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If one thing has become clear in recent western politics its that identity matters. A problem for the left is that the right own the entire idea of a national identity. Practically speaking I think the left needs to pilfer from history (positive American or western accomplishment - yes there have been many) to build coherent competing positive moral/political/national identities and stories (which could hopefully be weaved together with global goals). The right has a positive idea of what America stands for (despite many individual things they hate). The left could too.
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Dec 22, 2019 17:42
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For Americans in particular there is a whole lot of national mythology that the Left could claim as the Right becomes more and more ideologically bankrupt. If the Right wants to stand with Nazis and Neo-Confederates, the Left should claim WW2 GI's and Civil War Unionists
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Dec 23, 2019 01:17
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Fojar38 posted:WW2 GI's and Civil War Unionists 
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Dec 23, 2019 03:50
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There ultimately aren't any elements of the nation that the left can co-opt without diluting its own message because its message is fundamentally anti-nationalist, and if it tries to be nationalist it stops being leftist in the sense that it stops being able to address the problems in people's lives, because many of those are caused by nationalism. Particularly if you're trying to claim previous nationalist efforts as your own, you run into the problem that when you get down to it they weren't really that concerned with people's welfare either. And further if you feed that kind of thinking you set yourself up for the right to do it better, because they really can go all in on nationalism. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 04:07 on Dec 23, 2019 |
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Dec 23, 2019 03:55
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Origin has to be in conjuction with expectation. So one would have have show that the national myth should conclude with the expectation of a classless society.
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Dec 23, 2019 04:15
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OwlFancier posted:There ultimately aren't any elements of the nation that the left can co-opt without diluting its own message because its message is fundamentally anti-nationalist, and if it tries to be nationalist it stops being leftist in the sense that it stops being able to address the problems in people's lives, because many of those are caused by nationalism. Particularly if you're trying to claim previous nationalist efforts as your own, you run into the problem that when you get down to it they weren't really that concerned with people's welfare either. Nationalism and populism are among the most dangerous forces on earth but I think political success demands some of both especially when your opponent is already using them. Direct appeals to globalism are probably political suicide but it’s easy to imagine a positive national identity that ties cooperation, generosity and pragmatism to strength and leadership.
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Dec 23, 2019 04:54
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It's easy to imagine only if you don't think about it much. Because the reality is national projects which focus on "strength" and "leadership" become, through the filtering effects of the structure of the nation state, simply top down rule by an uncaring elite and pointless and ultimately ineffective warmongering and draconian domestic policy. Because those things already exist, they're already latent in the structure of our countries, either you want to root them out and solve the problems they cause, or you want to appeal to them to win elections, and continue to perpetuate them and their problems. It is, in fact, near impossible for me to imagine what you're describing because I understand that the nation does not care about me or anyone else, I can not imagine a caring or generous nation, such a thing does not exist and never has. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 05:01 on Dec 23, 2019 |
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Dec 23, 2019 04:59
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The point about a unifying identity is a strong one though. The Left’s unifying identity is that everyone who doesn’t survive purely by owning capital is part of the same class: the working class. The right’s is that class doesn’t matter, what matters is being $yournationalityhere. You’d think that the right was set up to lose this one. After all, there are a lot more people who are in the working class than there are from any particular country, and in any one country there are a lot more working class people than true bourgeois or aristocrats. But IMO the left has two problems getting that message out: 1. It lets the right define “working class” too narrowly. It doesn’t only mean working in t’mines. It means your income comes from work not investments. That’s the 99%; in fact it’s probably the 99.5%. It’s people we tend not to think of as working class: doctors, bankers, lawyers, PR execs. If your income comes from working, you share the interests of the working class. Importantly, it also covers the kind of job or life you might aspire to - even if you “win”, the game is still rigged against you if you sell your labour. 2. It doesn’t do enough to challenge the message that some other aspect of a person’s identity (sex, sexuality, ethnicity, whatever) is their real identity and more important than being part of the working class. This is a killer IMO because the prejudice against minority groups in most countries is so extreme that fixing it has to be a major priority for the left, or what are we even for? But that support needs to be given in a way that doesn’t override people’s identity as part of the working class. If we can do 2, we can handle nationalism as well because a person’s national identity can be recast as part of who they are (while still having class interests defined by being part of the working class), instead of 100% of who they are. This will do a lot to neutralise the right. Fundamentally the left is a mass movement. Division is poison in a way it’s not for the conservative right.
