Yves here. Among other things, notice how the Democrats have and are working to undermine the Greens, just as they have Black Lives Matter and the left generally. Never forget that the Dems are determined to crush the left, and perfectly happy to conspire with the right.
By Louis Proyect, who has written for Sozialismus (Germany), Science and Society, New Politics, Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Organization and Environment, Cultural Logic, Dark Night Field Notes, Revolutionary History (Great Britain), New Interventions (Great Britain), Canadian Dimension, Revolution Magazine (New Zealand), Swans and Green Left Weekly (Australia). Originally published at Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist
Over the last week or so, I have read two articles that offer a highly distorted version of events leading up to Hitler’s seizure of power that are put forward in order to help elect Hillary Clinton.
In “Can the Green Party Make a Course Correction?”, Ted Glick equates Jill Stein’s determination to run against both Clinton and Trump in every state with the German Communist Party’s “Third Period” turn. Referring to Jill Stein’s reference to Trump and Clinton on “Democracy Now” as being “equally terrible”, Glick linked her to the German CP’s refusal to unite with the Social Democrats against Hitler:
Jill’s words are an eerie echo of huge mistakes made by the German Communist Party in the 1930’s. Here is how Wikipedia describes what happened:
“The Communist Party of Germany (German: Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands, KPD) was a major political party in Germany between 1918 and 1933. During the Weimar Republic period, the KPD usually polled between 10 and 15 percent of the vote and was represented in the Reichstag and in state parliaments. The party directed most of its attacks on the Social Democratic Party of Germany, which it considered its main opponent. Banned in Nazi Germany one day after Adolf Hitler emerged triumphant in the German elections in 1933, the KPD maintained an underground organization but suffered heavy losses.”
In Harold Meyerson’s “Bernie, Hillary, and the Ghost of Ernst Thalmann”, the same historical analogy is used to get out the vote for Clinton but this time directed more at disaffected Sanderistas than Green Party activists who Meyerson likely views as beyond hope:
In the last years of the Weimar Republic, the real menace to Germany, Thälmann argued, wasn’t the Nazis but the Communists’ center-left, and more successful, rival for the backing of German workers: the Social Democrats. The SDs, he said, were actually “social fascists,” never mind that they were a deeply democratic party without so much as a tinge of fascism in their theory and practice. But as the Communists’ rival for the support of the German working class, the SDs became the chief target of the Communists’ campaigns.
Thälmannism, then, is the inability (be it duplicitous, willful, fanatical, or just plain stupid) to distinguish between, on the one hand, a rival political tendency that has made the compromises inherent to governance and, on the other hand, fascism. And dispelling that inability is precisely what Bernie Sanders will be doing between now and November.
I’m neither equating Donald Trump with Hitler nor saying he’s fascist in the classic sense. Trump has no organized private army of thugs to attack and intimidate his rivals, as both Hitler and Mussolini did. But Trump’s racist, xenophobic, and nationalist appeals; his division of the nation into valorous and victimized native-born whites and menacing non-white interlopers; his constant employment of some Big Lies and many Little ones; and his scant regard for civil liberties make him the closest thing to a fascist of any major party presidential nominee in our history.
Yet a minority of Sanders’s supporters fail to grasp the threat that a Trump presidency poses to the nation—to immigrants, to minorities, to workers, and even to the left and to themselves. I doubt more than a handful will actually vote for Trump, but Jill Stein and even Gary Johnson will win some of the Sanders diehards’ votes (though for voters, moving from Medicare-for-All Sanders to Medicare-for-None Johnson requires either extraordinary ideological footwork or simple brain death). In states where the race between Clinton and Trump is close, however, a Sanders diehard’s vote for Stein or Johnson, or a refusal to vote at all, is in effect a vote for Trump.
Both Glick and Meyerson have long-standing ties to the left. Glick has been a member of the Green Party for 16 years and before that worked with a small group promoting an “inside-out” electoral strategy. In many ways, that is much worse than being strictly “inside” the Democratic Party because the brownie points Glick has accumulated over the years as some kind of “outsider” gives him the leverage he needs to subvert the genuine radicalism of a third party on the left. In 2004 Glick was part of a group of “Demogreens” who engineered the nomination of David Cobb as Green Party presidential candidate instead of Ralph Nader, who they feared would siphon votes away from John Kerry. Basically this is the same strategy Glick is pursuing today with Jill Stein being demonized as the equivalent of the berserk Stalinists of the “Third Period”.
Meyerson was active in the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee in the 1970s, a group better known as DSOC that would later on fuse with other groups to become the DSA. He is currently the vice-chair of the National Political Committee of the DSA and a contributor to liberal magazines both online and print.
Like Glick, Meyerson saw Ralph Nader’s campaign in 2004 as inimical to the interests of the Democratic Party although formulated in terms of defeating the horrible Republicans. Just as Glick argued in his article, Meyerson took Nader to task for not recognizing the differences between the two parties in “The American Prospect”, a liberal magazine he publishes. Referring to Nader’s appearance on “Meet the Press”, Meyerson took issue with his claim that the system was rigged:
He did, of course, assert that there were no very serious differences between the two parties, though host Tim Russert got him to concede that there were distinctions on such ephemera as judicial nominations, tax cuts, and environmental enforcement. The American government, Nader reiterated, was still a two-party duopoly.
So what does all this have to do with the rise of Adolph Hitler? The answer is nothing at all. Hitler is invoked as a kind of bogeyman to frighten liberals. He serves the same purpose as a warning from your parents when you were six years old. If you don’t brush your teeth, the bogeyman will get you. Now it is if you don’t vote for Hillary Clinton, der Führer Donald Trump will get you.
Unpacking and refuting such nonsense is dirty work but someone has to do it. To start with, it is necessary to put the German Socialists under the microscope to understand the historical context. If the German CP’s ultra-left position was a disaster, how else would you describe the social democracy’s failure to resist the Nazis? While there is no point in making an exact equation between the Democrats and the German social democracy (we should only be so lucky), it would have been incumbent on Meyerson and Glick to review its strategy especially since they are the American version of Weimar Republic reformists today.
Like the Democratic Party, the German Socialists cut deals with the opposition rightwing parties to stay in power. In effect, they were the Clinton and Obamas of their day. In 1928, the Socialists were part of a coalition government that allowed the SP Chancellor Hermann Müller to carry out what amounted to the same kind of sell-out policies that characterized Tony Blair and Bernard Hollande’s nominally working-class governments.
To give just one example, the SP’s campaign program included free school meals but when Müller’s rightwing coalition partners demanded that the free meals be abandoned in order to fund rearmament, Müller caved in.
