No amount of hardship or things getting worse will make people wake up. People will unironically think they aren’t working enough if they’re before retirement age and if they’re after retirement age they will say something like ‘I did everything right, but I have no money’. They have an existing framework to view their material conditions thanks to neoliberalism.

This must be corrected if we want people to adopt socialist and progressive ideas. We have to educate people if we want to make things better. There is no way around it. Now we have to educate people during a fascist dictatorship.

I posted this on the meta community. The mods and admins will see it.

https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/25367982

That video is the best source that I’ve seen that summarizes the relevant points. It’s also the first source I’ve found on the history of neoliberalism. The video is well researched and had an interview with an expert on the topic. So not only is it a highly relevant video to our discussion, it should be shared widely as it is an efficient way to educate people on neoliberalism. It’s also relatively recent so not everyone will have seen it yet.

Many people, if not most people in America and probably the West at large grew up partially internalizing these neoliberal ideas. But many of them don’t even know the name of the ideology let alone where those ideas come from. You argument initially did not seem to recognize neoliberalism as a political ideology. This is a common misconception I see all over lemmy. This gap in education must be corrected as neoliberal ideas are what have lead us to the current fascist regime. And even if we defeat this MAGA dictatorship, we will still need to contented with this pervasive neoliberal thinking when attempting to implement socialist and progressive policies.

Besides the European-American divide where conservatives are referred to as liberal in Europe and progressives are referred to as liberal in America there are actual misconceptions. One being Marxist-Leninists and many other leftists call anyone to the right of them liberals. In addition people conflate classical liberals, neoliberals, neoconservatives, and fascists as the same ideology.

Not being able to identify these ideologies will make people rhetorically ineffective at best and counter-productive at worst. Neoliberals and fascists have their own ideas that need to be countered with arguments that address those ideologies’ actual positions. What we have currently is people resulting to name calling, calling everyone a liberal, which isn’t a persuasive argument.

And yes, the US education system needs an overhaul. But its underfunding is an intentional part of the Republican strategy. An uneducated populace is easier to control. We need to fund our education system in the US and the government in general. In order to fund the government we have to get money out politics, which means taking control of the source of wealth from the owner class. In order to convince people that’s necessary we need them to understand neoliberalism is a sales pitch for the scam that is late-stage capitalism.

That’s a lot of work that needs to be done. Sharing this video is a small thing anyone can do to contribute to that. And what a lot people seem to fail to understand is that whether or not there is a peaceful revolution or violent revolution this work will still need to be done. There’s no shortcut for educating people.

Your comments are not federating properly to my instance, but I found the link. Thanks for sharing it, I enjoyed it immensely. =D

07 🟥

Linebaugh points to the influential words of August Spies, one of the convicted men, who just before his execution cried out the famous words: “There will come a time when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today.”

That’s a powerful quote. I remember going to local May Day fairs and maybe celebrating it in elementary school. Those events definitely did not cover any of this fascinating history about worker’s rights.

Poor is not defined as those who have the least in the economic terms being discussed in this article. That’s why there is a poverty line to define what is meant by poor. The poverty line used by the government needs to be updated however.

If people had more than enough to get by then we wouldn’t considered them poor even if no one had less money than them. Having the least amount of money isn’t the issue. The issue is can a person acquire the goods and services they need to live. If not that’s a problem and we’ve been describing that problem as being poor.

XD

❤️ 🖤

Love the outfit and photo. Fun concept. =D

The answer was to replace capitalism, an extractive economic institution, with socialism, an inclusive economic institution. And yes, it would have taken a lot of political will, which is why I argue it would have been hard, but not impossible. I’ve been arguing this with several users in parallel. If you want to see my argument in full it’s in my comment history.

What’s important is, now that the bomb has gone off and we have fascism, we still need to replace capitalism with socialism. But in addition we also have to defeat a fascist dictatorship on top of that. So now it’s even harder.

Jesus, if you think Bernie is the progressive candadite that I’m referring to, you just proved my point.

What point? Your argument is a collection of a few short false statements. I was attempting to be generous by assuming you were talking about Bernie even though he’s not a progressive, he’s a democratic socialist. That example about Bernie and the DNC court ruling is a real event.

Maybe you should stat by researching the progressive parties in the US.

What other parties are you referring to?

The Green Party is a scam that only fields a presidential nominees with no chance of success. Jill Stein is yet another Russian asset who has been seen meeting with Putin.

Again, this is me being generous and assuming good faith to get at an actual discussion about real things. The Green Party is what people usually refer to when they mean a progressive third party. The Green Party and the Libertarian Party are the only third parties worth discussing because they are the only third parties that act as spoiler candidates. The rest don’t even manage that. Republicans and Democrats are the only parties that had a chance to win our democracy back when it was still a democracy last year.

What is your position? What are you talking about?

Left Handed Morty

My interest in asking was if you meant nonviolent action or violent action. For your information, Americans are doing nonviolent action currently including some, if not all of the things you listed. We definitely need to do more and thank you for the list.

