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Democrats aren't doing anything left wing, nor are they trying to, though. That's my point. If the Democrats were trying to do left-wing things, then leftists wouldn't always be so upset that they have to bite their tongues, plug their nose, and vote for the center-right candidates.
For your burning building analogy, that is only accurate if you're a center-rightwinger. The actual analogy is if you have 2 groups of people, one starting 3 fires and putting out 2, and the other starting 3 fires and trying to stop the other person. Both groups are starting fires, one is just better. As a leftist, both liberals and fascists are still bad, though liberals are not nearly as bad as fascists, both are still negative.
Again, I vote for the center-right wingers, and criticize them as they continue to fumble the ball. I'm not advocating for better liberals, I'm advocating for leftists. I am not supporting abstaining from voting, or voting for fascists, I'm asking you to look in the mirror and realize that while Biden may be great for you, he's far from a leftist and isn't actually implementing leftist change, so leftists will understandably be upset.
You haven't had to fall in line because you aren't a leftist, and liberals are doing a good job in your eyes. Simple as. Leftists have to fall in line and vote for the lesser of two evils, while you get to vote for what you perceive as at minimum positive change.
To answer your question at the end, it greatly depends on where you are. Actual, leftist change comes from grassroots movements, so it will depend on your area. I'm not asking for you to dox yourself, so instead I'll give generalized information. Unionize your workplace, join something like the IWW or Food Not Bombs, educate and advocate, volunteer for local leftist politicians that may upset the liberal or fascist status quo, read theory, teach others, and donate to strike funds. Those are all pretty achievable for most people, at least partially. You don't have to be a union leader or anything, but every bit helps.
You haven't had to fall in line because you aren't a leftist, and liberals are doing a good job in your eyes.
I've noticed this a lot on Lemmy: It's a common arguing technique to simply tell the other person what their views are, and base your argument on that. In this case, you are 1,000% wrong. Wrong as hell.
I was registered third party for like the first ten years of my voting life, because I was disgusted with the Democrats. Bernie Sanders has been the only presidental candidate I've been genuinely happy with in recent memory. Don't tell me what my views are, and assume that I must be saying what I'm saying because of what those imaginary views are.
while you get to vote for what you perceive as at minimum positive change.
I think this is where our fundamental disconnect comes in. Before I say anything else, I want to ask, what are things that have gotten worse under Biden, to you? Oil extraction and Gaza, I assume; what else?
Don't be surprised if I label you a liberal if you're coming in batting full force for tepid, liberal Capitalist reform, and that leftists should be happy with it because it is good change.
Either way, Capitalism continues to erode, resulting in more disparity, less worker power, and no meaningful change in favor of Worker Ownership. Biden is doing a pretty good job for liberals, who wish to maintain the status quo, but for people who actually desire substantial reorganization of the economy into a worker-owned format, he's done absolutely nothing.
Whoops, we took a little turnoff towards the bad faith highway I guess.
You just told me even more aggressively what I believe. I asked a simple factual question:
What are things that have gotten worse under Biden, to you? Oil extraction and Gaza, I assume; what else?
I answered, and it isn't bad-faith. I said leftists are understandably upset that liberals are liberals, then you got upset and tried to convince me that actually, liberalism is good. It doesn't work like that.
You've explained to me your philosophy on what these words mean and how they apply a sufficient number of times; I don't need to hear it again. I am asking a specific factual question. Just firmly repeating your worldview is not going to lead me to suddenly start to agree with it. You must normally have these discussions with very suggestible people or something if you expect it to work that way.
What specific policies has Biden done that made specific factual things in the world worse? This isn't like a gotcha; I'm expecting there to be a real and somewhat-valid answer. I have my list of good things he's done, but I wanted to hear your list first and genuinely hear you out. I thought that you were engaged enough in the topic that we'd actually be able to talk about it with that as the starting point, but I've given you a couple of chances now and you've just been trying to berate me with your worldview instead, so maybe not.
What are things that have gotten worse under Biden, to you? Oil extraction and Gaza, I assume; what else?
Let's start over, we are clearly talking past each other. I'm going to list a set of assertions that I believe, as a leftist, that are common among leftists.
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Capitalism itself is bad, and in constant decline.
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Liberalism is a continuation of the Capitalist status quo, and thus Liberals seek to continue Capitalism.
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By continuing Capitalism, disparity continues to rise. Letting a fire burn without putting it out is a bad thing.