Another example was his failure to tackle the horrible impact of the worldwide depression. When there was a crying need to pay benefits to the unemployed, whose numbers had reached 3 million, Müller was unable to persuade his rightwing partners to provide the necessary funding. Their answer was to cut taxes. If this sounds like exactly the nonsense we have been going through with the Clinton and Obama administrations (and a new go-round with Mrs. Clinton), you are exactly right. The German SP had zero interest in confronting the capitalist class. That task logically belonged to the Communists but the ultra-left lunacy mandated by Joseph Stalin made the party ineffective—or worse. When workers grew increasingly angry at SP ineptitude, it is no surprise that the most backward layers gravitated to Hitler.
The ineffectiveness of the Müller government led to a political crisis and its replacement by Heinrich Brüning’s Center Party. Brüning then rolled back all wage and salary increases as part of a Herbert Hoover type economic strategy. Needless to say, this led to only a deepening of the economic crisis and political turmoil. Eventually Brüning stepped down and allowed President Paul von Hindenburg to take over. And not long after he took over, he succumbed to Nazi pressure (like knocking down an open door) and allowed Hitler to become Chancellor.
Within the two years of Brüning and von Hindenburg rule, what was the role of the German SP? It should have been obvious that Nazi rule would have been a disaster for the German working class. Unlike the Salon.com clickbait articles about Trump the fascist, this was a genuine mass movement that had been at war with trade unionists and the left for the better part of a decade. Stormtroopers broke up meetings, attacked striking trade unionists and generally made it clear that if their party took over, the left would be annihilated. Indecisiveness in the face of such a mortal threat would be just as much of a failure as the “Third Period” but that is exactly what happened with the SP as Leon Trotsky pointed out in “What Next? Vital Questions for the German Proletariat”, written in January 1932 on the eve of Hitler’s assumption of power.
In its New Year’s issue, the theoretical organ of the Social Democracy, Das Freie Wort (what a wretched sheet!), prints an article in which the policy of “toleration” is expounded in its highest sense. Hitler, it appears, can never come into power against the police and the Reichswehr. Now, according to the Constitution, the Reichswehr is under the command of the president of the Republic. Therefore fascism, it follows, is not dangerous so long as a president faithful to the Constitution remains at the head of the government. Brüning’s regime must be supported until the presidential elections, so that a constitutional president may then be elected through an alliance with the parliamentary bourgeoisie; and thus Hitler’s road to power will be blocked for another seven years. The above is, as given, the literal content of the article. A mass party, leading millions (toward socialism!) holds that the question as to which class will come to power in present-day Germany, which is shaken to its very foundations, depends not on the fighting strength of the German proletariat, not on the shock troops of fascism, not even on the personnel of the Reichswehr, but on whether the pure spirit of the Weimar Constitution (along with the required quantity of camphor and naphthalene) shall be installed in the presidential palace. But suppose the spirit of Weimar, in a certain situation, recognizes together with Bethmann-Hollweg, that “necessity knows no law”; what then? Or suppose the perishable substance of the spirit of Weimar falls asunder at the most untoward moment, despite the camphor and naphthalene, what then? And what if … but there is no end to such questions.
Now of course we are in a period hardly resembling the final days of the Weimar Republic. The good news is that a fascist takeover is highly unlikely since parliamentary democracy is more than adequate to keep the working class under control. The bad news, on the other hand, is that the left is so inconsequential and the trade unions so weak that there is no need for fascism.
But who knows? Another decade or so of declining wages and cop killings of Black people might precipitate the rise of a left party that has learned to avoid the reformist stupidity of the German SP and the suicidal ultra-leftism of the Stalinists. It is highly likely that people like Harold Meyerson and Ted Glick will be as hostile to it as they are to Jill Stein’s campaign today. Despite their foolishness, we should soldier on to final victory. The fate of humanity rests on it.
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I would contend these trite Trump/Hitler fantasies are the result of a terribly isolated intellectual class who know all too little about the country at large and think the “bitter clingers” are perpetually about to come get them. The truth is that Americans are highly apolitical, soaked in materialism and, by world standards, still very well off. Meanwhile the looneys in charge seem determined to shred the social contract and create an economic nihilism that will ensure the very fascism that they claim to fear. We are under threat in this country, but that threat is the status quo.
Their own fear of retribution at the hands of the bogey man of their dreams.
Interesting premise: “Donald Trump is not exactly like Adolf Hitler.”
neither is clinton. trump seems a bit more xenophobic, clinton more warlike.
Let’s see if Trump will launch Barbarossa II and occupy Ukraine, on the way to the oil fields in the south…
Excellent point. Ever since Maggie Thatcher proclaimed there “is no society,” the U.K. and the U.S. elites have been steadfastly proving to the bottom 80% that they are regarded as nothing more than “surplus population.” Far worse than benign neglect, we have elites promoting policies that are actively promoting the erosion of living standards for most, while enhancing looting opportunities for those at the top.
Thinking back on the Lieberman quote on whether there was a distinction to be made between the taxidermist or the veterinarian. Something about – either way you get your dog back.
And yet I have the strange feeling that they will simply rely on the tactic of divide and conquer (best exemplified by the “pay one half of the working class to fight the other” robber baron attitude) to keep us at bay. Crabs in a bucket, I tell you.
All right I’ll stop, but it worries me. Already the id of our people, comments, are calling BLM terrorists and equal to the KKK (yeah, I know)
Under Weimar’s parliamentary democracy all of the governments were necessarily coalition governments. Müller really had no choice except to cooperate with the Center Party members of the governing coalition if he wanted to stay on as Chancellor. The analogy to Obama and the Clintons breaks down at this point; for them it’s never been a question of either work with the Republicans or leave office.
Müller’s downfall in March 1930 was more the consequence of parliamentary intrigue than anything else. Leaders of the Center party had been planning for several months to oust Müller in favor of Heinrich Brüning on the understanding that Brüning could win President Hindenburg’s backing to rule by decree under Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution. In other words, the target wasn’t so much Müller as parliamentary government itself. The unemployment insurance issue was a pretext, not a cause, for Müller’s demise.
The German Socialists certainly made their share of mistakes prior to Hitler’s victory three years later–failing to use their Iron Front organization against the SA in the streets was one of them. But Müller’s situation in 1930 was really impossible, and who the hell could have foreseen that Germany would not have another Socialist Chancellor until Willy Brandt 40 years later.
The german social democrats did not just make their fair share of mistakes prior to the rise of Hitler. They played a big part in the split of the workers movement in germany and there were a lot of reasons that many radical lefts ( especially working class) hated this party. (This by no means should fare as justification of the stalinist communist assholes.) The SPD leadership used, abused and betrayed the very people that they supposedly represented.
