And of course how the DNC fucked over David Hogg nullifying his vice-chair election. I was surprised at how Malcolm Kenyatta the other vice-chair electee fell right into line with that shit. Kenyatta was a progressive who was in the running for the Pennsylvania Senate seat that ultimately went to Fetterman. I expected better out of Kenyatta.
The Democratic Establishment had one job: to throw their bodies into the gears of the MAGA Machine. Instead, they fundraise on it to keep old pols in safe seats.
Exactly this. Taking it further, we’re told we definitely absolutely can’t even think about voting third party because “then republicans will win.” Well, they won anyway. They win anyway. And when Dems win, they *never dare* attempt to change the fundamental economic fuckery of oligarchy. The Democratic Party is dead, long ago having been swallowed by big money.
Yes exactly. “Come back and tell me it’s all about winning elections when you have won an election.”
Similarly all those chumps who said “it doesn’t matter precisely what Starmer does if elected, any Labour government is better than any Conservative government” are seeing the fruits of it now. (I think it may actually have been less harmful to re-elect rishi Sunak, because he is completely ineffectual, and actually during the pandemic did give out support payments which I doubt Starmer would have; but whether or not electing Sunak would actually have been better, it certainly cannot now be argued that there is any public appetite for the policies Starmer has imposed).
It has become clear that when centrists use the work “pragmatism” what they mean is “complete surrender to and collaboration with the fascists who have paid us to pave the way for them”.
“Not only are donors’ interests different than working-class interests, but it also turns the relationship between the Democratic Party and its supporters into one of lecturer and lectee.” So abundance is basically positing our current system as cure for our current system?
The [capital ‘D’] Democratic Party belongs to, and represents the interests of the petty bourgeois section of the ruling class. In a mutually necessary yet hostile alliance with the GOP [bourgeois], it is necessarily an asset of the GOP.
As it descends into permanent crisis, capitalism’s contradictions and hostilities between the bourgeoisie, petty bourgeoisie and the proletariat social classes cannot be contained, concealed or negotiated.
The working class, the 90%, the proletariat at last sees that the petty bourgeois Democratic Party was never the workers’ class ally, but was always its implacable class enemy.
The 90% sees the Democratic Party, the Next 9% after the Top 1%, through the implacable lens of class warfare.
The proletariat can never again consent to be ‘represented’ by the Democratic Party. There will be no more mass, working class support of the Democratic Party.
The working class alone can, will and should be allowed to represent itself.
The working class must and will be its own representative. Nothing else is acceptable. And every day, more and more are coming to this position.
Every day, BOTH parties must hemorrhage worker support. Cross class cooperation is to be rejected on PRINCIPLE. This must continue until ALL power and authority are transferred to the working class.
I wouldn’t even necessarily call the petty bourgeois the enemy. It’s more These elites who are happy to declare a symbolic victory over gay marriage but not deliver on economic issues. The education divide is the where corporate democrats are not delivering for non college graduates. And unfortunately when the democrats can’t deliver meaningful economic results , some of those voters go for Trump. We have to win back real working class voters who don’t necessarily have college degrees.
As I see it, the language of class is absolutely necessary to analyze all policies, events, campaigns, slogans, initiatives, propaganda, election drives, party position papers, economic policies, and on and on.
Unless or until we bring the three-fold class structure to every political question, we will remain politically literate. Unless we at least begin to assimilate that class structure, which is the basis of all Marx’ work, we will be duckers for every campaign the other competing classes proffer for our consumption.
For the 90% [the working class] to accept the [mis]representation of either faction is to enter civic oblivion.
Except that we must criticize Marx wherever any of us feel the need. For me, he is a reckless conflator of the normative with the positive, and the normative must be fearlessly demarcated, declared, and debated, in every instance, for *constituents* acceptance or rejection.
In the end, 'all policies, events, campaigns, slogans, initiatives, propaganda, election drives, party position papers, economic policies, and on and on.' don't mean squat if after 4 years you've done nothing to help the millions of disillusioned and disaffected voters of the country, what would it take to get the 60% that DON'T vote, to vote for a candidate?
“… if after 4 years you’ve done nothing to help the millions of disillusioned and disaffected voters of the country, what would it take to get the 60% that DON’T vote, to vote for a candidate?”
It is difficult to believe that not three years from its second century, the [capital ‘D’] Democratic Party lacks the means or fortitude to do the analytical work needed to resolve your query to its own satisfaction.
You cede the disorientation and disillusionment of millions. It certainly isn’t novel analysis to note that the petty bourgeois Democratic Party tendency must rely on the bourgeoisie for social prestige and donor wealth, and on the proletariat for broad, political legitimacy.
OpenSecrets.org reports that through the last election cycle, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon disproportionately funded the Democratic Party. The oligarchy’s embrace of Trump’s de facto dissolution of the constitution can explain why Democratic hirelings do naught to oppose Trump’s openly established dictatorship.
