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OwlFancier posted:If you think that you have the capability to fight people with more power than you repeatedly and bend them to the law, it seems weird to me that you think that's preferable to just... making it so they don't keep appearing. Please describe your classless society.
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Dec 26, 2019 03:03
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UnknownTarget posted:What a delightful non-answer. Rather than providing definitions for any of the categories you created to subdivide the issue into meaningless hair-splitting, you deftly avoided it and tried to put it on me to provide your talking points for you. Pass. I don't have any talking points. I'm just rejecting your oversimplification. Whenever in a political discussion someone goes "this isn't a left or right issue" they are either trying to swindle you or they don't understand what is going on.
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Dec 26, 2019 03:04
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OwlFancier posted:If you think that you have the capability to fight people with more power than you repeatedly and bend them to the law, it seems weird to me that you think that's preferable to just... making it so they don't keep appearing. Because human nature dictates they will always appear. In a Marxist system, the elites are the central planners or the well-connected in the government. In a socialist system, they are similar. In a capitalist system, they are the wealthy and well-connected. There will always be class differences in human civilization. There will always be people that strive ten times harder and get more of the pie. There will always be people who cheat and lie. There will always be good people who get hooked on drugs and fall to the bottom. Always. To believe otherwise is naive. The reason that the framers of the American Constitution put checks and balances in to the system is because they understood human nature enough to know that there will always be those who seek power over others and rather than giving in to some hopeless dream that no, once democracy is established everyone will want to be equal and no one will try to get the better of others, they established a system whereby those individual desires would be put in check by the systems they are forced to utilize. You are arguing for a theoretical, a pipe dream that cannot be because you are hoping to somehow change basic human nature for all of time. What I am advocating for is a response to a practical reality. I do not even have an idea of how it can be done yet - I just know that it must be done. asdf32 posted:Please describe your classless society. Yes, please do so OwlFancier. Give this man what he wants, because i'd like to see it too. Orange Devil posted:I don't have any talking points. I'm just rejecting your oversimplification. Rejection without a supplemental is complaining for the sake of being heard.
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Dec 26, 2019 03:07
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asdf32 posted:Please describe your classless society. Like instead of having this weird class of ultra rich sex weirds in charge, we just... don't? And I don't know how to get there but then I'm not the one claiming that we can keep them as ultra rich sex weirds but use the law to make them... good ultra rich sex weirds?
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Dec 26, 2019 03:08
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OwlFancier posted:Like instead of having this weird class of ultra rich sex weirds in charge, we just... don't? Wow, powerful, cutting. Deep. "How about we just don't have rich people ever again?". Also, your constant oversimplification of the argument is disturbing. You keep implying that we're...saying that the law will make people good? All we're saying is that people of all classes need to be equal before it.
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Dec 26, 2019 03:10
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UnknownTarget posted:Because human nature dictates they will always appear. In a Marxist system, the elites are the central planners or the well-connected in the government. In a socialist system, they are similar. In a capitalist system, they are the wealthy and well-connected. Maybe the reason the US government works the way it does is actually because it was written up by a bunch of rich slavers who wrote something that would make them happy and they didn't actually know anything about human nature and weren't paragons of philosophy. UnknownTarget posted:Wow, powerful, cutting. Deep. "How about we just don't have rich people ever again?". What does "people of all classes need to be equal before the law" mean? What effect is it going to have, what problems is it going to solve, how do you square it with the effect that money and power has on one's relationship to the law? Because I am assuming your intent is to use the law to make people better components of society because that's the most charitable interpretation I can infer for why you want to do it. I assume you're not just suggesting it for fun? OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 03:13 on Dec 26, 2019 |
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Dec 26, 2019 03:10
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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. It's a list that has nothing to do with actual material conditions of the working class. A lot of it's also really nebulous stuff that doesn't a serious policy proposal out there. This sort of thing is a big part of the reason why leftists lose the working class, they create a bunch of divisive pet projects where even if people aren't against the idea they will disagree on implementation details or priority.
