You would agree, I’m guessing, that not all socialists ID as Marxists, right? As you know, socialism goes back well before Marx was born, etc. But those who advocate for socialism (by definition) advocate for the replacement of capitalism with alternative economic systems. I know of no definition of “socialism” that includes capitalism remaining as the economic engine. This of course, assumes that socialism replaces the current system — not that we go the social democratic route, the Tony Judt route from his excellent Ill Fares the Land, and “nationalize” certain industries only.

As in, if real socialism is implemented, across the entire nation in question, that assumes capitalism goes. All of it. Root and branch.

zn wrote:

The leftist sees capitalism as a horror, and believes that so long as money and profit rule the earth, human beings will be made miserable and will destroy themselves.

zn wrote:

That’s one version of the left.

Billy_T wrote:

My view is that it accurately describes most leftists.

This is entirely subjective of course.

But basically being a person who identified with the left from young adulthood on, and knowing many people across the decades and all over the country who identify the same way, and having read like-minded people again for the majority of my life, my personal experience is that no that view does not describe “most” leftists. Not even in the least. It is ONE view you can FIND AMONG leftists, but by no means a majority.

Really, this sums up my entire experience as a politically aware animal–no “most” is not the word I would use there. I would say “some.”

In fact, among the people who post here who identify as belonging to the left, you are the only one who subscribes to that specific set of views. Unless you want to tell Zooey, Nittany, PA and others who post here regularly that they’re not on the left. Talking about people who decidedly don’t centrally identify with establisment dems and/or standard issue american liberals, and who have (for example) taken the online political quiz and come out more or less left libertarian.

There’s lots of labels for the sprawling and disparate types who might be said to gather under the left umbrella, such as progressives or democratic socialists, and so on. And of course we all are burdened by the fact that in the USA “left” is a term used for establishment liberals and establishment dems and that general type.

Still, to me, “the left” has always been a term for a loosely affiliated alliance of many kinds and types. It certainly includes but is by absolutely no means restricted to straight-up marxists (which is in itself not one thing anyway. If it were one thing then my life would have been very different, because it would not have included years and years of often annoyed awareness of the marxist v. marxist in-fighting among some of the people I know and read).

So anyway starting a long time ago I saw and so still see the left as a kind of loose and churning alliance of different views, which do have some key fundamental things in common but absolutely do not reduce to one strictly defined type or view.

.

I’m not sure if I read you correctly above, especially the part about Marxists. But it sounds like you’re saying only the “Marxist left” is anticapitalist. Please correct me if I’m misreading you.

My anticapitalism includes Marxian views, but in no way is limited to (or by) them. As you know, the left-anarchist tradition, for example, which battled Marx directly and indirectly during his lifetime . . . and afterward . . . was/is staunchly anticapitalist, but not “Marxist” in their political orientation. That’s largely the subset I identify with, though I’ve always been eclectic (and evolving) in my thinking/sourcing.

To make things more complicated — and you hint at this — there is no such thing, really, as “Marxist” in the first place, and the range of thought among those who might choose that label is vast, sometimes contradictory, but mostly complementary. I don’t. I choose to read as much of the relevant vastness as I can . . . weigh and balance it with what might be called “non-Marxist” thought, etc. etc. Again, eclectic, a la carte approaches. My studies show a large contingent of the non-Marxist left is anticapitalist too.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 5 months ago by Billy_T.

Very good article, Zooey. Thanks.

nittany ram wrote:

and nothing you can say will ever persuade a FOX viewer to look at things differently because they are completely misinformed, and have no critical thinking skills through which to reach them. No discussion is possible with that crowd. Is. Not. Possible.

We have pulled NYT people over to our side on this board. And people to the right of NYT.

Well, I agree with your premise, but you’re comparing someone who gets their news through a TV channel vs someone who reads. I think people who primarily get their news through TV are always going to be intellectually lazy compared to a reader anyway. The TV gives you a brief synopsis of the news with no real detail or nuance. Print is better in that regard plus someone who reads is more likely to use multiple sources. So I think a ‘news reader’ would be more easily engaged from the start anyway, regardless of their politics.

