Tag: socialism

Fat Cats construct socialism? …//Yanis Varoufakis: capitalism isn’t working. Here’s an alternative

Update: there is no reason why fat cats can’t construct socialism, as long as it is socialism and the issue of property is addressed. Look at Engels. Indeed, Marx, who was not working-class, is by his own principles someone to be wary of: still another top-down framework. But Marx’s emphasis on the proletariat is the most obvious correction to the results called ‘bourgeois’ revolutions. But now the working-class category has shifted into confusion, and become an international issue.

Interesting but the expropriation of capital is the foundation of socialism? \
Two Manifestos version
In his new book, the economist imagines a future transformed by Covid-19 and sketches a daring vision of democratic socialism

Source: Yanis Varoufakis: capitalism isn’t working. Here’s an alternative | Economics | The Guardian

How Socialism Stopped Being a Dirty Word for Some Voters – And Started Winning Elections Across America  

The leftist Democratic Socialists of America, which helped congressional star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez get elected in 2018, looks to be a big political player again in New York City’s 2021 municipal elections.

Source: How Socialism Stopped Being a Dirty Word for Some Voters – And Started Winning Elections Across America | Portside

A new path to socialism

Two posts from yesterday collated and to be continued as a single essay/post below.

The question of socialism has been controversial for so long and socialism such an underdog, apparently, confronting the capitalist ideology made common sense by the immense factor of its propaganda, that the idea of socialism is on the defensive. But times have changed and suddenly we can see the prescience of the early socialists, the superset that Marx/Engels ended up dominating dogmatically, as the implications dawned of the world of capitalism coming into existence so suddenly. The Second International shows the sudden global popularity of the core ideas, then trounced and discredited by bolshevism/Stalinism. The planet is at risk from capitalism and the capitalists themselves are blind to what they have created. Not only that they have generally refused to consider
Marxists would like to think that they can simply try again with the old format/formation. That’s like thinking a rocket launch that fails can be followed by a second attempt with no consideration of what went wrong. The external social world has indeed considered the flaws of marxism, but Marxists are a kind of cult that can never question basic assumptions. This stalled mentality is holding back the left. Continue reading “A new path to socialism” →

 Some suggestions for moving beyond Marx…

Drop the term ‘Marxism’: it has generated a cult of personality based on a cult leader who can’t be questioned, Marx was a domineering cult leader type and could barely deal with Engels, let alone the general public. His manner has made a cult of marxism that is counterproductive now.

Abandon ‘historical materialism’, period. It is pseudo-science and a philosophical quagmire. It had a great effect on the way to secular humanism, but its history is not relevant now. The materialism that battled Hegel’s idealism is dated now and in the age of quantum field theory doesn’t even represent science. There is no sequence of economic epochs generating world history. That’s nonsense. Capitalism is a continuous stream in universal history starting with Paleolithic barter. It is suddenly amplified by the Industrial Revolution and becomes dominant but it is not an epoch in itself. It arises and then dominates modernity, which is indeed the start of a new epoch. To label capitalism an epoch Marx makes a monumental blunder which suggests it will persist for centuries. In reality it is a set of economic and technological chmaracters that can be changed at any time, and given the outcome it should be absorbed under socialism as soon as possible. The sequence feudalism, capitalism, communism is a fiction and we should look at world history, where Marx had never even heard of Sumer, as a simple chronology and abandon the futile effort to make history a science.

The legacy of socialism/communism ended up in jackknife against liberal systems, which provoked the excuse for total destruction of democracy.
Socialism needs to create a viable economy: our idea of democratic market neo-communism shows a simple way to blend the two types of system.
Democracy, markets, planning, a Commons…there are multiple components to a new social system. We can’t just exclaim socialism without specifying the multiple components essential.

Marx’s basic theories are idiotic oversimplification from the age of early scientism.
Leftists must disown the old, and be wary of old terminology. The public is not aware of the difference between idealistic Marx groups and North Korean communism. Marx never acknowledges failure where the public is more sensible and sees the problem at once. It would be nice to move from the terms socialism/communism. But that might not work. We have created the term neo-communism and moved on. We define these terms fresh and they don’t have to conform to Marx’s boilerplate nonsense.
Marxists have confused everyone and made socialism an impossible task/

A socialist system should be based on a liberalism, save on the issue of private property, capital.

