(11-30-2020, 10:45 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:(11-30-2020, 03:32 AM)Einzige Wrote:(11-29-2020, 11:27 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(11-29-2020, 06:52 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:You voted for Biden and the return to the status quo. So, it's all on you and everyone else who voted for him. You also voted to establish China as the new world leader as well. I hope the Democrats are prepared to deal with continued decline and the reality of a national split occurring on its watch so to speak. I think you guys did a wonderful job setting yourselves up for failure. Just so you know, I understand that we're going to take some lumps too.(11-29-2020, 08:34 AM)David Horn Wrote: There are two potential outcomes: both bad. Outcome #1 makes the obstructionism a permanent political feature, with RW Billionaires funding all sorts of legal and political mayhem. Outcome#2 leads directly to violence.
Biden is already a lame duck by virtue of his age. Worse, the entire Democratic leadership team are way past their use-by dates. If the Dems continue with this, it will be RBG all over again. BTW, I'm still pissed at her for being so selfish, not that it's important now. Back on topic: the Dems aren't ready to fight the next round with all Silent leadership. The GOP may just win by default.
I don't know who the younger House leaders are who are at least as progressive and competent at mobilizing action as Pelosi is. Invoking age alone does not describe what is happening, or the skill of the leaders. I don't know a young leader who can run for Pelosi's slot and win a broad mandate to lead the Party or be speaker. AOC will not be elected now, and I don't know if Ro Khanna can do it or is willing. Who else is there? Who will step up? A Gen Xer Democrat is more likely to be a spineless moderate.
McConnell is also a Silent and remains at the Republican helm. So that's no better for them, age wise.
Our government remains at a stalemate, but that is not due to the leadership, but to the voters. They voted for this. It's all on them. Voters today, when they vote for a senator, do not know who they are voting for. This year, they voted for McConnell or for Schumer, and even if the Democrats win two Georgia runoffs, McConnell will still win (though not as handily).
Only if progressive Democrats win a Senate majority can they make DC and PR a state and thus end the Republican Senate dominance. Only then can they reduce or take down the filibuster and reform the court/add liberals. Until they can do this, thanks to the voters' decision, we are stuck in 1981. Maybe forever. In which case, the USA will not be the world's leader; China will be. The USA may decline or split apart, and there will be no hoped-for second turning. Only continued decline.
Trump was no less status quo than Biden. Indeed, his much vaunted "populism" was a facade- consider how quickly, for example, he dropped the support for Universal Health Care which he expressed back in the 1990s.
Above all else Donald Trump is an @$$hole who cares only about his own profit, indulgence, and gain. For people like him politics is either a game or a tool of control. He has no humanist leaning.
"Humanist leanings" are irrelevant. Capitalist philanthropy is a tool of social control, or at best a game played between capitalists as a status symbol.
Quote:Is the bourgeoisie an unqualified evil? Even Marx saw it as the force of progress from a feudal to a capitalist society. I associate feudal society with economic rigidity incapable of introducing technological change except perhaps for weaponry and the building of castles and palaces. Is "bourgeois" a mere synonym for "successful"?
We no longer live in a feudal society. Capitalism is no longer progressive.
Quote:Marx may have lionized the proletariat...
He didn't.
Quote: When socialist writers ascribe this world-historic role to the proletariat, it is not at all, as Critical Criticism pretends to believe, because they regard the proletarians as gods. Rather the contrary.
[size=xx-large][font=Georgia, serif] Since in the fully-formed proletariat the abstraction of all humanity, even of the semblance of humanity, is practically complete; since the conditions of life of the proletariat sum up all the conditions of life of society today in their most inhuman form; since man has lost himself in the proletariat, yet at the same time has not only gained theoretical consciousness of that loss, but through urgent, no longer removable, no longer disguisable, absolutely imperative need — the practical expression of necessity — is driven directly to revolt against this inhumanity, it follows that the proletariat can and must emancipate itself. But it cannot emancipate itself without abolishing the conditions of its own life. It cannot abolish the conditions of its own life without abolishing all the inhuman conditions of life of society today which are summed up in its own situation. Not in vain does it go through the stern but steeling school of labour. It is not a question of what this or that proletarian, or even the whole proletariat, at the moment regards as its aim. It is a question of what the proletariat is, and what, in accordance with this being, it will historically be compelled to do. Its aim and historical action is visibly and irrevocably foreshadowed in its own life situation as well as in the whole organization of bourgeois society today.
- Marx, The Holy Family
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/wo...y/ch04.htm
Quote:but even 'socialist' regimes have their needs for elite achievement. I associate the proletariat with the drudges of society who do the necessary work to make the things and do the toil. Working smart is not proletarian. Creating meritorious art, literature, or music is in no way proletarian.
Because all of your tastes are petit-bourgeois. It's only natural for an accountant to despise the wider working-class, even if at bottom accountants (and the vast majority of the American "middle-class", a term originally devised to describe the owners of Capital in Europe against the laborers and nobility and applied dubiously in America) are also proletarians.
Quote:Commanding an army is not proletarian.
