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UnknownTarget posted:These are all related and the idea that capitalism is not going to go away is correct. Capitalism is a very natural process. It's literally evolution, but in market form. Not only have the billionaires accumulated unfair amounts of wealth, they did it in ways that are at least impossible for the current generations (who can only try and buy wealth-producing things from the existing billionaires), and at worst directly gaining their wealth on the backs of conquest and genocide. The point of this analysis has multiple important points. One, the end of history isn't real; where the wealth in the billionaire class's hands came from is a relevant point. In the past, we considered it fair that we might close a loophole that let them get away with bad behavior, but don't take away their toys that they earned "legally". We're at the point where tracing the problems back to their roots and correcting them are necessary if we're going to have a functional society going forward. Two, recognizing the social truth that wealth literally equals power needs to inform our sense of justice. Making it difficult to concentrate wealth into billionaire-levels is socially necessary not out of jealousy or fairness, it's out of the need to maintain law and order and democracy. Whether that's from 95% marginal tax rates and economic "creative destruction" that make it impossible to keep a huge business profitable for too long, or strict antitrust regulation, or both, preventing generational concentrations of power from happening in the future (assuming we can break up the billionaires in the first place) is an important part of the social contract.
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Dec 16, 2019 20:11
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If you’re posting on the internet that all frontiers closed by the ‘70s and that all billionaires like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg had been made by then, I think you really need to consider what “frontiers” are.
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Dec 16, 2019 22:27
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If ten people became billionaires in the tech boom, that kind of proves the point that it's just random luck and opportunism, not an actual feature of a society. edit: the biggest expenses for most people today are food and housing, both of which are constrained by land, and there's no more land without someone holding a deed and charging ever-increasing market rates to use, let alone own. That's what ran out during previous generations. Infinite Karma fucked around with this message at 22:58 on Dec 16, 2019 |
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Dec 16, 2019 22:56
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UnknownTarget posted:These are all related and the idea that capitalism is not going to go away is correct. Capitalism is a very natural process. It's literally evolution, but in market form. This is nonsense. The idea that a person can legally own land (or real estate, or shares in a business, etc) is not some inherent property of nature. Those are things that require a government that will enforce them. Like many people, you are likely confusing "capitalism" with the concept of "markets/trade."
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Dec 16, 2019 23:34
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Ytlaya posted:This is nonsense. The idea that a person can legally own land (or real estate, or shares in a business, etc) is not some inherent property of nature. Those are things that require a government that will enforce them. It's pretty natural for a dog to piss on the ground to claim an area of territory as their own. You're confusing private ownership with capitalism, though I'll give you that you can't have capitalism without private ownership of assets. That being said, ownership is part of the natural world and every type of system approaches it in some way. Communism is communal ownership for example. But communism still allows for private effects like photos, mementos, etc. - if not explicitly then implicitly through human nature. What's the point of this conversational detour? How does it relate to the future of progressive politics? UnknownTarget fucked around with this message at 23:46 on Dec 16, 2019 |
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Dec 16, 2019 23:41
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Personal/private distinction. The idea that people can posess personal effects and the idea that people can claim exclusive posession of the means of human prosperity are not the same thing.
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Dec 16, 2019 23:49
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I agree with the implicit argument in your statement; that the means of progress and prosperity (power) should not be so easily commanded by such a small, unnacountable individuals. But, without falling back on the "ism wars" of the early 1900s, what is the path forward for progressive politics to answer this challenge and what does the destination look like?
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Dec 17, 2019 01:21
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Whatever you call it, the way society currently runs is resulting in a large amount of productive capability being wasted, both in terms of wealth accumulating at the top as it is extracted from all the levels below by the way private ownership works, and also with private ownership and the wealth extraction motive being the driver for what productive capacity is applied towards. Which is to say we're all making stupid poo poo because what matters is that any poo poo is made and sold to facilitate the wealth extraction process. Being as this process is literally killing the planet it's very, very soon going to be absolutely necessary to change it, because if the people at the bottom start dying in droves then there's no capacity for growth left. If you can't extract raw resources from the global south any more then that collapses a large amount of the economy above it. And if you can't start directing industry towards less profitable but loving survivable methods of production, it's literally gonna collapse in on itself. So I don't see how the private ownership model can continue to function? Everything about it is unsuited to the world we will soon live in. It's not a moral argument any more, it's a practical one. The question is how effectively society can get ahead of the need to change to something else, thus far it's been "not at all" because the same ownership model also drives information availability and determines electoral outcomes. I can't tell you the perfect path forward or the destination but I don't see any desirable destinations that don't involve the elimination of private control of the means of production because that, ultimately, is the problem. I hope that somewhere the stars can align and someone can get a head start on the problem, and I hope that anywhere that can't will start to turn on the concept once it starts to fail, but society as it stands is structured around the perpetuation of that model of organization even to the point of its own self destruction, which it does in small scale every 10-15 years. I've suggested in UKMT that you can start by picking at current, visible failures of the private model. The US of course has its healthcare stuff, but there are countless small ways where private ownership fucks over people's lives, in housing, in job closures, in all sorts of little places. They don't have to be national policies but the more people you can get on board with the idea that we can, as a society, at least on a small scale, say no to the predation of private interests and make things that work for us, that opens doors for people to think about doing it on a bigger scale. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 01:37 on Dec 17, 2019 |
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Dec 17, 2019 01:28
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Having a vague sense of the destination isn't the same as having a path forward and practical arguments aren't as separable from moral ones as we might like to think.
