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Jun 2, 2024 09:13
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- mila kunis
- Jun 10, 2011
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saw this in another thread, anecdotes from a depression era judge. good readin about the rule of law and the nature of power under liberalism
quote:
Judge Samuel A. Heller
Retired.
I SAT in the Morals Court for a year or so. One day I had twenty-three defendants, prostitutes. About five or six visitors attended. They were obviously slumming. I said to them: “It’s fortunate that we don’t have people here to come to revel in the misery of others. I’m delighted that sensitive people of your type are here.” (Laughs.)
The girls were all broke, not a penny among them. I thought the visitors were touched. One, the daughter of a former mayor, said, “I want to donate $25 for handkerchiefs, so the girls can wipe away their tears.” Handkerchiefs!
In the Thirties, I sat in many police courts. Monday was usually the most crowded day. Most of the drunks were picked up on Saturday night, and kept in jail over Sunday. This police officer was walking up and down with a biily. He hit them in the shins: “Stand up, you’re in a courtroom.” I said, “Get out of this court and come back without the club.” He said, “They’ve got to respect the court.” I said, “Do you? How dare you bring a billy into this courtroom?”
One of the fellows was bloody. He said the police hit him. This same officer said, “He was talking against the Government.” I said, “He’s not an enemy of the Government. You are. He has a right to his opinion.”
Those forty men were terror-stricken, standing in line. I said, “Are you afraid of me? Would you be afraid of me if you saw me on the streets? Please relax.” I saw some of them I had discharged scrubbing floors. One was washing an automobile. He said the captain told him to do it. I told the captain to pay this man fifty cents. Since when is he entitled to free labor?
Some men I had already discharged were being lined up against the wall in the back of the room. I discovered that a railroad agent was telling them: If you don’t work for us out in Dakota, the judge will send you back to jail. I said, “Get that man.” He ran out.
I called the railroad office. “There’s a man making an employment agency out of my courtroom. What’s his name? I’m issuing a warrant for his arrest.” They didn’t know, they said. So I threatened to issue a John Doe warrant and arrest whoever is in charge of that office. If it’s the president of the company, he’ll be arrested.
The man showed up the next day. He said the police and the other judges always let him do it. That’s how they got day laborers. They’d send ‘em out west for six or eight weeks and let ’em bum their way back.
There was a judge in those days who had fun with drunks. He’d say, “Hold up your hands. Ah, you’re playing piano.” Some of them had the shakes. I said to him, “My God, what are you doing? These people are scared stiff.”
These same judges who had fun with the wretched, oh, did they humble themselves in civil courts! They’d look at the names on the legal briefs. If it was a big firm, oh boy, did they bow! A lot of votes there from the bar association. These same judges, who were so abusive to the poor, were so scared here. You have a chance if the person coming in is as weak as you are—or as strong as you are. There are rights. Everybody’s got rights on paper. But they don’t mean three cents in actual life.
While sitting in the Landlord and Tenants Court, I had an average of four hundred cases a day. It was packed. People fainted, people cried: Where am I going? I couldn’t bluff them and tell them to make an application, there’s a job waiting. I was told my predecessor had taken down their names and qualifications. He promised them help. On my first day, I came across thousands of cards in filing cabinets. I told the clerk I was going to examine these files to see how many of these people got jobs. My mistake. Within twenty-four hours, all the files disappeared.
A woman with three children, one in her arms, walked all the way downtown. No carfare, no defense. Oh, they were all desperate and frightened. When I’d come in, they stand up. I would tell them: Will you please sit down, so I can sit down?
These defendants all had five-day notices: if you don’t pay rent in five days, suit to dispossess is started. There is no legal defense. Out of a job means nothing, sickness means nothing. I couldn’t throw these people out. So I interpreted the law my way: five days was the minimum. No maximum was set. I gave everybody ten days. Of course, I offended the real estate brokers. I made them still more angry by allowing an extra day for each child in the family. Finally, I was giving them thirty days.
