Carl,
Why do you blame capitalism? Why not blame human nature? It's human nature
which cause people to choose capitalism as a system for so many centuries. It's
human nature which caused people to rebel against any regulations that would
control the negative effects of capitalism. If you look at the communist
countries which we know about, you'll see people doing to other people,
precisely the same things that people do to other people in capitalist
countries. Yes, I'd like a world which is organized for the welfare of people,
rather than for the welfare of private corporations. But, as you pointed out,
even the best of us is motivated by self interest and that has to do with our
biology and neurology.
Our human nature has brought us to this terrible crossroads. Things have just
become enormously complicated.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Thursday, March 19, 2020 6:34 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Capitalism vs. Socialism
Humans have come a long ways down the road from simple, "Survival of the
fittest".
I recall a painting I saw years ago. The little fish was swimming along,
oblivious to the bigger fish coming up behind it with mouth wide open, and
behind him was a bigger fish with its mouth wide open, with the front half of
an even bigger fish with its mouth wide open.
The fact that it's been this way for a long, long time does not mean that it
has always been, or needs to be the only way to live.
But so long as we support Capitalism, our world will continue to be a dog eat
dog existence.
Exploitation is the name of the game. It's not that we disregard the value of
our elders...which we certainly do, but the truth is that we all jockey for the
upper hand in one way or another. I've used blindness to my advantage, even
while living in a society that devalues disabled people. I've used my age,
both as a young man and as a senior.
I've taken advantage of what I could, in order to gain the upper hand.
And I've been slapped down more than a few times by folks more cunning than I.
And all the while, I dream of a different world, a world where we take pleasure
in making a better life for our elders, a better future for our children, a
land where we not only care for those people around us, but we care for the
Land and all the Life that is upon it.
Carl Jarvis, looking through my Rose Colored Glasses toward the Land of Oz.
On 3/19/20, miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Carl,
Well, I was talking about myself on one level, but on another level, I
was talking about society. I started thinking about this particular
interchange between us while I was taking a shower and I thought about
how our society really does de-value older people. I thought about Joe Biden
in particular.
Joe Biden is obviously in bad shape. He has some kind of senility. But
he is a symbol to a lot of people of stability and the Democratic
Party. So the leadership of the Democratic Party is going to use him
as a vehicle in order to take over the government. They will use
whatever tricks it takes in order to do that. If he wins the election,
they will do whatever they need to do in order to manipulate him to
attain their goals. The Republican Party has been doing the same thing
with Trump. These two incompetent old men are being used by, what you
and Roger would call, the ruling class. They did the same with Reagan
when he developed Alzheimer's. It didn't occur to anyone that he
should be removed from office on the basis of incompetence to fulfill
his duties due to illness. They just used him. Of course, they also
use, what you and Roger call, the working class, in order to attain
their goals. But most old people are useless, from the point of view
of the ruling elites. We are only useful if we have money to spend or
if a way can be found to use us in order to make money. That's the
reason for the existence of nursing homes, facilitated living
institutions, retirement communities, and senior apartment buildings
that provide services. It's important to segregate us from the rest of
society so that everyone else can keep working fulltime.
If I want to encourage my paranoia, I could theorize that the
encouragement of the feminist movement at the beginning of the 70's,
at the same time that unionism was being discouraged and industries
were becoming more financialized and the right wing think tanks were
gaining prominence and power, had to do with encouraging the breakdown
of the traditional family so we could move on to the kind of hyper
capitalism that we have now in which everyone works and pays poor
immigrants to care for their children and the elderly, whether at home, or in
various kinds of institutions.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Thursday, March 19, 2020 11:45 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Capitalism vs. Socialism
Hi Miriam,
It seemed to me that you were talking about yourself. Your value.
And I wanted you to know that you have been of value to me, in how I
have altered my thinking through both your posts and your personal
observations.
As for what Society thinks about us Aged Warriors, Screw them! As
long as I feel that I have some value, I will simply give the world
the Finger, and go about my business of educating Carl Jarvis, and
hopefully my efforts will help some others see Life a bit differently.
So...thanks for being on this List, and sharing as best you are able.
Finally, if I had a magic carpet, and you were so inclined, I'd start
a small discussion group in some quiet, cozy NYC cafe. I'd invite
Roger and Bob among others...maybe good old Richard Wolff and Naomi
Klein(not certain of spelling), and we'd sip some cheap wine and eat
popcorn and explore the reasons each of us cannot convince all the
others that we are the "right thinker". And then I'd bundle up, hop
aboard my Flying Carpet and head into the cold windy night...with
another bottle of cheap wine to warm my shivering body.