My concern was derived from the fact that most people it feels like most people on this site mean violent action when they say something like meaningful action. And I didn’t want to assume you either were in that camp or didn’t know about recent American protests.

For a reference to what I’m talking about here’s a recent post. The post itself is fine, but the comment section contains multiple calls to violence.

https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/25226675

edit: typos and clarification

Despite your preference for violence; nonviolence works.

Also, I would like to point out that while it is true that those who make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable, violence is still our least useful tool.

I even wrote this in a comment to you.

Very American to immediately start ranting g about violence while nonviolent campaigns that mobilize large, diverse groups are statistically more effective than violent resistance.

Right, which is is why I brought up the distinction between the two. Especially when people say meaningful change they are usually implying violent change. Also, I’m arguing these exact topics with multiple users. I’ve written this down in comments to other people. Check my comment history if the comment section is too messy to navigate.

Americans are doing those things. We need to do more and more have been planned.

But you did watch the youtube video with facts and an expert that efficiently explains the concept in a concise video essay that we most certainly need to share with others because defeating neoliberalism is a collective effort, right?

That’s a fundamental misunderstanding of political ideologies. These are all different ideologies from fascism. Although neoliberalism and by extension neoconservatism lead to fascism. No one is a classical liberal anymore. Compared to classical liberalism, neoliberalism is fundamentally its own ideology that was developed in the 20th century. Neoconservatism is a more conservative and usually more war hawkish version of neoliberalism.

Here’s a useful video about neoliberalism to improve your analysis.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zswexNXorOE

It wasn’t fair or free. What part of that can’t you see?

This is a baseless assertion. Our elections have been self-evidently fair and free so far, including the recent Wisconsin and Florida special elections. Musk tried to buy the Wisconsin election and failed to get the candidates he wanted. We’ll see what happens with the North Carolina 2024 Supreme Court election, but even that is an attempt to overturn the election results publicly not a secret rigging of the election. If they succeed that makes future fair and free elections even less likely than they are now.

If we fix the democracy,

We also need to people to reject neoliberalism and fascism and accept socialism. Or else we will eventually have to deal with a fascist movement that is so large it is a majority of the population.

We had like 8 parties running, and only 2 very similar parties got the majority of the votes.

We live in a two-party system which is what our first-past-the-post systems trend towards, so that it isn’t surprising.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo

but because progressives are legally denied access

Bernie wasn’t legally denied access. He was allowed to run when he wanted to run. The courts regrettably ruled that political parties are private organizations and can run their elections however they want despite the inherent public interest in there being a formal standardized process that political parties should be legally mandated to honor. Especially since the Republicans and Democrats are the only serious vehicles for political platforms in the US.

and violence was used against them when they tried to attend the debates.

This is conspiracism.

That’s neither fair nor free. Its an illusion of choice where the only options support the status quo of oligarchy

The choice between neoliberalism and fascism was a real choice. With neoliberalism we prolong our democracy with the hopes of co-opting the Democratic party with socialist and progressive candidates. With fascism we get progressively efficient death camps until society collapses or everyone is dead. It’s worth going into a bit more detail with the fascism choice since that’s what we have gone with. In addition to showing the consequences that further establish this was a meaningful choice, it’s important to drive home how terrible this choice was.

Now that we are a christo-fascist techno-feudalist dictatorship our ability to change society depends on the failure of that fascist dictatorship. This is not accelerationism, but anti-fascism. The first step to making things better is getting rid of the fascist dictatorship. The fascist dictatorship is both actively making things worse while also blocking attempts to making things better. So if we want to make things better then the fascist dictatorship needs to go.

When it comes to getting rid of the fascist dictatorship, societal collapse, or at least political collapse, is more likely but who knows how long that will take. It’s also not clear if it will be caused by internal or external factors. External factors being a foreign military or economic policies aimed at the US. It will probably be more likely be internal factors given the size and capabilities of our military and our leading and foundational role in the modern world economy we created after WWII.

Internal factors could include a whole host of causes. Like disease or famine. Fascist incompetence will probably be what drives whatever the ultimate cause is. We might get infighting when Trump dies of old age or is too debilitated to do anything more than be a figure head. It could also be a revolution that is either peaceful or violent. The peaceful revolution being the statistically more likely to succeed of the two.

It seems like any political violence will result in a civil war at this point. Most of the users on lemmy never spare any thought for the backlash political violence would cause if the MAGA movement had a martyr to justify atrocities. Considering that, it seems unlikely that those advocating for political violence are prepared or even care to fight a protracted and bloody civil war.

None of these possibilities would even be on the table for discussion let alone likely in the immediate term if we had gone with neoliberaism for four more years. We are at the point where we need some kind of a revolution to stop death camps here at home. Our failure to stop a fascist movement that wants to kill the most vulnerable groups of people was a choice. And a clear choice at that.