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Dec 26, 2019 03:12
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NovemberMike posted:It's a list that has nothing to do with actual material conditions of the working class. A lot of it's also really nebulous stuff that doesn't a serious policy proposal out there. This sort of thing is a big part of the reason why leftists lose the working class, they create a bunch of divisive pet projects where even if people aren't against the idea they will disagree on implementation details or priority. Uh, buddy I dunno if you know but like, the working class includes a shitload of black people, women, prisoners and would be targets of cops, trans folk, and rape victims... In fact I would suggest all of those groups are disproportionately working class. You must have an interesting definition of the what "the working class" is if you think none of those things have any bearing on us.
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Dec 26, 2019 03:15
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OwlFancier posted:Like instead of having this weird class of ultra rich sex weirds in charge, we just... don't? All actually functioning societies have people “in charge” of government and institutions and they will always be a form of elite.
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Dec 26, 2019 03:29
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I think the path forward for progressive politics is to actually engage with concrete action that creates visible results, rather than endless theoretical committee debates. The advantage that conservative politics has over progressives is, I think, that it is easy to ground conservatism in reality. They deal with the real and the actionable. Stop this thing from happening, keep those people out, etc. The left tends to devolve into these intellectual pissing matches where people like you, OwlFancier, like to live in a theoretical bubble. "We should just not make classes exist". Then you offer no concrete ideas on how that would happen or what it would even look like. The entire conversation gets dragged into a quagmire of trying to get liberal theorists to see the naivety of their positions and to get them to engage with reality, but they refuse because in their heads, reality could be so much better if only we could just make everything different. NovemberMike makes a good point that a lot of what liberals propose are really nebulous, they doesn't deal with the material conditions of the working class (hey, where's my food? where's my healthcare? what happens if I get let go from my job?). As an example of your arugment: reparations - is it all blacks? If not how do you prove they should get it? What if they're recent immigrants? What is one unit of bad equal to in reparation units? Should we go back and honor the mule and acre of land? On and on and on and to be frank, those people would probably be better served by improving their lives now with the issues of today. This is an issue that sounds great in theory, but doesn't have a lot of real-world touchpoints or even value to a lot of people (other than "lets give stuff to people who are disadvantaged" where at that point you could make that the policy, rather than making it a race thing). But liberal theorists, again, like to live in a fantasy world where all that matters is that they say the right things and think the right thoughts and try to slug it out with conservatives for votes by pandering to lots of different focus groups. Lots of times they punch way below where they should because they don't deal in reality, they deal in ideas - and ideas without action are useless. So I think, again: the path forward for progressive politics is to shed the top-heavy weight of liberal theorism and begin engaging directly with reality as it is, rather than what reality could be molded into. UnknownTarget fucked around with this message at 03:35 on Dec 26, 2019 |
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Dec 26, 2019 03:30
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OwlFancier posted:Uh, buddy I dunno if you know but like, the working class includes a shitload of black people, women, prisoners and would be targets of cops, trans folk, and rape victims... In fact I would suggest all of those groups are disproportionately working class. How does reparations help trans people get hormone therapy? How does police reform help a starving mother feed her children? You just fragment things until there's no hope for solidarity. Your list isn't things that I'm necessarily against, but if you don't even have one item in there about the primary class struggle then you're part of the problem and you should do some searching.