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Dec 23, 2019 05:32
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I would probably suggest that national identity is in direct opposition to class identity in a way that many other identities are not. Because alot of identities are formed out of shared disempowerment, nationalism is exactly the opposite of that unless you're like, a former african colony looking to throw off the yoke of europe. But as far as it applies to most of us nationalism is a constructed, fundamentally inconsistent and incoherent identity that exists entirely to make working class people see themselves as part of the same thing as their oppressors. It's perhaps most clearly the case for white nationalism and fascism generally which tries to tell people that the reason your boss would kill you as soon as look at you if it made him richer is because of foreigners/black people/feminism/whatever else is clearly not the problem but which might potentially contribute to anti-nationalist and anti-capitalist sentiment. Because those other forms of identity are quite compatible with leftism, because they represent systems of oppression that intersect with capitalism and you need their input to solve those problems.
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Dec 23, 2019 05:47
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Yess kinda? National identity is a fiction, sure, but coming from place X is a fact and affects how other people treat you. Other aspects that people can make parts of their identity aren’t inherently anti-oppression either: TERFs are a Thing, and living in China for the past decade I’ve met plenty of American, British or Canadian-born Chinese who came over with their experience of being marginalised overseas and ended up buying into full on Han nationalism (which is directly oppressive of minorities), because they get to be the assholes in charge this time, and who can blame them?
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Dec 23, 2019 06:02
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Not all other forms of identity are compatible no, but I think that intersectional politics among the left is a far more coherent concept than is left-nationalism. And a lot of the people who want do left-nationalism make intersectionality the thing they're explicitly campaigning against, because they're easy targets and traditionally also they're groups that other nationalists hate and persecute anyway. And also left-nationalists are generally assholes too. Ultimately people who have been left behind by the nation for economic reasons and for reasons like race, gender, or sexuality, are all people we can find common, non-nationalist ground with.
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Dec 23, 2019 06:06
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You gotta break out the scifi poo poo. When Martians attack, we're all Earthlings. Ozymandius was right
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Dec 23, 2019 06:15
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OwlFancier posted:Ultimately people who have been left behind by the nation for economic reasons and for reasons like race, gender, or sexuality, are all people we can find common, non-nationalist ground with. Yes - I mean if anything that’s our core. But we need to be unified by our common struggle, otherwise we spend all our time bickering about which dimension of oppression is most important and that makes it hard to maintain a unified front. It’s actually quite refreshing seeing USGoons’ contempt for Pete Buttigieg; the focus doesn’t seem to have been on him being from a marginalised group, it’s been on his pure 100% alignment with all the worst parts of the ruling class.
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Dec 23, 2019 06:29
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I would be hesitant to describe the majority of the left as being prone to that sort of bickering to be honest. Generally people actually are concerned about actual problems with getting their needs represented. And while people might discuss or argue about it, I don't think there is a particular problem presenting a united front other than when people actually start getting cut out of the platform. Which, I mean, is a thing to complain about? Don't throw people under the bus and I think the left does quite well on presenting a united front. To the point that the right likes to try extra hard to represent us as being a bunch of effete liberals who don't know about t'real struggles of t'working man in t'factory who only eats racism and dripping.
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Dec 23, 2019 06:41
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OwlFancier posted:I would be hesitant to describe the majority of the left as being prone to that sort of bickering to be honest. Generally people actually are concerned about actual problems with getting their needs represented. And while people might discuss or argue about it, I don't think there is a particular problem presenting a united front other than when people actually start getting cut out of the platform. Which, I mean, is a thing to complain about? Yeah fair enough. I may be buying into the propaganda here myself, or being overly influenced by the vitriol that can pop up on social media. Twitter really is toxic tbh.