It is not crazy! Look at Exxon-Mobil: such monsters should have been expropriated at the start, as Marx and Engels originally thought in the 1848 era.  The public has let these gangster capitalists sieze control of all human resources. Property in the large doesn’t refer to property in the small, personal belongings, small shops, etc… It was obvious very early but now the public is almost too conditioned to change. But the issue is no longer private belief system: we can start to see the whole world system set to crash.

to be continued

Source: The biggest obstacle to socialism is the cult of Marx idiots…/The Question of a Stagnant Marxism: Is Marxism Exegetical or Scientific?  – 1848+: The End(s) of History

Socialism should be much simpler than its ‘theories’ imply…//Snapping out of the Marxist theory fantasy…

The Marxist canon is too complicated and disguises the essential simplicity of a socialist construct which should be a variant of a basic liberal system, but one that creates a Commons around private property in the large, i.e. capital. It is an obvious tragedy to have allowed ‘primitive accumulation’ of all the resources of civilization to fall into the hands of capitalists. Look at the oil industry, so frozen in ideology they will destroy the planet without blinking. Socialism should have been the case from the start, with a liberal structure but without the predatory lunacy of unregulated capitalism. Marxists totally confused the issue with a monstrosity of theory, one that Marx could never get right yet claiming the status of science…
Two Manifestos

This odd classic contains three critiques, of Marx, Darwin, and Wagner. The critiques of Darwin and Marx are extremely cogent and it is remarkable that this book appeared in the 1940’s. It is…

Source: Snapping out of the Marxist theory fantasy…//Darwin, Marx, Wagner : Critique of a Heritage  Barzun, Jacques – 1848+: The End(s) of History

 The real competition with China: democracy and socialism done right

The future needs more than geopolitical rivalry, and the issue of democracy, while hardly the case with the US, will haunt the Chinese system if it attempts to control the future beyond barbarism, capitalism or not.
The US has an opportunity to produce a true ‘democratic socialism’ that can also deal with the issues of technology and markets. The pseudo-communism of the Chinese sphere is ironically a fatal weakness, while the same is true of the Us/West in a related but different sense.
Competing with China on technology in the context of US militarism is likely to destroy what is left of US so-called democracy, which, however, at least has a democratic format, which can be upgraded (in a miracle of possibilities) while the Chinese case is stuck in a Stalinist hangover.

While predicting an immediate boom in the U.S. economy “that could easily run into 2023,” Dimon had grimmer news on the future as well. “China’s leaders believe that America is in decline,” he wrote in his annual letter to the company’s shareholders. While the U.S. had faced tough times in the past, he added, today “the Chinese see an America that is losing ground in technology, infrastructure, and education—a nation torn and crippled by politics, as well as racial and income inequality—and a country unable to coordinate government policies (fiscal, monetary, industrial, regulatory) in any coherent way to accomplish national goals.” He was forthright enough to say, “Unfortunately, recently, there is a lot of truth to this.”

Source: Opinion | Who’s Rising and Falling on Planet Earth?

R48G: blogbk: Decoding WH: the left in historical context, the coming crisis

Having rushed to complete ‘Decoding World History’, it is time to consider a new form of the left. So,…

…this is another ‘blog book’ in progress next to “The Anthropocene…” and “Capitalism, Communism…”, etc: A theme of a new left requires a completely new prospectus and yet a useful critique and selection from the Marxist corpus. The left needs a new view of history, evolution, and socialism/capitalism. And it must if not reformist offer in advance a failsafed revolutionary transition. Being a revolutionary isn’t quite the issue: the greater system of history will do the revolution for us, yet we need to be ready
We have already written this book:
Two Manifestos
But we need a more robust version
And the ‘democracy’ in ‘democratic socialism has to robust and protected from the trend toward stalinism that lurks in old fashioned marxism.
The world has a secret wish for socialism but doesn’t trust marxist legacies to deliver.

Marxism has frozen in place and become a kind of religion. At the same time there are no really active groups or movements in the sense that there were in the Second International. But we can’t repeat that era’s material. The Reform/Revolution axis has produced a general stall.
We can easily create a framework that works in both modes .But marxism could be easy to repair

Continue reading “R48G: blogbk: Decoding WH: the left in historical context, the coming crisis” →

 Is the US done for? Time for a revolutionary (post-marxist) ecosocialist DMNC

There is no recovery from collapse unless there is vehicle ready for that: the idea for socialism, as long as it is not discredited in advance by the marxist/ Bolshevik legacy (and able to learn from it).

The idea of ecosocialism is reasonable and simple done right, but it needs to start immediately.
Trump was the final warning the US is done for and will become a fascist entity…unless a genuine left can intervene.

Unless you live in a state of denial you’re probably like me, troubled about the future. There’s not much left of mine, but my daughter’s generation and their children will have to survive the aftermath of fossil-fueled civilization on the ravaged, toxic planet we’ve left them. How will that look? Will democratic eco-settlements rise from More

Source: Villagers & Pillagers: Who Will Survive the Collapse? – CounterPunch.org