That doesn’t really change my position since I’ve seen many unironically and seriously advocate for being the aggressors. And like I said elsewhere, current progressive agenda doesn’t make a lot of sense because its whole identity is being the opposite of MAGA with a whiff of the ideals that once were core to it.
It doesn’t matter what MAGA does or what MAGA is, progressives need to define themselves independently of that. But a popular workers movement it is not. That crown for right or wrong belongs to MAGA.
That’s not the managerial class.
The managerial class are the office employees, very generally “knowledge workers”.
This is proof that the current progressive agenda causes the same kind of brain rot MAGA does.
The first thing is that progressives need to stop being intellectually dishonest. The movement needs to admit that the world view is a technocratic one in which the best course of action given the evidence available is the one that will guide the decisions of the movement, not popular sentiment.
As of right now the progressive agenda looks like a mass of contradictions whose only identity is opposition to MAGA and the right with such intensity that the right has in fact co-opted many of the stances that traditionally belonged on the left, losing the support of the working class.
Seen through a Marxist lens, it is not surprising, the progressive movement in the US is not a worker’s movement but rather a managerial class movement.
And then you don’t hire them because they have a 2 year gap in their resume and they were honest about spending that time in Thailand with a harem of transsexual prostitutes.
How can you actually write all this after saying capitalism is anti democratic, with the implication that being anti democratic is a bad thing. Look at what you wrote, and think long and hard if you actually want a popular democracy. The US system would work very very well if it had more parties and electors started acting the way they are intentioned to act (not vote for the president their constituents chose but rather the best choice according to their platform, utopic I know).
And yes both parties are right wing but that’s because Americans, on average are right wing. No shit political parties in democratic states mold themselves to be attractive to voters. But calling it a police state is the usual hysterical progressive stance that no one that has actually lived in a police state will take seriously. The US is not a police state. It is a corpocratic state though, no doubt. It’s a huge issue that I believe might come to a head soon, Trump is accelerating that with his blatant corruption. And then I hope money’s power over politics will be curtailed. Or not, we’ll see.
One thing I’d like to point out that Trump spent far less money than Kamala. And Kamala had the support of mass media while Trump didn’t.
What I get from you is that you are of course deeply troubled with the state of things but have not yet a clear idea of what would be a better system, you’re simply angry at what it is right now. Which is fair. But I think you need to make up your mind whether you think more government is good or if government as a human organization is inherently corruptible and therefore what we actually need is less government, and whether true direct popular democracy is good or whether we should become more technocratic/meritocratic/aristocratic because you seem to be flip flopping between one stance and the other. Even highly educated countries are electing right wingers right now so while education is a factor it’s not the only factor.
Yes I’m aware of the business plot. But I think you also need to understand the context in which that happened. The Federal Government was never meant to be as powerful as Roosevelt made it, the United States was envisioned as a state of states, kinda like what the EU is right now. So it is not surprising that a plot would form to take down a president that was trying to make a government that was much more powerful than it was ever meant to be. Trump is aesthetically a reaction to Roosevelt, but in reality is a result and even somewhat of a mirror image. Assuming that you are a principled person and not one that thinks politics is a team sports If you are outraged at the way Trump acts, you would be outraged at the way Roosevelt acted had you been there.
Well the problem is that you’re hardly saying anything anyone doesn’t know, especially if they are on lemmy.
Why did China become capitalist?
Marx himself said that communism can only arrive through capitalism. Though he is hardly an oracle, that logic makes sense to me.
I don’t believe in communism, simply because I don’t believe that abolishing private property is something realistic, it seems even anti human. And so far the track record for communism is not great, because concentrating all wealth in the hands of the state (who is controlled by a few people) is somewhat of a bad idea it seems (who would have thought!)
I do believe in socialism. But the conditions are not here yet. Humanity grows on having something to exploit. We’re currently building the next exploited class which will be AI and advanced robotics.Once all human labor is rendered worthless, socialism will not only be viable, it will be necessary. Capitalism is the only force that provides the means to get there.