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Dec 26, 2019 03:37
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asdf32 posted:All actually functioning societies have people “in charge” of government and institutions and they will always be a form of elite. All modern societies do because they are all built on turning people into productive tools to serve the interests of those who are in charge, often to the detriment of the people being used that way, yes. In no small part because this form of society is particularly adept at killing other forms of society (and at the rate we're going, itself) This does not make it desirable, "natural", or good unless you're some kind of social darwinist. UnknownTarget posted:I think the path forward for progressive politics is to actually engage with concrete action that creates visible results, rather than endless theoretical committee debates. The advantage that conservative politics has over progressives is, I think, that it is easy to ground conservatism in reality. They deal with the real and the actionable. Stop this thing from happening, keep those people out, etc. You appear to be suggesting that action, any action, is all that matters, doesn't matter if it makes any sort of sense or what it achieves, only that you do something. Which, uh, I'm not sure that's any better than theorywanking? Also I find being accused of liberalism quite offensive. NovemberMike posted:How does reparations help trans people get hormone therapy? How does police reform help a starving mother feed her children? You just fragment things until there's no hope for solidarity. Your list isn't things that I'm necessarily against, but if you don't even have one item in there about the primary class struggle then you're part of the problem and you should do some searching. Perhaps all of those things are aspects of the primary class struggle. There would be a reason I listed all of them together because they're all important parts of it. Also I'm arguing with some sort of liberal about electoral politics so like, clearly "destroy the class system" isn't a thing that's on the table through that process right now. But I think that all of those things must be parts of a comprehensive left platform because they're all aspects of class struggle. I do believe though that class action is easier if people have some sort of secure base from which to act, so most things that improve the conditions of the working class help us. If fewer of us were in prison then we might have more people available to organize with, and victory through organizing helps show people that it works. I also was specifically arguing in the context of things that are less popular while still being important because they're problems that affect people who are demonized by the media, but I think that standing in solidarity with people in that position and advocating for their welfare is an important part of building class solidarity. If you ignore those things then they're not going to stand with you when you need them to. Essentially I would characterise racism, sexism, homo/transphobia, nationalism, all sorts of -isms as methods through which class oppression manifests, as weapons for the powerful to use against the powerless, and I don't think that ignoring them or worse, trying to pander to them, is productive? They should be opposed and the struggles against each of them should not be viewed as separate from each other or from class struggle as a whole. I don't think you can punch through to the root of the problem without cutting away the branches first, because if you don't address those problems they're going to function as intended as tools to divide and attack the working class. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 04:15 on Dec 26, 2019 |
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Dec 26, 2019 03:46
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OwlFancier posted:You appear to be suggesting that action, any action, is all that matters, doesn't matter if it makes any sort of sense or what it achieves, only that you do something. Do you actually read the things that you're responding to? UnknownTarget, would you agree with OwlFancier's summary of your statement?
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Dec 26, 2019 04:02
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I read it but I have trouble extracting meaning from it. Like "stop thinking about goals or methods or how society works we need to act to make things better now" just... doesn't make sense? How do you act without a goal, or without a theory of how society works? Again I ask what does "make everyone equal before the law" mean if you reject the idea that power and wealth disparity inherently makes that impossible? How do you go about it if you reject any sort of thinking about why people aren't equal before the law, what the law even does in society?
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Dec 26, 2019 04:07
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NovemberMike posted:Do you actually read the things that you're responding to? UnknownTarget, would you agree with OwlFancier's summary of your statement? Like...no, not at all. OwlFancier, if you're having trouble extracting meaning from it but others aren't, maybe re-read the post without such a strong bias? You have skipped over the parts, repeatedly, where I've said that what I'm saying is that the issue is that elites aren't accountable for their actions and we (the people) need to find a way to change that. If you don't understand that "make everyone equal before the law" means that I implicitly accept that wealth and power disparity make it so that people are not equal before the law and that we need to change that, then brush up on your reading comprehension. So far, if I was to summarize OwlFancier's argument, it's basically: "It's impossible to make the powerful kneel before the law. Therefore, we should make being powerful impossible." Or put another way: "It's impossible to catch robbers, so we should just make a society where no one will ever steal ever again.".