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Dec 23, 2019 07:10
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I mean yeah there's people who will have yelling matches on twitter, but I think during the election the left presented a very united front, the only wobble I can think of was re: the GRA reform stuff because the leadership did go a bit... suspicious with their takes on the subject. It's a legitimate concern cos that's people's welfare on the line there and if they're giving their time and money to the campaign they deserve to be represented, even absent the moral obligation. Since the loss there's been a lot more arguing but that's what this time is for, people held a lot of it in for the campaign precisely to present a united front when it really mattered, but now is the time to start picking apart the loss and air your grievances, so that they hopefully won't come up the next time.
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Dec 23, 2019 07:15
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IMO it's largely impossible for the Left to reclaim flags and nations and gain anything from it, because it's not the actual symbolic identity crap that attracts people to the Right. Neonationalism is appealing because it's exclusionary. Maybe it's different in the US, but in any European country, you can communicate entirely by singing the national anthem and you won't reclaim a single voter from anti-immigrant parties if you don't want to close the borders. You can if you just straight up abandon genuine internationalism in favor of valuing the comfort of "your" people above the lives of others. Case in point: Denmark. The Danish social democrats were able to win elections by combining a defense and expansion of the welfare state with closed borders and essentially racist policies against non-ethnic Danes. They didn't shift their rhetoric and aesthetic to be more rah-rah patriotic, they couched the racist policies in boring socdem technocracy. And they won, because people mainly wanted the making GBS threads on immigrants part and could live without the harping on about national traditions part, not the other way around.
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Dec 23, 2019 12:57
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The Democratic Party Is Not What You Think Extremely important read from Sophia Burns about the tightly wound nature of "progressive" politics in the US as an appendage and front organization for the democrats: quote:On paper, the Democratic Party is a broad coalition. In practice, it is a cadre party. She makes an interesting point about how even "revolutionary" organizations not affiliated with the party depend on party machinery in order to carry out their activities: quote:Leninist organizations run fronts of their own, attempting to imitate the more successful Democratic ones. However, they also depend on the Democratic base. They draw on the same pool of activists, advocate for the same causes, and usually show up at the same demonstrations. So, they only attract support when they hide their Leninist affiliation and follow the Democrats’ lead – as Refuse Fascism (a Revolutionary Communist Party front) discovered in November, when it called for protests without Democratic support and nobody came. Additionally, there are words about how successful independent organizations eventually get cooped by professional Democrats. Take for example, the Greater Seattle Neighborhood Action Coalition, formed after trump by grassroots leftists, along with a significant number of professional democrats working for SEIU and other front groups. While the communists feuded with each other over minutiae, the liberals moved in lockstep and eventually took over the organization and neutered it completely. As far as her prescriptions go: quote:Well, what does the Left want? Strategy follows goals; tactics follow strategy. For revolutionaries, the goal is to literally overthrow the government. Revolution means replacing the existing political and economic system with a better one, based on the mass cooperative control of economic, cultural, and political life. The working class carries out all the activities that sustain human life and society. However, it’s excluded from power and subjected to oppression by the capitalist class of business owners and investors. So, it has the ability to carry out a revolution – the capitalists need it, but it doesn’t need them. Further, because of its position of exploitation, it stands to benefit from the abolition of class distinctions. I agree with this completely, the left needs a base in the US. This often means doing things that break the law, such as feeding the homeless without a commercial kitchen license, running free clinics with imported drugs (extremely illegal, and yet the FDA allows importation for personal use exactly because they know it is an effective relief valve for high costs), or creating night schools by the working class for the working class. All of these are much greater uses of lawbreaking in service of the people than infantile appeals to violence and revolution.
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Dec 23, 2019 16:19
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Can you give examples of the night schools thing? I'm interested.
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Dec 23, 2019 18:00
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UnknownTarget posted:Can you give examples of the night schools thing? I'm interested. Not specifically a night school, the BPP ran its own elementary school separate from the oakland school system: At historic Black Panthers school, Black teachers were key to student success: The Black Panther Party created one of the most durable bases in American politics and if left unchecked would've continued along the dual track path of empowerment.