Where among those 3 statements do you draw disagreement? I'll retract my half-serious claim of you as a liberal, and ask you as a fellow leftist: where do you disagree with me here?
Following the previous 3 statements, we can look at Biden. Biden has done close to nothing to move away from Capitalism and towards Socialism. He's put a few band-aids on a gaping wound, but that inaction in the face of the gaping wound is itself allowing the situation to deteriorate, such as skyrocketing housing prices, continuing rises in disparity, and an increasingly strangled working class.
I'll add: I advocate for voting for the lesser evil. What my original comment was about, however, was getting liberals to understand and accept that they face a fundamentally different set of electoral issues from right wingers. Right wingers are fascists, and have openly fascist candidates to vote for. The GOP is actively appealing to the far-right. The DNC, however, is appealing to the center-right, and feels entitled to the votes of leftists because they aren't as far-right.
That's the key! Because the DNC is content with maintaining the Capitalist status quo, in the eyes of leftists, the DNC will always be a lesser of two evils. Even an extremely competent DNC would still be an extremely competent liberal Capitalist party, and would still be the lesser of two evils.
Does this make sense to you?
Yeah. Pretty much everything in your second part, I agree with. In particular:
Biden has done close to nothing to move away from Capitalism and towards Socialism. He's put a few band-aids on a gaping wound, but that inaction in the face of the gaping wound is itself allowing the situation to deteriorate, such as skyrocketing housing prices, continuing rises in disparity, and an increasingly strangled working class.
Pretty much this, I would agree with, and I think we're on the same page in terms of needing to vote for him as the lesser of two evils while urgently trying to find some kind of better solution for the future before the end of the world comes (or, comes more than it already has).
- Capitalism itself is bad, and in constant decline.
- Liberalism is a continuation of the Capitalist status quo, and thus Liberals seek to continue Capitalism.
- By continuing Capitalism, disparity continues to rise. Letting a fire burn without putting it out is a bad thing.
Where among those 3 statements do you draw disagreement? I'll retract my half-serious claim of you as a liberal, and ask you as a fellow leftist: where do you disagree with me here?
So this is a significantly bigger discussion... I actually don't think capitalism itself is bad. The fire analogy is actually really good, to me. Capitalism is a powerful tool, you need it in order to do things that are useful to get done, but if it gets out of control it's incredibly dangerous. You need to have strong protections to keep it contained so it can do its job without taking over. Right now, in the US, it's not contained, so a lot of the harm you're talking about (increasing disparity) is entirely accurate.
Probably that viewpoint is gonna be popular with more or less nobody, and maybe you will reclassify me again as a liberal because of it, but you asked what I thought so that's what I think on a sincere basis.
I think most people in government in DC are corrupted by corporate money. The Republicans have sort of lost the plot of even trying for coherent governance that's good for anybody, rich or poor, but most of the Democrats are working diligently on behalf of the rich people. It's a massive damn problem. I don't think that's because of "liberalism" in any abstract sense, any more than the Republicans are working for "small government"; I think it's just open corruption. I think you would have to fix the influence of money in politics to even be able to talk about governance in terms of systems of belief or principle. Which is probably a lot of what you mean in terms of tearing down the systems of liberalism that are currently in charge of everything, so I suspect there's a lot of overlap between how we see it on that score too, although maybe the labels are different.
Alright, thanks for the good-faith response. You're correct, your belief in Capitalism being a useful tool that needs to be harnessed and contained, over actually needing to transition to a Worker-owned economy, is what separates what I am referring to as leftists and yourself. You can consider yourself a leftist, but I would probably classify you as a liberal or a Social Democrat (probably closer to a SocDem than a liberal, which is essentially a centrist).
The fundamental difference here is that leftists (as I am referring to, and will further refer as italicized to save time) have analyzed Capitalism and believe it to be fundamentally unsalvageable, only band-aids and stop-gaps to slow the fundamental issues like The Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall, or fundamental exploitation.
Your viewpoint is extremely common among Social Democrats, and that aligns very well with the Bernie Sanders campaign. Definitely far more preferable than liberalism, but it's also important to realize that leftists consider Bernie to be a compromise at best, and not an actual restructuring of the economy.
What you analyze as money corrupting in politics being the root cause of issues, leftists would also point to rising disparity even in Social Democracies like the Nordic Countries. It's slower there thanks to Worker Empowerment via strong unions, but still continues to rise. You agree with leftists that money in politics is bad, but you seem to believe this is a policy issue, and not a fundamental consequence of Capitalism, which is what leftists tend to believe.
