United States Politics Thread 47

[alice]

Too many leftists don't realize that perfect is the enemy of good, I should note, e.g. those who refuse to participate in anything that may improve life for the average person here and now because oh noes it won't lead to Teh Revolución (because of course the way to bring it about is to make life for everyone worse).

Yes - I like to call them 'salon Marxists' (though I know that this term historically had a different meaning). They claim that issues like climate change or right-wing populism were Nebenwidersprüche (that's the German jargon; I don't know what they call it in English) which on one hand cannot be solved without solving the Hauptwiderspruch between labour and capital, and on the other hand will solve themselves once the Hauptwiderspruch was solved. And the only way to solve the Hauptwiderspruch was a socialist revolution, which, however, would currently fail because there is no revolutionary situation given right now. Reforms would only stabilize the capitalist system and postpone the formation of a revolutionary situation and are thus counterproductive. So the only thing they can do is wait until a revolutionary situation builds up, and in the meantime, read and discuss the classics. Bummer.

It's not difficult to get, from reading such leftist writing, the impression that waiting/preparing/agitating/whatever for the Revolution is a lot like cargo-cult politics: "put some leftist policies in place and the working classes will revolt and everything will be wonderful for everybody forever"¹. It has its mirror image on the right, too; a lot of Libertarian thinking seems little more than "get rid of the Government and everything will be wonderful for everybody forever"².

¹ Well, nearly everybody, except those who have to foot the bill.
² See ¹.

[bradrn]

It's not difficult to get, from reading such leftist writing, the impression that waiting/preparing/agitating/whatever for the Revolution is a lot like cargo-cult politics: "put some leftist policies in place and the working classes will revolt and everything will be wonderful for everybody forever"¹. It has its mirror image on the right, too; a lot of Libertarian thinking seems little more than "get rid of the Government and everything will be wonderful for everybody forever"².

I get the impression that this is common across ideologues of all stripes. Even in local politics: I get the impression some people over here think, ‘get Scottish independence and everything will be wonderful for everybody forever’.

[Raphael]

They claim that issues like climate change or right-wing populism were Nebenwidersprüche (that's the German jargon; I don't know what they call it in English) which on one hand cannot be solved without solving the Hauptwiderspruch between labour and capital, and on the other hand will solve themselves once the Hauptwiderspruch was solved. And the only way to solve the Hauptwiderspruch was a socialist revolution, which, however, would currently fail because there is no revolutionary situation given right now. Reforms would only stabilize the capitalist system and postpone the formation of a revolutionary situation and are thus counterproductive. So the only thing they can do is wait until a revolutionary situation builds up, and in the meantime, read and discuss the classics. Bummer.

I guess this is your brain on theory.

[zompist]

Or they don't. In 1917 there was extraordinary hardship in Russia, and the result was a communist revolution.

The revolutionaries in Russia had an advantage of having the tsar as a clear enemy to target. The Russian "revolution" was authoritarian and eventually turned against both free expression and individual prosperity. This is typical of authoritarianism and the effects of terror management theory.

It was more complicated than that. The Russians had a tsar for 500 years. The war was really the determining factor.

There were two revolutions, of course, and it wasn't clear in (say) December 1917 that the state would be authoritarian. E.g the SR party, which won the first election after the October revolution, wasn't fully banned till 1922.

The main interest of 1917 for today is the lowest level of the revolution: workers taking over factories, army officers attacking the police, everyone issuing manifestos and editorials and debating all night in palaces cleared of aristocrats, detachments of the army defeated by people orating at them. Lenin at first was only a marginal figure feverishly writing screeds that even his own party ignored. I think everyone who's excited by "revolution", including you, are still after the heady excitement of that year.

It all went wrong, of course, and we agree on the general reason (authoritarianism). This was probably due to the very thing that enabled the revolution in the first place: centuries of absolutism leaving no room for experience with democracy.

My argument is that the geniuses have been successful to this extent because of the current conditions of society; namely, because the majority sees themselves as being in competition with other communities in their own class once again.