Carl Jarvis...I think I drank the last of our wine around Christmas
Time...2018...or was it 2017...
On 3/19/20, miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Carl,
People are different. The individual you describe, did have value to
others, up to the very end. I am not providing help to anyone at all
except, perhaps, my younger daughter. But she is basically taking
care of me so it's an even swap. I'm not saying that old people
aren't valuable. I'm saying that society doesn't value us unless we
are working, either for remuneration or on a volunteer basis.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Wednesday, March 18, 2020 8:15 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Capitalism vs. Socialism
Miriam,
I don't agree with your assessment. You do have value.
One of my real life heroes was a retired commercial photographer
named Edith Marty. Edith came from Chicago, retiring to Seattle to
be near her disabled daughter. In her spare time, Edith began
arranging drivers for transporting disabled people to and from
appointments, shopping, and social outings. She also began arranging
readers for blind students attending the University of Washington.
There were some 30 plus attending at the time. As time went by,
Edith began to slow down. First she dropped the arrangement of
drivers, and later she no longer was able to handle the reader
schedule. Edith told me that she was still walking to a nearby
halfway house where she counseled residents involved in drug rehab
programs. The last time Edith and I visited, she was unable to leave
her bed. "It's not so bad", she told me, "for a while I was able to
visit face to face, but that became too difficult so I began writing
to them. Just little notes of encouragement. But finally even
writing has become impossible, so I now call them up and chat with them,
telephone counseling, sort of."
Edith had a special talent of turning the darkest day into a bright
sunny garden. A couple of months after that last visit, Edith Marty
died. The Columbia Funeral Home was overflowing with more than 100
of Edith's friends.
That was over 45 years ago. I still am honored to have known Edith.
And I am equally honored to call you my favorite email friend.
Please continue as long as you're able, to share your points of view.
Carl Jarvis
On 3/18/20, miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The real difference is that China, Cuba, and even Germany and Italy
are doing a hell of a lot better at dealing with this pandemic than
the US. Not only do we have a system which means that the wealthy,
the corporations, pharmaceutical companies, will benefit in a
thousand different ways from this crisis, but we have no system or
philosophy which puts the majority of people first. And we have a
president who wants to financially benefit, and for the US to
benefit, at the expense of everyone else. And we have a military
system and national security system that will use this crisis to
remove any freedom we have left. We've already lost our ability to
vote for a president.
And by the way, as they talk about the need to ration treatment
because of shortages of medical facilities, you and I are the people
they're planning to withhold treatment from. We're the most
vulnerable, but we are also, in their minds, the least expendable.
Actually, I am. I can barely function. I'm a drain on everyone's energy.
But you still have social value.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Wednesday, March 18, 2020 4:44 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Capitalism vs. Socialism
So we're faced with a choice, American Corporate Empire, or
American Corporate Empire Light?
The Oligarchy offers only one choice, pick door #1 or door #2.
Either door bets a tiger. Door #3 is locked and the lady went home
for the duration.
We're stuck. And all the "blah blah blah" is only window dressing.
Some folks spend countless hours quibbling over gray shades, never
facing the truth that it's all the same. The same Ruling Oligarchy
will rake in the sucker's money and holler, "Step right up, ladies
and gents..." And the ladies and gents step right up.
Might as well pop a beer, grab some chips and settle down for
another Lose Lose election year...did I say "year"? This election
"year" has been around
30 months.
Carl Jarvis
On 3/18/20, miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
My problem with this very good argument is that it deals in
absolutes, in blacks and whites. It absolutely negates subtleties.
One can try arguing point by point, but it's useless. Capitalism
isn't just one monolithic thing. It has taken different forms and
how harmful it is, has depended on the form it has taken and how
much it is regulated.