You're right. The relationship of a general to the means of destruction is analogous to that of a capitalist commanding the means of production.
Quote:Medicine and law are not proletarian.
You're wrong. Doctors and lawyers are still proletarians - just well-recompensed ones.
>quote]The only thing proletarian about Donald Trump is his vulgarity. I'm not saying that people of cultural refinement can't treat people badly, but bad taste among the powerful generally indicates a disregard of the norms of decency. Surely you have seen my thread on dictators and their taste. It's not simply power. Bad taste demonstrates a lack of restraint, and if some farm laborer shows poor taste in putting his surname in Old English lettering on his rear window such is harmless. The inadequacy of President Trump's learning is obvious in view of all the resources that he had. Cocaine (often rumored) and adultery are poor substitutes for the philosophical and cultural quest.[/quote]
Philosophical hogwash. Nebulous "culture" is an abstraction away from real, physical relationships to the instruments of production.
Quote:Have you been to eastern Kentucky or southern West Virginia? Such would be an improvement. The most reactionary parts of America are those in which the once-predictable ways of making a middle income out of mining or manufacturing are gone without replacement. For many people, "Make America Great Again" means to reopen the factory or the mine even if such is impossible or absurd. Trump made the promise, but he cannot deliver that.
The promise was stupid. These people would be better served by using their position to find a way outside of capitalist relations permanently.
Quote:Don't get me wrong; America has problems and many of those have their source in the moral pathology of some of our economic elites. Remember of course that all elites from shamans to Soviet-era central planners, through pharaohs, high-level clergy, feudal lords, tycoons, top-level military officers, and business executives, have become increasingly demanding over time until their power is gutted or they are overthrown. Ideology notwithstanding, Agosto Pinochet and Mao Zedong had far more in common than is comfortable for my sensibilities.
What's your point? Mao was a State capitalist.
Quote:If you are thinking that 'socialism' in which the government owns and operates the productive industry, then think again:
Yeah, again, that isn't socialism.
Quote: But, the transformation — either into joint-stock companies and trusts, or into State-ownership — does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces. In the joint-stock companies and trusts, this is obvious. And the modern State, again, is only the organization that bourgeois society takes on in order to support the external conditions of the capitalist mode of production against the encroachments as well of the workers as of individual capitalists. The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine — the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers — proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is, rather, brought to a head. But, brought to a head, it topples over. State-ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict,but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution.
- Engels, Socialism: Utopian & Scientific
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/wo...y/ch04.htm
State ownership of the means of production occurs, and can only occur, in a capitalist society. For, after all,
Quote:The executive of the modern state is nothing but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.
Quote:the Soviet Union copy-catted Fordism even to the extent of buying a Ford plant to make vehicles imitating Ford vehicles. (I saw a GAZ version of a Model-A Ford in an antique car museum.... and it is identical except for the GAZ badge and Cyrillic lettering around the gauges). That sort of socialism is not good at innovation, and it is infamous for turning out obsolete and substandard wares.
Indeed. And
Quote: While the revolution in Germany is still slow in “coming forth”, our task is to study the state capitalism of the Germans, to spare no effort in copying it and not shrink from adopting dictatorial methods to hasten the copying of Western culture by barbarian Russia, without hesitating to use barbarous methods in fighting barbarism.- Lenin, "The Tax In Kind"
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/w...apr/21.htm
Quote:Solar panels are far less troublesome than fossil fuels. When Saudi Arabia's oil reserves go dry, then I can hardly imagine a better place for solar panels even for desalination of water.
I wasn't declaiming against solar panels. I was declaiming against the idea that we should replace Fordist, capitalistically-run coal mines with Fordist, capitalistically-run solar panel plants.
Quote:ure. It's called "small business", and it will make its comeback when the bloated bureaucratic behemoths that are giant manufacturers and stores go under.
Small business is absolutely no less exploitative than large business - nay more, it has to exploit more to compete with large businesses.
Quote:That is how America will find its way out of the next Great Depression when a 1929- or 2008-style crash finishes off giant enterprises whose lifespan is nearly over. Small business relies upon the labor of people whose profits are their form of income because no outsider subsidizes their efforts. It rarely has access to lavish supplies of capital as loans.
And this is why small businesses are even more insanely exploitative than large - because they have to be.
Quote:Small business rarely has clout in the political system as do the tycoons and executives who fund right-wing pols in the American political system.
When they aren't supporting those right-wing pols themselves- e.g. Knott's Berry Farm in California, which directly funded the original Goldwater for President movement. Small businesses are as reactionary as large ones.
Quote:The community in which I live could use a good clothing store, maybe a one-location equivalent of the J C Penney store (it offered largely clothing) downtown. I bought a lot of clothing there before bureaucrats at JC Penney chose to centralize more of their sales at shopping malls. JC Penney is now in bankruptcy. Too bad.
...America's political institutions practically assumed the norm of small business in agriculture, retail, banking, and manufacturing. Nobody could buy the system. When people buy the system, it is no longer a democracy.
Petit-bourgeois dreams. Every little accountant fancies himself a little shopkeep.