( Sebastian Haffner :” The betrayed Revolution”)
Another big player in bringing to power Adolf Hitler seemed here completly forgotten. Nobody less then the later Pius the XII orchestrated the dissolution of the second biggest party in Germany – the Catholic Center Party, whose members and Voters were suddenly without political home and more or less encouraged to vote Hitler.
To compare the situation in America with this time in Germany is not only ridicolus but plain fear-mongering.
Who’s Bernard Hollande?
He think he wanted to refer to François Gérard Georges Nicolas Hollande, ci-devant president of France.
The essential flaw in the “Trump is Hitler” meme is that no matter how bad Trump is, Hillary is about 10x worse. Despite his flaws, Trump is at least sane. Hillary on the other hand is demonstrably a psychopathic lunatic–and that’s even before we get into talking about the eye-wateringly extreme corruption. I wish this fact had gotten at least a mention in the post, but oh well.
Trump/Clinton pathologies are like for like. Each is best gifted at looking out for themselves, the rest of the universe be damned. Either will use the office solely for personal profit, and to protect and expand their privilege. Whatever help they afford the world (or damage they do to it) will be secondary to the context of personal gain. That entails slotting in with the predominant wisdom of the Cheney Era: neolib/con. You can’t make a mint by butting heads with sub-contractors.
Either will swill the bourbon, don the blindfold, and get behind the wheel like every president since before any of us were born. Either will make us all poorer in wealth, health and spirit. Either will kill a lot of people who never did anything to them.
A vote for Trump is not a vote to stop Hillary. It’s just a vote for Trump.
You are not correct. The depths of Hillary’s depravity are fairly well understood by now. She is the epitome of the blackest, most malignant evil that the human race can puke up. And her extreme psychosis plus comic incompetence and bad judgement means that a nuclear war is likely under the Clinton regime. In contrast, Trump is at worst merely a run of the mill showman and crook. We can survive Trump. With Clinton, that’s the end. There’ll be nothing left.
No one is going to make America great again. The economy will never grow no matter what anyone does. The jobs will never come back and education is only going downhill from here. Our standard of living will never be as high as it is now, and in fact soon it will drop like a rock, far faster than it has been dropping so far. That is so even in the impossible event of Jill Stein or Bernie Sanders being elected president. That is reality. Deal with it.
Our highest and only moral duty as human beings at this point is to ensure that America does not wipe out all life on earth as it’s going down the drain. And I think Trump is the best person for that job out of all those on offer.
I keep tossing it over and over in my head. If Sanders is not on the ballot, the choices are:
1. Clinton/TBD
2. Trump/Pence
3. Third party
4. No vote/leave the ballot blank
Options 3 and 4 are, in effect, a vote for whomever is leading in the polls. A third party candidate, in the United States, is extremely unlikely to poll above 5%. I was comfortable voting third party in 2012. But this election is a very different kettle of fish. So far, I know I will not vote for Hillary Clinton. Otherwise, I remain undecided.
There is one additional option…
5. Leave the country
Option 5 is not an option. With the hydrogen bombs that everyone has today a nuclear war would pretty much be the end of life on earth. Well cockroaches might survive, but that’s about it.
Everyone is going blithely along like it’s “impossible” but that fails to account for the utter insanity of Hillary and her neocon friends. They are pure self-righteous suicidal lunatics. As Secretary of State Hillary could only destroy Libya and a few other small states, thankfully being kept in check by the corrupt, but not insane, Obama. As president there’d be no one to control her bloodthirst.
If you do vote for some office — but not for President — your ballot should be counted. The fact that you did not vote for President should show up as an undercount. I disagree with your opinion that an undercount vote is tantamount to voting for the candidate leading in the poles. That’s equivalent to the old vote for the lesser evil argument. There is no lesser evil between Hillary and Trump.
Thank goodness you’re not being hysterical.
It’s not hysterical. That’s the problem.
jgordon, I agree. I’ve been toying with the idea of voting for Jill Stein, but this commentary has convinced me to vote for Trump.
I am a member of the white working class and all I care about is the avoidance of WWIII, jobs and trade. The rest of it is divisive B.S. in my opinion, and that of most of my cohort.
bdy, staying home is not a vote for Trump, it might also be one for Hillary in the states where it’s close.
Rather than the Hitler analogies, how about looking at the effect Ralph Nader had on US politics? After all, Mr. Nader’s candidacy helped defeat the DINO Al Gore, and paved the way for a more liberal political agenda – right?
Except that isn’t what happened – we got President Cheney and Sock Puppet Bush for 8 years, who pushed he country way to the right.
If we want to move the country to rational thinking and away from far-right wing memes, doing nothing other than running liberal candidates for President every 4 years doesn’t seem to work. May I respectfully suggest following Bernie’s advice, and start thinking locally? If we start electing liberals to city and state offices now, in about 12 years we’ll have a shot at getting our policies enacted on a national level.
All these protest votes against Democrats during the presidential election season accomplishes is to validate the world view of the big-time Democratic consultants: ” the hippies won’t vote for us anyway, so why bother with them?” Oh, and it helps Republicans further consolidate their power. If you disagree, please point to any successes you’ve had in enacting your desired political agenda. (As the far-left activists don’t like President Obama either, you can’t cite any of his successes as left-wing accomplishments.)
On a side note: during World War 1, the Supreme Court held that speech which presented a “clear and present danger” of leading to criminal activity was not protected by the First Amendment. Eugene Debs gave an anti-war speech while running for President, and was sentenced to prison for sedition. (Source, Wikipedia – Eugene Debs.
If your struggle against Hillary Clinton and the Democrats helps Donald Trump and the Republicans win the Presidency, look for a Supreme Court which will revive that standard for free speech. When you are arrested for terrorism because you spoke out against, say, an oil pipeline, and the Trump-appointed Supreme Court upholds that sentence, take pride in the fact that your actions have directly impacted US politics.
Ah yes, the Vichy left blames Nader for Bush’s election once more. Never mind the milquetoast, weak and uninspired candidate. Never mind the blatant and massive Florida (and elsewhere) election fraud the DNC did absolutely nothing about (for going on 16 year now). Never mind the utter abandonment of the working class by the Dems for going on 20 years at that point. Nope, the REAL reason Gore lost was because a few thousand people in Florida were sick of all the betrayal by the Dems and voted their conscience. Yep, that’s who’s to blame!
And if Hillary loses to Trump now, it’ll be the same story all over again. The Vichy left, forever caving in and allowing the Dem party to move perpetually to the right, losing the vote of the vast majority of the electorate and its the tiny amount of us who are sick to death of the repugnant candidates the DNC keeps puking up that are to blame. Its never their awful utter lack of game theory that has allowed their leaders to move to the right of Nixon. It can’t be their fault, they voted for the puke-tastic Dem!