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Dec 23, 2019 18:23
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This is a repost of something I wrote up in another thread in September but I think it is relevant here. Apologies for the wall of words but I think a survey of some of the scholarship on social movement organizing might be a helpful addition to this discussion. ---- I'll preface this by pointing out that there is a substantial and helpful literature on what causes new social movements to emerge and what factors can predict their relative success or failure. In what follows we'll see some examples of how this question is modeled. As with many realms of social science you get the familiar breakdown of macro and micro factors. As a general rule micro analysis focuses on the behaviour of individual agents and how they interact with each other (i.e. how does a firm decide whether to hire more workers or invest in more production). Macro analysis concerns systemic interdependence (i.e., how does the aggregated buying and selling of all the firms in the marketplace create systemic patterns that translate into things like booms and busts). There is a less common but important in-between level of analysis, the meso, which focuses on specific community or organization within a larger system (i.e. the dynamics and decision making within a specific firm; if micro looks at individual decisions and macro at larger scale interactions then the meso is the intermediate layer in which these two forces meet and are expressed via some specific institutional configuration, like a specific workplace or union or organization). We tend toward macro analysis in this thread. We see the overall state of the country and how hosed up our politics are and think of what macro factors have caused this to happen. As it happens this is paralleled in the dominant literature on social movements. They too have various macro oriented models that try to explain when, how and why people choose to get involved in a social movement. On the off chance this is compelling enough to anyone that they want to check out the full book for themselves you can access it here. At the core of this literature is the idea of a "Social Movement Organization" (SMO), Daniel Stockemer, The Micro and Meso Levels of Activism: A Comparative Case Study of Attac France and Attac Germany, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, p. 1-3 posted:The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, anti-nuclear protests, and the pro-peace mobilization of the 1980s, as well as gay and lesbian activism of the 1990s and 2000s, are examples where common people opted for engagement that goes beyond the process of ordinary politics (Morse, 1993). They displayed a deeper commitment to a political goal – political motivation that cannot be measured simply by casting a vote for a party (Mouriaux, 1983, p. 53). Citizen engagement has taken shape in the form of social movements, as defined by Sidney Tarrow. He understands social movements in the classical sense as “collective challenges by people with common purposes and solidarity in a sustained interaction with elites, opponents and authorities” (Tarrow, 1998, p. 3). Collective action defined in this way not only takes many forms, brief or sustained, institutionalized or disruptive, humdrum or dramatic, but also occurs within institutions on the part of constituted groups, which fight for clearly defined goals. These constituted groups are social movement organizations (SMOs),1 which are the meat and backbone of all social movements (Mayer and Ash, 1996). They attract and recruit people who want to fight for a cause via unconventional means; they are responsible for the organization and coordination of most unconventional political activities; and they provide the financial resources necessary to stage events and to train participants in creative forms of action (Rucht, 1999, p. 207). The three dominant ways of interpreting social movement formation reference above are. These explanations are not mutually exclusive and can be viewed as complementary. On the other hand, they are all pitched primarily at a macro-level of analysis, which is to say they don't offer very good explanations for why some groups succeed and others fail under more or less the same conditions. Such an explanation requires a more nuanced micro and meso level explanation. The three broad approaches for explaining the appearance and success of social movements is: 1. relative deprivation theory 2. resource mobilization theory 3. opportunity structure theory To briefly cover each of them: Relative Deprivation Theory Stockemer, p. 14-15 posted:Over the past 50 years, grievance or relative deprivation theories have been the dominant, classical explanation for why some people have engaged in contentious political activities while others have not (Geschwender and Geschwender, 1973). Grievance theorists (Forger, 1986; Runciman, 1966) see feelings of relative deprivation, which result from perceived discrepancies between peoples’ value expectations and their value capabilities, as