The same goes for socialism. And each of these systems looks
different in different countries because cultural traditions vary
widely. If one's ideology blinds one to the differences between
the effects on average Americans of a Trump administration, versus
what they would have been under a Clinton administration, then we
have no basis of communication. I'm as angry at the Democratic
Party leadership as anyone could possibly be, and that includes
Obama. I am particularly aware that the parties differ less in
foreign policy than they do in domestic policy. And given the fact
that New York, because of the electoral college, will vote for
Biden, regardless of what I do, I can express my rage and
disaffection by throwing away my vote, by giving it to a candidate
who stands for what I believe in, who has no chance of winning, and
who won't hurt a Democratic victory. But given what I know about
how Republicans choose judges, about their record in terms of
racism, economic choices, and immigration, if I lived in a swing
state, I'd vote for Biden and then go home and vomit.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Roger Loran
Bailey (Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Wednesday, March 18, 2020 11:14 AM
To: blind-democracy <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] Capitalism vs. Socialism
https://socialistaction.org/2020/03/16/capitalism-vs-socialism/
Capitalism vs. Socialism
Socialist Action / 2 days ago
A critique of “lesser-evil” politics
By NICK BAKER
Right-wing columnist George Will recently wrote that in American
elections “the question is not whether elites shall rule, but which
elites shall, so the perennial political problem is to get popular
consent to worthy elites.”
This is the American capitalist electoral strategy in a nutshell,
stated openly in Will’s syndicated column published in hundreds of
newspapers. Over
100 years ago Russian revolutionary V.I. Lenin said that in a
capitalist democracy “the oppressed are allowed once every few
years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing
class shall represent and repress them in parliament.” George Will
says Lenin was right.
While the Democratic Party forces today coalesce to push former
Vice President Joe Biden to the fore, many—including most
vociferously Senator Bernie Sanders—are proclaiming the importance
of backing whomever emerges as the Democrat’s presidential
candidate. Sanders railing against the “billionaire class” and the
“billionaire Washington establishment”
notwithstanding, billionaire Michael Bloomberg was included in his
pledge!
In January, Noam Chomsky, Barbara Ehrenreich, Leslie Cagan, Norman
Solomon, and other prominent writers and activists published an
open letter to the Green Party denouncing its decision not to
follow a “safe state” strategy in the November election.
Traditionally, the Greens tell their supporters to vote Green in
“safe states” that are already guaranteed to go to either the
Democrat or Republican, but to vote Democrat in “contested states,”
where votes for a Green candidate could prevent the Democrat from beating
the Republican.
The letter proclaims the “special danger of Trump” and chastises
Greens for the “price that millions and even billions of people
will pay for Trump winning” if they “spoil” it for the Democrats.
The writers say, “We are told, ‘Greens want to get Trump out as
much as anybody’ but how can that be if Greens would vote for a
Green candidate, and not for Sanders, Warren, or any Democrat in a
contested state knowing that doing so could mean Trump’s victory?”
[emphasis added]. I suppose you would call this “Trump-shaming.”
For Chomsky, this simply continues his election-year tradition of
telling people that the moral choice is to vote for the Democrat as
the “lesser evil.” In an interview on the Al Jazeera television
network’s show UpFront in January 2016, Chomsky said that this
strategy is “exactly what I’ve said in every previous election,”
when he announced that he would “absolutely”
vote for Hillary Clinton, already the presumptive nominee at that
time, against whoever became the Republican candidate.
When asked by the interviewer, Mehdi Hasan, to describe the
difference between Clinton and the yet-unsettled Republican nominee
of either Donald Trump or Ted Cruz, Chomsky cited Cruz’s desire to
carpet bomb Syria and the horrors of carpet bombing. Clinton, who
throughout the campaign called for a massive increase in U.S.
troops and bombs in Syria and a “no-fly” zone (where only the U.S.
could fly), was therefore Noam Chomsky’s moral choice, apparently
because Clinton didn’t go as far as carpet bombing. When Donald
Trump became the Republican nominee, the New York Times ran an
article saying that of the two, it was Clinton who was the hawk on Syria,
not Trump.
So long as the two parties of capitalism are not literally
identical, Chomsky says that you should vote for the “lesser evil,”
as he did in 2016, 2012, 2008, 2004, 2000!
The Left Sinks into the Bernie Campaign
Many on the left insist that Sanders is unlike Hillary Clinton,
Barack Obama and Bill Clinton – neoliberals who unfailingly
subordinated workers’
interests to capitalist profit.
But Bernie Sanders calls himself a democratic socialist. Some of
his supporters insist that he’s not a Democrat at all, claiming
he’s an “Independent.” Yet Sanders is financially backed by the
Democratic Party, is a prolific fundraiser for the Democratic
Party, and a member of the Senate Democratic Caucus. The Democratic
Party has prevented party members from running against
“Independent” Bernie in Vermont. An analysis of Sanders’s
congressional votes done in the 90’s showed that he had a 95
percent Democratic Party voting record—well above the 80% rating of the
average Democrat at that time.