Is this a fair explanation? If we look at your view of liberalism and Capitalism in general, we can see that, yes, Biden is more in line with what you want than what leftists want. For you, Biden is more of a question of competency, than direction, whereas for leftists, the direction itself is bad.
Do you see what I've been saying now?
The fundamental difference here is that leftists (as I am referring to, and will further refer as italicized to save time) have analyzed Capitalism and believe it to be fundamentally unsalvageable, only band-aids and stop-gaps to slow the fundamental issues like The Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall, or fundamental exploitation.
Fair enough. But also, fire fundamentally spreads uncontrollably to the point where it destroys everything; that's it's nature. That doesn't mean it's a bad idea to heat your home.
I get what you're saying and I think we're pretty much in agreement on the facts; how to assign the labels isn't to me a critical back-and-forth to have. I get what you mean. I guess my big substantive question would be, what would be examples of society where your vision of leftism has been implemented? When I talk about capitalism being a useful tool, I mean that I like having vaccines, supermarkets, computers, all the stuff that's the the fruit of having a massive organized economy. Obviously the current system isn't the only one imaginable that can produce that stuff, but I think if you're going to point to the problems of the dystopian US economy (which are very real) and argue for throwing the whole thing away, what are you going to replace it with? A semi-command economy like China, or libertarian everyone-do-whatever-they-want-with-their-business system, or back to individual farming, or what? Like where is a society that has implemented what you're talking about wanting to do and how has it worked out?
You don't need to heat your home with fire, you're tying heating to fire just like you're tying production and infrastructure to Capitalism.
What I personally want, is what all leftists want at the core: worker ownership of the Means of Production, rather than individual. This has been expressed numerous ways, from Worker Co-operatives in developed nations, as a quick example.
When you attribute vaccines, supermarkets, computers, and so forth to Capitalism, you're stating that in order to have those, there must be individuals owning and controlling production dictatorially, rather than democratically.
Again: I'm advocating for Socialism. Worker Ownership of the Means of Production. This isn't throwing away infrastructure, just the concept of individual ownership. The economy would be massive and organized, just democratically rather than dictatorially.
Why does anyone need capitalism to get anything done? Are you saying nothing got done for all of human history before the 19th century? How does that work?
In addition to weapons and suffering, the huge capitalist economies of the modern first world produce vaccines, computers, abundant food, and so on, and I wouldn't want to throw that away. My personal belief is that the development and modern production of those things can't be wholly separated from the power and breadth of the market economies where they happened. In its current incarnation, it also involves a lot of suffering to create it, but to me that's not inherent to the system, it's just how we currently do it. You might disagree; if so, where would you point to as a good example of where and when it's been done well (fully non-capitalist economy that produced good quality of life for all of its citizens)?
Tweaking the system so that everyone (of every race i.e. not like we did it before) is living what white people experienced during the New Deal or the post-WW2 US sounds great to me. I realize that that's purchased with the blood of a lot of miners and labor activists during the late 1800s and early 1900s, but I think once that system was created, it worked great for the citizens, better than did a lot of countries that went further from there full-on into a complete Communist overthrow. No?
They happen to be capitalist and they do produce a lot. But they don't produce a lot because they are capitalist. Those things have no clear relationship.
Soviet Russia had industry. Soviet Russia had research and science. Soviet Russia made vaccines and was very prolific about vaccinating their population. Soviet Russia wasn't capitalist, or even communist for that matter. So how were they able to do that without capitalism? Everything that applies to Soviet Russia applies to China the same btw.
So, clearly it has nothing to do with capitalism. And funny you mentioned the new deal. The last time the United States bucked capitalism for socialist policy. Republicans/fascists/capitalists were literally plotting to kill/overthrow FDR over his new deal policy. We literally didn't get there because of capitalism. We got there in spite of capitalism.
Suffering and inequality are inherent to capitalism. That doesn't mean capitalism wasn't better than mercantilism or feudalism. It was. But that doesn't mean it's perfect, or the best system humanity has created does it?
Also, post world war II there was no communist overthrow anywhere. Russia, China and Korea aren't communist and never have been. They're Leninist. Most communist despise Leninist almost as much as capitalists. Russia was as communist as the Nazis were socialist. Which is not in any meaningful sense.
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