Cowbee

It's also a story about America, unless for some reason Trump is running for Canadian Presidency too. Plus, Canada faces much of the same issues as the US.

Yes, America is a dying Empire, and the Capitalist class is desparately trying to maintain it's grip.

You're arguing whether the GM theory is right or wrong

Not quite. I know it's wrong, my argument is that your analysis of Trump is wrong because it assumes Great Man Theory is correct, ie Trump's views will die with him and there couldn't be a successor.

I'm saying to Trump supporters, it doesn't matter, he's their "Great Man", they've fallen for the idea that a Great Man will fix all their problems. Because they are stupid and believe in false ideals.

This isn't Great Man Theory on the part of Trump Supporters. Trump Supporters hold fascist views because of their material conditions, not because Trump convinced them to.

That's why I'm getting the impression you're trying to show off how much you know instead of engaging with the actual topic. Do you need a pat on the back?

No, I genuinely was making a point, attacking it for having an understood meaning undermines your position.

I know inventing reality is your whole schtick, but Marx was in fact a Materialist. Politzer's Elementary Principles of Philosophy makes this very clear.

I'm not going to take you too seriously, you have previously denied all 3 major components of Marxism, those being Socialism, Historical and Dialectical Materialism, and Marxist critique of Capitalism via the Labor Theory of Value. Any actual analysis of Marx by your part needs to be viewed with the highest level of skepticism to begin with.

Materialists are reactionaries who imagine that the social conditions of capitalism are immutable realities.

Gotcha, you believe Karl Marx and every Marxist to follow him was a reactionary.

You're deeply unserious.

What are you trying to do? Legitimately, what is your goal here? To say I don't know what Great Man Theory actually is?

It would take time for someone to take his place, which gives resistance time. It is a good thing to fight fascism.

Nope, wealth disparity drastically decreased when compared to Tsarism and later Capitalism. In addition, Soviet workers had extensive safety nets, like free healthcare, education, more vacation days and fewer working hours than the US, and high home ownership rates.

They didn't have an abundance of luxuries, but they did reduce poverty drastically.

But they're not, and if you believe that, you're falling for leftist propaganda.

They are a far-right corporatist party with core party lines of Nationalism, xenophobia, militancy, and class colaborationism. What boxes are they missing checkmarks for?

Yes, both parties serve their donors, but both parties are made up of individual citizens whose first loyalty should be to upholding the Constitution. If they don't believe a candidate will uphold the law of the land, they should refuse to allow them to win the nomination. That's one of the central messages of the book I linked.

We aren't talking about what people should do if everyone is morally upstanding. We are specifically talking about power structures as they materially exist, in the real world. The very fact that the only parties in power must be the parties that can gain funding from the wealthiest Americans means they must continue to represent their interests to retain power. You are speaking of an idealistic fantasy land.

Look at where socialism has been tried. In the USSR, Stalin abused his power to send undesirables to the gulags, and there are plenty of books from first and second-hand sources about how that worked. Or look at the Cultural Revolution in China. Both states claimed to be socialist in some sense, and both resorted to extreme violence to establish their systems. Any system that relies on violence against dissidents to establish itself is morally bankrupt.

Yes, both the USSR and PRC had violent revolutions. The US also uses violence against dissidents, and has the highest prison population in the world per Capita.

What we can also see is that the USSR and PRC drastically reduced poverty and drastically increased life expectency. For all of their well-documented problems, there are also well-documented success stories, and a large amount of nostalgia for the USSR in most Post-Soviet countries. Make of that what you will.

I disagree. High government approval rates can easily be manufactured, especially in a one-party state.

They can also be easily manufactured in a two-party state, that doesn't change that the actual approval for government is the necessary metric.

The way it should work is if one party is knocking it out of the park, the other party(s) will reform their policies to adopt the good parts of the party that's in power and attack the bad parts, which will make them more attractive to voters. That's why the policies of Democrats and Republicans essentially flipped around the Civil War. Also, the definition of "liberal" used to mean small government, limited entitlements, and now it generally means "progressive." Parties change as public sentiment changes, and that's a good thing, since that means they're adapting to what constituents want.

If both parties have low approval rates, what then?

I think this process could be way more efficient, which is why I push for proportional representation and eliminating first past the post.

Better than what we have now, sure.

Keeps the party that's in power honest and constantly evolving to keep their constituents happy.

You don't need an opposition party, just democratic control within the party and state. Again, see what the citizens actually want, there's plenty of room for diversity of thought even within a single party.

Here's a well-cited Wikipedia article about it.

None of them hold water. I could point you to Wage Labor and Capital, or Value, Price and Profit, or even Capital, but if I don't know what specifically you find disagreeable with the LTV, I can't answer. Do you want me to go through the entire Wikipedia article for you? I specifically didn't want to throw books at you because you aren't going to read them just for a Lemmy argument, which is why I asked you personally to offer an explanation. In absence of any specifically stated criticism on your part, here is a good general article supporting the Labor Theory of Value in contemporary time.