Where are the demands for impeachment? Where is the Party raising class consciousness, for organizing centers of resistance in factories, workplaces, neighborhoods and schools to provide training for mass interventions to defend immigrants and workers? Where are the appeals to the 300,000,000 who are the US working class? Where are the calls for a General Strike?
Who is explaining how industrial strikes are converted to political strikes against the central government? As billions and even trillions are squandered on coming wars and global war — how is the Party preparing the population to demand and struggle for overturning fascism and dictatorship, and putting all those responsible for it on trial crimes against the people?
The 90% which is the proletariat, the working class, with the support of students and all progressive forces in society must discuss what changes to the economy and social structure are necessary to break the power of the financial/corporate oligarchy. It must inquire what new forms of mass organization, including the General Strike, are needed to defend working class rights.
The [capital ‘D’] Democratic Party stands rejected not because of proletarian indifference; and while it is true that disorientation and disillusionment remain, they increasingly reside with the fascistic right. The rank and file of the working class are being radicalized by the same conditions that coerce the bourgeoisie into reaction, authoritarian forms of rule, and global war.
That it is me and not you raising critical foundational issues illustrates the problem in summary form.
The Democratic Party must be prohibited from leading the struggle against fascism, war and dictatorship because it consistently refuses up lead , because it is weathered to the capitalist system by a thousand cords. Handing this assignment to the Democratic Party will be disastrous.
You ask what it would take to get those who elect not to vote to the polls. The way to erode vote-striking is to actually do such things as I named.
But as you say — if after 4 years you’ve done nothing to help the millions of disillusioned and disaffected voters of the country . . . well — what can you expect?
But class is clearly tied to education, hence the divide we see. Once people get educated and become a democrat they tend to vote for parties that adress social issues first. This is sometimes called luxury beliefs.. they get relatively wealthy or powerful and they are much more concerned about social or cultural issues as opposed to being oriented toward giving meaningful economic aid to the less educated. And if they are republican, then they skip luxury beliefs and head to blinging out, like our president...😠
I have completely failed to explain the meaning is social class. Unless I can make this clear, nothing I say will make sense — let alone matter. Until social class is understood, one can have no fixed political center of gravity.
For the moment, we must set aside education, luxury beliefs, power, socio- cultural issues, political orientation, economic aid, etc., to focus on social class.
Class is based upon and defined by one’s relationship to the system of production. Under the capitalist system of social organization, there exist three social classes.
Far and away the most prestigious is the bourgeoisie, the Top 1%. It gains its wealth by owning — factories, fields, forests, mines, corporations of logistics, energy, technology, communications, etc. Politically, the 1% is represented by the GOP.
The petty bourgeoisie, The Next 9% after The Top 1%, gains its wealth by equity holdings, dividends, user rights, interest, royalties, capital gains, trademarks, intellectual property and protected know-how rights, and the like. Politically, The Next 9% is represented by the [capital ‘D’] Democratic Party.
Far and away the largest is the proletariat, the 90%. It gains what it has by appearing on the market daily, to sell its labor power [the ability to work] on whatever terms the generosity of The Top 1% sees fit to bestow. Politically, the 90% must choose BETWEEN the other two classes. The 90% has NO representation of its own under the capitalist organization of production.
Otherwise out, there are owners [1%], investors [Next 9%], and workers [90%]. Those are the three, possible class relationships in the capitalist production system. The interests of all three classes are in irresolvable conflict with those of the other two classes. Hence, the term ‘class struggle. Or ‘class warfare.’
Now you contend Ken that education matters. But that isn’t the real question. The question is, ‘what does education mean to each of these social classes.’
For The 1%, education means the very best, Ivy League schools where privileged youth receive the very finest education possibly, in a tradition where education trains privileged youth how to consolidate, extend and perpetuate political power IN THEIR OWN INTERESTS.
For The Next 9%, education is supposed to be a pathway to social advancement, an open door to more prestige, and a bigger slice of economic pie.
Remember the ‘irresolvable conflict?’ The Top 1% is determined to keep The Next 9% ‘in its place.’ That conflicts with the material interests of The Next 9%.
And the 90%? The Top 1% wants the 90% to have ONLY enough education to run the machines it owns, and to complete the forms in a proper and timely manner.
Clearly, the interests of The Top 1% are INTENSELY hostile to the 90%. So, The Top 1% uses The Next 9% as a buffer AGAINST the 90%. The Next 9% talks ‘education reform’ in a hope that the 90% will take the bait and fall into line. If it ‘works,’ The Next 9% gets a little more from The Top 1%. But the 90% gets nothing.
What emerges from this, Ken, is a necessary yet mutually hostile alliance between The 1% and The Next 9%. On every issue, on every question, at every level of government, in every capitalist economy on earth — this is how and why social class determines economic and social policy. Be it war [NEVER in the 90%’s interest as they’ll be killing and killed by fellow workers], or any other ‘issue,’ these are the dynamics of class struggle under capitalist political economy. I used education because you raised that first.