About that time a group of real estate men invited me to lunch. Each was introduced: this one was five thousand tenants, that one, eight thousand. There were about sixty thousand tenants represented—if I may use that word—by these few men. After the meal, the man who had cordially invited me, suddenly became hostile. The others smiled, as though they knew what was coming up. He said,“I’m going to speak straight from the shoulder. Isn’t it a fact that judges favor tenants because there are more voters among the tenants than among the landlords?” All of them laughed.
I got up and said, “You didn’t speak straight from the shoulder. If you did, you’d have said, ‘Are you playing politics in court?’ Now I’ll answer straight from the shoulder. If I were playing politics, I’d play politics with youse guys.” I purposely used the vulgar expression. “Because you have long pockets and long memories, and you support those who serve you. Who are these tenants who come into my court? They’re destitute, out of jobs, poverty-stricken. When election day comes, one’s out looking for a job, another will sell his vote for fifty cents to buy his baby milk, and most will forget it. There’s no political reward in helping the poor. But what makes you think the man who sits in judgment between the landlord and the tenant must have the mentality of a renter?
“Someday you’ll succeed in intimidating the judge who sits in my place. He’ll have the chance of throwing four hundred families out on the streets of the city each day. When a man is hungry and out of a job, and nobody knows it, he can control himself. But when his few pieces of furniture are thrown out into the street, his neighbors know it. He has nothing to lose. A wise man comes along and says, ‘Idiots, why don’t you organize? Quit paying rent. When you get the five-day notice, ask for a jury trial.’ ”
One of the real estate boys said to me, absolutely astonished, “Can they ask for a jury trial?” So I said to this brilliant man, “What makes you think the right of trial by jury is limited to rent collectors?
“With a jury trial, you can hardly try one—at most, two—cases a day. At the rate of two thousand cases a week, in four months you’d have 32,000 people asking for jury trials. If they closed every court in this state, you still wouldn’t have enough judges to try your case. And then you’d wish there were a man like Heller, who had the courage to tell you: Why don’t you mind your own business and let him mind his business?”
One of them said, “I admire your candor, but you’re not doing yourself any good.” He was right. When I ran for office, the real estate organizations sent out thousands of letters: I have no respect for private property. They defeated me. They keep score. The poor are so busy trying to survive from one day to the next, they haven’t the time or energy to keep score.
There was a man running against me, who said you can evict people without notice, if it’s done peacefully. We agreed to have a public debate. He didn’t show up. In the election—in the very neighborhood where many of the tenants live—he got thousands of votes and I got hundreds.
During those hard times, I learned a good lesson. A good deal of the misery that the poor suffer—and ignorance—is due to the fact that they’re not organized. They’re isolated, brainwashed. I could have remained on the bench until I died. If I could have degraded myself . . . just go along. I couldn’t do it. But I was on the bench for twenty-one years—and that, to me, is a miracle.
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Nov 28, 2022 02:13
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- Sunny Side Up
- Jun 22, 2004
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Mayoist Third Condimentist
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drat that’s interesting as heck. Reminds me I want to read China Mieville’s thing about international law I think called Between Equal Rights
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Nov 28, 2022 05:24
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- Truga
- May 4, 2014
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Lipstick Apathy
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av/post combo
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Nov 28, 2022 13:51
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- PERPETUAL IDIOT
- Sep 12, 2003
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Does anyone know of a good book or even long article about life under Socialism in the Seychelles? Seems like a very interesting case study.
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Nov 30, 2022 16:05
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- Danann
- Aug 4, 2013
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https://peoplesdemocracy.in/2022/1204_pd/fiscal-requirement-welfare-state
quote:
The Fiscal Requirement of A Welfare State
Prabhat Patnaik
THE post-second world war period had seen a spate of welfare state measures in the advanced capitalist countries, especially in Europe, in emulation of what the Soviet Union was effecting. Capitalism had to accept these measures, notwithstanding its hostility to them, because it was in the midst of an existential crisis, weakened by the war, shaken by the upsurge in working-class anger, and terrified by the spread of socialism in Eastern Europe. With the subsequent consolidation of its position, however, its hostility to welfare state measures manifested itself openly. It tried to roll them back, though, thanks to the resistance of the workers, it did not have the success it would have wished; even a person like Margaret Thatcher could not succeed in dismantling the National Health Service in Britain. At the same time ironically, capitalism derived a degree of legitimacy from the welfare state, with its claim that, far from being predatory, it was indeed a system guaranteeing people’s welfare.