the root cause for unconventional political action (Klandermans et al., 2001).1 The underlying assumption in this approach is that citizens do not normally protest when they are satisfied with their daily lives. Rather, people are more inclined to engage in collective action when facing dire economic, social, or political conditions, whether real or perceived (e.g., Choi, 1999; Seidman, 1994). As Klandermans (1997) puts it, a demand for change often begins with dissatisfaction, be it in the experience of illegitimate inequality, perceptions of a loss of integration in society, feelings of injustice and moral indignation about some state of affairs, or a sudden imposed grievance (see also Abeles, 1976). Stockemer, p. 15 posted:To explain changes in sources of frustrations in industrialized countries, new social movement scholars (Melucci, 1989, 1998; Touraine, 1981, 1988) claim that the type of society may predispose people to certain grievances and demands. For example, Touraine (1985, p. 774–781) argues that industrialized societies were prone to class struggles as well as to struggles for political and civil rights. However, as Melucci (1998, p. 13) contends, the era of industrial conflict ended in the 1950s or 1960s. With the fulfillment of material needs and the granting of (basic) political rights, individuals no longer wanted more material goods but were seeking self-realization (Buechler, 1995, 2008). After 1968, other forms of postmaterial values (e.g., peace or the environment) became more central as well.2 While this is an intuitively appealing theory it runs aground on the fact that "most of the time, most aggrieved people who are not represented neither mobilize nor form any movement structure" because "whether those aggrieved and inadequately represented create SMOs within the civil soceity subsystem of the political system seems to depend on other conditions, such as a subset of aggrieved individuals with resources, who are able to build an organization, and the opening up of political opportunities that allow these aggrieved individuals with resources to act." (Stockemer, p. 17). That naturally leads us to the second theory: Resource Mobilization Theory Stockemer, p. 17-18 posted:Only small subsets of aggrieved individuals can initiate SMOs. The resource mobilization approach alerts us to four necessary personal conditions, which aggrieved people must fulfill in order to create an SMO. These factors are financial and personal resources, time, energy, and experience (Edwards and McCarthy, 2004). First, a start-up of an SMO requires monetary funds. Most small and local start-ups require moderate amounts of capital, which can often be provided by initiators and their friends. However, larger SMOs often need outside funding. This funding can come from foundations, existing SMOs, interest groups, parties, or wealthy individuals (Walker, 1991). Opportunity Structure Theory Stockemer, p. 18 posted:The opportunity structure theorem purports that the likelihood of aggrieved people with resources to launch an SMO rises and falls with perceptions of successful mobilization. In this sense, political opportunity structures (POSs) refer to constraints, possibilities, and threats that originate inside or outside the mobilizing group and affect its chances of mobilizing. Structural characteristics of political systems, the behavior of allies, adversaries, and the public; societal tendencies, economic structures, and developments – all these factors can be sources of mobilizational opportunities (McAdam, 1982; McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly, 2001; Tarrow, 1989a, 1989b, 1991; Tilly, 1978, 2005.) For example, the ability to appeal to a wide variety of interests, the emergence of a sponsor, or the possibility to push through a policy demand might entice possible initiators to spend both time and energy to launch an SMO Bringing that together we get the following synopsis for how SMOs come into existence and then succeed or fail: Stockemer, p. 19-21 posted:Three factors account for the development of protest structures within civil society. These are (1) the existence of grievances in society; (2) the So to briefly sum all this up: there are multiple factors that need to be present for a successful social movement to launch itself and have any reasonable expectations of success. There has to be a set of identifiable grievances that can be targeted, there needs to be a critical mass of individuals with the necessary resources (monetary, social, personal) to launch a new organization. In situations where you have a large population of aggrieved individuals, a group of political entrepreneurs ready to capitalize on those grievances, and a plausible looking plan for putting this into action then you can get the emergence of a new social movement organization. While these SMOs are not sufficient for enacting policy change they are necessary for it. So while they're not a panacea for all that ails us they are a crucial part of the puzzle if you're someone who is confused about why neoliberalism is such a seemingly monolithic political tendency.