Another big benefit of print over TV: You can avoid the stupid TV news idea of “fair and balanced.” If you ever watch a CNN panel show, you’ll see political hacks cheerleading for their own side, ignoring the truth, with the host rarely interjecting to fact-check anyone. Nowhere else in our day to day lives do we choose to do this. If, for instance, a victim of a gun shot is raced to the emergency room, the doctors and nurses don’t bring in a wide array of faith healers, leech users, worshipers of Anu, and let them hash things out. They use medical science and do their best to save the victim’s life.

I wish we thought of our political problems like that, rather than “fair and balanced” — which is never either, of course.

wv wrote:

Well, its true Fox is off-the-charts, with their NeoCon/Evangelical sales-pitch.

But what IS the NYTimes? What does it stand for, what does it sell to the public exactly?

My own view is that it essentially sells Obama/Clinton. Neoliberalism.
And there is no neoliberalism without the CIA and the Corporations and the Pentagon and weapons manufacturers and the corporate-media, etc, etc etc. The whole shebang. The NYT is pro ‘system’. Pro ‘corporotacracy’.

And what does the corporotacracy do to the biosphere? To the poor?

So is that so much better than what Fox News is all about? Well…yes…i suppose…but still…. blah blah blah yall know my speech by now.

I loathe the NYT.

w
v

WV, I disagree that the bolded part is essential to the neoliberal project, especially the CIA. In essence, neoliberalism is just a return to the pre-Keynesian consensus of laissez-faire, “free market” ideology, but with new aspects of highly sophisticated lobbying, marketing and far better organization at the top. In its former incarnation, there was no CIA. The Congress and the president alone could sustain neoliberalism here, domestically, with its three essential elements of runaway deregulation, runaway privatization and massive tax cuts for business and the rich. It can easily work with other nations to extend this toxic brew internationally without the spooks.

The latter were once important in helping to topple nations that refused to accept American capitalism, but that, too, was carried on prior to the CIA or its precursors. America, Britain and much of Europe’s old colonial powers, especially, have been ramming capitalism down the world’s throat for two centuries.

Good article. I especially liked the mention of William Morris, a personal favorite of mine. His visionary left-libertarianism was pragmatic as well.

Which reminds me: I think the emergence of the Sanders/Clinton split has brought something into focus, that, of course, was always there, but not so apparent . . . From left to right, one’s idea of “pragmatism,” “extremism,” “reality,” “purity tests,” and so on is almost entirely subject to one’s own place along the spectrum and the greater context of one’s life. As in, I’ve had too many recent, futile discussions with Dems who bash, insult and blast Sanders and persons left of Sanders for their “extremism” and inability to deal with “reality.” From my vantage point, it’s those centrist, corporatist Dems who have that problem, and I see their clinging to the capitalism system as “extremist.” Even among leftists, this same suspicion of other views obtains, and most of it likely stems from stereotypes and assumptions about others that really don’t have basis in fact.

We all fall for it. We all bring to the table our own biases, and no one is above that.

To me, the best way out of that rut is to gather, crowd-source, hash out end-goals and horizons and try to agree upon general paths, without insulting each other for being too this or too that. Work back from First Principles, once we’ve established them, and avoid mocking end-goals for their potential as “unrealistic.” The point of those goals isn’t, and never has been, their relative connection to what is currently possible. The point of those end-goals has always been to push us to do better, and better, and better. If we don’t shoot for the moon, we’re only going to reach some ledge on a little hill. If we shoot for the moon and fall short, we’re far more likely to reach the Rockies.

d

nittany ram wrote:

wv wrote:

nittany ram wrote:

Who do you think would win a fight between Jamie Lanister (before he lost his sword hand) and Aragorn? How about between The Mountain and Legolas? Arya and Samwise?

I know the correct answers. I just wanna see if you know them.

============

Aragorn.
Legolas.
Arya.

