People are starting to get it
(midwest.social)
☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆
SocialismThe middle class has always been systematically crushed under capitalism, which has been a primary project and function of the state. This pressure is felt by the middle class and forms the human basis for fascism.
This is why fascism is an intrinsic part of capitalist social relations. As long as there is a middle class to squeeze, there will be the structural basis to blame someone other than those responsible.
I'd be careful to say that the middle class is being turned into peasants. Its not completely wrong, but its a rhetorical statement (peasant bad, middle class good) rather than a materialist statement based on understanding social forces. I'm unconvinced that by destroying the material basis for the middle class, the capitalists are creating a whole new class, or reproducing older ones. If anything, destroying the middle only brings more attention to the central feature of capitalism that creates two diametrically opposed classes rather than many differing castes or classes, which stabilized previous modes of production. Capitalism creates capitalists and workers. Everything else is unstable or illusory.
well put
Capital has no use for social democracy anymore. In Germany that is obvious since the 2000s. Social Democrats turned so hard on the working class, but that was a cul de sac.
I'd argue it started with FDR not the cold war. FDR did end up helping many Americans, but the concessions given slowed and/or completely stopped many workers movements in the US. Halting further progress amongst socialist or communist parties in the US.
The middle class wouldn't emerge until the late 1940s, but the groundwork was set in the 30s
It was the same fear though, there was a really strong working class movement in the US after the great depression, and a lot of communist organizing happening within unions.
That is why I called them concessions
fair
RIP left wave USA 1930-1975
RIP right wave China 1980-2015
Silence, the two braincells of a progressist are working now.
Recommend: The Blind Spot: How Oligarchs Dominate Our Democracy - Jeffrey Winters
Don't worry about that, the threat will be back.
We just have to reach the level of peasantry that started the communist revolution.
Worry about that.
There are two classes, the senatorial class and the plebeians. Just like in Rome with the worst psychopaths at the top.
Just like in Rome
As was noted by P.K. Dick ...
This is why I advocate for, hear me out, liberal arts. 🤢
Soc 100 or 101, can't remember which, taught this.
I advocate for a socialist revolution instead.
Sigh. https://everything.explained.today/Ultra-leftism/
After not enjoying Applied Calculus, I took Modern Math, AKA Math For English Majors, to complete my math requirement.
It was a great class! Lots of useful, real-world math skills. It didn't use anything much more complicated than simple algebra, but we talked about the traveling salesman problem and ways to fairly split up an estate.
We also talked about election math, and how first past the post is objectively a terrible election system, and how there are several systems readily available that are mathematically more representative of the will of the people. I don't even know if the teacher had a specific political stance, or if she was just mathematically offended by our outdated democratic operating system.
Great class. Wish they would start teaching subjects like that in high school.
Unfortunately, HS teachers in places which need to know these things the most are also the most likely to lose their jobs for it. E.g. In my HS, learning 'history' stopped at the beginning of the 20th-century.
As a STEM grad who spent 2 years undeclared, it sounds like a course even STEM people could use.
I'm so thankful that I sort of accidentally backed into a well rounded education. I cannot say the same for the majority of my STEM colleagues.
I think especially STEM students should have lib arts requirements.
lib arts requirements.
There must be better ways.
100%. Some of the most useful courses that I took were either electives or simply did not count toward my major. Specifically: a logic course, a course about the history of socialism, and a writing course (including research papers)
Critical thinking and logic 101 (syllogistic logic) were infinitely valuable, imo. I think critical reading should also be required.
They should also start teaching basic psych in grade school. Kids need that and adults' bs may be mitigated, but they won't teach it, and that's why.
Why is the threat gone? Cultural and political momentum died down while USSR was around and USSR being dismantled for sure killed off a huge chunk of the momentum and strength, but it's hard to believe the ideology would be dead and never coming back
Modern liberals drank their own kool-aid and literally thought it was "The End of History", and the future would just be liberal democracy, with some technocratic tweaks. These are people who genuinely believed freedom for capitalists was intrinsically tied to human rights and that capitalism eventually means the best outcomes for everyone. They'd just watched the USSR fall, and were so sure China was either going to embrace free markets and western-style democracy or stagnate until they were overthrown and replaced by a government who did.
I mean they were sorta right about the Chinese free market thing, but only partly and without the Western style democracy.
No, they were wrong.
The liberal socialist wave of China 1980-2015
should be seen as the inverse
of the social democratic wave of the US 1930-1975.
Both ditched it once it became unnecessary to preserve their socio-economic structure.
The socialist market economy in China was a return to more classical Marxist economics than the dogmatic attempt to collectivize even small proprietors under the Gang of Four.
I mean more what became after the economic liberalization. Billionaires and huge private companies and stuff. That's probably partly what the people were expecting to see in the future.
Calling the socialist market economy "liberalization" isn't really accurate, as it implies the opposite direction, dogmatic collectivization, would be "more communist." It was a course correction. Either way, western liberals began projecting onto the PRC's economy what they expected of a capitalist economy, and now that it's increasingly evident that this is fundamentally incorrect they are scrambling to come to a new analysis of why China works and why the west is dying.
I just mean it in the sense of relaxation or freeing the market for more private operators.
I understand what you meant, I just took it a bit further as stating that alone gives a different impression from what actually happened and why.
Yes, China does crack down on certain bourgeois freedoms, because the bourgeoisie are kept on a short leash, when they’re allowed to exist at all.
No, China’s government is not xenophobic to its own people. Some people may be bigoted, including some Han people, but you can find bigotry anywhere.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action_in_China
You’re getting your information from anti-communist & anti-China propaganda that our government, corporate media, and NGOs (which are funded by our government and corporations) produce & propagate.
Nobody called China a paradise, but it is projection to say China is "extremely xenophobic to anyone who isn't Han Chinese." By proportion of the population, Han Chinese are some of the least represented in the NPC, with minority groups given regional autonomy, minority protections, and affirmative action that goes beyond western protections.
Further, the rights the west does have over China, such as with regards to LGBTQ rights, are improving over time in China (and are largely regional, rather than state-wide). Meanwhile, the west seems to be falling backwards.
They saw China using markets and didn't understand the fundamental difference between markets being wielded by capitalists, developing the means of production in rare, specific cases where it helps them concentrate power and markets being wielded by workers to for the singular purpose of developing the means of production.
I meant more how they're now where there's billionaires there running huge private companies etc
Yeah, but unlike the US, those billionaires do not control the government. The government is controlled by the CCP.
It's the dictatorship of the (people who say they represent) the proletariat. Not the dictatorship of the people who buy the most politicians.
Yaaayyyy....
To clarify, the PRC is a dictatorship of the proletariat. The CPC is the organization of the proletariat, not its own distinct class.
It's just a very capitalistic seeming thing to have billionaires and huge private corporations. Something familiar to many capitalist countries.
The commanding heights of China's economy are publicly owned, and the private corporations that do exist are heavily controlled by "golden shares" the CPC owns. Billionaires exist because private property still exists, and private property exists because markets are useful for socializing production. The social surplus is still oriented towards socialist development. The marketization of small and medium firms is in service of socializing production so that it may develop and be folded into the public sector, not for the sake of capitalist class interests.
But the threat is neither dead nor gone
For a while the ruling class managed to convince people that it really was the end of history.
