happen when
1. Government is grossly undemocratic, which can include traditional monarchies like Imperial Russia or the latter years of the Empire of Ethiopia, colonial rule as in French Indochina and Portuguese colonies in Africa, particularly-vile and corrupt regimes as in China under Chiang Kai-Shek or Cuba under Batista, or political orders completely discredited after military occupation as in Albania and Yugoslavia (where Commie regimes came to power with little need for Soviet occupation in establishing Marxist regimes)
2. Government is incompetent and corrupt; it shows contempt for the welfare of the common man but facilitates the indulgence of economic elites
3. Economic development is in the early stages of industrial development (true peasant societies do not go Communist because the solution for rural distress is to redistribute land to farmers as an expression of capitalist restructuring)
4. Industrial development is highly concentrated in a few places, especially the capital of the country, so workers are easy to concentrate in strikes and rebellions by simply riling people who live in gigantic disease-ridden fire-trap slums
5. Industrial policy focuses on heavy industry, resource extraction, and plantation agriculture as keys to rapid development instead of upon cottage industries that produce stuff like clothing and housewares that the worker can use
6. Economic distress in rural areas is severe, peasants being bled on behalf of distant and uncaring elites in the cities or overseas
This does not apply to military conquest by a Marxist state such as the Soviet Union. Soviet military occupation would have as readily facilitated a Communist takeover in the Netherlands as it did in fact facilitate the Czechoslovak coup of 1948. This is parallel to explaining why France got a fascistic regime and Britain did not in World War II; the British were successful in keeping the Wehrmacht, Gestapo, and SS out of their country and the French weren't.
This explains why Russia had a Marxist revolution and Japan didn't, why China had a Marxist revolution and India didn't, why Cuba had a Marxist revolution and Mexico didn't, why Vietnam had a Marxist revolution and a Marxist insurgency failed in the Philippines, why Angola had a Marxist revolution and Botswana didn't, and why Yugoslavia had a Marxist revolution and Italy didn't. Marx suggested that the most economically-advanced societies of his time would first undergo Socialist revolutions before other countries -- and it was backward Russia which still had feudal characteristics and inchoate industry in 1917 that got the first revolution that saw Marx as a mentor.
Governments that promote market-driven development fare better in thwarting Red revolution than those that insist upon top-down efforts to rush economic growth. A healthy agricultural system of yeoman farmers creates a potential constituency for conservatism. Democracy allows the rise of parties such as the British Labour Party and social-democratic Parties more intent on promoting social welfare than any proletarian insurrection; dictatorships with secret police that repress all dissent against institutional exploitation ensure that dissent finds itself in small, conspiratorial, violent, tightly-knit, fanatical, and ruthless cliques prone to terrorism as in Russia in the early part of the twentieth century. As countries leave the early-industrial age, the capitalists typically find that it is wiser to let the workers have a stake in the system (as consumerism) instead of taking everything -- thus ensuring that workers have something to lose other than the chains that Marx said was all that they had.
But yes, let the economic elites of America (big landowners, plutocrats better described as heirs instead of as entrepreneurs, business executives, bureaucratic elites and political operatives, and arguably organized crime) decide to take everything for themselves, and we might have a situation in which workers have nothing to lose but their chains.
OK, so much for the lecture in political science.
....Most of us Blues do not enjoy lavish lifestyles. If anything we despise someone like Paul Manafort for living large on the rewards for helping a dictator bleed Ukraine. We do not need suffering among our political leaders. If anything, it is Donald Trump who has shown little concern for the welfare of people not already filthy rich even after he made wild promises in 2016. Trump has betrayed many of the people who voted for him. As a partisan Blue I saw him for what he is. Estimates on the border wall have escalated from $5 billion to much more, as building that wall will necessitate the building of roads necessary for building and 'servicing' the wall. Personally corrupt as Trump is, I can expect $5 billion to be a good minimum figure for graft alone.
It would make more sense to build an expressway connecting Lubbock, Texas through Abilene to I-10 northwest of San Antonio along or following US 84 and US 83, 277 miles in length (about 40 miles of it is up to Interstate standard). Maybe that is not a perfect idea of a highway project, but I would not be surprised if the Texas legislature would prefer such. If we are to build something, then we might be wiser to build highways that connect cities and reduce traffic fatalities than to build walls that are more likely to kill people.
...Arizona is drifting Blue due to demographics -- the fast-growing Hispanic (largely Mexican-American segment of the electorate) and people leaving California for the lower cost of living. Were I an Arizona politician I would heed that.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.