See: culture wars. However, I agree with Murray Bookchin that Marx's 1948 idea of classes is useless today. (There's always a top class, of course. It's what's under them that changes.)

To avoid fascism, you actually have to create universal prosperity.

Sure. But it's a little harder than it sounds.

[Raphael]

To avoid fascism, you actually have to create universal prosperity.

Sure. But it's a little harder than it sounds.

And I don't think it's a guarantee, either.

[Travis B.]

Too many leftists don't realize that perfect is the enemy of good, I should note, e.g. those who refuse to participate in anything that may improve life for the average person here and now because oh noes it won't lead to Teh Revolución (because of course the way to bring it about is to make life for everyone worse).

Yes - I like to call them 'salon Marxists' (though I know that this term historically had a different meaning). They claim that issues like climate change or right-wing populism were Nebenwidersprüche (that's the German jargon; I don't know what they call it in English) which on one hand cannot be solved without solving the Hauptwiderspruch between labour and capital, and on the other hand will solve themselves once the Hauptwiderspruch was solved. And the only way to solve the Hauptwiderspruch was a socialist revolution, which, however, would currently fail because there is no revolutionary situation given right now. Reforms would only stabilize the capitalist system and postpone the formation of a revolutionary situation and are thus counterproductive. So the only thing they can do is wait until a revolutionary situation builds up, and in the meantime, read and discuss the classics. Bummer.

It's not difficult to get, from reading such leftist writing, the impression that waiting/preparing/agitating/whatever for the Revolution is a lot like cargo-cult politics: "put some leftist policies in place and the working classes will revolt and everything will be wonderful for everybody forever"¹. It has its mirror image on the right, too; a lot of Libertarian thinking seems little more than "get rid of the Government and everything will be wonderful for everybody forever"².

¹ Well, nearly everybody, except those who have to foot the bill.
² See ¹.

Even those who don't just sit back and wait for Teh Revolución to happen, i.e. by actively trying to make it happen, often have the fault of thinking that anything that helps people now that is not simultaneously preparation for Teh Revolución is bad because then people won't want to revolt and bring about Teh Revolución as much.

[zompist]

To avoid fascism, you actually have to create universal prosperity.

Sure. But it's a little harder than it sounds.

And I don't think it's a guarantee, either.

I agree, but it's worth maybe examining more. I think we get into science fiction territory here, though.

Can we get rid of plutocracy and really egregious inequality? Sure. We already did it once: the developed world was a lot more egalitarian after WWII, when the elite had either impoverished itself in the Depression, or delegitimized itself by its interwar foolishness. Far leftists may not like that example; well, they had their own revolutions in multiple countries.

Is it a one-and-done operation that solves inequality and oppression forever? Not with the humans we know. There's a subpopulation that really really likes authoritarianism. Plus there's the lesson Huxley tried to teach: solve most of our economic problems, and who the hell is still an activist? It's hard to make everyone passionate about the status quo, and that can be a problem if troublemakers arise again. Maybe Star Wars was right after all: every century you have to swat down the Sith once again.

I'd add: rb is wrong that scarcity can be entirely eliminated. Iain Banks (a socialist) demonstrated this in the Culture: not everyone can be a designer of ringworlds; not everyone can be the top games player; not everyone can be a major pop star. Not everyone can live in a beachfront mansion, or in the center of town, or in the most chic spot in the space habitat.

But we can't project the politics of 2026 even a hundred years in the future. The problem is not that Adolf Hitler keeps getting reborn and re-enacting WWII. New politics will arise, possibly incomprehensible to us today.

rotting bones actually alluded to this: what if we can genetically modify brains to remove authoritarianism? Should we? (That's a lot like asking if Batman should just kill the Joker.). But more generally: the politics of 2026 just does not apply once humans can decide what being human is like.

[Travis B.]

Inequality cannot be entirely eliminated because people cannot be made completely equal, because human abilities are ultimately unequal even when you control for everything else. In the end, 50% of people will be below the median and 50% of people will be above the median. Not everyone can write a successful series of books about conlanging and conworlding, for instance. (There simply is not enough market for them for everyone to make a living off of them even if everyone could.)