Now this: you wrote, ‘…Once people get educated and become a democrat they tend to vote for parties that adress social issues first.’
I reply: political education begins when a worker breaks with and repudiates BOTH capitalist parties based on a recognition that ONLY a working class party based on a socialist [Marxist] programme can be allowed to represent the working class.
As for ‘the class divide we see,’ that is integral to capitalism as I note with reference to owners [1%], investors [9%], and labourers [90%].
Well I think capitalism certainly is having some real problems. China is Marxist and I think people in the US demonize it too much. But I feel that it’s not an ideal place but they have made progress. I’m definitely keeping an open mind about this. You might like the book Fully Automated Luxury Communism by Aaron Bastani!
This is the same conclusion Howard Zinn comes to in his "People's History Of The US" but I think he sees the top 10% using a middle class as the buffer from the working class. All well and good in theory. In practice it is not like it is not being tried by the likes of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and we see the result. We see a more extreme example in Russia with Navalny. The working class is easily distracted. Warren with her Pocahontas shit pretty much took herself out of contention. Bernie didn't do anything wrong except be a Socialist but that was enough for the long knives on both sides to come out. We have seen how the far right hijacked the term woke and rebranded it as anti-white, anti-straight, anti-Christian, anti-American. We have seen how any crime committed by an immigrant is amplified but criminals like "J6" up to and including Insane Clown himself are patriots. The left doesn't help itself with stupid shit like Defund The Police which has become our albatross. Biden was asleep at the switch with the border which became all to apparent when the likes of Abbot and DeSatan started shipping illegals to blue cities and Democrats started bitching and we all looked like a bunch of idiots. I believe Bernie would have kicked Insane Clown's ass into oblivion. Insane Clown's own pollster Fabrizio does as well. This shit started with Citizens United and probably ended when Kamala ran as a joyous pom pom waving Barbie Doll.
"Bernie didn't do anything wrong except be a Socialist"
Sure, Bernie "Hillary will make a great president!" Sanders did nothing wrong, except for the continuous lying and shapeshifting (immigration, BLM, corruption, etc.). Now, incredibly, he's protecting Big Pharma by going after RFK Jr. *as an evil person*, rather than sticking to *engaging* RFK directly on both their complaints, and only afterward protesting certain specific policies. Then it is can be possible to work with him to clean up the "huuuuuuge" mess of Big Pharma. But, no, we can't get our hands dirty with the likes of Trump (aka Hitler), no sirreee! Why, that would mess up the divide-and-conquer -- and we can't have any of that, can we? Each side must see the other side as evil incarnate! Only that way can the interminable show go on.
Look, anyone who survives in politics (no matter the system) more than a season -- I'm looking at BOTH Bernie AND RFK Jr -- is compromised all over the place. This will also be true after any "revolution", in which the new boss will be same as the old boss, unless and until a radically new system of absolutely open information, NOT economics, can be enforced. What the last hundred years of history have taught us is that socialism vs capitalism is barking up the wrong tree. *Every* successful society has both.
Psychopathy is the primary problem here, not economics. Due to the iron law of oligarchy and the nature of psychopathy (that is, not caring about others), *all* systems, no matter how originally designed, are eventually gamed by psychopaths and sociopaths. The big task we facing is figuring out how to successfully confront this. So, no, it won't be (the umpteenth attempt at) pure socialism that will do the trick. If nothing else, there's that little problem that the bourgeoisie and the rich are people too, so fuck "the dictatorship of the ... " well, by *any* class.
I was reading your post with interest until you referred to Trump as the (Deep/security State's current) Hitler, it shows that the propaganda has stuck, how many 'Hitlers' have you had to vilify in the past 40 years?
Understand that I think Genocide Don is a bought and paid for fool/tool though I'm not sure if he's the best or worst thing for America, maybe America has to see how bad it can get before you reform the system.
I didn't intend to call Trump Hitler, I meant sarcastically that others do. Also, there are multiple deep state factions. "Deep state" simply means an entrenched faction within government that is effectively untouchable by the law.
"I think Genocide Don is a bought and paid for fool/tool" -- Agreed. But as a loose cannon who will, despite that status, often publicly say taboo truths and in many cases not back down no matter what the outcry, he is also part hero. At the least, this ironically sloppy bullshitter has broken the logjam of institutionalized lying. That's a sea change that must not be dismissed.
"The working class alone can, will and should be allowed to represent itself."
Absolutely. Democracy is really the core principle here, not some ideolog(ies) defined only by theorists and vanguards. Any vanguards enlisted to get job(s) done need to be held to a VERY tight leash, and in perpetuity.
An outside perspective is that the Democrats aren't really ' a mutually necessary yet hostile alliance with the GOP' BOTH are beholden to the, often Zionist, billionaire class, both sides are being lied to, they just tell a different set of lies to their half of the voters, BOTH have been bought.