But it never occurs to these people that if the Dems had just stuck to their principles and not sold out in pretty much every way to corporate interests that the country right now wouldn’t be 27% Dem, 24% Repub and 44% Independent. No, without the massive sellouts perhaps that 44% number, or even more, would be in the Dem category. Its amazing how its always the left’s fault for the sellout of the fake left and the resulting electoral devastation.
Yankee Frank: Thanks. Yes. I bet you spend all day reminding the oooshy “left,” if they are leftists, that the Democrats were only too happy to lose the election. Only the Black Caucus offered any real resistance, and they were sent off to the boondocks by Gore himself.
Hey, person, nice set of assertions. What shreds of evidence do you have that the Clintons won’t do what you so portentously warn about, and effing WORSE? After all, the Dems promise to continue and advance (sic) what the Great Obama has been up to.
Oh, maybe they will “protect” the “right to choose,” in abortion and sexual proclivities and enlistment in imperial forces to go kill wogs and advance the looting. Any recollection of the ’68 Dem convention, and subsequent? How about what the state security panopticon did and does to Occupy-ers and whistle-blowers?
Take your talking-point bogeymen elsewhere.
The commenter starts off by blaming Nader for Gore losing instead instead of his actual candidate, the Supreme Court, Jeb Bush, Katherine Harris, the Democrats who voted for Scrub, the butterfly ballots, hanging chaos, etc.
Nader is despised because he reminds Democrats that they are simply a party of bourgeois nitwits and nostalgia victims who consider the “The West Wing” to be profound. How else can Democrats be smug? Sure debating a Republican is like dumping dynamite in a barrel of dead fish and calling it art and can allow a Democrat to feel smug, but when people outside the two party system exist, Democrats are forced to reform or lash out because they haven’t had much to be smug about in decades.
Very nice– right on
1. Gore won FL– the Supreme Court took it from him
2. Gore couldn’t carry his home state, TN…? Who’s to blame for that?
3. Everybody who voted for Nader would have voted for Gore had Nader not been on the ballot? A superb counterfactual, indeed.
4. If Nader took votes from Gore, how about the other side of 2000 equation? Remember that? Nader/Gore = Buchanan/W. If Nader took votes from Gore, didn’t Buchanan do the same for Bush? I think that one such calculation had Buchanan taking more electoral votes from W than Nader did from Gore
Approximately 220,000 Democrats voted for Bush in Florida. If Gore was able to convert merely 1 percent of those Democrats, he would have won.
Democrats lost Florida for Gore. Period. End of story.
TN is probably to blame for Gore not carrying it, Gore couldn’t carry extreme right-wing state, ho hum.
NGT: you are extra-salty today. Congrats. What’s remarkable is that the Democrats and their thingamabobo about Nader are like the old cold-warrior Republicans and “Who Lost China?” It is a blame game to make people submit to their betters, the Bourgeois Nitwits. (The Democrats as unending Monty Python skit, all hanging chaos but with resentments.)
It seems the article went “woosh” over your head.
You might want to check the prison population under Herr Clinton. Threats of being imprisoned by Clinton opponents simply are a fear if the alternative is Frau Clinton.
I can’t cite any of Obama’s successes as left wing acoomplishment because they’re right wing.
Shorter: STFU, hippies. Now send us money. We really need it.
You are forgetting all the millions of votes that selecting Eeyore from Connecticut, and the Likud Wing of the Democratic Party, cost Gore when he ran against W.
Like Rahm Emanuel with Obama, a pox on their house, in this case, before the election.
According to the usual rules of engagement, the Rubinite wing of the Democratic Party gained support and strength from a strong Perot showing. There’s a case to be made that a 20% turnout for Green will likewise constrain the ability of either of the neoliberal candidates to claim a right-wing mandate.
Also, to hell with liberals. They’re right-wingers with conceits of self-righteous self-alienation from the proles and are 50% responsible for our present state of affairs. Children dancing around mommy’s skirts chanting something about playing nice while in fact playing ruthless idiotic variations on Simon Says to manufacture an “undeserving” second class… are unfit for and thoroughly undeserving of any sort of power. They also tend to have totalitarian fever dreams and believe personal boundaries are solely theirs to adjudicate.
Hunkerdown: I think that you make a good diagnosis: Many liberals don’t recognize that this election is a collapse of liberal elites as well as of the Republican trickle-down elites. About all I can say is that at least the Bourgeois Nitwits (see Not Timothy Geitner, above) who run the Republican Party seem to understand that their stratum is in crisis. The Democrats, who have devolved into rigid technocrats (who even believe that drones are capable of solving foreign policy and Internet-distribution problems at the same time) are slouching toward insouciant Bedlam.
Dude- you said this
but forgot to finish it with “and the triangulating Dems enthusiastically went along with them, despite their squeals of anguish.”
FIFY
You said we can’t use any of Obama’s (liberal) “accomplishments” in retort of what you said. By that do you refer to his passing the Republican plan for an insurance mandate to benefit rich gigantic corporations or his bombing more nations than anyone in all human history even Adolf Hitler? Or his being the most militaristic President ever and restarting a Cold War with Russia costing trillions for no reason but to benefit military profits? Or his TPP trade deal that will make corporations not just people but GODS (yes GOP blush for being to the left of Obama) that we actual people will be forced to obey in every way? Oh —- and are we lefties also barred by you from noting Obama has presided over more Repiblican election victories and more Democratic election losses than any US President in history? Maybe it’s time for people with your reasoning to realize there is a reason for record low voter turnout – because people like you offer 2 versions of the same.
Where are these liberal candidates of which you speak? I haven’t found one yet. Even Sawant is not a “liberal” as she has union marching orders. No one yet is willing to stick their neck out to stop the Mortgage Bankers Association.
Problem:
Spoiler effect
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoiler_effect
Solution:
Instant-runoff voting
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting
The idea that Nader lost the election for Gore is a discredited myth. You’re like Red Sox fans who blame Bill Buckner for losing the 1986 World Series when there were several other botched plays that screwed the Red Sox out of a World Series championship just as equally or even more so.
The reason you Democrats keep bringing up Nader is because you never want to change. You roll out Nader every 4 years like it’s supposed to scare us or something. That devotion to lesser of two evils, another discredited moral theory BTW, is why the worst Democratic candidate in history and greater of two evils is running against Trump. You neoliberals are over. Get used to it.
Great metaphor on Buckner. I remember that moment well. And he should never have been on the field; in other words, it was a management problem.