Is it unfair for us in the present? I guess. But it was also unfair for all the billions of humans who have died through history to create the conditions of the world we live in, which whatever you may think, is a vast improvement over every other period of time. Humanity is a constant project, and it is always the case that the present humans need to make sacrifices for the future humans. If that doesn’t happen our species stagnates.
The point of capitalism is that it creates endless hunger for endless desires and thus endless growth. In serving yourself you serve others. Of course capitalism needs to be curved if this is the case because it otherwise becomes destructive so in comes events of mass discontent, and massive political shifts much like you see now and in the Great Depression. We are soon approaching a point in which we will need a New New Deal.
But keep in mind this is not even the worst era of capitalism. Despite the disparity in terms of sheer wealth, the disparity in quality of life is much much smaller. I’m not dismissing the problems, but I think that one needs perspective as well.
Also people have a terrible idea of what democracy is. Democracy has never been “we all have equal say”. That’s a fairly recent interpretation of it. Democracy through most of its history has been “these specific group of people have equal say, and they decide for everyone else”. And that is basically the reality of almost every human system. We can make ourselves equal in rights but we will never be able to make ourselves equals in charisma or ability, and thus some people will always have more power than others, even if not officially others will look upon them for leadership.
Wow there’s so many things wrong in this that I don’t even know where to start. The sentiment is right, but your entire understanding of how the economy or even capitalism works is terrible. I hope you are like 15, and not a grown person.
You can still buy stocks worth $2, some of them might even end up being worth $120+ 17 years. The reason the stock was worth so little back then was that the company was smaller, see how that works? The guy buying AMD back then was taking as much risk as you are buying a $2 stock today.
Capitalism is a very flexible and moldable system, it can adapt to almost any conditions. Many of the problems that are inherent to capitalism can be smoothed and fixed but it requires political will to do so. I think capitalism works extremely well in two circumstances : a. System in which there are good wealth distribution system or b. Government avoids regulations in ways that increase the barriers to entry to markets in such a way that no one can ever compete again in said market without having more capital than the current competitors.
I prefer a. Just saying b. can work too but it’s actually much harder to pull of because the government would need to willingly dismantle itself and not in the way Trump is doing it.
Probably the same reason everyone doesn’t just talk English.
I don’t know enough about programming to do it myself so I like to look at what the community says. This is one thing we’re AI could be very helpful no?
Hierarchy will always exist yes, you did not discover something new. I don’t know if I would describe it in the context of masters and slaves though, for sure there is a lot of inequality but overall the difference in quality of life between the elites and the common person is much less than under feudalism. And you have a lot more agency over the outcome of your life.
Like I said, hierarchy. Hierarchy and feudalism are not the same thing.
Many very rich people own hardly any land. Many very powerful people own hardly any land. Many comparatively poor people may own many acres of land. You could move the goal post and say it’s ownership of corporations but then at that point it’s clearly not feudalism.
Yu do not work in exchange for protection unless you consider the democratically elected government a feudal lord, in which case again, number 1 doesn’t apply and therefore the system isn’t feudalism. Furthermore you have the option to get another job, move out, save and start a business etc.
You can see how that’s not the case anymore, even marriage is a legal contract.
So yeah, no we do not live under feudalism and you need to maybe touch grass. Feudalism was much worse than what we have now, like it’s not even close.
You do not know what feudalism is. What you described is hierarchy, not feudalism.
I’ll get downvoted to hell probably, but hierarchy is inherent to humans and to primates in general. Even if on paper we create a truly egalitarian society, there will always be people that by virtue of being more skilled or charismatic will always have more influence in society. It doesn’t mean that they “rule” necessarily but more like people will put trust in them to make decisions when everyone else can’t get on the same page on etc.
I just don’t think there’s any room for debate. You can get it on loan, rent it, buy it secondhand or buy it new. Anything else would be unethical.
You are not obligated to read the book.
You should feel obligated to nothing except to remunerate people fairly for their work if you want it.
Yeah isolating yourself from everyone you disagree with is awesome, truly nothing bad ever comes out of it.
But the OP wants access to that content. It doesn’t matter what the content is, what matters is someone wrote it and they are entitled to payment from those who want to consume it.
Alternatively they could just not read it or ask the people they are debating to send them a copy if they possess one.
New protected minority just dropped!