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Dec 17, 2019 18:02
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Helsing posted:Having a vague sense of the destination isn't the same as having a path forward and practical arguments aren't as separable from moral ones as we might like to think. It's literally impossible to provide a clear path forward for any goal that isn't accomplishable in the next few years, because to do so would require magically predicting the future (or at least to provide a path forward to the extent people are demanding it). My guess is that truly significant change won't be possible until society faces a greater crisis, simply because the wealthy have an overwhelming amount of power. But it will be necessary at some point, simply because climate change and the nature of capitalism to inevitably increasingly concentrate wealth will force the issue. Also, it's stupid to say "you can't advocate for things unless there's a clear short-term path to them." Someone could make the exact same argument against abolitionists in the US in the early 19th century. There wasn't a legislative path towards accomplishing that at the time, and it ended up requiring armed conflict, but that doesn't mean that abolitionists were somehow wrong. There's value to advocating for things even if current power structures oppose those things, whether the thing in question is slavery or rent seeking.
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Dec 17, 2019 19:34
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Ytlaya posted:It's literally impossible to provide a clear path forward for any goal that isn't accomplishable in the next few years, because to do so would require magically predicting the future (or at least to provide a path forward to the extent people are demanding it). The problem here is how to translate big picture goals into an actionable agenda that motivates people to fight. There has to be some guiding vision or set of principles that inform the left on how to use a victory and that allow it to survive temporary setbacks or defeats. Otherwise you're left with this idea that we should just sit around repeating the same ideas to the same tiny crowds and hoping that after the next crisis people will suddenly see the relevance and urgency of our ideas and that really there's nothing we can do to change anyway, we're already perfect and we just need to wait around for the rest of society to see the innate correctness of our analysis.
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Dec 17, 2019 21:08
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OwlFancier posted:Whatever you call it, the way society currently runs is resulting in a large amount of productive capability being wasted, both in terms of wealth accumulating at the top as it is extracted from all the levels below by the way private ownership works, and also with private ownership and the wealth extraction motive being the driver for what productive capacity is applied towards. Which is to say we're all making stupid poo poo because what matters is that any poo poo is made and sold to facilitate the wealth extraction process. So I still don't agree that private ownership will go away, but we're talking about degrees of agreement here rather than total misalignment. With your last paragraph, are you suggesting that you pick these visible failures of the private model and lobby against them? What's a specific action here that you're thinking of or would like to see happen, even if a perfect world? Imagine a movie and play your idea out, I'd like to see what you're thinking. Helsing posted:Having a vague sense of the destination isn't the same as having a path forward and practical arguments aren't as separable from moral ones as we might like to think. I don't know what you mean. Helsing posted:The problem here is how to translate big picture goals into an actionable agenda that motivates people to fight. There has to be some guiding vision or set of principles that inform the left on how to use a victory and that allow it to survive temporary setbacks or defeats. Otherwise you're left with this idea that we should just sit around repeating the same ideas to the same tiny crowds and hoping that after the next crisis people will suddenly see the relevance and urgency of our ideas and that really there's nothing we can do to change anyway, we're already perfect and we just need to wait around for the rest of society to see the innate correctness of our analysis. This I agree with, but that's also why I was advocating for my website earlier: local people create local objectives that are attainable by the people nearby. Once accomplished, it empowers that group which in turns empowers the overall movement ("Look, other people that are a part of this are changing things where they are, we can do it too!"). I think it's down to picking a destination ("We want the world to look like this when we're done") and then finding small things that build up over time. Here's another project idea; create a VR experience of "the world of tomorrow" where you can showcase climate change but also really interesting ways that a functioning society has adapted to that change. Underwater cities, etc. Stuff that really inspires people to think big about what they can change.