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Dec 26, 2019 04:30
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UnknownTarget posted:Like...no, not at all. OwlFancier, if you're having trouble extracting meaning from it but others aren't, maybe re-read the post without such a strong bias? You have skipped over the parts, repeatedly, where I've said that what I'm saying is that the issue is that elites aren't accountable for their actions and we (the people) need to find a way to change that. I do not understand how you propose to change that because as I said, the nature of wealth and power inherently implies control over the law. UnknownTarget posted:So far, if I was to summarize OwlFancier's argument, it's basically: Except that "being a robber" does not inherently imply control over the law. Wealth and power does inherently imply control over the system of law. Like you're saying that we should have wealthy and powerful people but they should just... not... have... power over the law... somehow. Do you see the disconnect? You are saying that the people you're saying should run our society should not have the power to... run our society..? Our entire society is structured to give people with wealth and power the ability to do as they please. Wealth buys you media control, media control buys you votes, votes buy you control over the law, even if you don't shortcut it and just literally buy representatives into office. I do not understand how you are proposing to make this just not happen in a way that is somehow less crazy than actually saying "we shouldn't have rich and powerful people at all" That's what wealth and power is for. That is definitionally what it is, the power to rule others, what power are you suggesting should be higher absent divine intervention? How do you propose to regulate that power? If you bend the powerful before the law they would no longer be the powerful. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 04:42 on Dec 26, 2019 |
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Dec 26, 2019 04:36
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OwlFancier posted:I do not understand how you propose to change that because as I said, the nature of wealth and power inherently implies control over the law. I don't have a proposal to change that. Hopefully we can have a productive conversation in this thread on a mechanism that could be implemented. I have some ideas, but I don't think they're good. That being said, the original framers had a similar problem. They overthrew an unaccountable leader (with much help from the French <3) and had to develop a system where the new leader wouldn't have the same problem. quote:Except that "being a robber" does not inherently imply control over the law. Wealth and power does inherently imply control over the system of law. If you want to split hairs: 1) Wealth and power imply the ability to ignore the law. Same as a robber. 2) You haven't really disagreed with my summary of your point: "It is impossible to control power, therefore by some *magic sky dust* we will make it impossible to have power.". 3) What I am saying is that the people who run our society should have the power to run our society, but be accountable to other parts of that society. For example, the Executive Branch has the power to control the military, but not the purse. It's called division of power. Anyway, besides all that - would you say my summary of your argument (point #2) thus far is correct or incorrect? Can you state my argument in a sentence?
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Dec 26, 2019 04:43
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Yes you're entirely correct, I believe that power disparity in society is inherently bad and unstable and that the necessary step to fix most of the problems in society has to be to eliminate that disparity, because you can't have power disparity without it breeding privilege. I don't have a comprehensive plan to achieve that because that's like, the whole effort of left politics for the last couple hundred years, but that's the only analysis of the state of the world that makes sense to me. I do not buy this idea that you can have some kind of competing governmental department system, because what would stop the people in charge of all the branches working together to help themselves and not others? They all come from the same echelon of society, they're all mostly rich white dudes, that's by design, that's the expression of wealth and class in society, and I also don't think that's it not working as intended because again, the US was founded by rich white slavers, it's not surprising they'd think that was a good basis for running a country. It works quite well for the rich white slaver class, not very well for anyone else. I can't summarise your argument very well at all because I don't understand it, it does not make internal sense to me and seems to rely on a conception of how society functions that I do not share or understand. If I had to try I guess I'd say "there will always be rich and powerful people and we need to make them fight each other and this will stop any one of them becoming the ultimate rich and powerful person, also this is different from the feudal system" OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 04:54 on Dec 26, 2019 |
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Dec 26, 2019 04:51
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Dec 26, 2019 04:55