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Dec 23, 2019 18:29
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Very good posts. I have read through all of them and now a couple of Sophia Burns's articles. I see the logic in saying that progressive movements in the United States are essentially fronts for the Democratic Party. I don't think it's completely purposeful, as she suggests; merely that the same people who canvas for progressive ideals also canvas for the Democrats. However in many cases I do think it is purposeful, like she suggests. In regards to your post, Helsing - I think those gents are spot on. The creation of a successful movement requires 1) Grievances, 2) Will and ability to organize and 3) Opportunity to seize for growth. The difficulty in finding all of those is obvious. Political organizing is a full-time job for a reason and if you're able to do it you're either one of the "activist lifestylers" that Sophia derides or a part of an established political machine and functioning as an agent of one of the major parties - who are paying your salary or their donors are paying the operating budget of your party-influenced organization. During my time on the Occupy forums when that movement was first starting, I met a very strange man. He was definitely a little off-kilter, and caused quite the stir because he never really engaged in discussions - he just kept repeating the same couple of questions over and over. He frustrated a lot of users because he literally just said the same things over and over again. "obfuscating the core of accountability" was one of his taglines. He interested me because I've never seen someone so devoted to a singular line of thought. After speaking with him and then falling out of touch, I bring his idea here because I believe it is correct and speaks directly to these quoted issues. It is simple; accountability as a movement. It's similar to the Geneva trials after WW2. Great injustice was wrought and a people's court was called to try those who did it. Let's skip the details of who got off and who was bargained for; the message is clear: no one is above the law. So, a movement for accountability seems to be the proper course of action. The major grievance of our time is that leaders are not prosecuted for their wrongdoing. That's what gets people upset. There is a will to organize, to find purpose - and I believe that with a singular, clear mission statement (bring accountability to the elite, force trials, etc.) then the ability will coalesce. There are many opportunities to capture the public's fervor and use it to grow. Epstein's trial is one, for example. Demanding accountability, focusing in on that and creating the movement around that is possible, I think. The details I do not know, but I do know that there is a massive appetite for justice from the common class. To Sophia's point, "Accountability" is self-cleaning - in the words of this crazy man. You cannot be "for" accountability while letting unaccountable behavior fester in your movement. Technically, you can - but it's a house of cards. The moment you're ousted as being corrupt, the movement fails or you get replaced. It's like playing the game with a gun against your head - if you cheat, you're out. If you don't, you can win. So in this way, it resists co-opting by the existing power structure because if they co-opt it and are found out, then the movement itself can turn on them. Finally, it calls back to the core idea of the American Experiment, for those that want to build a leftist America identity. The whole reason we have a democracy (representational republic for you pedants) is to create a mechanism by which to hold leaders accountable; do bad stuff, lose your job. Accountability hits all the points brought up in this thread and the message is so simple, so direct, so easy to say and understand, that I think it could really be the thing that the working class rallies around.
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Dec 24, 2019 04:10
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I find the idea of suggesting there could be a movement in the US to hold the state to account in a manner similar to the nuremburg trials post WW2 quite funny, given the US's role in paperclipping a whole shedload of nazis out of Germany so that they wouldn't face justice and could help prop up its own military capabilities lol.
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Dec 24, 2019 04:23
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OwlFancier posted:I find the idea of suggesting there could be a movement in the US to hold the state to account in a manner similar to the nuremburg trials post WW2 quite funny, given the US's role in paperclipping a whole shedload of nazis out of Germany so that they wouldn't face justice and could help prop up its own military capabilities lol. Oh hey that's literally the reply that I preempted in my post. "Let's skip the details of who got off and who was bargained for; the message is clear: no one is above the law." You must feel super Clever and Smart. You focused on the one weak analogy instead of the meat of what I said. I presume because it's easier to pick a hole in something obvious rather than putting in the effort of replying to the gestalt? What about the rest of what I said? The concept? How it is a direct response to what people have said in this thread and ties in with running themes of this discussion?