"As it descends into permanent crisis, capitalism"
There's not going to be any permanent capitalist crisis. "Globocap" (to use CJ Hopkins' term) ain't going anywhere, it's co-opting everything under the sun, in the process relabeling all kinds of stuff, Orwell-style. Just as it has successfully for decades. Remember, that's how we got here in the first place, despite the primacy of Marx in the universities for more than half a century.
Capitalism too will fail when they run out of other people's money and resources, ANY totalitarian system has that fault, it's just a matter of whose money they run out of.
But "This time is different" ...LOL Seriously, though, it IS looking that way:
(1) TPTB have perfected an entire fused 1984/Brave New World psychological + physical-backup control system, and have implemented it splendidly for decades, nakedly and in multiple ways since 2001; and
(2) the accumulated technology (of all kinds, weaponry, propaganda, computing, surveillance, etc. etc.) + the principle of power concentration means that we have now, very likely, reached a point of no return.
That is, there likely will never be another successful revolution achieved primarily by the powerless. The only hope is to peel off enough powerful scions-who-aren't-psychopaths to get the job done.
"The working class alone can, will and should be allowed to represent itself."
Well, it would seem we're in agreement here. At least, where "working class" = working class, not "working class" = self-selected Trojan-horse vanguards. That is, ANY vanguards, not just the nakedly pathetic "Democratic" Party. Do you agree?
The only problem I see here is coming up with appropriate mechanisms that gets as close to the "represent itself" ideal as possible, in those cases where full-membership is truly not possible or coherent. That is, where that mechanisms have as short-circuited (i.e. highly responsive) feedback loops as possible. I've never seen such a mechanism that didn't eventually if not quickly collapse under the weight of selfishness/psychopathy.
On the other hand, if among one's *actual* beliefs are that too many of the working class "proles" are truly too stupid/ignorant to handle such things, AND that those individuals who actually are less capable will not follow the more capable *when the latter treats the former with respect* ... well, in that case, we'll end up where all the other socialist/communist/Democratic Party efforts did. It sure as hell won't be capitalism's fault. And in that case, you might as well chuck the pretense of democracy, and admit you're supremacist.
So, are you a supremacist, perhaps told even that you were born/raised to lead? Or are you brave enough to allow democracy, and let the chips fall where they may?
Currently, in the EU leadership for example, we have breathtakingly brazen and obscene examples of supremacism, based on the profoundly antidemocratic attitude that none of their ideology can possibly be wrong, positively *or normatively*.
Unfortunately, from what I've seen from Marxism over the decades, it is replete with this kind of pretension. And so it must recruit mainly from the young, creating naive but passionately energetic armies that can be trained like dogs ... until, that is, they figure out "who's the patsy".
Nonsense. Drunkenness and racism evolve from untamed human nature, which (in the modern world) itself follows from failures by the best in society to lead -- that is, leaders with their followers' interests at heart. Those with lesser abilities will follow those of greater abilities IF AND WHEN the latter treats them right. This has always been true throughout history, and whatever the ideology.
I was born and live in one of the greatest Industrial Cities in Switzerland, the Working Class Males, did not live in full desperation back in the 1930ties, when that Worker's City was the stronghold of the Swiss Nazis.
The Cities Swiss Workers lived quite good in the 70ties, when it was the leading Anti-imagrants City, legal Imigrants by the Way.
An expertise at maintaining positions of authority and privilege goes with an inability to build true power. All professed values go out the door when they threaten the wrong donors.
Also the case of India Walton who won the DNC primary in Buffalo mayoral race in 2021 then lost the election to the incumbent who was favored by big money et al.
Minneapolis is still setting some trends… just not good ones anymore 😳I’m glad you showed how Frey is yet another corporate democrat and the real progressive is his opponent!
In my book getting ratfu@*&ed by the DNC and donor class is the endorsement...at least they are making the right enemies and drawing them out of the shadows.
Just keep on being antisemitic. No need to stop now, you convinced me that your party wants us all dead. So we're dead to you. See how you do without our money and votes.
Nothing to see here folks- just another Zi0nist mad at being reminded that genocide is bad, that they aren’t entitled to occupying land by slaughtering the inhabitants and that the majority of Americans don’t support their beloved apartheid regime.
And of course how the DNC fucked over David Hogg nullifying his vice-chair election. I was surprised at how Malcolm Kenyatta the other vice-chair electee fell right into line with that shit. Kenyatta was a progressive who was in the running for the Pennsylvania Senate seat that ultimately went to Fetterman. I expected better out of Kenyatta.
That's another instance of DNC manipulation I forgot to highlight.
The Democratic Establishment had one job: to throw their bodies into the gears of the MAGA Machine. Instead, they fundraise on it to keep old pols in safe seats.
For a long time, they could get away with attacking the left because they argued they won elections and stopped Republicans. Now, that excuse is gone.
Exactly this. Taking it further, we’re told we definitely absolutely can’t even think about voting third party because “then republicans will win.” Well, they won anyway. They win anyway. And when Dems win, they *never dare* attempt to change the fundamental economic fuckery of oligarchy. The Democratic Party is dead, long ago having been swallowed by big money.