Now, what about Ginger vs Mary-Anne ?

w
v

You got 2 out of 3 correct. That’s a score of 66.7%.

Unfortunately you needed a minimum score of 66.8% to pass the test.

So you failed.

Where you slipped up was when you marked Arya over Samwise.

Arya, like the rest of the Game of Thrones cast, is a fictional character. She’s not real. Game of Thrones is a TV show.

What, you think some wee actress is going to defeat a battle hardened Hobbit in a real fight?

Get real.

Well, I think you’re having a great deal of trouble recognizing truth from fiction. For instance, it is known that the Black Widow would whip all the people in your scenarios, and you were too afraid to admit it. I mean, who is more real than Scarlett Johannson?

Excellent article from Jacobin about Big Green being infected by Third Way, neoliberal responses to environmental destruction.

No Third Way for the Planet — Kate Aronoff. An environmentalism that can actually save the planet must do battle with corporations. Mainstream environmental groups have done the opposite.

Brief excerpt:

One of the biggest problems with the neoliberal wings of the Democratic Party and the environmental movement is pretty simple: They both could kill us all.

For some time, the two tendencies have run parallel to one another. During the Reagan years, just before Bill Clinton began pushing for welfare reform and expanding the war on drugs, Fred Krupp, CEO of the Environmental Defense Fund, set out to chart his own “third way” for big greens. The “Third Stage,” as he called it, would swap the “relentlessly negative” tone of “polluter-pays” environmentalism for market-based approaches and partnerships with major corporations — fossil fuel companies included.

The strategy caught on, earning him the ears of both Bush administrations and Clinton. Green organizations’ staff in DC ballooned to help lobby and curry favor with politicians. All of a sudden, big business wasn’t the enemy anymore — they were the solution.

When Democrats and mainstream environmentalists tacked rightward in an effort to capture the center, they each lost touch not just with working people, but with the ability to imagine solutions of the scale needed to curb the greatest threat to human existence ever known, climate change. To avert the latter and fight the Trumpian right, each need to shake their enduring faith in the power of free markets.

Rather than Clinton-style market-friendly technocracy, we need an environmentalism that includes redistribution. It’s our only hope for digging out of this mess.

ZN, well, we disagree a bit about possible frames, too. But, yes. Lefties definitely can disagree in good faith, etc. No worries on that part.

I, too, see Gore as preferable to Bush, and Nader as preferable to both of them. So, it’s not an issue, for me, of saying, it’s okay that Bush won, cuz both parties suck. I think Bush was among the worst presidents ever, and until Trump, I might have had him in the top three. Trump pushes him out of that now and has the top slot — at least so far.

My point is the blame game. Not who was preferable. I wrote what I wrote to try to demonstrate that lashing out at the Greens, or Stein, or Sanders, when people do that, just makes no sense. Not logically, mathematically, ethically or morally — in my book.

Zooey wrote:

And Buchanon got 449,000, and the Libertarian candidate got over 384,000. Which candidate were those votes taken from?

And beyond Florida, New Mexico, Oregon, Iowa, and Wisconsin were all decided by less than half a percent, New Mexico by less than a tenth of a percent.

Exactly.

Plus, no state can be “decisive” in our system. No one state has another ECs to do that. Bush won 30 states; Gore 20. Rather than pin it all on Nader, perhaps the Dems should consider the other ten states he couldn’t win, including his home state of Tennessee.

But the real kicker here? In Florida, 320,000 registered Dems voted directly for Bush. Last time I checked, 320,000 is a hell of a lot more than Nader’s 23,000. If we’re playing “what ifs,” that has to include those registered Dems, too, and their numbers dwarfed Nader’s.

PA Ram wrote:

This is not a “country first” nation. It is a “party first” nation. If the Clinton had won and the Republicans were in charge she would already have been impeached. However, if Clinton had won and the Dems were in charge they would no doubt cover for her. There are few true patriots in Congress and wrapping a flag around yourself does not make you one.

This is about a two royal classes protecting their own self interests. The peasants in the middle do not particularly matter.