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Dec 24, 2019 04:44
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And I dispute that you can or should "skip the details" when "skipping the details" leads you to characterise the invasion and forcible regime change of a country by exterior powers who were completely willing to profit off its atrocities while claiming to be ideologically opposed to everything it stood for, as a self-generated grassroots revolution against the power structure in said country. Denazification in Germany was largely imposed from outside. And really only to the degree that it was actually useful to the people doing it. A lot of people who were active in the nazi administration were still in various levels of the government on both sides of the iron curtain for a long time afterwards even if you ignore the efforts made to capture and co-opt various numbers of them to fuel the superpowers. So I don't get your point? It appears to be "well that happened, therefore this other, entirely different thing could happen" because there is virtually nothing in common between the process by which nazi germany became current germany, and the process of a country actually initiating internal transformative justice through the existing process of its own political structure. Note that this is not to say that the nazis wouldn't have likely collapsed to internal pressures in time but specifically claiming that the process of the second world war and what came after is applicable to domestic politics in our countries today is just... I do not understand it at all? The process you are describing is in no way at all "self cleaning" and I don't get what you seem to think efforts to organize for justice are at the moment? I also don't get what you think the effects of turning in on itself whenever it comes into contact with the power structure (which again, I characterise as being inherently "dirty" to use your analogy) would be? Movement gains traction, movement becomes established, movement tries to effect change through the power structure, becomes corrupt, leaders ousted, nothing is done, movement tries same process again? The reason movements become corrupt through contact with the power structure is that the alternative is that they lose the ability to do things through the power structure because they can't engage with it. In which case what you're advocating for is something that doesn't even try to use the existing power structure because it's inherently damaging to the cause. Do you have some mechanism by which this repeating self-purge would actually change the power structure? Because I don't see one. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 05:05 on Dec 24, 2019 |
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Dec 24, 2019 04:57
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OwlFancier posted:And I dispute that you can or should "skip the details" when "skipping the details" leads you to characterise the invasion and forcible regime change of a country by exterior powers who were completely willing to profit off its atrocities while claiming to be ideologically opposed to everything it stood for, as a self-generated grassroots revolution against the power structure in said country. My point is that the issue is a lack of accountability. What needs to be done is to hold those in power accountable. Reread my post and remove that analogy to get what my point is, rather than focusing on it. quote:Note that this is not to say that the nazis wouldn't have likely collapsed to internal pressures in time but specifically claiming that the process of the second world war and what came after is applicable to domestic politics in our countries today is just... I do not understand it at all? Once again, you're focusing too much on the analogy. What I'm talking about is holding power accountable. Reread my post and remove the part where I mentioned the Nuremberg trials and you'll see what I was trying to say. quote:The process you are describing is in no way at all "self cleaning" and I don't get what you seem to think efforts to organize for justice are at the moment? I also don't get what you think the effects of turning in on itself whenever it comes into contact with the power structure (which again, I characterise as being inherently "dirty" to use your analogy) would be? Movement gains traction, movement becomes established, movement tries to effect change through the power structure, becomes corrupt, leaders ousted, nothing is done, movement tries same process again? It's cleansing in the fact that if you try to take someone to task for doing something wrong, but you yourself are doing something wrong, the movement will collapse in on itself in infighting. It destroys itself, as a feature - not a bug. quote:The reason movements become corrupt through contact with the power structure is that the alternative is that they lose the ability to do things through the power structure because they can't engage with it. In which case what you're advocating for is something that doesn't even try to use the existing power structure because it's inherently damaging to the cause. You're focusing on the part where it's self-purging, rather than the crux of what I was trying to say: the issue of our times, and the firebrand that progressivism can use, is the lack of accountability for those in power. By focusing efforts on forcing accountability, we strike at the heart of the modern issue. The real question you should be asking is "how can we hold the elite accountable for their actions" and once you realize we have no answer, then we can start discussing how to find the things that really need to be done. UnknownTarget fucked around with this message at 16:24 on Dec 24, 2019 |
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Dec 24, 2019 16:06
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You're going to have to take a 'salt the earth' attitude towards conservatives because they have, can and actively are doing it to anyone left of Mussolini as we speak.
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Dec 24, 2019 16:35
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TBH I think left vs. right is a red herring issue. Not saying "both sides are the same", more like outside of the extremes, there are a lot of overlapping values. I.e. hunters, typically considered very "right" in the US are actually the people who pay the most to maintain our wild lands through their hunting licenses and conservation efforts. By pitting clumps of people against each other, the elite ruin any momentum those movements may have. For example, Occupy & the Tea Party actually had a lot of overlapping demands and concerns (such as they were). However they were manipulated by the media into opposing left and right sides and never built a critical mass, instead spending a lot of their energy fighting each other.
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Dec 24, 2019 16:42
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Yeah dude they might have overlapping concerns, but the solutions they agitate for are very different. One set of those being left and the other right.
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Dec 25, 2019 00:49
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What's a left vs. what's a right solution for forcing the elite to be accountable for their actions?
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Dec 25, 2019 18:21
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UnknownTarget posted:What's a left vs. what's a right solution for forcing the elite to be accountable for their actions? Destroy the elite vs. fantasize about being the elite.