Sanders is a capitalist candidate full stop. As we demonstrated in
our earlier analysis of his campaign platform and deeds (See
“Anatomy of Bernie Sanders’ Socialism,” December 2019), his
politics are nothing more than warmed-over New Deal liberalism.
Sanders’ Medicare for All proposal, while a genuine improvement in
health care access for American workers, would do little more than
socialize the costs of health care while leaving in place the
private, for-profit hospitals and the extortionary pharmaceutical
monopolies where massive profits and price-gouging will remain the
rule.
Sanders’ answers to a recent New York Times questionnaire are
revealing.
Asked if he would “consider military force for a humanitarian
intervention”
[emphasis added], Sanders gave the answer of every ruling class
candidate:
“Yes.”
Claims of “humanitarian intervention” have been the ruling class
stock-in-trade in every imperialist war in history. The current U.S.
imperialist wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, are all wars
of “humanitarian intervention,” along with the U.S.’s attempted
coup and economic warfare in Venezuela, its embargo of Cuba, and
its endless threats against China, Iran, and North Korea. Obama
destroyed Libya on the basis of a “humanitarian intervention.”
Going back over
120 years, the U.S. has justified its invasions of Cuba, Haiti,
Korea, Vietnam, etc. on the basis of “humanitarian intervention.”
Sanders response to next NYT question, “Would you consider military
force to pre-empt an Iranian or North Korean nuclear or missile
test?, was similarly revealing.” Sanders answered “Yes” again.
Is the Sanders campaign a movement to build socialism?
Many Sanders supporters insist that his campaign can be the
beginning of a movement. We hear this more and more from the
segment of his supporters who identify as socialists and who state
plainly their belief that socialism is the only way to that goal,
that is, a just society ruled by the working masses in their own
name and in their own interests, for the benefit of all, not the
profits of the few.
These “socialists” often acknowledge that Sanders himself is not
actually a socialist. But, they assert, his campaign is or can be
the beginning of a movement, inside the Democratic Party – or
inside the so-called leftwing of the Democratic Party – to build
working class power and eventually socialism in America.
In truth, Bernie Sanders is a capitalist politician operating in a
ruling class party tightly controlled by the ruling rich and always
operating in the interests of capitalism. It is the party that has
absorbed so many activists from the civil rights movement, the
Black liberation movement, the women’s liberation movement, the
LGBTQI liberation movement – turning those activists away from
their movement goals while often integrating them into the very
structures of the capitalist system.
That’s why the Democratic Party is known as the “graveyard of
social movements.” It aims and operates to take promising social
movements out of the streets and into the voting booth, into
bourgeois elections – the preferred arena of the ruling class where
the wealthy elite write the rules themselves and choose whether or
not to enforce them, according to whatever best serves their interests.
All roads inside the Democratic Party lead to the same place: the
continued domination of the capitalist exploiters.
Socialist supporters of Sanders will soon learn what the class line
means.
The Democratic Party is on one side of it and the interests of the
working class are on the other. There is no movement for working
class power that can be built alongside the exploiters of working
class labor. There is no socialist internationalism that can be
built inside the party of imperialist war. There is no
anti-capitalism in the party of billionaires. There is no
revolution in the party of the one percent.
If the Democrats ran Lenin himself, we wouldn’t vote for him.
Because the Democratic Party is an instrument of the ruling rich
who control it, fund it, guide its every move, and whose interests
it serves perfectly.
Socialism can only arise from independent organizations of the
working class, acting in its own interests. Vote Socialist Action
in 2020! Join us!
Share:
Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on
Facebook (Opens in new window)Click to email this to a friend
(Opens in new window) March 16, 2020 in Uncategorized.
Related posts
The relevance of the Russian Revolution today
Vote Socialist Action in 2020!
Debate on Nicaragua: Capitalist reform or socialist revolution?
Post navigation← Vote Socialist Action in 2020!System Change, Not
Climate
Change: Monthly Climate Crisis News Roundup → Search for articles
Search Search … Get Involved!
Donate to help support our work
Get email updates
Join Socialist Action
Social Media
View socialistactionusa’s profile on FacebookView SocialistActUS’s
profile on Twitter Subscribe to Our Newspaper
Newspaper Archives
Newspaper Archives
Upcoming Events
No upcoming events
--
___
Neil deGrasse Tyson
“God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance.”
― Neil DeGrasse Tyson
