(04-14-2021, 10:24 AM)David Horn Wrote:(04-13-2021, 04:05 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: In theory, it should only take an hour to punch a hole through the rim of a house in St Paul. An old boss told me that one time. Evidently, the boss's theory didn't take into account the overall thickness or the density of the concrete that ruined his theory. He didn't want to hear that from me anymore than you want to hear what I have to say to you and your beliefs these days. I assume that you aren't fortunate enough to be a multi millionaire like Obama, Biden and Pelosi or a multi billionaire like the Facebook dude or Google dude or Bill Gates or even Trump for that matter. I assume that you are as susceptible to rising costs and shortages like everyone else living below them.
Somewhere in there is a point. Yes, I'm susceptible to rising prices as we all are. That's also true of the rich, though their idea on what's important is obviously different from yours or mine.
C-Xer Wrote:I never thought that I'd be around long enough see you and every other partisan left wing hack in the position that you are all in these days. Here you are pretty much being set up to find yourselves discarded and finding ways to live off whatever revenues associated with American entertainment and the drama associated with Left Wing propaganda for the most part. So, what's an Oscar worth to most Americans these days? Is it worth nearly as much as it did to America before it was taken over and politicized by today's Left? Does education cost more than its worth as well? Guess who took that over and turned it to shit? It's the same group. I hope you don't have to guess? So, how long is it going to take for the Left to adjust to presence of people who aren't as dumb or a gullible as them? Can they adjust or are they pretty much stuck?
If the Progressive program succeeds, and that's still open to question, then we'll all be less exposed to the vagaries of life. The rich will not continue accumulating at the rate they have and the rest of us will have more -- especially those not in the top 5%. If you're under that threshold, and I certainly am, then you should gain too.
Unlikely.
The (bourgeois) Progressive programmes succeeded for 50 years, from the age of Theodore Roosevelt to the era of Richard Nixon. Its proponents certainly yelled a lot rhetorically about challenging incumbent power etc., but by the 1950s most sectors of industry found themselves in a happy compromise with the institutions built up by the Progressives and the New Dealers. While of course things such as the Powell Memorandum demonstrate that many sections of Capital were unhappy with the postwar consensus of high (theoretical) taxes and some social services to preserve the Cold War domestic front, many were- the Ford Foundation, the Carnegie Foundation, etc. and their donations to Progressive causes demonstrate as such. Indeed, such is the essentially conservative nature of bourgeois Progressivism that Richard Nixon was able to govern as a domestic Keynesian while building up the conservative movement without destroying his political base through the obvious contradictions.
What all this proves is that bourgeois Progressivism is just a phase which Capital sometimes passes through, adjusting for inclement conditions as necessary. This is all. It creates new channels for the exercise of the power of Capital, from regulatory capture to the exercise of biopower on the proletariat in the name of Progress (laws passed regulating slums, dietary standards, sex offenders and other criminals, etc.).
Recommended reading: The Rise And Fall Of Progressivis. by the Communist author George Novack, from 1957.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/novack/...57/x01.htm
Quote:If it was realistic to transform the Democratic party into an agency for working-class politics or to organize a “people’s anti-monopolist coalition” in some other way, then what was the point of building a Socialist or Communist party on a working-class program? Why did Eugene Debs have to reject Populism and Bryanism and help launch the Socialist party at the beginning of this century? Why did the Left-Wing forces have to form a Communist party on an independent Marxist basis 20 years later? (We are not speaking of educational and propaganda groups spreading socialist ideas but of Marxist parties set up to challenge capitalist and reformist parties in elections, etc.)This was written in 1957. The experience of 64 years have absolutely borne it out: the reformist George McGovern was crushed, Jimmy Carter institutionalized neoliberalism in the Democratic Party, Bill Clinton and Obama reinforced it, the reformist Bernie Sanders was crushed, etc.