The maintenance of the welfare state however has meant a substantially higher tax-GDP ratio compared to the earlier period in European countries and also compared to the current figures for countries that have skimped on welfare provision. In the list of countries arranged in descending order of tax-GDP ratio for the year 2020, 29 of the top 30 countries are from Europe, both West, and East, that is, countries which have had a legacy of either Communist or Social Democratic rule; the only non-European country is Cuba which again is not only under Communist rule but whose welfare state measures are admired all over the world.
Communist governments adopting welfare state measures and raising the resources required for this purpose through high levels of taxation, and this arrangement persisting even after the collapse of communism, should not come as a surprise; what is striking however is that West European Social Democracy too has maintained a high tax-GDP ratio to finance its welfare state provisions. France tops the list with a tax-GDP ratio of 46.2 per cent, followed by Denmark (46.0), Belgium (44.6), Sweden (44.0), Finland (43.3), Italy (42.4), and Austria (41.8). The inescapable conclusion that emerges is that the maintenance of a welfare state requires heavy taxation, that is, heavy interference by the State in the pattern of income distribution that is spontaneously generated by the market.
None of these European countries has been characterised by GDP growth rates as impressive as those of the high-growth economies of today even in the heyday of the so-called Golden Age of capitalism in the immediate post-war years; their rates of GDP growth have fallen to even lower levels in the period after the collapse of the housing bubble in 2008. India, by contrast, while its officials keep patting themselves on the back for its being a supposedly high-growth economy, has abysmal welfare state measures, and, not surprisingly, a tax-GDP ratio (18.08 per cent) that is towards the lower end of the scale.
Three propositions follow from these findings. First, the so-called “trickle-down” effect of GDP growth is a completely vacuous concept. The outcome of the functioning of unfettered capitalism can never succeed spontaneously in raising the level of welfare of the mass of the working people. This is because capitalism can never function without a reserve army of labour, one of whose main functions is to keep down wages even as labour productivity keeps increasing, so that the share of surplus in social output increases, leading to larger consumption by the capitalists and their “hangers on”. The workers do not automatically get the benefits of economic growth under capitalism. True, if they organise themselves, they can fight for and even obtain better living conditions; but in such a case they would also force the State to increase the tax-GDP ratio with which to provide them with a higher social wage. The crucial determinant in other words is their capacity to fight effectively, not the rate of economic growth whose benefits are supposed to “trickle down”.
Exactly the same can be said about the belief that despite low levels of taxation, a high growth rate of GDP will automatically put so many resources into the government’s hands that it will be able to spend adequate amounts for raising the welfare of the working people. This is a completely misplaced belief: the transition to a welfare state never occurs by stealth or by small accretions of supposedly benevolent measures; it occurs as a break-through, of which the mobilisation of the requisite resources through a substantial rise in the tax-GDP ratio is a reflection.
The second proposition is the following. Not only does GDP growth not lead to a welfare state per se, but in fact, fetishising GDP growth becomes a means of preventing any transition towards a welfare state, of creating a false narrative that the working people would become actually better off by allowing transfers of resources to capitalists so that they can undertake larger investment and thereby usher in larger GDP growth, than by insisting on transfers towards themselves for the creation of a welfare state. The latter position is even pejoratively called “populism” and debunked as being wasteful and short-sighted because it entails the distribution of so-called “freebies”. This fetishisation of GDP growth is used as the argument for keeping the tax-GDP ratio low, for any increase in it, which would typically require taxing the capitalists, is supposed allegedly to destroy their “enterprise”, and hence their inducement to invest, thereby damaging GDP growth.
The reasoning here of course is analytically wrong: capitalists do not invest more just because they have larger resources at their disposal; their investment decisions are governed by the expected growth of the market and hence do not increase simply because they are given larger resources through transfers. But even this analytically-erroneous argument is used to discredit any demand for a welfare state and subvert any move towards it. What the experience of the welfare states around the world shows however is that the tax-GDP ratio has got to be increased greatly for achieving such a state, involving substantially increased taxation of the capitalists and completely ignoring the argument about its damaging growth prospects. The demand for a welfare state in other words must overcome the fetishization of GDP growth which is part of bourgeois apologetics.
