02-22-2021, 08:31 AM
(02-22-2021, 02:50 AM)Einzige Wrote:(02-22-2021, 02:49 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(02-21-2021, 04:50 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:Upward flow sounds better but in reality only makes the ones at the top rich or richer. The downward flow/trickle down recognizes the ones at the top are rich and encourages them to spend more on improving and expanding their business's. Either way, the ones at the top are the primary benefactors.(02-20-2021, 05:16 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(02-20-2021, 05:01 AM)Einzige Wrote: The Democrats aren't eager to do shit except to continue to extend the rule of Capital - not "the rich" but Capital, which is a system ordering and governing all human capacity on Earth today.
Is it telling that most people don't see the division of wealth as one of the crisis problems? The economy is, and the division of wealth is part of it, but the key problem Marx saw is not considered that important now and the tool he saw as solving it is not seen as necessary. The most severe problems faced by the culture are addressed in the crisis, and capitol is not among them.
I can see the division of wealth as being addressed in a future awakening or crisis, though likely through non violent means. It is just that with the productivity increase, there isn't that much focus on it.
I think there is considerable focus on this in the current 4T. Not that this problem will be fully and forever solved in the next 8 years, but the direction needs changing now. Trump deceived people that he was concerned about this issue, and Sanders and Warren and even Biden spoke to it explicitly. The USA will suffer a great deal if the last 40 years of fast-growing inequality and wage-slavery is not shifted toward a different trend, just as happened in the previous 4T. The neo-liberal era needs to end. That by definition is also the end of rising inequality and reverses that trend. Trickle-down must be replaced by flowing up in this 4T. Covid is just another symptom of neo-liberalism, as is climate change/pollution. And racism is implied in it. The direction must shift.
Yes, precisely so. The solution is to abolish Capital.
No, even the more orthodox view in Marxism is to abolish the bourgeoisie and to put capital under the control of people responsible to the proletariat. In theory that implies a socialist state with a democratic government. The problem with M-L is that it went to the Stalinist model of central planning devoid of any input from those who actually did the work in farms and factories.
... There are other explanations, and historical reality suggests itself. One is the Skowronek cycle, which explains that around 1980 America went from the New Deal model that held that the well-being of workers is the measure of prosperity to the neoliberal model, as reflected in politics, in which the creation of wealth in the hands of the Right people who had the responsibility of creating wealth as efficiently as possible would solve all problems by creating so much prosperity that enough would trickle down. The rapacious greed, the sybaritic indulgence, and unchecked power of capitalists and the executive elite became the objective, and even if such Presidents as Clinton and Obama could mitigate things for a short time they quickly found out that in a plutocracy, he who has the gold makes the rules. This was the heyday of Boomer elites as politicians, owners, and executives... and that is coming to an end.
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.