"Progressives should not make the same mistake that Ernst Thälmann made in 1932. The leader of the German Communist Party, Thälmann saw mainstream liberals as his enemies, and so the center and left never joined forces against the Nazis. Thälmann famously said that ‘some Nazi trees must not be allowed to overshadow a forest’ of social democrats, whom he sneeringly called ‘social fascists.’
After Adolf Hitler gained power in 1933, Thälmann was arrested. He was shot on Hitler’s orders in Buchenwald concentration camp in 1944."
Karl Marx 1850
Marx didn’t live long enough to see just how ineffectual that line of thinking actually is.
Same capitalists trying the same failed tactics of voter suppression.
Every one of his perspectives of capitalism and it’s bourgeoisie governments still rings true.
Rings true, isn’t true in actual practice.
Rings true in practice
Sounds a lot like the Trumpers decide if something is true to me.
Is the US Socialist? Has Socialism been brought about by establishment parties anywhere in history?
Nope, which is part of the problem.
Yep, which is why Socialists answered the Reform or Revolution question in Marx’s time quite definitively. The answer is Revolution.
careful what you say to jordanlund. he’s a mod and despite his supposed love for socialism (and chaotic good t-shirt), he likes to ban accounts that promote violent revolution.
If my relatively tame comments defending the basics of Marxism get me banned, then they will be doing me a favor.
Admins and mods in the West are walking a fine legal line, and servers can be seized. Not saying I agree with it, but that I do recognize it.
FDR has entered the chat.
Look up the New Deal.
Hell, look up the 1956 GOP Party platform.
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2014/oct/28/facebook-posts/viral-meme-says-1956-republican-platform-was-prett/
Yes. Look up ‘the New Deal.’
FDR was a Social Democrat, not a Socialist.
Slow motion is better than no motion.
It’s pointless to argue over who is a ‘real’ Socialist. I can come up with arguments about anyone you care to name to prove they weren’t ‘real’ Socialists. What are the policies that actually improve people’s lives?
FDR was okay, then his safety nets were stripped away. They were only ever temporary concessions because Capitalists were always the ones in control, and they still are. In this manner, it was eventually no motion.
Almost as if the point of socialism is to strip away the the means of production from the capitalists in order to install a dictatorship of the proletariat, and not simply apply social safety-net band-aids so that capitalism can continue to function.
American liberals are so exhausting in their selective application of definitions.
100%, I’m trying to get them to come to that conclusion on “their own.”
Would make things a lot easier, lol
Almost as if it’s important to get out and vote in every election.
Ronald Reagan sabotaged Jimmy Carter’s Iran policy and squeaked in with the help of spoiler John Anderson.
You yourself said it; there were good policies in place, the Right hated them, and used a lot of dirty tricks to get rid of the good policies.
Having good government is like controlling diabetes; you have to be vigilant all the time.
No, I fundamentally disagree with your entire view of historical development, ie the why behind everything.
History is a progression of material conditions, not people and ideas, not Great Individuals making Big Moves. Social Democracy came at a time when the Soviet Union was rising, and Capitalists within America feared similar uprisings in America, compounded by the Great Depression. Concessions were allowed in that context, temporarily.
Neoliberalism came later, after WWII, during the height of the Cold War. It was a way to further seek profits in the Global South.
Fascism is rising now because Capitalism is undoubtedly in decline, and is decaying further.
Material Conditions drive the ideas that drive the masses that drive what’s salient, not random Great People doing everything.
Jesus christ, that’s just not what socialism is.
There’s a reason why social-democrats are castigated in communist circles. Social-democratic policy is always inevitably eroded because social safety nets don’t solve the fundamental contradiction of capitalism. It isn’t a matter of ‘getting out the vote’
If it wasn’t for his Secretary of Labor, Francis Perkins, who was socialist, none of the things that he passed would have ever come to fruition. He gets way too much for credit for the ideology of a female socialist
I don’t think “ineffectual” is the word you’re looking for there.
I agree entirely, in regards to politics in 1850’s Germany with its diverse multiparty political ecosystem.
As for current American politics, where we are deeply entrenched in a societal tug-of-war in an ostensible two-party system, where third parties can swing policy in a largely undemocratic direction by spoiling the vote in close elections, I disagree completely. Third parties serve no purpose in a two-party representative democracy.
If we can break the two party political duopoly, then I will never complain about another fringe party voter ever again. Until then, you better fucking vote for the lesser evil, because letting the greater evil win, as we learned in 2017-2020, is really fucking bad.
If anything, letting Democrats win the next few major elections could spell doom for the Republican party as a whole, and give us a chance to introduce some actual competition to the Democratic party.
I wish that I could snap my fingers and have it fixed today, but that’s not how societies work. Accelerationism always requires violence, and violence isn’t how you should uphold democracy, unless you are defending its pillars against a direct threat. A two-party duopoly is something we the people need to defeat.
That means we need to abolish the electoral college, introduce universal mail-in voting, defeat all right-wing disenfranchisement efforts, and introduce ranked-choice voting to all elections. These are radical changes that will take a lot of work to accomplish, and that will face a lot of opposition.
Under Democrat leadership, these things are possible. Under Republican leadership, we’ll be lucky if we still have elections.
Your solution to defeating the duopoly is continuing giving them power and participating in it?
Give me a reasonable alternative and I’ll take it.
You don’t name a candidate to vote for, just say we shouldn’t participate.
Who do you think scares Donnie more, Harris or your non-participation?
This will never happen. The replacement party will be fascist. The Republican Party’s fascism doesn’t exist because of “brainwashing” or “conmen,” it exists because fascism rises from decaying Capitalism. If you don’t get rid of the Capitalism, the conditions for fascism remain.
The Democrats will never work against their donors. This will never happen.
Especially when their donors are the same donors to the GOP
Absolutely.
That part. They know where we’re going, the only difference as far as I can see is some prefer it slower, to keep from spooking the populace, and others are willing to slaughter any part of the populace that resist.
One day, the lambs will stop screaming.
Are you doing a lot of things exactly the way they did in 1850?
Politics is
So, things like social media and votes for women [to name two] are meaningless?
So how’d that work out for him and Germany?