Yes exactly. “Come back and tell me it’s all about winning elections when you have won an election.”
Similarly all those chumps who said “it doesn’t matter precisely what Starmer does if elected, any Labour government is better than any Conservative government” are seeing the fruits of it now. (I think it may actually have been less harmful to re-elect rishi Sunak, because he is completely ineffectual, and actually during the pandemic did give out support payments which I doubt Starmer would have; but whether or not electing Sunak would actually have been better, it certainly cannot now be argued that there is any public appetite for the policies Starmer has imposed).
It has become clear that when centrists use the work “pragmatism” what they mean is “complete surrender to and collaboration with the fascists who have paid us to pave the way for them”.
Joe, for some teason I felt giddy and happy resding this. 🤭
Glad to hear that!
“Not only are donors’ interests different than working-class interests, but it also turns the relationship between the Democratic Party and its supporters into one of lecturer and lectee.” So abundance is basically positing our current system as cure for our current system?
The timid do not win elections just as the meek have not inherited the earth
Not so long ago Marx remarked, “the ideas of the ruling class are often the ruling ideas.” Example: Democrats
I’d like to tell Ken Martin to fuck off. For real.
No, Ken Martin needs the shit beat out of him.
The [capital ‘D’] Democratic Party belongs to, and represents the interests of the petty bourgeois section of the ruling class. In a mutually necessary yet hostile alliance with the GOP [bourgeois], it is necessarily an asset of the GOP.
As it descends into permanent crisis, capitalism’s contradictions and hostilities between the bourgeoisie, petty bourgeoisie and the proletariat social classes cannot be contained, concealed or negotiated.
The working class, the 90%, the proletariat at last sees that the petty bourgeois Democratic Party was never the workers’ class ally, but was always its implacable class enemy.
The 90% sees the Democratic Party, the Next 9% after the Top 1%, through the implacable lens of class warfare.
The proletariat can never again consent to be ‘represented’ by the Democratic Party. There will be no more mass, working class support of the Democratic Party.
The working class alone can, will and should be allowed to represent itself.
The working class must and will be its own representative. Nothing else is acceptable. And every day, more and more are coming to this position.
Every day, BOTH parties must hemorrhage worker support. Cross class cooperation is to be rejected on PRINCIPLE. This must continue until ALL power and authority are transferred to the working class.
I wouldn’t even necessarily call the petty bourgeois the enemy. It’s more These elites who are happy to declare a symbolic victory over gay marriage but not deliver on economic issues. The education divide is the where corporate democrats are not delivering for non college graduates. And unfortunately when the democrats can’t deliver meaningful economic results , some of those voters go for Trump. We have to win back real working class voters who don’t necessarily have college degrees.
Thanks for the reply, Ken.
As I see it, the language of class is absolutely necessary to analyze all policies, events, campaigns, slogans, initiatives, propaganda, election drives, party position papers, economic policies, and on and on.
Unless or until we bring the three-fold class structure to every political question, we will remain politically literate. Unless we at least begin to assimilate that class structure, which is the basis of all Marx’ work, we will be duckers for every campaign the other competing classes proffer for our consumption.
For the 90% [the working class] to accept the [mis]representation of either faction is to enter civic oblivion.
Except that we must criticize Marx wherever any of us feel the need. For me, he is a reckless conflator of the normative with the positive, and the normative must be fearlessly demarcated, declared, and debated, in every instance, for *constituents* acceptance or rejection.
In the end, 'all policies, events, campaigns, slogans, initiatives, propaganda, election drives, party position papers, economic policies, and on and on.' don't mean squat if after 4 years you've done nothing to help the millions of disillusioned and disaffected voters of the country, what would it take to get the 60% that DON'T vote, to vote for a candidate?
Laverne:
“… if after 4 years you’ve done nothing to help the millions of disillusioned and disaffected voters of the country, what would it take to get the 60% that DON’T vote, to vote for a candidate?”
It is difficult to believe that not three years from its second century, the [capital ‘D’] Democratic Party lacks the means or fortitude to do the analytical work needed to resolve your query to its own satisfaction.
You cede the disorientation and disillusionment of millions. It certainly isn’t novel analysis to note that the petty bourgeois Democratic Party tendency must rely on the bourgeoisie for social prestige and donor wealth, and on the proletariat for broad, political legitimacy.
OpenSecrets.org reports that through the last election cycle, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon disproportionately funded the Democratic Party. The oligarchy’s embrace of Trump’s de facto dissolution of the constitution can explain why Democratic hirelings do naught to oppose Trump’s openly established dictatorship.
Where are the demands for impeachment? Where is the Party raising class consciousness, for organizing centers of resistance in factories, workplaces, neighborhoods and schools to provide training for mass interventions to defend immigrants and workers? Where are the appeals to the 300,000,000 who are the US working class? Where are the calls for a General Strike?