Because it's a one-party state. If you give a simple majority all of the power, you're leaving out almost half of the total, and what happens if people in that simple majority end up changing their mind? The whole point of the dictatorship is to prevent people from changing their minds, hence the dictatorship.

You're misreading quite a few things here. A one-party state doesn't mean no elections, councils, ballot measures, minority protections, or so forth. The point of a Dictatorship of the Proletariat is to simply prevent Capitalists from corrupting the state.

Marx didn't write a ton about it, but we can see the repression in the USSR and Maoist China as examples of reasons to avoid it.

Both the USSR and Maoist China were more democratic than Tsarist Russia and Nationalist China, and the Russian Federation is less democratic than the USSR was.

Sure. IIRC, he advocated for dissolving state functions until a small committee of people orchestrates the economy (i.e. reallocate resources and whatnot).

Not necessarily, he just argued for the elements of government that oppress other classes, what he referred to as the "state," to whither away. This is a necessary consequence of eliminating classes themselves.

I just don't see a strong government ever giving up power voluntarily. Who would actually do that? A lot would say they would, but that just doesn't happen in practice. It never happened in the USSR, and doesn't seem to be happening in China. There is no evidence that anyone in power would willingly give it up, especially if it's run by a group instead of an individual (a kingdom might yield power if a particular king/queen felt so inclined).

See the previous point. The government doesn't "relinquish power," the structures themselves become redundant. Do you see lamp-lighters lighting oil street lanterns anymore? No, because they are electric now. We do not maintain structures that have no use.

None of my concerns here have anything to do with Capitalism vs Socialism, but centralization of power (i.e. the political side, not the economic side). I just don't see a reason for the kind of person who works their way up the ranks of a political party to ever willingly cede power.

Again, it isn't about ceding power. You can read Critique of the Gotha Programme for more information, since you want links.

Capitalism is an economic system, not a political system. Socialism is both (generally speaking). The political side most often paired with capitalism is most often liberalism, because liberalism is all about the separation and limiting of both.

Economics and politics cannot be divorced from one another. Democracy within a Capitalist system means Capitalists have outsized power, and the state will serve the Capitalists.

I would say the US was a liberal democracy when formed, but that ship has long since sailed. Liberalism is all about individual rights and equality before the law, and those are both being trampled left and right. So what we're seeing today has little to do with pure capitalism, it's honestly getting closer to mercantilism, which is the marriage of government and the economy with a veneer of free markets. Look at the tariffs of Chinese EVs and whatnot, which are protectionist policies, which goes against the whole point of capitalism.

You're again attaching idealism to reality. Reality does not care what people believe about it.

No, my point is that we should be limiting the interaction between the government and the economy, while also ensuring that the people generally benefit from any exclusivity granted to individuals in the economy. This means, in general:

• higher property taxes and negative income taxes - i.e. a minimum standard of living for the poor
• removal of most corporate legal protections - owners of corporations should be criminally liable for actions of their company
• dramatically limit IP protections - e.g. copyright law should last 10-15 years, not 90

Why? How would this maintain itself in Capitalism? Why would either party move in this direction? Why would the donors pivot to weakening their power?

And so on. Basically, the government should not be in the business of selecting who in the economy succeeds or fails, it should merely be in the business of collecting a distributing tax receipts, as well as protecting the populace militarily. Whether the economy booms or busts should be none of its concern. The main interaction between governments and the economy should be piguovian taxes, like carbon taxes and whatnot, and those should be strictly redistributed to the public to avoid any kind of favoritism in how they're assessed. Oh, and maybe trust-busting, monopolies help no-one.

Again, why? This seems like it sounds cool to you, but you've done no thought on how to make reality reflect it. A lot of "shoulds," as usual from you, with no analysis of why things are the way they are.

In other words, capitalism shouldn't be eliminated, but quarantined, and stripped of any political power. It's an economic system, and it should remain as such.

It can't, because Capitalists control the state, and will not change just because they should. Read Socialism: Utopian and Scientific to understand why people who focus on what the ruling class should do (referred to as Utopians) have failed every time.

It's almost like no matter how old or how advanced we get we need somebody to break up our fights and to make us share our toys so that our little siblings can play with them.

Sure, even in Socialism and Communism there would be laws and a government.

That's kind of weird but treating any sufficiently large group of humans like a child eventually becomes a necessity to prevent them from turning into an unregulated group of psychopaths.

I don't think this has any bearing in reality, it just sounded nice in your head.

It's not on the DNC to regulate the GOP, it's on the GOP to regulate the GOP. Basically, the GOP should have just refused to nominate Trump if they felt he was a serious threat to democracy (let him run as an independent).

It's on the DNC to stomp out fascism. The GOP is a fascist party, why would they stop Trump? Both parties serve their donors.

That's just going to result it the same problem, just with a very different smell. Nobody should "take power," a peaceful transfer of power between left and right (or a variety of other parties in parliamentary systems) is a sign of a healthy democracy. That's what I want, and every effort I put in will be to increase the smooth transition of power, not try to centralize power in my preferred side.

