07-29-2020, 09:19 AM
(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.
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.