Who is explaining how industrial strikes are converted to political strikes against the central government? As billions and even trillions are squandered on coming wars and global war — how is the Party preparing the population to demand and struggle for overturning fascism and dictatorship, and putting all those responsible for it on trial crimes against the people?
The 90% which is the proletariat, the working class, with the support of students and all progressive forces in society must discuss what changes to the economy and social structure are necessary to break the power of the financial/corporate oligarchy. It must inquire what new forms of mass organization, including the General Strike, are needed to defend working class rights.
The [capital ‘D’] Democratic Party stands rejected not because of proletarian indifference; and while it is true that disorientation and disillusionment remain, they increasingly reside with the fascistic right. The rank and file of the working class are being radicalized by the same conditions that coerce the bourgeoisie into reaction, authoritarian forms of rule, and global war.
That it is me and not you raising critical foundational issues illustrates the problem in summary form.
The Democratic Party must be prohibited from leading the struggle against fascism, war and dictatorship because it consistently refuses up lead , because it is weathered to the capitalist system by a thousand cords. Handing this assignment to the Democratic Party will be disastrous.
You ask what it would take to get those who elect not to vote to the polls. The way to erode vote-striking is to actually do such things as I named.
But as you say — if after 4 years you’ve done nothing to help the millions of disillusioned and disaffected voters of the country . . . well — what can you expect?
Nut as I say, by this time, the DNC knows this.
But class is clearly tied to education, hence the divide we see. Once people get educated and become a democrat they tend to vote for parties that adress social issues first. This is sometimes called luxury beliefs.. they get relatively wealthy or powerful and they are much more concerned about social or cultural issues as opposed to being oriented toward giving meaningful economic aid to the less educated. And if they are republican, then they skip luxury beliefs and head to blinging out, like our president...😠
Ken:
I have completely failed to explain the meaning is social class. Unless I can make this clear, nothing I say will make sense — let alone matter. Until social class is understood, one can have no fixed political center of gravity.
For the moment, we must set aside education, luxury beliefs, power, socio- cultural issues, political orientation, economic aid, etc., to focus on social class.
Class is based upon and defined by one’s relationship to the system of production. Under the capitalist system of social organization, there exist three social classes.
Far and away the most prestigious is the bourgeoisie, the Top 1%. It gains its wealth by owning — factories, fields, forests, mines, corporations of logistics, energy, technology, communications, etc. Politically, the 1% is represented by the GOP.
The petty bourgeoisie, The Next 9% after The Top 1%, gains its wealth by equity holdings, dividends, user rights, interest, royalties, capital gains, trademarks, intellectual property and protected know-how rights, and the like. Politically, The Next 9% is represented by the [capital ‘D’] Democratic Party.
Far and away the largest is the proletariat, the 90%. It gains what it has by appearing on the market daily, to sell its labor power [the ability to work] on whatever terms the generosity of The Top 1% sees fit to bestow. Politically, the 90% must choose BETWEEN the other two classes. The 90% has NO representation of its own under the capitalist organization of production.
Otherwise out, there are owners [1%], investors [Next 9%], and workers [90%]. Those are the three, possible class relationships in the capitalist production system. The interests of all three classes are in irresolvable conflict with those of the other two classes. Hence, the term ‘class struggle. Or ‘class warfare.’
Now you contend Ken that education matters. But that isn’t the real question. The question is, ‘what does education mean to each of these social classes.’
For The 1%, education means the very best, Ivy League schools where privileged youth receive the very finest education possibly, in a tradition where education trains privileged youth how to consolidate, extend and perpetuate political power IN THEIR OWN INTERESTS.
For The Next 9%, education is supposed to be a pathway to social advancement, an open door to more prestige, and a bigger slice of economic pie.
Remember the ‘irresolvable conflict?’ The Top 1% is determined to keep The Next 9% ‘in its place.’ That conflicts with the material interests of The Next 9%.
And the 90%? The Top 1% wants the 90% to have ONLY enough education to run the machines it owns, and to complete the forms in a proper and timely manner.
Clearly, the interests of The Top 1% are INTENSELY hostile to the 90%. So, The Top 1% uses The Next 9% as a buffer AGAINST the 90%. The Next 9% talks ‘education reform’ in a hope that the 90% will take the bait and fall into line. If it ‘works,’ The Next 9% gets a little more from The Top 1%. But the 90% gets nothing.
What emerges from this, Ken, is a necessary yet mutually hostile alliance between The 1% and The Next 9%. On every issue, on every question, at every level of government, in every capitalist economy on earth — this is how and why social class determines economic and social policy. Be it war [NEVER in the 90%’s interest as they’ll be killing and killed by fellow workers], or any other ‘issue,’ these are the dynamics of class struggle under capitalist political economy. I used education because you raised that first.
Now this: you wrote, ‘…Once people get educated and become a democrat they tend to vote for parties that adress social issues first.’
I reply: political education begins when a worker breaks with and repudiates BOTH capitalist parties based on a recognition that ONLY a working class party based on a socialist [Marxist] programme can be allowed to represent the working class.