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It seems that so far you and I have had the most page time recently so our discussion is part of the larger question: what is the path forward for progressive politics. I believe that I have laid out a realistic goal that reacts to reality. OwlFancier, if I can state your argument despite me not agreeing with it or sharing your view, then you can do the same for me (your guess is wrong btw, except for the "there will always be rich and powerful people" part). I also challenge you to come up with just one idea of how your utopia would look, function or even come to pass. If you can't define what you're disagreeing with and give an example of how your idea would function or come to pass then your stance objectively holds no water. UnknownTarget fucked around with this message at 05:19 on Dec 26, 2019 |
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Dec 26, 2019 05:15
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I disagree with the idea that 1. There will always be rich and powerful people, particularly on the levels we see today, because that is a relatively recent invention and the process by which their power is maintained is also relatively new, the idea that either are sustainable is highly disputable. And 2. That it is possible to meaningfully constrain a class of people if you are going to hand them all of the power. I do not need to be able to posit a comprehensive alternative to say that that argument is nonsensical by its own logic. Like I can say "Instead of having bosses to tell us what to do with our lives we could decide for ourselves what we want to do. Instead of being coerced to produce massive amounts of useless poo poo to satisfy the need of the wealthy to extract profit from the process of production and consumption without regard for the effects of production or consumption, we could instead decide what we want to produce democratically, and limit our production to things we need, and take the rest of our time to ourselves, to not work, to enjoy life, without destroying the planet or our bodies and minds in endless, useless production and consumption." But I think it is more useful to directly disagree with the things you're saying because they do not make sense. The reason you can state my position is because my position is extremely simple, conceptually. I have no idea what your postion is even conceptually, and the bits I do appear to understand don't make any sense. Like I get that you've said "everyone should be equal before the law" but you reject the idea that power and wealth is inherently unconstrainable by law because power and wealth definitionally gives you power over the law. So I disagree that you have proposed a credible suggestion for how the probem of unaccountable power can be fixed. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 05:42 on Dec 26, 2019 |
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Dec 26, 2019 05:29
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OwlFancier posted:All modern societies do because they are all built on turning people into productive tools to serve the interests of those who are in charge, often to the detriment of the people being used that way, yes. In no small part because this form of society is particularly adept at killing other forms of society (and at the rate we're going, itself) So your society has no government or large institutions apparently. Have fun with that.
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Dec 26, 2019 13:03
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That may in fact be a necessary component of a just and sustainable society, yes. I would like for it not to be but I do think that the ability of people to cooperate in a humane fashion degrades over large distances and in large numbers. Technology can help with it to a degree but whether or not it's possible to have a large scale society which doesn't degrade into barbarism or not remains to be seen. You'd have to ask a cyberneticist about it. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 13:10 on Dec 26, 2019 |
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Dec 26, 2019 13:06
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Bucky Fullminster posted:Charismatic leaders seem to be the most important there. In some ways this is about dissecting the Brittish election - Labour seemed to do everything right, and Corbyn was fine to good. But there just wasn't enough inspiration to get them even close to the line. Charismatic leaders are basically a cheat code to getting whatever The tl,dr seems to be that Labour got on the wrong side of Brexit and got hosed. It was an issue that didn't just split Labour, but overrode party loyalty for people who previous voted Labour.
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Dec 26, 2019 13:52
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UnknownTarget posted:Rejection without a supplemental is complaining for the sake of being heard. No, it isn't. Edit: oh wow an argument from human nature, how novel and surprising! Also the Framers of the American ConstiTution (am I doing the right number of capital letters to indicate I worship these people and their lovely documents?) didn't provide "checks and balances" (hello there thought-terminating cliche) worth a good goddamn poo poo, for evidence see US history, especially recent history. Orange Devil fucked around with this message at 15:35 on Dec 26, 2019 |
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Dec 26, 2019 15:31
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The literal point of the "checks and balances" in the US constitution was to make it impossible for the popular will to seriously threaten the interests of the upper classes and that anybody is still holding that poo poo up as some kind of gold standard is farcical.