What can be done, though, is making opportunities equal for all people of equal ability, and controlling for all arbitrary factors outside of individual intrinsic ability. While things such as education cannot be made equally available to all people simply for lack of people to teach other people at more advanced levels, they can be made equally available to all people with sufficient ability.

On the other hand, things such as health care can be made equally available to all, and while certain things such as housing cannot be made completely equal simply for the fact that some dwellings will be more desirable than others, they could be distributed by lottery to lessen people's arbitrary advantages.

[rotting bones]

I don't think it's that simple

If I had to sum it up in a few words, I'd say fascism is a combination of factors: primate fear of the unknown, whatever pushes scammers and con men, combined with the industrial power and mindless bureaucracy of the modern state.

But this position is fully compatible with fascism becoming marginal because of social changes. I don't think anyone is saying human nature doesn't play into fascism in any way whatsoever.

whatever pushes scammers and con men

They are trusting the wrong people and they don't have a historical analysis, but the emotional component of their complaint is revealing:

Poor supporters of fascism (without whose vote fascists can't win elections) say their families had good lives when the foreigners weren't here. They believe they can have good lives again once they are gone. If you conjoin the emotional component of this motivation with historical facts, you get an analysis pretty similar to what I've been saying.

Universal prosperity is of course what we should strive for. But it's not happening right away - or even in a century. What happens in the meantime? There'll be poverty still, and setbacks, and unforeseen problems.

Universally rising prosperity will work to some extent:

2. Why didn't this happen before?

In the recent past, the wealthiest countries were afraid of the Soviet Union. They forced their capitalists (a historical fact) to pursue policies that universally raised living standards across society.

This looked like the inevitable march of progress and bound all classes to a common project.

It took decades to sink in that conditions had irrevocably changed.

I think the proper answer is to some extent moral. It used to be that racism and antisemitism were taught to be immoral, and while that wasn't enough, espousing the sort of view you read on X these days used to mean social death.

I think we should get back to that standard. And it will happen, eventually -- though it is sad that people need to feel the boot crushing their face to understand.

How do you imagine that will happen? Social media is dominated by right-wing echo chambers with massive funding behind them.

[rotting bones]

¹ Well, nearly everybody, except those who have to foot the bill.

Money is not real. The actual work is done by the people who consume most of its products.

[rotting bones]

It was more complicated than that. The Russians had a tsar for 500 years. The war was really the determining factor.

The decisive factor was losing the war against Japan. Losing a war against Asians really hurt their pride.

I was talking about something else. Having the tsar as an enemy is different from having large numbers of poor people repeatedly voting against solidarity, even if fascist voters are skewed towards the wealthy. The latter is responsible for the widespread depression of the contemporary left. On the other hand, I don't think we should expect anything else from Marxist theory. Marxism has always criticized parliamentarism for reasons like this.

There were two revolutions, of course, and it wasn't clear in (say) December 1917 that the state would be authoritarian. E.g the SR party, which won the first election after the October revolution, wasn't fully banned till 1922.

The main interest of 1917 for today is the lowest level of the revolution: workers taking over factories, army officers attacking the police, everyone issuing manifestos and editorials and debating all night in palaces cleared of aristocrats, detachments of the army defeated by people orating at them. Lenin at first was only a marginal figure feverishly writing screeds that even his own party ignored. I think everyone who's excited by "revolution", including you, are still after the heady excitement of that year.

What about the American Revolution? Democratic revolutions are possible.

It all went wrong, of course, and we agree on the general reason (authoritarianism).

I don't think getting rid of authoritarianism in politics is sufficient. What needs to be done is getting rid of authoritarianism in the production and distribution of resources.

This was probably due to the very thing that enabled the revolution in the first place: centuries of absolutism leaving no room for experience with democracy.