As for ‘the class divide we see,’ that is integral to capitalism as I note with reference to owners [1%], investors [9%], and labourers [90%].
Take care, Ken.
Well I think capitalism certainly is having some real problems. China is Marxist and I think people in the US demonize it too much. But I feel that it’s not an ideal place but they have made progress. I’m definitely keeping an open mind about this. You might like the book Fully Automated Luxury Communism by Aaron Bastani!
Ken, I suggest not telling Marxists that China is a Marxist country. Just a thought.
This is the same conclusion Howard Zinn comes to in his "People's History Of The US" but I think he sees the top 10% using a middle class as the buffer from the working class. All well and good in theory. In practice it is not like it is not being tried by the likes of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and we see the result. We see a more extreme example in Russia with Navalny. The working class is easily distracted. Warren with her Pocahontas shit pretty much took herself out of contention. Bernie didn't do anything wrong except be a Socialist but that was enough for the long knives on both sides to come out. We have seen how the far right hijacked the term woke and rebranded it as anti-white, anti-straight, anti-Christian, anti-American. We have seen how any crime committed by an immigrant is amplified but criminals like "J6" up to and including Insane Clown himself are patriots. The left doesn't help itself with stupid shit like Defund The Police which has become our albatross. Biden was asleep at the switch with the border which became all to apparent when the likes of Abbot and DeSatan started shipping illegals to blue cities and Democrats started bitching and we all looked like a bunch of idiots. I believe Bernie would have kicked Insane Clown's ass into oblivion. Insane Clown's own pollster Fabrizio does as well. This shit started with Citizens United and probably ended when Kamala ran as a joyous pom pom waving Barbie Doll.
"Bernie didn't do anything wrong except be a Socialist"
Sure, Bernie "Hillary will make a great president!" Sanders did nothing wrong, except for the continuous lying and shapeshifting (immigration, BLM, corruption, etc.). Now, incredibly, he's protecting Big Pharma by going after RFK Jr. *as an evil person*, rather than sticking to *engaging* RFK directly on both their complaints, and only afterward protesting certain specific policies. Then it is can be possible to work with him to clean up the "huuuuuuge" mess of Big Pharma. But, no, we can't get our hands dirty with the likes of Trump (aka Hitler), no sirreee! Why, that would mess up the divide-and-conquer -- and we can't have any of that, can we? Each side must see the other side as evil incarnate! Only that way can the interminable show go on.
Look, anyone who survives in politics (no matter the system) more than a season -- I'm looking at BOTH Bernie AND RFK Jr -- is compromised all over the place. This will also be true after any "revolution", in which the new boss will be same as the old boss, unless and until a radically new system of absolutely open information, NOT economics, can be enforced. What the last hundred years of history have taught us is that socialism vs capitalism is barking up the wrong tree. *Every* successful society has both.
Psychopathy is the primary problem here, not economics. Due to the iron law of oligarchy and the nature of psychopathy (that is, not caring about others), *all* systems, no matter how originally designed, are eventually gamed by psychopaths and sociopaths. The big task we facing is figuring out how to successfully confront this. So, no, it won't be (the umpteenth attempt at) pure socialism that will do the trick. If nothing else, there's that little problem that the bourgeoisie and the rich are people too, so fuck "the dictatorship of the ... " well, by *any* class.
I was reading your post with interest until you referred to Trump as the (Deep/security State's current) Hitler, it shows that the propaganda has stuck, how many 'Hitlers' have you had to vilify in the past 40 years?
Understand that I think Genocide Don is a bought and paid for fool/tool though I'm not sure if he's the best or worst thing for America, maybe America has to see how bad it can get before you reform the system.
I didn't intend to call Trump Hitler, I meant sarcastically that others do. Also, there are multiple deep state factions. "Deep state" simply means an entrenched faction within government that is effectively untouchable by the law.
"I think Genocide Don is a bought and paid for fool/tool" -- Agreed. But as a loose cannon who will, despite that status, often publicly say taboo truths and in many cases not back down no matter what the outcry, he is also part hero. At the least, this ironically sloppy bullshitter has broken the logjam of institutionalized lying. That's a sea change that must not be dismissed.
"The working class alone can, will and should be allowed to represent itself."
Absolutely. Democracy is really the core principle here, not some ideolog(ies) defined only by theorists and vanguards. Any vanguards enlisted to get job(s) done need to be held to a VERY tight leash, and in perpetuity.
An outside perspective is that the Democrats aren't really ' a mutually necessary yet hostile alliance with the GOP' BOTH are beholden to the, often Zionist, billionaire class, both sides are being lied to, they just tell a different set of lies to their half of the voters, BOTH have been bought.
Laverne:
The 'mutually necessary yet hostile alliance with the GOP' isn’t exclusive to the [capital ‘D’] Democratic and Republican Parties.
This is a feature of any class rule in any society organized on the ‘for profit’ rule of Capital. And yes, this is Marxism you’re seeing.