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Dec 18, 2019 04:10
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UnknownTarget posted:This I agree with, but that's also why I was advocating for my website earlier: local people create local objectives that are attainable by the people nearby. Once accomplished, it empowers that group which in turns empowers the overall movement ("Look, other people that are a part of this are changing things where they are, we can do it too!"). I think it's down to picking a destination ("We want the world to look like this when we're done") and then finding small things that build up over time. Richard Rorty was right. This is really just not terribly complicated, to regain control of the country progressives need to - Articulate a clear agenda and vision for the U.S. and frame it in personal terms to voters - recent developments like the GND and MFA are a good start to this, although the policy desperately needs to be fleshed out, groups like Sunrise still have no idea what it is they're actually advocating for - Recruit and promote genuinely charismatic leaders who don't constantly speechify (none of the current movement leaders fit this description IMO) - Be proud to be American and reclaim patriotism - flagellating the flag and allowing conservatives to lay claim as the only actually patriotic political movement was the self-own of the century - Quit the self-righteous identity politics jerkoff sessions, stop relitigating history, rally around the American identity as a grand unifier and make it clear that everyone is welcome here and is to be treated with respect without being constantly loving overbearing
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Dec 18, 2019 15:43
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UnknownTarget posted:So I still don't agree that private ownership will go away, but we're talking about degrees of agreement here rather than total misalignment. With your last paragraph, are you suggesting that you pick these visible failures of the private model and lobby against them? What's a specific action here that you're thinking of or would like to see happen, even if a perfect world? Imagine a movie and play your idea out, I'd like to see what you're thinking. Housing sucks, rents too high, quality terrible, tenancy agreements not secure, take housing into state ownership, run as a service, not as a profit making model, offer secure tenancies, low rates, subsidize with tax revenue from a second house tax or something. Basically how it used to work in the UK before they privatized everything. The state ownership model works and solves a lot of the problems with private enterprise. Because the private problems are that it works only to maximise profit.
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Dec 18, 2019 16:33
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KOTEX GOD OF BLOOD posted:You really don't need to/shouldn't try to techbro progressivism out of the political wilderness. OwlFancier posted:Housing sucks, rents too high, quality terrible, tenancy agreements not secure, take housing into state ownership, run as a service, not as a profit making model, offer secure tenancies, low rates, subsidize with tax revenue from a second house tax or something. Basically how it used to work in the UK before they privatized everything. The state ownership model works and solves a lot of the problems with private enterprise. Because the private problems are that it works only to maximise profit. These are all solutions that I agree with, thank you guys. I like the idea of rebuilding the identity. Do you think the world will reject the idea of an American identity though? I know I asked earlier to start painting a picture of where we're going and I think we're doing that. What about paths to that destination? How can we (as progressives), for example, discover and recruit good leaders? How can we retake the flag and the identity? How can we take housing into state ownerships and run it as a service, etc? If not how right now then how can we get there from here? I'm still stuck on my "techbro" idea of a website but there are other ideas out there!
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Dec 18, 2019 16:44
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KOTEX GOD OF BLOOD posted:- Be proud to be American and reclaim patriotism - flagellating the flag and allowing conservatives to lay claim as the only actually patriotic political movement was the self-own of the century While I agree that liberals have coopted identity politics to an absurd degree, you will not win the emerging demographics by whitewashing the crimes of the past and present. White leftists are constantly hoping that demographics will become destiny but the follow through involves articulating a reason why people should cast a vote for your candidate. The default party of most minorities isn't the democrats- it's "I don't vote." KOTEX GOD OF BLOOD posted:- Quit the self-righteous identity politics jerkoff sessions, stop relitigating history, rally around the American identity as a grand unifier and make it clear that everyone is welcome here and is to be treated with respect without being constantly loving overbearing Once again this kind of strasserism has no real home. A bunch of whites carping about how everyone is welcome here is blatant performance given the extreme segregation in housing and employment. How do you think cramming down the flag will work when a huge portion of minorities know they are severely discriminated against in every facet of society?
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Dec 18, 2019 16:46
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CAPS LOCK BROKEN posted:While I agree that liberals have coopted identity politics to an absurd degree, you will not win the emerging demographics by whitewashing the crimes of the past and present. White leftists are constantly hoping that demographics will become destiny but the follow through involves articulating a reason why people should cast a vote for your candidate. The default party of most minorities isn't the democrats- it's "I don't vote." Unfortunately for the left, depending solely on votes from demographic minorities is a failing electoral strategy in American politics, so you have to articulate a rhetoric and agenda that also appeals to white voters. Fortunately, there is broad consonance in the issues that affect these voters and minorities in urban centers. Unfortunately, rather than preaching national unity and solidarity behind class issues, progressives broadly have gone the "gently caress white people!" route, and then are shocked when tons of white voters switch from Obama and hand Trump a victory. The response has been "well of course, they're racist!" and a continuation of the identity politics kabuki. These people were hosed by Wall Street; poverty, shifting economic tides, and the opioid epidemic have turned their communities into forgotten wastelands. Is it really so surprising that when large segments of the left elite have doubled down on gently caress Whitey, and their political activism revolves around that tenet, those people end up being co-opted by racists and conservative opportunists? The American left consistently frames having a credible approach with white voters and having a credible approach with minorities as a mutually exclusive dichotomy. That is a false choice, and acts as a really succinct demonstration of just how spent they are as an ideological and political force. CAPS LOCK BROKEN posted:Once again this kind of strasserism has no real home. A bunch of whites carping about how everyone is welcome here is blatant performance given the extreme segregation in housing and employment. How do you think cramming down the flag will work when a huge portion of minorities know they are severely discriminated against in every facet of society?