Why would it result in the same problem? Structurally. You just laid this claim out but didn't back it up. Secondly, a sign of a healthy democracy isn't a constant flip-flop, but high government approval rates. If neither major party is doing a good enough job, that's an unhealthy democracy. Finally, why would you not want to permanently beat fascism? What good does having an opposition party do?

Oh, a number of things. I completely reject the LTV, which is central to Marxist thought, for example, and the arguments there are numerous and well-documented so I'll leave that to the extant literature. I also don't believe a socialist state can actually devolve into a stateless society, those in power will cling to it and refuse to tear down the system that props them up (that's like expecting Trump to actually "drain the swamp" when he's a crocodile). I don't think anarchism can actually work because people are tribal and any anarchist system would devolve into some form of feudalism. But I'd like to get closer to anarchism rather than further away, and a dictatorship of the proletariat scares me.

Why do you reject the LTV? There are no good "takedowns" of it, ever, so far. Saying you'll leave it to "extant literature" is just a dodge. Secondly, saying that you think a State would continue and not dissolve into statelessness is a misunderstanding of what Marx refers to as a State, and what makes up Statelessness, which calls into further question your denial of the LTV previously. Anarchism likely won't work out, sure. Why does a Democratic Worker State, ie the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, scare you? Is Democracy scary if there are no Capitalists to steer it?

So I believe there will always need to be a state (some group w/ a monopoly on force), but that power needs to be carefully limited to prevent bad actors. I think most western systems are pretty good, but power has gotten a bit too centralized. Talking about the US specifically, the executive and judicial branches have gotten too powerful, and the legislative branch has gotten too weak. My priority would be to dramatically change how the legislature operates to strengthen it at the expense of the other two branches. In short, I believe in a gradualist approach, not a revolutionary one, where there's a concerted push to tear down the bits that are most repressive.

There will always be a government, not necessarily a State in the Marxist sense. Marx wasn't an Anarchist, the State is specifically a mechanism of Class oppression, not all administration or policing. This is again why I am calling into question your understanding of Marxism. You don't have to be a Marxist scholar, but understanding what you critique is important.

Here's an article about media bias against conservatives. I will say it's a lot harder to see if you agree with the conclusions.

The media is Liberal, not Leftist. Conservatives represent the far-right fringe of Liberalism, represented by fascism.

The right does this nonsense a lot too, the left is just a bit more subtle, and generally speaking has the tech sector on its side. That's not to say the right is any better, in fact the right generally overreacts, which hurts their credibility even more and gives more credibility to the media and tech sectors. Since young people disproportionately use tech as a demographic, it's uniquely effective at shaping political opinions of the rising generations. Whether this is good or bad depends on your political aims, but I think it's a clear example of propaganda.

You're confusing Liberalism with Leftism, here. Tech companies are not on the side of Leftists. Tech companies are Liberal, ie in favor of Capitalism, but not conservative, ie far-right Populism. Both are still right-wing and support the Capitalist status quo.

Couldn't you say that about socialism as well?

Yes, actually! Socialism is democracy for the Workers, against the former Capitalist oppressors, yes. That's the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, in response to the Capitalist Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie. Democracy guided by and for the many is better than Democracy corrupted by and for the wealthy few.

The thing is, socialism can exist within capitalism (e.g. worker coops and unions), but capitalism cannot really exist within socialism because of the difference in how property works.

Yes. Is your point that we should allow feudalism in modern society too? Oppressive and dysfunctional organizational structures should be phased out in favor of more democratic structures that serve the people, rather than the wealthy elites.

You absolutely can, but it generally needs to be done by the major political parties. See How Democracies Die for a discussion on attempted (and successful) fascist movements and what was or should have been done to stop it. But you need the parties to be motivated to root it out (i.e. control messaging and whatnot), and the GOP did a piss-poor job of it with the #nevertrump campaign...

The DNC is not motivated to root out fascism, they are letting it happen. America is a dying Empire, fascism is going to be an ongoing risk until it either collapses or Leftists take power.

I completely agree. However, propaganda isn't unique to the right, there's a ton on the left as well, especially here on lemmy. It's easy to overcorrect, especially in this era where truth takes a backseat to what "sounds" right.

Sure, there is propaganda on the left as well. Working through what's correct and what isn't is an ongoing task. That being said, leftists are correct.

I've read enough to know that it's also full of propaganda. But there are nuggets of interesting ideas.

Any examples? I am not trying to make this a book-measuring contest, I believe Leftism to be correct and necessary, full-stop.

That said, I do lean left on a number of issues, and I do try to stay abreast of good ideas regardless of source. I consider myself libertarian, with a generally georgist view of property and a preference for a guaranteed minimum standard of living (UBI/NIT) when it comes to welfare. I disagree strongly with Marxism and most forms of socialism, except the completely voluntary systems like worker cooperatives and non-government backed unions.

Oh, that's quite unfortunate. Georgism would just delay collapse, it wouldn't fix the structural issues that necessitate Capitalism's downfall. Additionally, the idea that Capitalism can in any way be more voluntary than stock-standard Socialism is false, as Capitalism is only voluntary for Capitalists.

What specifically do you disagree with Marxists about, and why?