I HATE the stupid undying false meme that Nader cost Gore the election. He did NOT. GORE lost Gore the election. All he had to do was call for recount of all Florida districts rather than just a few that seemed likely to go his way.
Be that as it may, over 200,000 DEMOCRAT voters cast a ballot for Bush. ALL the other 3rd party candidates pulled in enough votes to toss the election to Gore IF those voters would have voted Gore instead of WHATEVER 3rd party candidate they did vote for. All that crap analysis operates under the assumption that those 3rd party voters WOULD have voted for Gore if not for their 3rd party candidate being in the race, as opposed to them not voting at all or voting for Bush. Democraps assume that if you do not identify as Republican you OWE your vote to them. Bullcrap.
I’ll be voting for Jill Stein no matter what this fall. If she wasn’t on the ballot (or if Sanders isn’t) then I would not vote at all on a Presidential ticket. My vote is MINE, not the DNC’s.
And we better educated people type our stuff here, taking note of the perversions of history used by the real parasites to promote the Triumph Of The Narrative, showing our erudition and witty prose. All while the neos use the tools of mass control and manufacturing of consensus to teach the 80% fear and obedience and loyalty or at least the futility of trying for a political economy organized around principles of county and decency.
Yep, let us analyze, and trade snippets of awareness of all the huge number of instances of Victory of Orc-Think. Any evidence at all that any “D and C” principles apply in the globalize do monetized world, principles and policies that we debate over and lack the power to demand? Any evidence that there are limits (other than mass death) to the Success of the Predators?
But maybe I’m missing something…
“neos use the tools of mass control and manufacturing of consensus to teach the 80% fear and obedience”
Yeah but it’s not working anymore, do you watch the news?
By what standard is it not working? A few dead cops is just the cost of doing business plus serves to justify even more aggressive policiing and surveillance.
Free speech: From today’s Links section
FBI Greenlights Crackdown on Black Lives Matter Protesters
You may also want to review the history of violent suppression and infiltration by state and federal Democrats of the Occupy movement, the NATO protests in Chicago, pipeline protests, etc. in recent years, and the total lack of objection on the part of blue team cheerleaders.
The Nader myth has been debunked repeatedly, but ICYMI
edit: was supposed to be a repy to RepubAnon July 16, 2016 at 12:42 pm
Is it just me, or does it seem that Hillary and her surrogates have shifted the sales pitch a bit? Less emphasis on trustworthiness, steady hands, experience, judgement and more emphasis on how awful a Trump presidency would be. Comey’s tongue lashing may have had something to do with this.
Basing your appeal on demonizing Trump, including the obligatory fascist references, is a dangerous thing to do. All Trump has to do is tone it down a bit between now and November – ie, be less awful.
People have short memories.
I suspect they know Hillary isn’t being seen as a steady hand but they refuse to acknowledge why and thus are moving on to a message of “ooga Boogaloo Trump” and kicking DFHs.
Her 2008 schtick was she was qualified to answer the phone at 3am when Obama the super predator launched a home invasion cause she voted in lock step with Shrub’s foreign policy and commanded the White House kitchen. Does anyone remember the “Treaty of the Lace Doilies”? If Hillary had not come through with just the right China pattern, Taiwan would have been invaded by Super Putin. Unfortunately, Americans not seem to be buying this.
Based on that interview with Ezra Klein she comes off as just spouting sh*t and having no idea what she’s talking about.
She’s the female counterpart of the very serious Moustache of Understanding, Thomas Blahblahblah Friedman.
Well, except for all the dog whistles to privatizing Social Security and the like. I avoid reading Friedman, but isn’t he a bit more open and crude than that?
Her verbiage is loathsome where it isn’t empty or dishonest. All these supposedly intellectual feminists like Traister and Goldberg testifying to her warmth, charm, wit and intellectual rigor if only you can get in a small room with her are revealed as dishonest hacks by this interview. She’s in a small room with Ezra. Would she be magically more articulate and appealing if it was his wife doing the interview?
> She’s in a small room with Ezra.
Yep. I was shocked at how threadbare Clinton’s language and thinking were in Ezra’s interview. As I said, I thought Trump was the one who spoke at a fourth-grade level.
From the bits I remember from your dissections of his speeches, it seems to me Trump’s fourth-grade stylings are designed to achieve a mix of communicating simple, clear ideas, provoking emotional responses and various identification and persuasion tactics involved in closing a sale.
Clinton’s bullshit (not cursing, just being descriptive) doesn’t seem to do any of these things. It’s not going to work on regular people. Does it really work on the media elite JV that’s vouching for her? I don’t think Rebecca is Traister is stupid. Does she just close her eyes and think of the Hamptons when she writes about Hillary?
It does demonstrate that keeping Hillary away from the public as much as possible is good strategy. They can’t keep that up all the way until November, though, can they?
I just read elsewhere someone I consider pretty well-informed do a big shrug about the emails. The line out of Netroots Nation apparently is, “She did it because the State Department had an antiquated system. No big.” I was shocked that this person swallowed it. Honestly, I’m shocked when anyone buys anything Clinton says. It makes me feel I’m visiting from another solar system.
I had the same reaction after Nice.
Her comments were pure boilerplate – the ‘intelligence summit’, etc…
I thought – “man, this is what passes for profound? this is the voice of experience?”
There’s the thought that, not unlike trump, she is her own worst enemy when she begins speaking.
Having watched the campaign progress from the “scooby van” primaries to the branching out to the more status quo appeal, in hindsight, she appears to never quite have a message of any sort, and relies heavily on capitalizing on any current meme, while only revisiting those that poll with a suitable measure of appeal.
The idea that she had to be roped off from journalists, and needing acting lessons from steven spielberg, works to flesh-out the actual person we are still confused about.
And yes, the boilerplate has been obvious nonsense from the beginning of the campaign.
If I really had a question it would be, what percentage of the voting public will swallow that worthless nonsense of – I have a comprehensive plan to make america great again – and then allow her to define *comprehensive* at some later date, with all the caveats and covenants up for sale to the right bidder.
Then my thoughts wander off to the CRE market and the lengths that RE agents will go to, to secure a sale or lease on property, and is the dem party this desparate, that they would only run one figure (less the concillatory appearance of Chaffe and O’malley, for the semblance of propriety) ?
You know, something along the lines of – we’re willing to do anything crappy to secure power.
Was this a complete oversight on the part of the party elite, to not have had the foresight to recognize the strength of the populist vote, post-OWS, and the underlying antipathy of the dynastic political class?
Or, is this bit of foaming-the-runway, and continuity government baked in ?