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Dec 18, 2019 17:36
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UnknownTarget posted:This I agree with, but that's also why I was advocating for my website earlier: local people create local objectives that are attainable by the people nearby. Once accomplished, it empowers that group which in turns empowers the overall movement ("Look, other people that are a part of this are changing things where they are, we can do it too!"). I think it's down to picking a destination ("We want the world to look like this when we're done") and then finding small things that build up over time. I don't think this strategy is going to scale up to anything past the local level. CAPS LOCK BROKEN posted:Once again this kind of strasserism has no real home. A bunch of whites carping about how everyone is welcome here is blatant performance given the extreme segregation in housing and employment. How do you think cramming down the flag will work when a huge portion of minorities know they are severely discriminated against in every facet of society? I think this is a more complicated issue than you're implying. "Rally around the American identity as a grand unifier and make it clear that everyone is welcome here and is to be treated with respect" sounds an awful lot like 2008 campaign Obama or any number of other mainstream Democratic politicians.
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Dec 18, 2019 21:00
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And you can look at the trajectory of the obama administration for the society-wide effects of trying to do left/liberal-nationalism. The nation is fundamentally a false concept, it doesn't actually make sense, so if you start trying to hammer out a coherent national identity you're gonna immediately find that a whole bunch of your population isn't on board with it, and they're gonna start fighting back. Especially if you try to do it in a country with a massive amount of latent inequality, because people who may have been soft-nationalist and right wing will interpret it as you trying to take it off them, and become much more nationalist and much more right wing. You can't build a democratic, unified nation full of inequality, you either have to suppress the democratic aspect or not sign on to the nationalist ticket. Because otherwise you'll just alienate everyone who doesn't share your idea of what the nation is or should be, and you make a huge amount of room for your political enemies to say any policies they don't like are an attempt by you to corrupt the nation. Liberal nationalism is easily the least practical option because "we are a nation with coherent ideological values" and "you should be free to have your own values and live how you like" are fundamentally incompatible. And by far the most open to attack from anyone and everyone.
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Dec 18, 2019 21:06
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Helsing posted:I think this is a more complicated issue than you're implying. "Rally around the American identity as a grand unifier and make it clear that everyone is welcome here and is to be treated with respect" sounds an awful lot like 2008 campaign Obama or any number of other mainstream Democratic politicians. OwlFancier posted:And you can look at the trajectory of the obama administration for the society-wide effects of trying to do left/liberal-nationalism. Naturally a whole bunch of deplorables are going to have an issue with us defining America as a place where people are supposed to be equal together no matter what they look or sound like or where they're from, but guess what, gently caress 'em. We can take the flag back if we want, but the left isn't even bothering to try. KOTEX GOD OF BLOOD fucked around with this message at 22:13 on Dec 18, 2019 |
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Dec 18, 2019 22:04
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KOTEX GOD OF BLOOD posted:This is barely intelligible and it's hard to know what to pin down here, but suffice it to say that "the nation is fundamentally a false concept" is not how this works on the ground. Electoral politics is not like Left Internet Thunderdome and America means a lot to a lot of people – immigrants especially, try talking to them sometime! – it's deeply dumb to stomp on our own dicks by giving up America as a fundamentally broken and nonexistent concept while we're trying to win American elections. Yeah my entire family consists of immigrants and consider America to be a huge joke. People move here because they can get a better deal than the old country, not because they have signed on to the US leitkultur.