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Dec 26, 2019 15:46
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Cerebral Bore posted:The literal point of the "checks and balances" in the US constitution was to make it impossible for the popular will to seriously threaten the interests of the upper classes and that anybody is still holding that poo poo up as some kind of gold standard is farcical. https://germanystructuralanalysis.weebly.com/government.html quote:Besides the protection of rights, the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany also establishes institutions, each with distinct functions, to enhance the efficiency of the government and distribute power across the board to prevent an authoritarian overthrow. The German government's checks and balance on power is demonstrated through its three constitutional institutions, which are the executive, legislative, and judicial branches respectively. http://www.europarl.europa.eu/unitedstates/en/eu-us-relations/us-and-eu-branches-of-government quote:The traditional division of the various functions of government is: legislative, executive, and judicial. In the U.S., each area is fulfilled by separate institutions to “check” potential abuses and balance each of the branches. Similarly in the EU there are three main political institutions that constitute the EU’s executive and legislative branches, as well as an independent judiciary with the power to exercise judicial review. Are you guys here to discuss the path forward for progressive politics or what? Why are we re-debating basic poo poo from the past? I'm all for challenging the status quo but most of the naysayers in this thread are either wrapped up in naivete or just grumpy do-nothings who have an axe to grind. Propose some ideas you dialectic featherweights. UnknownTarget fucked around with this message at 16:18 on Dec 26, 2019 |
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Dec 26, 2019 16:04
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UnknownTarget posted:https://germanystructuralanalysis.weebly.com/government.html I see that being an intellectual heavyweight in your world means posting poo poo about Germany and the EU when we're talking about the US constitution. I suppose one could also point out that plenty of western countries don't actually have a formal separation of powers and still manage to do better than the good ol' USA, but I guess that would be lightweight stuff since it's actually relevant to the discussion. It's also extremely funny to see the same people who are literally arguing that there must be an elite to control the rabble accusing others of being offputting or naive. I'm sure that your average voter will just flock to you once you explain to them that they just have to be ruled by their betters.
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Dec 26, 2019 16:28
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Cerebral Bore posted:I see that being an intellectual heavyweight in your world means posting poo poo about Germany and the EU when we're talking about the US constitution. I suppose one could also point out that plenty of western countries don't actually have a formal separation of powers and still manage to do better than the good ol' USA, but I guess that would be lightweight stuff since it's actually relevant to the discussion. Dialectic != intellectual. Your point was that "anyone who holds up the separation of powers outlined in the US constitution as a gold standard is farcical". I merely posted two other examples of succesful democratic countries that have modeled their separation of powers on the US model. Ergo, I assume you think their approaches are also farcical? You are either like OwlFancier, in that you cannot comprehend arguments, or you are being deliberately obtuse. The people in this thread (myself included) that have argued for a check on elites have simply stated that there will always be some sort of elite class. If they're torn down today, a different group will rise. For some reason, you take that to mean that we support the idea of being ruled by elites. I, personally, accept them as an inevitability of the human condition. Now we are going to go into the traditional progressive circle jerk of infighting. Propose an idea instead. I dare you.
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Dec 26, 2019 16:41
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Cerebral Bore posted:The literal point of the "checks and balances" in the US constitution was to make it impossible for the popular will to seriously threaten the interests of the upper classes and that anybody is still holding that poo poo up as some kind of gold standard is farcical. One branch with no voter influence would have done that. 3 branches exist to check each other (with the market being another major check on power). OwlFancier posted:That may in fact be a necessary component of a just and sustainable society, yes. I would like for it not to be but I do think that the ability of people to cooperate in a humane fashion degrades over large distances and in large numbers. Technology can help with it to a degree but whether or not it's possible to have a large scale society which doesn't degrade into barbarism or not remains to be seen. So you’re some dumb type of anarchist then. Lol.
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Dec 26, 2019 19:29
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I think he's an intelligent type of anarchist actually.asdf32 posted:One branch with no voter influence would have done that. 3 branches exist to check each other (with the market being another major check on power). Everyone here's older than 14 so we know the theory. Would you mind explaining how this naive idealism has born out quite so terribly in practice? You're not allowed to appeal to human nature. Hint: there are no checks, there are no balances, never were, it's all just a bullshit fairy tale to help you sleep at night while the elite fucks you and every other shmuck who fell for it. Orange Devil fucked around with this message at 23:34 on Dec 26, 2019 |
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Dec 26, 2019 23:31
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"Elites" are difficult to avoid altogether because there are built in hierarchies of skill and experience that seem to be more or less necessary for an industrial or agricultural society. However, there's a tendency to conflate "elites" with the holders of extreme wealth who are better termed oligarchs.