A experience of democracy provides dubious guarantee against authoritarianism. Historically, authoritarianism increases all the time. Rome went from being a Republic to an Empire. India is basically a Nazi dictatorship now. I see no reason to think any successor regime will move to the left. The US is practically in the same position, with centrist Democrats moving right and spreading Islamophobia even against non-socialist candidates. The clearest premodern examples of democracy existed in city states that never scaled and ceased to exist. (Chesterton says that in Christianity, God is a council, but this is anachronistic apologetics that doesn't match traditional theology, which was highly authoritarian. For example, heresy comes from the Greek word for "choice". Exercizing free choice as opposed to obeying the Lord or his regent was seen as a problem from the beginning.)

See: culture wars.

I think culture wars are effective because of economic conditions:

Undeveloped tribes habitually share resources. They go to war when one of their number is killed. Fascist frame crime by the urban poor and tribe on tribe violence rather than a law and order issue. This narrative is effective when resources are scarce. When resources are scarce, tribes are more antagonistic.

Without conditions of scarcity, humans don't think in these terms.

However, I agree with Murray Bookchin that Marx's 1948 idea of classes is useless today. (There's always a top class, of course. It's what's under them that changes.)

1848?

I think Marx's class analysis is still useful if you look at the underlying dynamics instead of applying it blindly.

Sure. But it's a little harder than it sounds.

Aiming for universal prosperity is sufficient:

2. Why didn't this happen before?

In the recent past, the wealthiest countries were afraid of the Soviet Union. They forced their capitalists (a historical fact) to pursue policies that universally raised living standards across society.

This looked like the inevitable march of progress and bound all classes to a common project.

It took decades to sink in that conditions had irrevocably changed.

Authoritarianism is incapable of aiming for universal prosperity either. Obviously, prominent members of an authoritarian party will get preferential treatment.

Aiming for universal prosperity is not that hard. All you need are egalitarian systems for producing and distributing resources.

I think we get into science fiction territory here, though.

Not having any plan on moving forward leads to doomerism.

Can we get rid of plutocracy and really egregious inequality? Sure. We already did it once: the developed world was a lot more egalitarian after WWII, when the elite had either impoverished itself in the Depression, or delegitimized itself by its interwar foolishness. Far leftists may not like that example; well, they had their own revolutions in multiple countries.

Only by relying on unequal global trade. That was never going to last.

I'd add: rb is wrong that scarcity can be entirely eliminated. Iain Banks (a socialist) demonstrated this in the Culture: not everyone can be a designer of ringworlds; not everyone can be the top games player; not everyone can be a major pop star. Not everyone can live in a beachfront mansion, or in the center of town, or in the most chic spot in the space habitat.

I've always argued for eliminating scarcity of essential goods.

But we can't project the politics of 2026 even a hundred years in the future. The problem is not that Adolf Hitler keeps getting reborn and re-enacting WWII. New politics will arise, possibly incomprehensible to us today.

In many ways, I welcome a scrambling of 21st century politics, which has nothing to offer me.

On the other hand, Marx has some universal lessons for any new politics:

At any point in the previous 4000 years, you could lop off the rulers' heads, distribute all their wealth, and everyone would still be poor.

Note that in some ways, medievals were wealthier than us. The population was so low, there was more land per person. It's complicated. Originally, what Marx was trying to explain through "dialectical reasoning" is that every step of progress has cost us something. We shouldn't side with oppression in the name of progress.

This is something to bear in mind when fascism rears its head under new names like Prometheism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qr-upy40irs (Trigger warning: This video promotes fascism.)

rotting bones actually alluded to this: what if we can genetically modify brains to remove authoritarianism? Should we? (That's a lot like asking if Batman should just kill the Joker.). But more generally: the politics of 2026 just does not apply once humans can decide what being human is like.

A lot of this will be determined by who has access to this technology.

[rotting bones]

Inequality cannot be entirely eliminated because people cannot be made completely equal, because human abilities are ultimately unequal even when you control for everything else. In the end, 50% of people will be below the median and 50% of people will be above the median. Not everyone can write a successful series of books about conlanging and conworlding, for instance. (There simply is not enough market for them for everyone to make a living off of them even if everyone could.)