Well said, PA.

Good article. A minor snippet from it reminds me of the ongoing attack by the Dems against the Greens, Stein, Sanders, etc. They keep bringing up Nader in 2000 and blaming him for Bush. I wish they’d go back to school and take math classes again.

In 2000, barely half the electorate showed up. Roughly 100 MILLION voters stayed home — or had their votes suppressed. Nader’s total, nationwide, was roughly 2.8 million. How on earth is it Nader’s fault when 100 million voters stayed home, and an additional 50 million voted for Bush?

Basically, it’s 2.8 million versus 150 million. And it’s all on Nader?

wv wrote:

zn wrote:

wv wrote:

But i still dont think that comes close to the present situation

Remember, what I said is, this has been happening all along. I didn’t exclude the new technology magnifying it. I just mean to point out that the history on this was deep.

It’s just that before, it was kings doing it.

=============

Yes, and I’m saying that view doesnt work for ME. I dont think i can say “well history is just continuing along its path like a river”.

To me, what we have now is something NEW. Qualitatively different. Sui Generis.

The technology-of-capitalism has changed the game into something new. A mutation has emerged. Or somethin.

w
v

I agree with this, but with a caveat. And it’s kinda weird. Cuz it’s almost like a changing river of thought from ZN to you to me. Unless I misread you guys, and it wouldn’t be the first time . . . ZN is essentially saying nothing is new except for the folks in charge. You’re saying, no, this corporatist model is brand new. It’s unique. And I’m saying, it goes deeper still. It’s the underlying system of legal forms and social relations invented for the capitalist system itself . . . the capitalist system in and of itself, its inherent, internal logic . . . that the corporatist model is just the logical progression, the natural evolution of a highly unnatural and unique economic form.

We could end the corporate model today, and capitalism would innovate and sprout something just as bad or worse tomorrow. It needs to be taken out, root, trunk and branch.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 6 months ago by Billy_T.

nittany ram wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

IMO,

Folks are missing the fundamentally revolutionary changes wrought by capitalism, when it overthrew previous economics forms — which were all local and independent of one another. No previous economic system had even tried to subsume all local markets under its umbrella, and then get governments to make all of that the only legal structure.

Well I don’t disagree with anything you’re saying about capitalism, Billy. I was speaking more in generalities though. I don’t know much about economic systems but I doubt the systems that existed in Western Europe in the 1500s were any ‘better’for the masses than what we have today.

They were rotten back then for the masses, too, of course. But within those local, independent market systems there were kernels of hope for a real revolution from the bottom up. Under feudalism, for example, the lord of the manor didn’t have legal ownership of what the people renting his land produced. Yes, they had to tithe to him. But there was not yet any strict employer/employee relationship, under the law, that said someone automatically owns everything generated by others. That came later with capitalism. It was the first system that encoded this upfront ownership of someone else’s production. And until capitalism, most people were self-employed, self-producers, small farmers, artisans, craftsmen, etc. etc. Many of them were independent of feudal lords.

Anyway . . . the bottom line is: The capitalist system, for the first time in history, primarily due to its Grow or Die imperative, subsumed local market after local market, until none were free. And it still has to do this in some form, be it into the future (debt and speculation), into the formerly public realm (privatization), or via consumer labor (self-service). It can never stop its expansion into new markets or reconfiguring old ones. This is really what threatens the planet. Its inexorable need for more and more and more. That was never an innate dynamic for any previous system.

Before capitalism, we had C-M-C and use value dominate. Commodities exchanged for money to buy more commodities we all needed.

After the capitalist revolution, that became M-C-M and exchange value. Money, purchasing labor (as a commodity) to produce commodities in exchange for more money. It no longer mattered if anything produced was needed. If they could sell shit on a stick, they did. All that mattered (and matters now) was if it could generate profits. The goal of fulfilling needs was dropped, and “sales and marketing” was established as a wing in order to create “needs” that did not exist.

Also gone forever were local, independent markets, which could function on their own, outside other dominant systems.