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Dec 26, 2019 23:46
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Helsing posted:"Elites" are difficult to avoid altogether because there are built in hierarchies of skill and experience that seem to be more or less necessary for an industrial or agricultural society. However, there's a tendency to conflate "elites" with the holders of extreme wealth who are better termed oligarchs. This is very true: the principal qualification to be an oligarch is to have loads of money and not terrible at managing it. There are oligarchs who have an elite level of some skill or another, but plenty who are just a bit above average at managing other people's labour and operationalising processes, and some who have no skills other than being rich (like Trump). On the current debate: pretty sure the path forward for progressive politics is to engage with communities and make engagement with politics part of people's everyday lives. It's time tested, it worked the first time round and while the tactics for building everyday engagement and support networks will be different in the 21st century the strategy still seems viable.
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Dec 27, 2019 00:52
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Purple Prince posted:This is very true: the principal qualification to be an oligarch is to have loads of money and not terrible at managing it. Once you have loads of money, you can hire people who are not terrible at managing it. There is no other qualification but money. Something about how capital is dead labour, which vampire-like just continues to suck up ever more labour to enlarge itself. It'd be harder work blowing a billion dollar fortune than to double it. Orange Devil fucked around with this message at 02:15 on Dec 27, 2019 |
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Dec 27, 2019 02:13
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sean10mm posted:Charismatic leaders are basically a cheat code to getting whatever Brexit is a symptom, not a cause. Specifically, it’s a symptom of most of the cities in the UK outside London (which is where the traditional Labour base was) coming to believe that the Government and a shadowy cabal of elites in London and lefty do-gooders are privileging minorities and foreigners over them (or, if they’re immigrants or minorities themselves, that the status they worked so hard for is being undermined by letting in the wrong sorts after them). This is, broadly, true, for various reasons. Since the alternative is fascism, people are going full fash. Edit: To elaborate a bit, governments take relatively small actions to improve the lives of some minorities and immigrants as individuals. People see this happening and wrongly assume this means the entire group is privileged over the majority. What’s actually happening is that the majority’s structural advantages over minorities are being eroded. I also think we need to be honest with ourselves - if we’re not national socialists - is that what we are doing is asking the working class of the developed world to continue to elect leaders who are committed to dismantling their privileges over poorer foreign labour. That’s a hard ask when other people are promising to keep the barriers up or reinforce them. I guess we could try the narrative that instead of relying on capitalism to do that as it has done for the past 40 years while skimming off from the top to make a tiny number of people grossly rich, we are going to cushion the blow by expropriating or extorting enough wealth from the upper classes to make the transition less painful. Possibly also that we are fighting for British/American/Wherever workers to lose their privileges slower than other countries’. Beefeater1980 fucked around with this message at 03:10 on Dec 27, 2019 |
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Dec 27, 2019 02:36
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Beefeater1980 posted:I also think we need to be honest with ourselves - if we’re not national socialists - is that what we are doing is asking the working class of the developed world to continue to elect leaders who are committed to dismantling their privileges over poorer foreign labour. No, we aren't doing that, the dismantling of worker's rights is capitalist endeavour, you can, and we did, make the case that people have a right to good things and that the state should provide those regardless of what capital wants and regardless of your nationality. The problem was that because people have had nothing but lovely neolibs from all parties for the past 40 odd years, they didn't believe it. Combined with obviously the media assasination campaign against the party and the leadership.
