gradenko_2000 posted:

I really don't get why Bruenig wants to keep using """Scandinavia""" as a model of "socialism". It feels almost liberal in the way that they're running scared of bringing up actual socialist states out of fear that they'll be called Stalinists or whatever.

But that's going to happen regardless. The BBC put the Kremlin in the background of a photo of Corbyn and photoshopped his hat to look more like an ushanka.

Slanderer posted:

really hosed up that he doesn't use China as a model of successful socialism in our age, i agree

Mr. Lobe posted:

hey, uh I haven't looked around CSPAM in like over a year to see this thread but wasn't this the PSL thread once or something? whatever happened to that?

also hello I am with the ISO... kind of. don't really live in the states anymore. recently moved to Germany and more just doing academic union organizing stuff while getting more of a feel for the local landscape.

I also organize with Science for the People which just had a re-foundation meeting just last February or so and is in the process of coming together into a coherent organization after being dormant for decades

Serf posted:

i reckon its because the scandinavian countries are safe, white nations that normies have heard vaguely positive things about

Forums Terrorist posted:

someone post the herrenvolk democracy Jacobin edit

Slanderer posted:

drat it's almost like the proceeds in those nations arent distributed via socialized programs but instead are chiefly funneled towards a small class of god-kings

gradenko_2000 posted:

I really don't get why Bruenig wants to keep using """Scandinavia""" as a model of "socialism". It feels almost liberal in the way that they're running scared of bringing up actual socialist states out of fear that they'll be called Stalinists or whatever.

But that's going to happen regardless. The BBC put the Kremlin in the background of a photo of Corbyn and photoshopped his hat to look more like an ushanka.

GalacticAcid posted:

Pener Kropoopkin posted:

If a sovereign wealth fund is a socialist institution then one wonders why he doesn't bring up Saudi Arabia or the UAE.

Enjoy posted:

He very clearly pointed to democracy

R. Guyovich posted:

liberal democracies are closer to monarchies than they are to socialism.

Pener Kropoopkin posted:

sovereign wealth funds are financial instruments that systemically seek to maximize their profits. even if the people directly elected every single officer of the wealth fund, that wouldn't make it socialist.

Enjoy posted:

And what is the state? It is an organisation of the ruling class — in Germany, for instance, of the Junkers and capitalists. And therefore what the German Plekhanovs (Scheidemann, Lensch, and others) call "war-time socialism" is in fact war-time state-monopoly capitalism, or, to put it more simply and clearly, war-time penal servitude for the workers and war-time protection for capitalist profits.

Now try to substitute for the Junker-capitalist state, for the landowner-capitalist state, a revolutionary-democratic state, i.e., a state which in a revolutionary way abolishes all privileges and does not fear to introduce the fullest democracy in a revolutionary way. You will find that, given a really revolutionary-democratic state, state- monopoly capitalism inevitably and unavoidably implies a step, and more than one step, towards socialism!

For if a huge capitalist undertaking becomes a monopoly, it means that it serves the whole nation. If it has become a state monopoly, it means that the state (i.e., the armed organisation of the population, the workers and peasants above all, provided there is revolutionary democracy) directs the whole undertaking. In whose interest?

Either in the interest of the landowners and capitalists, in which case we have not a revolutionary-democratic, but a reactionary-bureaucratic state, an imperialist republic.

Or in the interest of revolutionary democracy—and then it is a step towards socialism.

For socialism is merely the next step forward from state-capitalist monopoly. Or, in other words, socialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be capitalist monopoly.

Enjoy posted:

And what is the state? It is an organisation of the ruling class — in Germany, for instance, of the Junkers and capitalists. And therefore what the German Plekhanovs (Scheidemann, Lensch, and others) call "war-time socialism" is in fact war-time state-monopoly capitalism, or, to put it more simply and clearly, war-time penal servitude for the workers and war-time protection for capitalist profits.

Now try to substitute for the Junker-capitalist state, for the landowner-capitalist state, a revolutionary-democratic state, i.e., a state which in a revolutionary way abolishes all privileges and does not fear to introduce the fullest democracy in a revolutionary way. You will find that, given a really revolutionary-democratic state, state- monopoly capitalism inevitably and unavoidably implies a step, and more than one step, towards socialism!

For if a huge capitalist undertaking becomes a monopoly, it means that it serves the whole nation. If it has become a state monopoly, it means that the state (i.e., the armed organisation of the population, the workers and peasants above all, provided there is revolutionary democracy) directs the whole undertaking. In whose interest?

Either in the interest of the landowners and capitalists, in which case we have not a revolutionary-democratic, but a reactionary-bureaucratic state, an imperialist republic.

Or in the interest of revolutionary democracy—and then it is a step towards socialism.

For socialism is merely the next step forward from state-capitalist monopoly. Or, in other words, socialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be capitalist monopoly.

Pener Kropoopkin posted:

sovereign wealth funds are financial instruments that systemically seek to maximize their profits.

Kurnugia posted:

and why is that do you think? what is it that drives sovereign wealth funds to always seek to maximize their profits?

StashAugustine posted:

Also bruenig has admitted that Scandinavia isn't socialist, they just have institutions which could be easily socialist if they were directed differently

Karl Barks posted:

Straightforward from here:
1. organize the third world working class
2. crush the global capitalist hegemon
3. world proletariet revolution

Pener Kropoopkin posted:

Electoralism isn't a dead end so much as a platform to advance a revolutionary line, but you at least need to have that revolutionary line. It's delusional to think you can elect your way to socialism and maintain all the trappings of bourgeois democracy, but electoral politics are where the people are at.

ShriekingMarxist posted:

They might have the infrastructure and distribution, but they don't have the material and production to become "socialist". Socialism isn't about keeping the current model of production/trade and just slicing all the profits off the top and ensuring they're distributed to everyone in that country equally, it requires a fundamental change in the system of production and people's relationship to it, and a massive push for domestic industries to replace exploitative imports and imperialist trade policies. There's no such thing as socialism in one country, or socialism wherein a strong welfare state uses the current instruments of capitalism to benefit all of its citizens, they're just more progressive liberal democracies.

The sooner we stop fetishizing nordic model poo poo and get real about imperialism and real revolutionary changes, the sooner we can stop loving around with the cycle of progressive reforms -> era of stability/growth -> reactionary regress -> crash bullshit, reformism is a dead end, electoralism is a dead end. The NHS is under siege in England, and casual fascism is en vogue all over the western world. You can't stop the encroachment of profit driven destruction of public good.

Also planet's dyin' Cloud, we don't have 5 generations of incrementalist gains to push the capitalists back.

Slanderer posted:

what do your see as your role in the revolution, my friend

GalacticAcid posted:

Mine will be passing out bernie sanders stickers and going door to door for Cynthia Nixon

WhiskeyJuvenile posted:

gently caress, I can't have find that what job will you have after communism post

HorrificExistence posted:

Amazing scenes from Moscow, largest protest in a decade at least

CPRF organized a protest that had at least 100,000 people in it. Russians are not gonna let them raise the age of pensions.