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Dec 18, 2019 22:14
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KOTEX GOD OF BLOOD posted:This is barely intelligible and it's hard to know what to pin down here, but suffice it to say that "the nation is fundamentally a false concept" is not how this works on the ground. Electoral politics is not like Left Internet Thunderdome and America means a lot to a lot of people – immigrants especially, try talking to them sometime! – it's deeply dumb to stomp on our own dicks by giving up America as a fundamentally broken and nonexistent concept while we're trying to win American elections. I am saying that the nation as a concept is inherently nonsensical, it means whatever you want it to mean to you. Trying to make it mean one thing to everybody means excluding some of the existing concepts of what the nation means, which are going to be extremely varied in a society with massive inequality. Thus, if you try to run on a nationalist ticket you've got to be prepared to exclude people who don't sign up to your idea of what the nation is. Which the right is perfectly willing to do! Because that's what it wants, it wants to drive out or suppress everyone outside of its definition of what the nation means and who it's for. But you can't do that as a liberal, you can't want to run a varied and pluralistic society which also has a definite and prescriptive concept of nationhood, because you aren't willing to stamp out your detractors, because stamping out the detractors is fundamentally incompatible with your platform, and also your supporters do not control enough of the votes and other parts of the power structure, to keep you in power. Whether or not the nation means things to people is irrelevant, it doesn't mean the same thing to everyone. And if you try to make it mean that, that's how you get the tea party and the #resistance. Both appeal to their own personal notions of what America means, both would claim exclusive posession of the soul of the nation, neither one commands a compelling majority, though the right is doing better. I would suggest because they're more willing to really go whole hog with the exclusionary nature of coherent nationalism. As a concept it fits the right far better than it does the socially liberal center. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 22:25 on Dec 18, 2019 |
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Dec 18, 2019 22:19
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OwlFancier posted:I am saying that the nation as a concept is inherently nonsensical, it means whatever you want it to mean to you. Trying to make it mean one thing to everybody means excluding some of the existing concepts of what the nation means, which are going to be extremely varied in a society with massive inequality.
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Dec 18, 2019 22:25
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KOTEX GOD OF BLOOD posted:Yes, defining a nation is inherently exclusionary. No, that doesn't preclude progressives from defining America, because then all we're excluding is committed assholes and we don't need them to win. Progressives should make the definite and prescriptive concept of American nationhood our varied and pluralistic society. You're acting like that's a fundamental contradiction and it's not. In fact, the left's unwillingness to do this is a major reason it has failed to control votes and levers of power. I am saying that it tried that with Obama and what it did was produce a committed right wing reaction, which the center was not truly willing to stamp out, because stamping out all dissenters is not compatible with the permissive attitude of the socially progressive wing. You're not just excluding committed assholes, you're also excluding all the not-so-committed assholes who are more receptive to the committed rear end in a top hat propaganda machine (which liberal society won't, even can't, stamp out) than they are to yours. You're radicalizing them against you because they probably weren't particularly on board with your position to begin with and definitely aren't if you start talking about trying to spread it. They may have been content to leave your position as a problem for the parts of they country they don't have anything to do with, but if you start trying to really push it, they're the kind that works themselves into a frenzy at the prospect of a gender neutral bathroom in their small town or whatever. Because again, the idea of a socially progressive and tolerant government aggressively stamping out regressive social attitudes is nonsense, you don't get something like that, what you get is "well they're entitled to their opinion too we can't be too harsh about it" because that's a massive section of the socially progressive movement. It's full of people who actually really care about "the discourse" and poo poo. If you start talking about doing away with that then you're really gonna start running out of support. I do not believe there is a majority anywhere for mandatory social progressivism. It's like saying why don't LGBT advocacy groups just seize control of the government and implement their desired reforms? That's clearly nonsense, instead those reforms are piggybacked onto a nondescript "tolerant" agenda that is very gentle about telling people everywhere in the country that they have to be A OK with all of it. And this, of course, limits how good the reforms can get, and is also why there is a growing reaction in many cases, because the tolerant center that makes up the majority of the electoral support will allow that to happen in the name of discourse. You can't look at the history of social progress in the USA and think "well clearly there's a huge appetite here for aggressive social reform by the central government" because the whole thing is a history of the most delayed, half assed crawl towards something vaguely decent that tends to stabilize just past the point of staving off armed rebellion. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 22:37 on Dec 18, 2019 |
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Dec 18, 2019 22:33
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OwlFancier posted:I am saying that it tried that with Obama and what it did was produce a committed right wing reaction, which the center was not truly willing to stamp out, because stamping out all dissenters is not compatible with the permissive attitude of the socially progressive wing. OwlFancier posted:You're not just excluding committed assholes, you're also excluding all the not-so-committed assholes who are more receptive to the committed rear end in a top hat propaganda machine (which liberal society won't, even can't, stamp out) than they are to yours. You're radicalizing them against you because they probably weren't particularly on board with your position to begin with and definitely aren't if you start talking about trying to spread it. They may have been content to leave your position as a problem for the parts of they country they don't have anything to do with, but if you start trying to really push it, they're the kind that works themselves into a frenzy at the prospect of a gender neutral bathroom in their small town or whatever. You also keep beating around the bush about what reforms we are talking about specifically. I don't think anyone is talking about creating a Rainbow Stasi. How are you defining this "mandatory social progressivism" which is sure to spark an electoral backlash? What do you actually mean by "aggressive social reform"? We are seeing strong majorities in support of Medicare for All and over 90% support for the Green New Deal in battleground states, and strong national support for raising the minimum wage. When I think about progressive policies and using American nationalism as a rhetorical frame, that's what I mean. What do you mean? As far as I can tell your argument boils down to "we can't fight for a progressive notion of America because it will upset some people, and upsetting people isn't progressive," and I think Karl Popper had a word or two to say about that like 70 years ago dude.