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Dec 25, 2019 19:03
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Infinite Karma posted:Destroy the elite vs. fantasize about being the elite. Which is which? Because I could see that being either. Left: we want to help everyone, we should be in charge. Right: we know what's best, put us in charge and we'll keep things in check. So how does the populace hold the elites accountable for their actions? My wife and I were just talking about this, and while candidates like Bernie are saying to tax the wealthy, reform campaign finance, have better police oversight etc., no one is coming out and saying "hold elites accountable". There are no activist movements around it, either. Our system was built to hold the most powerful people at the time (government leaders/Kings) accountable. Now, the most powerful people are billionaires and government officials who never have to worry about facing a real election. How do the people hold them accountable for what they've done? How do remove the second layer of law for people who make more than $100 million or whatever, or who are super well connected? UnknownTarget fucked around with this message at 19:37 on Dec 25, 2019 |
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Dec 25, 2019 19:27
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Traditionally the left want to end the class war by removing the ruling class, and the right love the ruling class. But to answer the real question, holding elites accountable is virtually impossible. Whatever systems there are, they can be subverted to tilt towards the powerful (read: rich in modem times). So we make it extremely hard to hold on to power for long enough to make a difference. High marginal taxes, high property taxes, high corporate taxes, and high estate taxes, vacancy taxes, stock trading taxes... basically tax everything that allows capital to extract rents without performing labor, and keep the top of the market unstable so nobody can hold on to billions indefinitely. If there are a few billionaires who are able to capture the zeitgeist and ride success to fortunes we can't control, we build the system so that lightning-in-a-bottle success needs to be continually performed (which is impossible) to hold on to it. Markets can do some of the work as everybody else catches up and replaces the monopoly power of the lone genius.
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Dec 25, 2019 20:27
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Infinite Karma posted:Destroy the elite vs. fantasize about being the elite. No the main difference is who they think the elite is: government elite vs capitalist elites. They both want to destroy the elites. Though it’s worth noting that destroying elites is a fantasy. We live in huge, complex, technologically dependent societies that must be run by elites. The point of the political system is to hold the elites accountable (while also not succumbing to mob rule).
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Dec 25, 2019 22:02
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asdf32 posted:No the main difference is who they think the elite is: government elite vs capitalist elites. They both want to destroy the elites. without a king, how will one operate a Westphalian nation-state
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Dec 25, 2019 22:37
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UnknownTarget posted:What's a left vs. what's a right solution for forcing the elite to be accountable for their actions? Depends mostly on how you define "accountable", "the elite" and which specific (sub)set of actions you are calling for said accountability on.
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Dec 26, 2019 01:33
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Orange Devil posted:Depends mostly on how you define "accountable", "the elite" and which specific (sub)set of actions you are calling for said accountability on. 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. @asdf32 - I agree with everything you said. It's not about destroying elites permanently. They will always be there. It's about holding them accountable to the same laws as the rest of us.
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Dec 26, 2019 02:29
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I would suggest that the most comprehensive leftist position is that the definition of "the elite" is that they aren't held to the same laws as the rest of us because otherwise they wouldn't be "elite" and the idea that a society can exist in this perpetual stalemate where they exist but have no undue power is farcical, and that society must instead be organized in such a manner that they do not exist. They mustn't be destroyed because that's better, they must be destroyed because that's literally the only way it can possibly work in the long run, you cannot have a society organized so that there are a privileged few with all the power but at the same time they only use it for everyone's benefit. What you're arguing is that philosopher kings are a real and good way to govern. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 02:35 on Dec 26, 2019 |
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Dec 26, 2019 02:33
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OwlFancier posted:I would suggest that the most comprehensive leftist position is that the definition of "the elite" is that they aren't held to the same laws as the rest of us because otherwise they wouldn't be "elite" and the idea that a society can exist in this perpetual stalemate where they exist but have no undue power is farcical, and that society must instead be organized in such a manner that they do not exist. No I'm not. I'm saying that there will be elite who will rise to power and their intentions may be good or bad but regardless they must be held accountable to the same justice system the rest of us are.
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Dec 26, 2019 02:54
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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. Like the idea that you can keep fighting the people in charge and winning and that's good and sensible, but making it so you don't need to keep doing that is not even conceivable, that's pretty silly if you ask me. Because I would suggest the latter is by far the easier option.
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Dec 26, 2019 02:59
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