What can be done, though, is making opportunities equal for all people of equal ability, and controlling for all arbitrary factors outside of individual intrinsic ability. While things such as education cannot be made equally available to all people simply for lack of people to teach other people at more advanced levels, they can be made equally available to all people with sufficient ability.

On the other hand, things such as health care can be made equally available to all, and while certain things such as housing cannot be made completely equal simply for the fact that some dwellings will be more desirable than others, they could be distributed by lottery to lessen people's arbitrary advantages.

Universal prosperity doesn't require absolute equality.

[Ares Land]

Universally rising prosperity will work to some extent

I certainly hope so, but I'm a little wary. Right now it feels like voters don't want prosperity; they want to beat up immigrants.

I think we should get back to that standard. And it will happen, eventually -- though it is sad that people need to feel the boot crushing their face to understand.

How do you imagine that will happen? Social media is dominated by right-wing echo chambers with massive funding behind them.

At least in Europe, far-right media used to be either illegal or marginal and kept that way through various legal means. I suspect this will be felt necessary once fascism has done enough damage (the open question is how long will it make and how much damage will be necessary. It may alas, take a generation.)
That's if social media is even relevant ten years from now, which is far from sure. It certainly looks like X is increasingly irrelevant: there's no amount of money that will force people to use the slop factory.

[Ares Land]

Is it a one-and-done operation that solves inequality and oppression forever? Not with the humans we know. There's a subpopulation that really really likes authoritarianism. Plus there's the lesson Huxley tried to teach: solve most of our economic problems, and who the hell is still an activist? It's hard to make everyone passionate about the status quo, and that can be a problem if troublemakers arise again. Maybe Star Wars was right after all: every century you have to swat down the Sith once again.

Problems we have fixed stay fixed to some extent; just not to the extent we'd have wished. Poverty is dire, but not is dire as 1930s poverty; economic downturns are awful but don't reach the extent of the Great Depression. Fascists can't eliminate democracy entirely, or mass murder to their heart's content.

I think the rise of plutocracy is to a large extent due to a slowing down of economic growth after the 1970s, which wasn't supposed to happen. I expect we'd still be caught unaware by unexpected issues in the future -- but not as much. I think we can expect to keep understanding sociology and economics better over time.

[rotting bones]

I certainly hope so, but I'm a little wary. Right now it feels like voters don't want prosperity; they want to beat up immigrants.

Anthropological research says this is caused by hardship. It also fits what the voters themselves say about their motives.

If the voters are inherently evil, that would actually push me towards Stalinism. I would see no choice but to beat them up until they learn their lesson or die trying.

At least in Europe, far-right media used to be either illegal or marginal and kept that way through various legal means. I suspect this will be felt necessary once fascism has done enough damage (the open question is how long will it make and how much damage will be necessary. It may alas, take a generation.)
That's if social media is even relevant ten years from now, which is far from sure. It certainly looks like X is increasingly irrelevant: there's no amount of money that will force people to use the slop factory.

We got to this position because Musk bought Twitter. Because videos of genocide were being spread on TikTok, it was bought by corporate media, which put a stop to it. Why would they let adversarial media exist?

[Ares Land]

I certainly hope so, but I'm a little wary. Right now it feels like voters don't want prosperity; they want to beat up immigrants.

Anthropological research says this is caused by hardship. It also fits what the voters themselves say about their motives.

If the voters are inherently evil, that would actually push me towards Stalinism. I would see no choice but to beat them up until they learn their lesson or die trying.

No one is inherently evil except sociopaths, who are thankfully a tiny minority. Voters can get entirely evil notions, such as being convinced that immigrants are inherently subhuman and dangerous. The problem, this belief has been, if anything validated.

I think painting far-right voters as poor victims of hardship only validates their belief.

Personal experience (anecdotal, I know, I know) also makes me suspicious of the 'hardship' explanation.
Judging from the far-right voters I know personally... well, if they're suffering from hardship, then frankly I could stand some of that hardship myself.

