True. But you do remember that the Soviet Union had a ruling class and although
China is doing a fantastic job in moving people out of poverty, it, too has a
wealthy elite, a middle class, and a lot of very poor powerless people. And I
doubt that Fidele and Raoul Castro were living like proletarians either.
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!
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Neil deGrasse Tyson
“God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance.”
― Neil DeGrasse Tyson