The third proposition relates to the dialectics of exclusion. As resource transfers are made from the government budget towards the capitalists to stimulate GDP growth, and as the relative magnitude of transfers increases with the onset of recession and stagnation that typically constitutes the denouement for neo-liberal capitalism, fewer resources are left even for the paltry welfare expenditure that was being made earlier from the budget. This results in privatisation of education, health, and other essential services, which leads to the further exclusion of working people from all these services. Since the transfers made to the capitalists do not cause any increase in investment or even produce much immediate increase in their consumption, the reduction in welfare expenditure that matches such transfers, has the effect of reducing over all aggregate demand. This has the effect of lowering the GDP growth rate so that the effort to raise the growth rate in this manner has paradoxically the very opposite effect, but this becomes an excuse for further increases in transfers to the capitalists which has the further effect of reducing the growth rate. Since the obverse of such transfers is a reduction in welfare spending, the scale of such spending progressively diminishes. In short, we move further and further away from any prospects of a welfare state rather than moving towards it.
We in India are currently in the midst of such a dialectic. Such is the pressure on fiscal resources both because of the low tax-GDP ratio and the increasing scale of transfers to capitalists under the misguided idea of promoting investment and GDP growth, that the central government is even winding down the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme which had earlier served as a lifeline for the rural poor.
There are, to clarify and recapitulate, two distinct problems with GDP-growth fetishism that is propagated in the current era of neo-liberal capitalism: one, the analytical error underlying the claim that giving larger transfers to capitalists leads to higher investment and hence growth; and two, the claim that higher GDP growth itself leads to greater welfare for the people even if the tax-GDP ratio is small. The experience all over the world shows that building a welfare state requires a huge increase in fiscal effort.
A short essay and its arguments about how the welfare state is created by deliberate action by militant labor and proletarian governments, why trickle-down does not correlate to the creation of a welfare state, and finally how the redistribution of resources to capitalists leads to a decrease in demand that under neoliberalism only contributes further to decreased economic growth.
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Dec 5, 2022 04:04
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- animist
- Aug 28, 2018
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https://peoplesdemocracy.in/2022/1204_pd/fiscal-requirement-welfare-state
A short essay and its arguments about how the welfare state is created by deliberate action by militant labor and proletarian governments, why trickle-down does not correlate to the creation of a welfare state, and finally how the redistribution of resources to capitalists leads to a decrease in demand that under neoliberalism only contributes further to decreased economic growth.
starting to wonder if Capital is not actually particularly smart
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Dec 5, 2022 05:13
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- MLSM
- Apr 3, 2021
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by Azathoth
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https://peoplesdemocracy.in/2022/1204_pd/fiscal-requirement-welfare-state
A short essay and its arguments about how the welfare state is created by deliberate action by militant labor and proletarian governments, why trickle-down does not correlate to the creation of a welfare state, and finally how the redistribution of resources to capitalists leads to a decrease in demand that under neoliberalism only contributes further to decreased economic growth.
It’s gonna own when roads become completely privatized in the coming decades and it costs a toll to drive on them the same way many bridges do
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Dec 5, 2022 07:50
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- croup coughfield
- Apr 8, 2020
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Can't post for 65 days!
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It’s gonna own when roads become completely privatized in the coming decades and it costs a toll to drive on them the same way many bridges do
i suppose its possible, but unlikely. roads aren't profitable even with substantial tolls. roads require a ton of very expensive maintenance. the bourgeoisie already have a great deal going where the state handles the cost of repair in perpetuity. real estate developers will often front the cost of roads in exchange for cities and counties to assume the cost of maintaining them moving forward. i dont see a scenario in which it becomes preferable to assume direct ownership.