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Dec 27, 2019 02:46
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Ok so there are two wealth gaps: - Gap between oligarchs (capitalists) and everyone else - Gap between developed and developing world. We know that about half of the world’s wealth is held by a tiny number of disgustingly wealthy individuals. We also know that most of the world’s extreme poverty is in the developing world, primarily Sub-Saharan Africa, but that thanks to neoliberalism pockets of extreme poverty are also springing up even in rich countries. The logical conclusion, I think, is to take the wealth of the obscenely rich and distribute it mostly to the poor of the developing world, plus to the utterly destitute of the developed world. Once you’ve done that then you can distribute the surplus to the poor-but-not-destitute. But unless you let some places get rich first (or stay rich longer), you’re doing that for ~7+bn people at the same time. Since the richest 1% owns about half the world’s wealth, and you’ve already burned some of that alleviating crippling poverty, that probably doesn’t mean increased wealth for the average employed blue collar worker in a developed country for a little while. Or does it? Some numbers (if anyone has more accurate ones then go for it): Total wealth in world: 360 trn Assets of millionaires: 180trn Median net wealth US 69k USD (0.3bn ppl) Median net wealth Europe 24k USD (0.59bn ppl) Median net wealth China 21k USD (1.1bn ppl) Median net wealth ROW: 7k USD (5bn) So we’ve expropriated 180 trillion, and we want to share it fairly. To level up ROW to China: 5bn x $14k = $70trn We have 110 trn left To level up China + ROW to Europe = 6.1 bn x 3 k = 18 trn We have 92 trn left To level up ROW to US = 6.6bn x 45k = 297 trn 92-297 = -205trn So we run out of money and have to start expropriating wealth from workers once we get to the US basically. As a non-American that doesn’t bother me too much of course. Ironically, 40 years of neoliberalism have reduced the scale of the task by narrowing the wealth gap between the west and Asia (mostly China). A lot of socialist policy in the Anglosphere at least is about dismantling free trade and reimposing barriers, which would slow that trend. But that’s the law of unintended consequences for you. E: I was expecting the money to run out a lot earlier but turns out that in addition to China narrowing the gap, our capitalist class right now is REALLY rapacious. Who knew? Beefeater1980 fucked around with this message at 06:18 on Dec 27, 2019 |
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Dec 27, 2019 06:13
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But that's way outside the capability of any national government, though, that'd require like a global government which isn't really an immediate electoral concern. Electorally socialist policies are about redistributing wealth and power away from oligarchs, which would be obviously better for the working class? Also "everyone gets an average european quality of life guarnateed" is pretty loving utopian if you ask me, even ignoring the potential for that wealth to do far more without the inefficiency of capitalism creating wastage everywhere.
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Dec 27, 2019 06:21
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OwlFancier posted:But that's way outside the capability of any national government, though, that'd require like a global government which isn't really an immediate electoral concern. Electorally socialist policies are about redistributing wealth and power away from oligarchs, which would be obviously better for the working class? Yeah, as I was doing those calculations I was realising we were closer to being able to do this than expected. But what gets me is this: the longer we let race-to-the-bottom global capitalism go on, the smaller the gap between west and rest, and the bigger the gap between oligarchs and everyone else. I’m not sure how having a major western country go properly socialist would change that, but my guess is that it would reverse or at least halt that trend within the country itself. This would mean a much better quality of life for the people in that country, but less wealth transfer to the poorer parts of the world. And also very relevant is that China was able to capture so much of the global wealth precisely because it had a strong socialist government, that first made population growth a priority, then opened up but in a controlled way. Overall this doesn’t change the conclusion that we all need to get socialist governments in, but if we don’t find a way to defuse the idea that it will mean a levelling down for the mass working class in the west, it may be hard to get them onside for change.
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Dec 27, 2019 07:34
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I mean again I don't think any western socialist government is about major wealth transfer into the global south or anything, even if it would be the right thing to do, precisely because it's entirely unelectable. They tend to focus instead on stopping wealth transfer up the economic strata. If you stop that it's quite possible people might become more open to international transfers because a lot of the hostility to that is because the right like to pretend that the reason a lot of people are struggling is because of that. If people aren't struggling any more then it's far easier to make the case that we have enough to help others.
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Dec 27, 2019 07:55
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