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Dec 18, 2019 22:59
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Thread right now: "we should fix the country" "lol the concept of country is literally meaningless". This is sure to present a way forward for progressive politics and is in no way bullshit leftist wankery that only serves the poster's egos. Still in this thread there's been maybe two people including me that have proposed an actual action that someone could try besides jerking off about ideology wars in 2020.
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Dec 18, 2019 23:02
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I mean you're not really giving me much to work with? I don't think there is a functional voting majority for radical social progress in the vein of the steps needed to end the majority of forms of racist discrimination in the US, or full LGBT/women's equality. Some economic programs, sure! But then of course you're stuck with the political system which does have a massive amount of entrenched opposition to them. I think you're much more likely to have success with an economic program among voters than a civil rights style one, but whether you can get that past the political system is another question. I'd also question what that has to do with nationalism, because fundamentally you're declaring war on the most powerful elements of the US when you do that. To say nothing about the obvious problems with nationalist conceptions of economics which tend to very quickly devolve into excluding people who don't meet the accepted criteria of whatever nation you're doing it in. The economic argument's strength is that it isn't rooted so much in abstract concepts of nationalism, it's rooted in the fact that everyone has a poo poo job, everyone struggles to afford healthcare. These are unifying, rooting experiences that you can address in a lot of people. If you start muddying it up with nationalist ideas I think you're weakening your argument, not strengthening it. I'm not "absolutely terrified" of "a few racists" I'm telling you that you can look at the state of the political landscape and see that a dangerous number of people are racist or sexist or homo/transphobic to a greater or lesser degree and likely will not support a radical program to improve that situation. And even if there was the majority of the actual politicians you'd be using to try to do it, will not support an "intolerant of intolerance" platform because they're politicians and politicians trend towards being miserable fence sitters, especially "progressive" ones. I do not share your view that there is a secret majority of people who would agree that "diversity makes America great". You can advocate for a radical improvement, and indeed you should, but I think it's a mischaracterisation to suggest that it's secretly very popular and especially to suggest that you can run on a nationalist platform to put that idea across. UnknownTarget posted:Thread right now: "we should fix the country" "lol the concept of country is literally meaningless". This is sure to present a way forward for progressive politics and is in no way bullshit leftist wankery that only serves the poster's egos. The concept of a country is not meaningless, but the concept of the nation is a lot more complex than the legal jurisdiction of the government, and is also entirely ideological. The country is a thing that exists, the nation is a thing that exists in the heads of millions of people and most of the concepts of it do not line up very well outside of vague platitudes. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 23:17 on Dec 18, 2019 |
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Dec 18, 2019 23:12
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OwlFancier posted:I mean you're not really giving me much to work with? I don't think there is a functional voting majority for radical social progress in the vein of the steps needed to end the majority of forms of racist discrimination in the US, or full LGBT/women's equality. OwlFancier posted:I do not share your view that there is a secret majority of people who would agree that "diversity makes America great".