if we reach a point where private roads become the norm, the rate of profit has fallen so far that we're probably near the end of capital's hegemony
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Dec 5, 2022 14:16
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- vyelkin
- Jan 2, 2011
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i suppose its possible, but unlikely. roads aren't profitable even with substantial tolls. roads require a ton of very expensive maintenance. the bourgeoisie already have a great deal going where the state handles the cost of repair in perpetuity. real estate developers will often front the cost of roads in exchange for cities and counties to assume the cost of maintaining them moving forward. i dont see a scenario in which it becomes preferable to assume direct ownership.
if we reach a point where private roads become the norm, the rate of profit has fallen so far that we're probably near the end of capital's hegemony
Yeah, the state paying for roads is a big subsidy for companies that ship their goods on those roads, especially when the roads are maintained through taxes that fall disproportionally highly on poor people and not corporations (i.e., paying for road maintenance out of user fees like gas taxes and road tolls and vehicle registration fees, or through unprogressive income taxes, rather than something like corporate taxation). From a capitalist perspective it makes sense to privatize certain roads that can be exploited for profit, like express toll highways and bridges, but for the most part it's better for them systemwide to offload the maintenance for crucial profit-making infrastructure like that onto the state as long as they can ensure the state finances that maintenance from other revenue sources.
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Dec 5, 2022 15:04
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- croup coughfield
- Apr 8, 2020
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Can't post for 65 days!
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just one time i wish mlsm would actually think something through before laying on the ground and howling dumb doomer poo poo that doesnt even make any sense
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Dec 5, 2022 15:49
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- HiroProtagonist
- May 7, 2007
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Does anyone know of a good book or even long article about life under Socialism in the Seychelles? Seems like a very interesting case study.
i ran across this fact quite a few months back and have been interested too. if you find anything i'd be into any suggestions too.
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Dec 5, 2022 16:00
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- I Miss Snausages
- Mar 8, 2005
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Volvorific!
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Incoming random rant:
Ugh, you want to Make America Great Again? Convince America that China is as great of a threat as Russia was previously! "Can't have the plebs see what communism might get them" (Laugh off a feudal society going to atomic super power in 32 years). Start a dick waving contest with the space race so taxes und so much science and technology to beat the USSR that HACCP food standards were developed because NASA PAID Pillsbury to figure out how to make food safe just so astronauts don't get upset tum tums (now the world standard for food safety). No one cared so much about high taxes. Local, health and industry was funded by taxes! Once the USA understood that they could temporarily outspend the USSR militarily to hasten their downfall, (sorry, doing a bit of arguing economically) exactly that happened in the late 70s through the 1980s. SO FEW PEOPLE SAW THE TRUTH IN THE 1990S WITH THE CUTS THE WELFARE SYSTEM BEING DONE ALONG SIDE THE CUTS FOR MILITARY SPENDING! NO NEED TO HELP ANYMORE!
Rant off.
Sorry, had to say it to someone other than the wife and cat.
(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
I Miss Snausages has issued a correction as of 05:06 on Dec 6, 2022
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Dec 6, 2022 05:02
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- croup coughfield
- Apr 8, 2020
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Can't post for 65 days!
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cmon man i just got off a 14 hour shift nobody be weird please
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Dec 6, 2022 05:09
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- croup coughfield
- Apr 8, 2020
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Can't post for 65 days!
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feeling extra marxist tonight tho. its powerful
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Dec 6, 2022 05:11
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- Trash Ops
- Jun 19, 2012
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im having fun, isnt everyone else?
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feeling extra marxist tonight tho. its powerful
lol at the probe of the weirdo but wtf is your fuckin av
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Dec 6, 2022 05:33
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- the bitcoin of weed
- Nov 1, 2014
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Incoming random rant:
Ugh, you want to Make America Great Again? Convince America that China is as great of a threat as Russia was previously! "Can't have the plebs see what communism might get them" (Laugh off a feudal society going to atomic super power in 32 years). Start a dick waving contest with the space race so taxes und so much science and technology to beat the USSR that HACCP food standards were developed because NASA PAID Pillsbury to figure out how to make food safe just so astronauts don't get upset tum tums (now the world standard for food safety). No one cared so much about high taxes. Local, health and industry was funded by taxes! Once the USA understood that they could temporarily outspend the USSR militarily to hasten their downfall, (sorry, doing a bit of arguing economically) exactly that happened in the late 70s through the 1980s. SO FEW PEOPLE SAW THE TRUTH IN THE 1990S WITH THE CUTS THE WELFARE SYSTEM BEING DONE ALONG SIDE THE CUTS FOR MILITARY SPENDING! NO NEED TO HELP ANYMORE!