It is difficult to imagine a set of policies that could have been more damaging than those that have been applied by the Triangulation Team over the past 25 years. From rolling the Glass-Steagall Act and the rule of law, to deregulation, austerity, their so called “trade agreements”, the Empire of Chaos, climate change, sanctioning predatory lending and securities fraud, etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangulation_(politics)
Like most Americans, who according to the polls share progressive and green values, this has been a bitter and protracted lesson in the black art of deception and persuasion to benefit a small segment of the population financially. Think I’ll take my chances with one of the alternative choices.
It seems to me that the use of labels such as fascist, with Hitler being the favourite bogey man are largely beside the point in terms of what is going on today, which is what I think you are pointing out. Mainly because I think that especially lately & not just in the US, that democracy is fast becoming nothing more than an evermore threadbare banner that the elites wave in your faces to disguise the ugly reality.
As for Trump I think he is the strong man that populations under severe conditions often look up to, in the hope that they can sort the mess out. I wouldn’t describe Quin She Huang, Alexander the great, Octavian, or any number of divine right kings as fascists, or even as right wing, as there was no real left or right, before the modern age, although most of them may as well have been – maybe dictator or tyrant are better words for all of them.
Outside looking in what mainly strikes me about the US is that it is an expansionist empire mainly driven mainly by Neo-cons & Neo-Libs who it appears are always there as the power behind the throne, whose influence they see as being threatened by Trump. Maybe Obama is the figurehead for a ship that could be called Corporatocracy for which Clinton is the perfect replacement, & selfishly perhaps as a foreigner I would probably prefer Trump, while hastily crossing my fingers.
I am also wondering what real difference a fascist leader would make in terms of the behaviour of the US to the outside world, as it seems to me that Hitler’s & Mussolini’s ( not Franco’s ) military adventurism is already fully in play, considering the nuclear & resource restraints. Lebensraum is not really something that would have to be considered, but the unter-menschen thing would obviously be a very large concern, but at least the infrastructure problem might get sorted out, although you lot might find yourselves sharing a large dark cell.
After reading Tolstoy’s ” Resurrection ” & how he describes the Tsarist state & how it & the people who ran it worked in the latter half of the 19th century to maintain it, it appeared to me that besides the now thin cloak of democracy, & the fact of it being then an extreme form in terms of inequality, it is much the same system as has been used ever since, with the very same sort of people running the show, which in turn became a bigger monster under the communists, again being run by the same sort of people who were doing the very same under a different label.Tolstoy’s idea of the why of a large prison population in terms of control, is probably a very valid theory in terms of judging what state a country is at in terms of tyranny.
Clinton is an interventionist.
Trump appears to be an isolationist.
Of the two, isolationism is less damaging to the rest of the planet – one hopes. But ugh, it means voting for Trump.
“necessity knows no law” (above, Trotsky quoting Bethmann-Hollweg)
This is an accurate description of USA elections and government.
Those who are really making the decisions (and they are mostly behind the scenes) are not government by laws, unlike the rest of us. Just look at the Clinton email situation as a small example, or the laughable and long-disproved 911 official story, or the many elections both recent and historic long proven to have been “won” by fraud.
If you have the necessary level of power for a given situation, the law is no obstacle.
There are times when, that unspoken truth, seems to bear out.
“Necessity knows no law”: “Not kennt kein Gebot” is a trite German expression, like the English cliche, “Any port in a storm”.
it’s always funny and sad to read people who think Hillary is “left” of center. like Obama, she is the “more effective” evil. it takes a Blue Dog aka Democrat to do the Republican dirty work. like Obama does with the drones, Obamacare Healthcare Insurance Co. subsidies, continue Bush’s tax cuts for the Rich, the Grand Bargains(money for War, none for Society), Sequesters, and of course the Bailouts of the Banks/TARP. The efforts of Bill Clinton with NAFTA, Welfare Reforms, Drug Sentencing aka, the War on Drugs/Blacks, voiding the Peace dividend by using NATO to bomb Serbia, and the peace agreement with Russia over troops in Eastern Europe. The list of Evil done by these so-called Democrats is startling, effective and endless. we’ve even got Vicky Nuland to say F00K the EU under Obama. Bush presidency continued.
Effective EVIL is what a Democrats is. the Republicans just wait for the Democrats to do the Republicans “Dirty” deeds. the Republicans have more finesse than the Democrats, or the Democrats choose to be the “heavy.” the Blue Dogs claim “cooperation” under the guise of selling the average American out.
Truly Vichy Democrats or Quislings in my book.
it’s like we never finished WW2, or it has been picked up where it left off, only silently. The Germans lost and now apparently, so did the rest of the world. we have Democrats who sell out for their share of the “loot” of the Republican Party scam that went into overdrive since St. Reagan took that mantle of deceit and depravity. of course the DFH’s were right all along, but that can’t ever be acknowledged. Pajama clad Cheetos DFH’s, aka effing Retards
so instead we get this TINA and the rest of the Right and Left attacking anyone who dares to call the Elites on their Elite elections Duopoly Party where Tweedledee and Tweedledum divide and conquer. not like Jill Stein stands a chance of doing anything but being kayfaybe. a useful distraction to continue the Ponzi scheme of war upon brown people here in American and elsewhere. The names and forms of hate change but everything in the War on the American People continues.
40 years of Divide and Conquer.
I certainly can’t stand Trump for what he represents, what is called the Republican Dream/American Dream fantasy line. Me, Me, Me. the Exceptional American. but Hillary scares me worse than Trump does. The more effective EVIL is what Hillary embodies today, and we are past done if she is elected. Her glee at Gadhafi’s demise is tellingly frightening.
i never ever thought i could ever vote for a Republican again ,and nowadays Democrats as well, lol, Hillary is showing me labels are irrelevant. Actions speak louder than any labels. Hillary screams alarum bells into the dark black night. Trump might just be merely divisive, ineffective and a loose cannon. i can only hope the Republican fall apart with Trump in charge, or be so divided by Trump’s honesty in expressing what Republicanism stands for. that honesty of what Trump says and does is so glaringly upsetting for cohesiveness/unity in what is called the Republican Brand. the Republican scam up till now has worked so well under the “code of silence.” Such a deadly efficiency that we have seen since St. Reagan, which more or less heralded the “Decline of American Civilization”. but it took the Democrats to activate and abet the decline. to hear Obama “praise” St. Reagan at his initial victory speech in Chicago on election night sent shivers down my spine. and it’s been worse ever since he took office.
maybe the present day malaise that is the Republican Party would prevent the further implementation of the Looting, assuming Trump wins. I only know that if Hillary wins, She and the rest of the Blue Dogs will gladly continue screwing us and the World over under the “guise” of Bipartisanship Cooperation. Think TPP, TTIP. Mrs. Goldman Sachs vs. Mr. Loud Mouth.
i don’t want anyone to cooperate with the Republicans to finish America off. Trump seems like the best “choice” to slow down the destruction of our world, both ecologically and politically, due to his Bull in a China shop behavior.
i, too, always find it snarkily funny when Nader is accused of losing Gore’s election for him. another Democratic Quising, who couldn’t even win his own state. Something Muskie, Humphrey, and Mondale actually did. Nor does anyone say anything about the Supreme Court’s appointment of W as president, nor a word about the Black Voter suppression and Katherine Harris W’s brother Jeb enacted.