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Dec 18, 2019 23:33
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I don't think, for example, you would win a majority campaigning on reparations, shorter prison sentences, major police reform, self ID, a commitment to closing the wage gap or a proposal to solve the systemic inability of the judicial system to handle cases of sexual assault. Despite all of those things being good and important. You might be able to do some of them incidentally but I would be surprised if they would motivate people to vote, or that they're the kind of thing you could get past politicians. The key problem if you're trying to do this nationalistically, a lot of those things are things the right would, probably successfully, argue against from a christian/american values angle, clearly you hate cops, love perverts and criminals, hate the free market, love big government etc. They're the kind of thing that the right is likely to turn into a successful attack against your position and candidate. You would need to be confident that either there is secretly a lot of support for them (and that that support is going to come out and vote for you) or alternatively that you can control the media conversation to make them not come up too much. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 23:53 on Dec 18, 2019 |
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Dec 18, 2019 23:42
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OwlFancier posted:I don't think, for example, you would win a majority campaigning on reparations, shorter prison sentences, major police reform, self ID, a commitment to closing the wage gap or a proposal to solve the systemic inability of the judicial system to handle cases of sexual assault. Despite all of those things being good and important. OwlFancier posted:The key problem if you're trying to do this nationalistically, a lot of those things are things the right would, probably successfully, argue against from a christian/american values angle, clearly you hate cops, love perverts and criminals, hate the free market, love big government etc. They're the kind of thing that the right is likely to turn into a successful attack against your position and candidate. You would need to be confident that either there is secretly a lot of support for them (and that that support is going to come out and vote for you) or alternatively that you can control the media conversation to make them not come up too much. It's worked out great for Republicans since the late 80's / early 90's, public opinion has shifted a lot in their favor and it wasn't some accident. For someone who derides Obama and centrists so much, you subscribe wholly to their theory of politics. KOTEX GOD OF BLOOD fucked around with this message at 02:53 on Dec 19, 2019 |
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Dec 18, 2019 23:54
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The fact nobody can conceptually separate "politics" from the electoral cycle is kind of illustrates the problem with "progressive" politics or whatever you want to call them. Even most of the goons in D&D advocating radical social democratic or socialist policies are still completely fixated on electoralism to the extent that it seems to largely eclipse any other discussion. Mobilizing around elections can be an effective tactic but a genuine political movement needs a deeper foundation.KOTEX GOD OF BLOOD posted:The problem is that mainstream Democratic politicians have zero ideological credibility. There is no reason for anyone to trust them, unless you are a D.C. Sith Lord benefitting richly from the status quo. In fact, their flaccid and blatantly perfunctory nationalism is a big reason that the left has turned away from flag-waving. For the left, this has been a fatal strategic and ideological mistake, because of how it guts their own credibility with many of the people we need voting for progressive candidates and policies. What would constitute 'the left' in this example? Left liberals lost control of the Democratic party decades ago and while the DLC no longer exists the New Democrats effectively took over and transformed the party. Were the party to return to its comparatively pro-labour and anti-Wall Street stances from the 50s and 60s, or were the party to adopt a Sanders inspired left-populist agenda then that would be a serious threat to the incomes, not to mention influence, of Democratic staffers, politicians and especially donors. The Democratic party isn't just an organization that seeks to maximize its vote share. It is also a gigantic collection contracts and employment opportunities, as well as a career ladder. Of course winning an election can create more opportunities but only if you win the right way. If the Democrats ran and won on policies that actually started reversing the recent gains of capital over labour then that would much of job-and-contracts system under threat. For many of them it would be better to lose on a centrist ticket than to win on a leftist one. UnknownTarget posted:Thread right now: "we should fix the country" "lol the concept of country is literally meaningless". This is sure to present a way forward for progressive politics and is in no way bullshit leftist wankery that only serves the poster's egos. If you want people to take your criticisms more seriously then it would help if you could demonstrate a basic familiarity with the issues being discussed. Your dismissal right now comes off as something reflexive rather than something based on a genuinely informed or thoughtful opinion.
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Dec 19, 2019 19:21
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Helsing posted:If you want people to take your criticisms more seriously then it would help if you could demonstrate a basic familiarity with the issues being discussed. Your dismissal right now comes off as something reflexive rather than something based on a genuinely informed or thoughtful opinion. No. My criticism is that this is all just intellectual wankery at the expense of proposing action. At least drive towards something, rather than meta-statements on whether nationality is valid or armchair political machinations. State something like "I think we should do this and this is one way I can do it locally" or "this is one concrete item that, once removed, I will be able to do something". I dare you.
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Dec 19, 2019 21:01
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UnknownTarget posted:No. My criticism is that this is all just intellectual wankery at the expense of proposing action. At least drive towards something, rather than meta-statements on whether nationality is valid or armchair political machinations. State something like "I think we should do this and this is one way I can do it locally" or "this is one concrete item that, once removed, I will be able to do something". I dare you. Having a coherent and operational theory of society and social change isn't the irrelevant distraction you seem to think it is.
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Dec 19, 2019 22:17
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KOTEX GOD OF BLOOD posted:Or you build support. This is called leadership. I mean I think that in electoral politics the media and poo poo plays a huge part? If you learn absolutely nothing from the corbyn campaign I would strongly suggest that if you cannot control the media they will dogpile you into the dirt no matter how actually good your platform is. If you're suggesting things outside electoral politics then yes, you can do things on smaller scales to build support for positions but that takes a very long time to pay off and is also in many ways incompatible with electoral politics, because electoral politics is, as noted, also a giant jobs machine for centrist wankstains and they don't like the idea of being beholden to a bunch of lefty organizations that operate independently.
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Dec 19, 2019 22:22
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Helsing posted:Having a coherent and operational theory of society and social change isn't the irrelevant distraction you seem to think it is. Ok, how will this directly help to create path forward for progressive politics?