We got to this position because Musk bought Twitter. Because videos of genocide were being spread on TikTok, it was bought by corporate media, which put a stop to it. Why would they let adversarial media exist?

Oh, but we don't have to let billionaires run things, and in fact we shouldn't. We're right at the stage where people have more or less figured that out; then they have to act on it (which may, alas, take quite some time)

[Ares Land]

We got to this position because Musk bought Twitter. Because videos of genocide were being spread on TikTok, it was bought by corporate media, which put a stop to it. Why would they let adversarial media exist?

As a separate post because this is an aside... I really miss pre-Elon Musk Twitter...
But I also think the buyout was a self-defeating move, and Elon Musk's X is less dangerous. We know it's nothing but a far-right cesspool.

In the last couple of years, it was also a far-right cesspool, but with the appearances of a neutral forum. It's probably better that far-right idiots just talk amongst themselves.

[MacAnDàil]

We got to this position because Musk bought Twitter. Because videos of genocide were being spread on TikTok, it was bought by corporate media, which put a stop to it. Why would they let adversarial media exist?

As a separate post because this is an aside... I really miss pre-Elon Musk Twitter...
But I also think the buyout was a self-defeating move, and Elon Musk's X is less dangerous. We know it's nothing but a far-right cesspool.

In the last couple of years, it was also a far-right cesspool, but with the appearances of a neutral forum. It's probably better that far-right idiots just talk amongst themselves.

Why miss it? The format of Twitter is necessarily short. That is conducive of a lack of reflection and nuance. This lack of nuance encourages manichean thinking like xenophobia. It was as much Twitter that ruined Musk as the reverse. Rowling is also a case in point.

[Ares Land]

Why miss it? The format of Twitter is necessarily short. That is conducive of a lack of reflection and nuance. This lack of nuance encourages manichean thinking like xenophobia. It was as much Twitter that ruined Musk as the reverse. Rowling is also a case in point.

Oh, to be honest, when I first heard about Twitter (I didn't realize but that was ages ago!) I thought the format constraints was stupid. But I was wrong; people made it work and in fact it worked great for news, jokes and a bit of silliness.
It was actually a great format for following political drama (in the light-hearted way that's often needed; the political satire around Brexit was extremely funny). There was some pretty neat stuff, (I remember a couple horror stories in Twitter format. Those were nice.)

Twitter was pretty good until, I don't know? 2018. I don't know if the dreaded Algorithm was already a thing, but it was still unobstrusive back then.
I think it got nastier and less interesting in 2019. One sure thing is that Twitter was really infuriating during COVID so by 2020 it was broken.

What happened? They just got greedy; they were making (I think) tons of money out of Twitter, but they wanted more. And just like any good tech company, they figured the way to make more money was to break their own product. So there were a series of pretty stupid change: breaking the interface, and introducing or tweaking the algorithm so it would show you whatever infuriates you the most.

As for the format, I don't know. I think at some point they expanded than removed the character limit and things got even worse.

Bluesky shows promise. It has trouble getting a user base, but you get some rather interesting content. My main problem with it is, everyone there sounds like Marvin the Android. (Yeah, yeah, we all know about the relentless advance of global warming and fascism. But you know, it's not going to get worse if someone tells a joke or something.)

As a geek, I found Mastodon really interesting but, well, it never really took off so no user base.

I don't know who radicalized Trump Musk. I remember thinking he was just an eccentric rich guy and figured they shouldn't let engineers out in public. Then I learned he never was in fact, an engineer. Now I think he's always been a little shit.

I don't think Twitter radicalized J.K. Rowling -- she's hardly the first person to start out decent and pick up nasty beliefs along the way. It is true that Twitter publicized the nastiness and probably made it worse.

[malloc]

I don't know who radicalized Trump. I remember thinking he was just an eccentric rich guy and figured they shouldn't let engineers out in public. Then I learned he never was in fact, an engineer. Now I think he's always been a little shit.

Perhaps you mean Musk since as far as I know, Trump has never been involved in engineering.