My governor, John Bell Edwards, LA, a supposed Democrat, has thrown his support for TPP. Another Blue Dog doing the Republican dirty work. Bipartisan screwing. but then again, i am not in the club.
The Elites apparently figured out how to use Weimar and Hitler and WW2 as a blueprint/instruction manual for the scam we are undergoing today. the same old evil, all gussied up and brand newish looking.
Hillary or Trump, Neither nor!
The atom bomb changed everything.
Revolt is impossible.
Revolution too.
China is where Obama has set up the war .
I offer a way out but like all others am behind the power curve.
It does fall on Sanders to blow up the convention.
Yes! and his 1900 delegates. I’m counting on it. I’m wondering how many
of Hillary Clinton’s delegates are facing their own elections and how comfortable
they are at this time with their position. Maybe they will be persuaded to switch
to Bernie Sanders. It has been disturbing to me that some people believe that
because Bernie endorsed Hillary he is no longer a candidate. I believe that
both Stein and Sawant have acted prematurely by seeking to enlist Bernie’s
supporters for the Green Party. Why did so many go so negative so quickly
after the endorsement? The lack acknowledgement and respect for the grit
and strategy in evidence has surprised me. So far I trust Bernie’s ability to be
the executive of his own actions and that he knows most about where he stands and the options open to him. I still think he will be the democratic
candidate. If so, god help him.
You have far more trust in politicians than I have.
As for the howls at Bernie’s endorsement of Hillary, if they had cheered instead then it would be taken as given that the left has fallen into line (on their own swords…AGAIN) for the establishment and the game is over. By expressing dismay and anger, supporters are instead showing that, no, the left is NOT going to simply fall on its sword yet again. NOT THIS TIME.
But then again, I have about as much faith in voters as I do in politicians. I daresay that when the ballot is upon us and a lot of these people see Clinton vs Trump on the screen, they will swallow their expressed beliefs and vote for Clinton like good abused dogs.
There is no point voting for either Trump or Clinton. Both are in the tank for neoliberalism. Sheldon Wolin’s Inverted Totalitarianism is already here.Clinton and Trump are a neoliberal dream team. Clinton playing the role of “serious person” while Trump is the “friend of the little man”. Between them both, they’ll hoover up most of the votes, and it will be back to business as usual. The FIRE industries’ have a choke-hold on the state. If they want TPP passed, passed it will be. The choice is clear: say NO to the duopoly. But it won’t happen. Too many are fooled by Trump’s faux populism or Hillary’s pseudo progressivism.
There is a way out, but it’s a long shot. A genuine social democracy party will have to be built from the ground up. It may take decades. It may take months – a la Syriza, 5 Star or Podemos. But it is possible. A party that will not compromise on its values. Forget about a takeover of the Dem party. The successors to Sanders need to make a clean break from a deeply corrupt organization. The Sanderistas hold the cards now. They have nothing to lose by cleaving the Dem party in half; in fact, they would be taking out one of their opposition. For the Dem party as they stand are as much the enemy of the people as the Reps.
In the back of my mind, a lingering thought of walking away from the entire system seems the most rational and bold choice. It would take planning and fortitude. Corruption and inequality are qualities built into the current system and rejecting them is the only way forward. Liberty is incompatible with corruption and inequality.
Rejecting the current order and living ones life free of compromise, however difficult, is the only way forward. Another lingering feeling is that this life might be easier than expected once undertaken. A day of freedom and liberty is worth a lifetime of deluded oppression.
It’s a given that either Trump or Clinton will be the next prez, barring some incredible weirdness taking place. But if the campaigns proceed in fairly normal fashion, it will be Trump against Clinton, with Stein and Johnson getting more votes than usual, being that the top candidates are unacceptable to much of the populace. But I don’t like Stein or Johnson either. So the best thing I can do is vote for Trump to beat Clinton, and teach the dems a lesson, give them a spanking.
The lesson that teaches the duopoly is that the system is working just fine, thank you very much.
The choice is supporting the smooth operation of the status quo or working in any way possible at bringing about change. A vote for Trump is a vote for gridlock and exposure of a corrupt system. This election is the exposure of betrayed ideals.
A vote for Trump is a show of support for the system falling apart sooner rather than later. It is a vote to make the system weaker rather than stronger. Viewing the election this way is troubling for people of conscience because empathy weighs heavily on them, and desire a world free of suffering. So they fall prey to the notion that a vote for Clinton is a way of limiting suffering when in fact is the exact opposite.
There are very few political warriors on the left that the more timid can follow. They stand out and are put to the sword by the powerful elite.
Not voting, if connected with the action of living ones own life in a self sufficient and nonviolent manner is an option that is rational and has impact over time. It is a vote of noncooperation. It is a vote for an alternative way of life.
Well said.
Ah. I don’t believe in “non-violence”. I don’t “turn the other cheek” or go all Gandhi. I hit back when swung at. I cannot do your passive fall-down and twitch dance.
If the Hitler reference demonstrates anything, it’s that the Movement Formerly Known as the Left has a very restricted range of historical references, or indeed knowledge. In what passes for debate there, references to “fascism” or ‘Hitler” are generally enough to shut the other person up, irrespective of the actual historical parallels, if any.
FWIW, though the KPD tend to be everybody’s whipping boy, it’s important not to forget that in 1919 the then (Socialist) Chancellor Ebert turned to the extreme right-wing militias who went on to form the hard core of the Nazi movement to crush the Communists. This was pretty recent history, and who was to say that the Socialists wouldn’t pull the same trick again after Hitler had been stopped?
Carolinian’s lead comment is insightful:
“The truth is that Americans are highly apolitical, soaked in materialism and, by world standards, still very well off.”
It is worth remembering that under mature capitalism, one thing the proletariat has in common with the bourgeoisie is that, like the bourgeois, the proletarian regards himself or herself first as an individual.
The proletariat is _not_ a class which mobilizes itself readily. It is much easier to get peasants, or even petty bourgeoisie, to fall into ranks to defend their class interests. The image of legions of militant proles sweeping down the avenues is something that exists only in the fancies of naive revolutionists or timorous bourgeois.