…what you call neoliberalism is nothing more than deepening inequality

This is demonstrably false. Here’s a video to learn more about neoliberalism.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zswexNXorOE

Neoliberal ideas were thought up and implemented by people deliberately to create a state of inequality to benefit a few wealthy individuals. So it is not another label for inequality, but a political ideology with a set of policies designed to create inequality.

empowered the corporate interests and weakened democratic accountability …in other words, empowering the neo-nobles.

This was by design, not an accident of spontaneous inequality. Neoliberalism is a political invention. We did not trip over it.

Your country is an oligarchy with a temporary king every 4 years, coated with a thin veneer of democratic rituals.

We are now a a christo-fascist techno-feudalist dictatorship. We have a christian theocratic dictator who is supported by an oligarchy of tech billionaire feudal overlords that together rule over us like we’re serfs.

It is obvious how meek the Americans are. Based on recents polls more than 40% still supports the antics of the current king

Fox News has brainwashed millions of people over the last thirty years, so that’s not particularly surprising.

and the other 60% doesn’t do anything significant to oppose the idiotic decrees.

I’m genuinely curious what you consider to be meaningful action at this point. People are doing all kinds of non-violent action. The fascists took control of this country largely non-violently, Jan 6 being an exception. And even Jan 6 didn’t succeed in any kind of violence against its purported targets, but seems to have helped Trump more than it hurt him due to the lack of consequences.

We’re unlikely to get a fair and free election at this point if we even hold elections at all. So short of fascist incompetence getting us 2026 and 2028 elections, there’s not a lot of peaceful levers in a fascist dictatorship besides building a movement that is oppositional to the administration. Such a movement will be essential for toppling this fascist dictatorship whether we hold elections or not. Even the CCP had to roll back its Covid-19 restrictions because of protests in China.

Also, I would like to point out that while it is true that those who make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable, violence is still our least useful tool. The current administration is shockingly incompetent. Trump, his cabinet, and Musk are perhaps the best people to have as political opponents in this moment as they truly seem to have no real clue what they are doing or how to do anything properly. Peaceful change is still our more likely avenue of success so it’s what we should pursue for the time being.

No it was a democracy, but it wasn’t inclusive of everyone. What your argument is describing is a comprise that had to be made so that a new nation would not be divided almost immediately. Women weren’t able to vote either. Only land owning men.

But our democracy had a virtuous circle that expanded who was included in the political process. This expanded who could participate in our economic institutions as well, eventually. This is process also took place in England. And despite such an unequal start in America, it was working for most of our history.

It was with our adoption of neoliberalism in 1980 with Reagan’s election that the virtuous circle became a vicious circle. People were increasing excluded from our economic and political institutions. And our democracy has now fully transformed into a extractive fascist dictatorship.

Our capitalist system was always an extractive economic institution but our democracy had kept it in check. Things like trust busting, monopoly laws, and the New Deal prolonged the growth we were experiencing under the extractive economic institution of capitalism.

Now that our political and economic institutions are fully working in tandem as extractive institutions that growth will soon end. We can already see how Trump’s attacks on universities and scientific research are stifling innovation. Without any innovation fueling creative destruction, growth in our economy will stagnate. The extractive institutions run by the owner class will eventually run out of things to extract.

At this point it becomes a race between the collapse of America and it’s ability to consume neighboring countries in order to keep extracting. Much like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Unlike Russia, even with fascist incompetence, America has the most powerful military in the world going off budget alone. It’s likely we will conquer quite a few countries before our extractive institutions cannibalize everything.

So no, not oligarchy. Not the same thing as neoliberism either. Your argument is a critique of people from over two hundred years ago from a modern moral perspective. Whether or not that’s fair, it isn’t a useful means of analysis. Even though it was not as inclusive as we would like it to have been American democracy was functionally a democracy from the beginning. And it became more inclusive as it went on. There was nothing stopping us from making different choices at critical junctures along the way that would have resulted in us reaching the kind of democracy that includes all people.

It is important to understand that this outcome was not inevitable. It’s not worth staying in the judging pit arguing who to assign blame to so we can sling mud at them. But we need to acknowledge that we failed so we can learn from this and move on. There’s no shortcut around it. The sooner we learn our lessons the sooner we can build a better world.

I do not consider the vicious cycle of a neoliberal democracy to be the pinnacle of democracy. Only I acknowledge that American democracy was a democracy. It was never perfect, but it didn’t have to turn out this way. We didn’t have to embrace neoliberalism in 1980 and American democracy didn’t have to die in 2024 with fascism.

This is important to state because there are misconceptions about what might happen next. We aren’t any closer to the pinnacle of democracy now. In fact, we are even further from it. This fascist dictatorship will be even harder to change than the last neoliberal democracy was.

Building inclusive institutions is hard. The further you get from them the harder it becomes. Even revolutions that seem on the surface to be a complete overthrow of the previous regime can in fact turn out to be a changing of the guard. If the institutions of a society, both political and economic, are not fundamentally and radically changed to include as many people as possible the vicious cycle is more than likely to continue. There is no such thing as a clean slate or rock bottom when it comes to how bad things can get. Things can always get worse and they will unless people learn from our mistakes and apply what we’ve learned to make things better. edit: typos