Rant off.
Sorry, had to say it to someone other than the wife and cat.
(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
not normal, but right (?)
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Dec 6, 2022 05:35
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- croup coughfield
- Apr 8, 2020
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Can't post for 65 days!
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lol at the probe of the weirdo but wtf is your fuckin av
lol i was posting like a hog last week and someone tagged me for it, not sure who. i put a fix in the queue twice but have since learned of some policies regarding that so it may be a bit longer. im starting to come around on it, though. its upsetting, and everyone hates it so i get a lot of attention. otoh i also hate it like poison
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Dec 6, 2022 05:41
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- Tankbuster
- Oct 1, 2021
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Incoming random rant:
Ugh, you want to Make America Great Again? Convince America that China is as great of a threat as Russia was previously! "Can't have the plebs see what communism might get them" (Laugh off a feudal society going to atomic super power in 32 years). Start a dick waving contest with the space race so taxes und so much science and technology to beat the USSR that HACCP food standards were developed because NASA PAID Pillsbury to figure out how to make food safe just so astronauts don't get upset tum tums (now the world standard for food safety). No one cared so much about high taxes. Local, health and industry was funded by taxes! Once the USA understood that they could temporarily outspend the USSR militarily to hasten their downfall, (sorry, doing a bit of arguing economically) exactly that happened in the late 70s through the 1980s. SO FEW PEOPLE SAW THE TRUTH IN THE 1990S WITH THE CUTS THE WELFARE SYSTEM BEING DONE ALONG SIDE THE CUTS FOR MILITARY SPENDING! NO NEED TO HELP ANYMORE!
Rant off.
Sorry, had to say it to someone other than the wife and cat.
(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
Good Post.
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Dec 6, 2022 05:42
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- GalacticAcid
- Apr 8, 2013
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NEW YORK VALUES
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been doing a reading group with two friends. we pick an essay every month and read that and just discuss it for a while on a Discord VC. afterwards one of us summarizes the discussion and does a thread of links to other works mentioned throughout the chat.
it’s been nice, doing one essay keeps it a manageable commitment & focused topic.
cheer’s.
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Dec 6, 2022 05:46
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- croup coughfield
- Apr 8, 2020
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Can't post for 65 days!
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been doing a reading group with two friends. we pick an essay every month and read that and just discuss it for a while on a Discord VC. afterwards one of us summarizes the discussion and does a thread of links to other works mentioned throughout the chat.
it’s been nice, doing one essay keeps it a manageable commitment & focused topic.
cheer’s.
have any of the essays stood out to you as something the thread may want to check out?
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Dec 6, 2022 05:47
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- gradenko_2000
- Oct 5, 2010
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HELL SERPENT
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Lipstick Apathy
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https://twitter.com/comradejoma/status/1599593222267076609?t=mbM4Z8V29wx9MMzVZfuTpg&s=19
(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Dec 6, 2022 05:48
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- croup coughfield
- Apr 8, 2020
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Can't post for 65 days!
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seriously im so tired
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Dec 6, 2022 05:49
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- GalacticAcid
- Apr 8, 2013
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NEW YORK VALUES
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have any of the essays stood out to you as something the thread may want to check out?
American Decline? by Marco D’eramo on the continued strength of the US empire was good, or in any event a good discussion starter
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Dec 6, 2022 05:56
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- GalacticAcid
- Apr 8, 2013
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NEW YORK VALUES
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I think it’s paywalled but if you search a New Left Review essay on Google you can usually bypass the paywall by accessing the cached version
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Dec 6, 2022 06:00
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- MLSM
- Apr 3, 2021
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by Azathoth
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just one time i wish mlsm would actually think something through before laying on the ground and howling dumb doomer poo poo that doesnt even make any sense
I had to pay a bridge toll on the way to see your mom so I was a bit grumpy
Sorry
(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Dec 6, 2022 06:49
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- Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3
- Nov 15, 2003
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It’s gonna own when roads become completely privatized in the coming decades and it costs a toll to drive on them the same way many bridges do
we already have EZ-pass lanes that cost money to use
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Dec 6, 2022 16:01
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- croup coughfield
- Apr 8, 2020
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Can't post for 65 days!