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Dec 19, 2019 22:24
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Helsing posted:The problem here is how to translate big picture goals into an actionable agenda that motivates people to fight. There has to be some guiding vision or set of principles that inform the left on how to use a victory and that allow it to survive temporary setbacks or defeats. Otherwise you're left with this idea that we should just sit around repeating the same ideas to the same tiny crowds and hoping that after the next crisis people will suddenly see the relevance and urgency of our ideas and that really there's nothing we can do to change anyway, we're already perfect and we just need to wait around for the rest of society to see the innate correctness of our analysis. How are you supposed to answer this, though? It is literally impossible to somehow prove that a particular strategy will be successful. Like I said previously, you could say the same thing about abolitionists - someone in that position wouldn't be able to magically prove that any particular political strategy will result in accomplishing the goal of freeing slaves in the future. When it comes to an idea like eliminating private ownership of capital, there's value to simply spreading the idea. Any individual doesn't somehow have the power to say "and we will reach this point by doing X, Y and Z." Just like some abolitionist in 1820 wouldn't be able to somehow give you an accurate path to freeing slaves in the South. It's enough in cases like this to simply say "the thing in question - whether it's slavery or private ownership of capital - is incompatible with a just society." Someone can try to involve themselves more with activism towards that end if they want, but there's nothing wrong with simply promoting the idea as a moral/ethical thing.
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Dec 19, 2019 22:25
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UnknownTarget posted:Ok, how will this directly help to create path forward for progressive politics? You sort of need to have a functional theory of how society operates if you want to suggest how to make changes to it effectively..? It's like asking "how will the haynes manual help me fix my car?"
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Dec 19, 2019 22:26
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UnknownTarget posted:Ok, how will this directly help to create path forward for progressive politics? When you developed your idea for a website to organize around political issues you were obviously relying on some ideas about how society works and how political change happens. I'm saying that you need to be explicitly aware that you're doing this so that you can actually examine the hidden assumptions you're relying on. I'd also suggest that learning the record of the past and how previous attempts to carry out similar political projects will forewarn you about some of the obstacles you're likely to encounter. Ytlaya posted:How are you supposed to answer this, though? It is literally impossible to somehow prove that a particular strategy will be successful. Like I said previously, you could say the same thing about abolitionists - someone in that position wouldn't be able to magically prove that any particular political strategy will result in accomplishing the goal of freeing slaves in the future. The problem here as I see it - and I apologize if I've misunderstand you - is that you seem to be thinking of politics as mostly be a matter of convincing a sufficient number of people that a policy would benefit them, and then mobilizing those people to turnout and lend support to the policy. I think this is a narrow and sterile view. I would argue that politics tends to be rooted in people's deeply felt identity. Politics is not usually a matter of individuals rationally assessing their material interests and then selecting from a menu of policies. It is organized group conflict in which people's deeply held feelings of attachment and solidarity (or in other cases resentment and cruelty) play a paramount role. People will see the success or failure of their self identified tribe as linked to their own welfare and in that sense they are motivated by self interest, but it's not a strictly rational and evidence based assessment its more of a gut feeling. Take the abolitionist movement. They did make rational appeals to people's self interest and the 'free soil' coalition was based around an alliance with midwestern farmers who were anxious about competing with the plantation system. However, notice how closely rooted opposition to slavery was in alternative geographical and economic identities. Also notice how while there were abolitionists in the south and pro-slavery voices in the North, the conflict still ultimately broke down along regional lines. Ultimately the conflict came down to a question of each side trying to mobilize its own resources to win rather than convincing fence sitters that one or the other side had a more rational set of objectives. So when I speak of identifying a path forward and an actionable agenda I should clarify that I'm not talking about coming up with some utopian scheme for reforming all of society. I am speaking about political organizing. Identifying constituencies, thinking of ways to organize them and increase their self consciousness, imagining potential coalition partners, identifying salient issues that are particularly useful for agitprop purposes, etc. In other words, I'm talking about trying to identify how you would actually build up a political power base. Policy goals are part of this conversation but not the most important part. Now on a related but separate note, it is also helpful to have a clear analysis of society at large here. This is what I meant when I referred to "some guiding vision or set of principles that inform the left on how to use a victory and that allow it to survive temporary setbacks or defeats". By this I do not mean some narrow list of policy priorities but rather a guiding set of beliefs and large scale goals that transcend any specific situation but which provide a sort of fixed point around which to navigate. Think about the fundamental differences between a liberal and a Marxist, not just in terms of policy commitments but in terms of assumptions about the possibilities and limits of politics (or even what should be included under the label of 'politics').
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Dec 20, 2019 18:23
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Well I see both your points and am interested to see what guiding principles can be generated to create an overarching sense of unity and identity between liberals across the world.
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Dec 20, 2019 18:40
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Infinite Karma posted:If ten people became billionaires in the tech boom, that kind of proves the point that it's just random luck and opportunism, not an actual feature of a society. To be honest, Henry George should be read more.
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Dec 21, 2019 07:34
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