The bourgeoisie are really quite fortunate that the class which they exploit and oppress is today’s proletariat. Our current financialist overclass would never be able to cope with, say, an angry class of rural smallholders. Any garden-variety jacqueries would take GS and kick its ass.
Carolinian: “[They] think the ‘bitter clingers’ are perpetually about to come get them.”
The bourgeoisie can’t imagine that anyone wouldn’t want to be them. They regard all other classes of people as being defective wannabe bourgeois. At the same time, they’re always telling the proles that they can somehow self-improve to become bourgeois. The proles are always set up to be the “losers” in a game which isn’t a game. Note that other oppressed classes in history didn’t have to put up with this sort of insult from their exploiters. An aristo never told a peasant that the peasant was a failed aristo. Aristos didn’t treat peasants as losers; they treated them as peasants.
While the bourgeoisie do not necessarily injure the exploited classes more than other ruling classes, they do more insult. One might hate an aristo more than one hates a bourgeois, but one can still respect an aristo and despise the bourgeois.
The “envy” that the bourgeoisie always attribute to other classes is something that is more true of the bourgeoisie themselves than of anybody else. No class in history, as a class, has ever been more deeply characterized by envy than the bourgeoisie.
Historically, the bourgeoisie envied the aristocracy for their effortless sense of superiority, the clergy for their learning, and the peasantry for their folkways. The bourgeoisie envy gatherer-hunters for their connection to nature, and they envy the petty bourgeoisie for their industry and discipline. The bourgeoisie even sometimes envy the proletariat for their supposed leisures! Of course, the bourgeoisie never fail to envy one another, since that’s pretty much their entire way of life.
The bourgeoisie cannot even imagine any Good coming into the world, except through the mechanism of envy–that’s the core doctrine of their concept of “markets.”
So I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that bourgeoisie accuse the proles of being envious. It’s in the front of the bourgeois mind, so, as a class, it is hard for them to comprehend how little they have to fear from the proletariat. If the bourgeoisie ever did understand that the proles, as a class, do not envy them, it would deeply undermine the bourgeoisie’s world view and self-esteem.
One step in each prole’s liberation is when he or she realizes that, “you couldn’t pay me to become a bourgeois.” After all, one can be mostly an individualist, with a mostly materialist world-view, and still not want to live as a member of a controlling class which is driven nonstop by its own incurable envies and fears.
Carolinian: [American people are] “by world standards, still very well off.”
Remember that being proletarian is not about current income level. It is about one’s relationship to the control of the means of production. There is such a thing, from time to time, as a decently paid proletariat. But the long run tendency is for any of those who do not control their means of production to become alienated and immiserated.
One more thing: the proletariat should wage a class war _before_ their living standard drops too low. The proles of the Western world should have launched a counter-offensive in the class war at least 20 years ago. Instead we wasted a generation wandering down the Third Way garden path.
But of course, we proles are slow to mobilize, and as a class, possess little martial tendency. For humanity, and for the world, this is a good thing. The future needs the proletariat to become the politically dominant class, since we’re the only class in history that has ever learned to “get over themselves.”r
Carolinian’s lead comment is insightful:
“The truth is that Americans are highly apolitical, soaked in materialism and, by world standards, still very well off.”
It is worth remembering that under mature capitalism, one thing the proletariat has in common with the bourgeoisie is that, like the bourgeois, the proletarian regards himself or herself first as an individual.
The proletariat is _not_ a class which mobilizes itself readily. It is much easier to get peasants, or even petty bourgeoisie, to fall into ranks to defend their class interests. The image of legions of militant proles sweeping down the avenues is something that exists only in the fancies of naive revolutionists or timorous bourgeois.
The bourgeoisie are really quite fortunate that the class which they exploit and oppress is today’s proletariat. Our current financialist overclass would never be able to cope with, say, an angry class of rural smallholders. Any garden-variety jacqueries would take GS and kick its ass.
Carolinian: “[They] think the ‘bitter clingers’ are perpetually about to come get them.”
The bourgeoisie can’t imagine that anyone wouldn’t want to be them. They regard all other classes of people as being defective wannabe bourgeois. At the same time, they’re always telling the proles that they can somehow self-improve to become bourgeois. The proles are always set up to be the “losers” in a game which isn’t a game. Note that other oppressed classes in history didn’t have to put up with this sort of insult from their exploiters. An aristo never told a peasant that the peasant was a failed aristo. Aristos didn’t treat peasants as losers; they treated them as peasants.
While the bourgeoisie do not necessarily injure the exploited classes more than other ruling classes, they do more insult. One might hate an aristo more than one hates a bourgeois, but one can still respect an aristo and despise the bourgeois.
The “envy” that the bourgeoisie always attribute to other classes is something that is more true of the bourgeoisie themselves than of anybody else. No class in history, as a class, has ever been more deeply characterized by envy than the bourgeoisie.
Historically, the bourgeoisie envied the aristocracy for their effortless sense of superiority, the clergy for their learning, and the peasantry for their folkways. The bourgeoisie envy gatherer-hunters for their connection to nature, and they envy the petty bourgeoisie for their industry and discipline. The bourgeoisie even sometimes envy the proletariat for their supposed leisures! The bourgeoisie never fail to envy one another, since that’s pretty much their entire way of life.
The bourgeoisie cannot even imagine any Good coming into the world, except through the mechanism of envy–that’s the core doctrine of their concept of “markets.”
So I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that bourgeoisie accuse the proles of being envious. It’s in the front of the bourgeois mind, so, as a class, it is hard for them to comprehend how little they have to fear from the proletariat. If the bourgeoisie ever did understand that the proles, as a class, do not envy them, it would deeply undermine the bourgeoisie’s world view and self-esteem.
One step in each prole’s liberation is when he or she realizes that, “you couldn’t pay me to become a bourgeois.” After all, one can be mostly an individualist, with a mostly materialist world-view, and still not want to live as a member of a controlling class which is driven nonstop by its own incurable envies and fears.
Carolinian: [American people are] “by world standards, still very well off.”
Remember that being proletarian is not about current income level. It is about one’s relationship to the control of the means of production. There is such a thing, from time to time, as a decently paid proletariat. But the long run tendency is for any of those who do not control their means of production to become alienated and immiserated.
One more thing: the proletariat should wage a class war _before_ their living standard drops too low. The proles of the Western world should have launched a counter-offensive in the class war at least 20 years ago. Instead we wasted a generation wandering down the Third Way garden path.
But of course, we proles are slow to mobilize, and as a class, possess little martial tendency. For humanity, and for the world, this is a good thing. The future needs the proletariat to become the politically dominant class, since we’re the only class in history that has ever learned to “get over themselves.”