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a toll booth is not privatization. the shareholders do not have private control of the road/bridge
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Dec 6, 2022 16:25
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- the bitcoin of weed
- Nov 1, 2014
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more likely that highwaymen make a comeback on particularly rural roads and start doing elaborate freight heists or something
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Dec 6, 2022 16:36
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- Cpt_Obvious
- Jun 18, 2007
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The warlord era may suck but it leads to great things so who can say.
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Dec 6, 2022 18:24
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- Cpt_Obvious
- Jun 18, 2007
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Related: I don't remember which thread suggested the people's history of ideas but it's great thanks.
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Dec 6, 2022 18:26
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- Maximo Roboto
- Feb 4, 2012
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Here's a big-brained counterfactual question- in Marxist thought, is fascism an inevitable consequence of petit bourgeois ressentiment, and if so, is that idea rooted in the Soviet Union's experiences in WWII? It almost seems like communists have an inherent hatred for fascism because of the betrayal of Operation Barbarossa, but before then during the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, there was more of an ambiguity there.
And is there a sort of emotional response, the fear is that fascism, by making entreaties to a subset of the working class and by miming revolutionary rhetoric, is a dangerous seducing ideology that threatens communism's appeal? As opposed to say bourgeois liberalism or reformist social democracy.
So in a different world if Mussolini's march on Rome failed and weirdo Futurists took over, while the hard right but not national socialist DNVP and whatever the Conservative Revolution was about won power in Germany instead, would Marxist thought have developed to regard different ideologies as the major threats to communism?
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Dec 6, 2022 23:29
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- mawarannahr
- May 21, 2019
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Here's a big-brained counterfactual question- in Marxist thought, is fascism an inevitable consequence of petit bourgeois ressentiment, and if so, is that idea rooted in the Soviet Union's experiences in WWII? It almost seems like communists have an inherent hatred for fascism because of the betrayal of Operation Barbarossa, but before then during the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, there was more of an ambiguity there.
And is there a sort of emotional response, the fear is that fascism, by making entreaties to a subset of the working class and by miming revolutionary rhetoric, is a dangerous seducing ideology that threatens communism's appeal? As opposed to say bourgeois liberalism or reformist social democracy.
So in a different world if Mussolini's march on Rome failed and weirdo Futurists took over, while the hard right but not national socialist DNVP and whatever the Conservative Revolution was about won power in Germany instead, would Marxist thought have developed to regard different ideologies as the major threats to communism?
No, fascism was identified as a threat well before WW2. In Italy’s case, specifically, supporting the imperialist policy of the bourgeoisie and urging Italy’s entry into the war earned Mussolini expulsion from the Italian Socialist Party.
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Dec 6, 2022 23:37
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- Maximo Roboto
- Feb 4, 2012
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Operation Barbarossa betrayed Molotov-Ribbentrop, and simple strategic sense to the extent that Stalin dismissed the idea of Germany attacking in that timeframe, what's the big deal
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Dec 6, 2022 23:45
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- genericnick
- Dec 26, 2012
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Operation Barbarossa betrayed Molotov-Ribbentrop, and simple strategic sense to the extent that Stalin dismissed the idea of Germany attacking in that timeframe, what's the big deal
You seem to think it's a big deal:
It almost seems like communists have an inherent hatred for fascism because of the betrayal of Operation Barbarossa,
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Dec 6, 2022 23:50
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- mawarannahr
- May 21, 2019
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drat it was that syq?
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Dec 6, 2022 23:50
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- Adbot
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ADBOT LOVES YOU
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Jun 2, 2024 09:13
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- croup coughfield
- Apr 8, 2020
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Can't post for 65 days!
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very carefully
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Dec 7, 2022 00:27
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Nov 27, 2022 19:08