It's Marxism only to the extent that Marxism is a critique of capitalism and predicted exactly this situation.
"As it descends into permanent crisis, capitalism"
There's not going to be any permanent capitalist crisis. "Globocap" (to use CJ Hopkins' term) ain't going anywhere, it's co-opting everything under the sun, in the process relabeling all kinds of stuff, Orwell-style. Just as it has successfully for decades. Remember, that's how we got here in the first place, despite the primacy of Marx in the universities for more than half a century.
Capitalism too will fail when they run out of other people's money and resources, ANY totalitarian system has that fault, it's just a matter of whose money they run out of.
But "This time is different" ...LOL Seriously, though, it IS looking that way:
(1) TPTB have perfected an entire fused 1984/Brave New World psychological + physical-backup control system, and have implemented it splendidly for decades, nakedly and in multiple ways since 2001; and
(2) the accumulated technology (of all kinds, weaponry, propaganda, computing, surveillance, etc. etc.) + the principle of power concentration means that we have now, very likely, reached a point of no return.
That is, there likely will never be another successful revolution achieved primarily by the powerless. The only hope is to peel off enough powerful scions-who-aren't-psychopaths to get the job done.
Well clearly, we’re having no rapprochement on anything.
"The working class alone can, will and should be allowed to represent itself."
Well, it would seem we're in agreement here. At least, where "working class" = working class, not "working class" = self-selected Trojan-horse vanguards. That is, ANY vanguards, not just the nakedly pathetic "Democratic" Party. Do you agree?
The only problem I see here is coming up with appropriate mechanisms that gets as close to the "represent itself" ideal as possible, in those cases where full-membership is truly not possible or coherent. That is, where that mechanisms have as short-circuited (i.e. highly responsive) feedback loops as possible. I've never seen such a mechanism that didn't eventually if not quickly collapse under the weight of selfishness/psychopathy.
On the other hand, if among one's *actual* beliefs are that too many of the working class "proles" are truly too stupid/ignorant to handle such things, AND that those individuals who actually are less capable will not follow the more capable *when the latter treats the former with respect* ... well, in that case, we'll end up where all the other socialist/communist/Democratic Party efforts did. It sure as hell won't be capitalism's fault. And in that case, you might as well chuck the pretense of democracy, and admit you're supremacist.
So, are you a supremacist, perhaps told even that you were born/raised to lead? Or are you brave enough to allow democracy, and let the chips fall where they may?
Currently, in the EU leadership for example, we have breathtakingly brazen and obscene examples of supremacism, based on the profoundly antidemocratic attitude that none of their ideology can possibly be wrong, positively *or normatively*.
Unfortunately, from what I've seen from Marxism over the decades, it is replete with this kind of pretension. And so it must recruit mainly from the young, creating naive but passionately energetic armies that can be trained like dogs ... until, that is, they figure out "who's the patsy".
The Male Proletarian was never the progressive Actor Marx thought he was.
He is to drunk, to dumb, to racist and to sexist to be a positive Force.
Nonsense. Drunkenness and racism evolve from untamed human nature, which (in the modern world) itself follows from failures by the best in society to lead -- that is, leaders with their followers' interests at heart. Those with lesser abilities will follow those of greater abilities IF AND WHEN the latter treats them right. This has always been true throughout history, and whatever the ideology.
If a Male Worker needs a Führer, he is by Definition not progressive.
I was born and live in one of the greatest Industrial Cities in Switzerland, the Working Class Males, did not live in full desperation back in the 1930ties, when that Worker's City was the stronghold of the Swiss Nazis.
The Cities Swiss Workers lived quite good in the 70ties, when it was the leading Anti-imagrants City, legal Imigrants by the Way.
No, the male Proletarian is a reactionary Force.
It is sad, but that is what it is.
Anybody going to their local Workers over Billionaires demonstration this Labor Day?
I was at the one in Boston. It was huge, and inspiring
This DNC strategy will backfire sooner than later. Even Spanberger in safe VA should be very concerned about this.
💯
An expertise at maintaining positions of authority and privilege goes with an inability to build true power. All professed values go out the door when they threaten the wrong donors.
Also the case of India Walton who won the DNC primary in Buffalo mayoral race in 2021 then lost the election to the incumbent who was favored by big money et al.
Minneapolis is still setting some trends… just not good ones anymore 😳I’m glad you showed how Frey is yet another corporate democrat and the real progressive is his opponent!
In my book getting ratfu@*&ed by the DNC and donor class is the endorsement...at least they are making the right enemies and drawing them out of the shadows.
Well put!
Just keep on being antisemitic. No need to stop now, you convinced me that your party wants us all dead. So we're dead to you. See how you do without our money and votes.
Nothing to see here folks- just another Zi0nist mad at being reminded that genocide is bad, that they aren’t entitled to occupying land by slaughtering the inhabitants and that the majority of Americans don’t support their beloved apartheid regime.
Hey look, another ignorant lying antisemite. Fuck you.
So you think the genocide being committed is good?