I freely admit to being inadequately educated on Marxist theory; I was a psychopharmacologist, not a political economist. My understanding of the terminology is rather imprecise.
However, it looks to me like you’re defining anything that isn’t communism as capitalism. In my use of the terminology, there is a broad spectrum of socialism between capitalism and communism.
To me, communism is when you abolish capital completely; socialism is when you bring capital under the control of the working class. Which, in its mildest forms, has a surface appearance not too different from a social democratic capitalist economy.
Any chance you’d be willing to post a quick glossary with your personal brief definitions of socialism, communism, capitalism, liberalism, fascism, anarchism, Marxism, Marxist-Leninism, Maoism, etc? It’d be good if we can work out some common language here so we don’t all end up talking past each other.
Are you coming at this from some form of pre-Marx socialist perspective?
Despite some of my rhetoric, I’m not actually much of a radical. I spent most of my life as an extremely wet SocDem, although I’ve been shifting rapidly left over the last decade. Climate was the main initial driving force behind that, although my focus has expanded since then.
I’m still working out exactly what I believe and exactly how to describe it. My instinctive tendency is towards the left edge of a Nordic-style mixed economy under genuinely democratic control, but I am appreciative of and open to more radical ideas. On domestic economics, I lean towards Naomi Klein; on international politics, Akala.
Although I believe in the justice of the leftist approach, the main reason why I am trying to promote socialism at the moment has little to do with economics or conventional politics. To put it simply: socialists fight fascists, and that is what is required right now.
I’m not going to say that fighting fascism isn’t always important, but it’s reactive, not reforming or revolutionary. Putting the wealthy in check has been so unimportant for so long that everyone is on on the back foot, swamped by the need to hold the line against wealth’s inevitable private army of amateur and professional brownshirts.
As a faction that reacts against that, socialists are valuable, but that’s not really what I created the thread for. I’m not putting my foot down. The thread is owned by the community. I’m suggesting that there’s more radical and newer ways to fight the Man than joining the long, slow, slogging socialist retreat in the face of massive and bumbling hordes of lawyers and massive and broad displays of firepower. I want to investigate what might break the cycle we’ve been in since the Roman Republic.
For what it’s worth, socialists are good at investigating and reporting what’s happening (Naomi Klein). It plays into the reactive posture, not a revolutionary posture. They’re guardians of the people, for better or worse, but for worse it doesn’t put the rich on the back foot more than momentarily.
I’m looking more at reform and revolution and how they blend into each other. It’s true that Sanders is barely a socialist, ideologically, but he is both a reformer and a revolutionary. Reformers and revolutionaries aren’t inherently good or bad but Sanders has avoided a number of traps set for revolutionaries and reformers.
But we need more than just Bernie. We need revolutionary sticks, reforming carrots, and battling forces to push the multitudes of both forward.
That’s pretty much the focus of Naomi’s recent work, No Is Not Enough…
(crappy MSNBC-ness, but the interviews with real journalists were all 20+ minutes)
Or is your thought that the goals she proposes are too modest?
Which bits of Bernie’s approach do you see as revolutionary, and which bits as reformist? Which traps were you thinking of, and what do you think his plans are now?
Are you after immediate practical tactics or longer-term theoretical thoughts?
As a reformer, he got in! He has spent decades casting principled votes, far more than other Senatorial curmudgeons, shaming and naming, and not always making the precise choice another social democrat might make, but as an outsider battler against I have no real comment.
But no, curmudgeonry alone passed for a while as a face for happy, rascist DC powerbrokers. It took a real hippy to make it live. Now it has a real face that Mitch Mconn can’t say much against. He has brought a principle of curmudgeonry back to this country that no country can be without. Stalin never learned that lesson, and that makes Sanders a revolutionary.
I have little thought about the immediate. Bernie is still not a long-term story. Hit the wealthy where they hurt; they are stupid about everything but contract law and purchasing obedience. Work on that.
…which is what leads into my usual advocacy for an as-soon-as-possible US response along these lines:
As to how to make that happen? That’s more complicated, but I’d argue that it begins with community level organisation and a left-wing united front.
If you’re thinking with a more global perspective…well, in my view the USA is the lynchpin. Too much money, too much carbon, too many spies, too many soldiers; as goes the USA, so goes the world.
In the longer term…I don’t think that there really is much of a longer term if the Trumpists persist in power. Climate is an all-hands-on-deck urgent emergency; so is fascist control of the US military.
OTOH, if they’re overthrown, it will be via revolution rather than reform. And if that happens, many impossible things become possible.
