There’s a lot here so I’m going to respond to this in pieces:
“And because liberalism cannot address our crises, and because it crushes socialist alternatives, it inevitably paves the way for right wing populism.”
I’m curious about the definitions of liberalism and socialism that are being used here. Because the author is describing them in opposition to one another, I’m assuming they mean some sort of “Workers control the means of production” definition for socialism and if so, I’m just fully not on board with anything here.
Socialists often appear hesitant to commit to a specific vision for organizing the economy, and when they do, the details can be quite vague. Do they advocate for syndicalism, a command economy, or something else entirely? How would jobs be assigned, and what mechanisms would be used to address potential perverse incentives? It’s worth noting that worker cooperatives are not illegal; if they can truly compete with traditional capitalist enterprises, why don’t we see more large-scale examples like Mondragon?
If we’re talking about market socialism, i.e. the nordic model, how exactly are liberalism and socialism opposed then?
“Don’t really mind if facists take power, so long as the latter too ensure the conditions for capital accumulation.”
Come on. This is laughably out of touch. Do you not see how upset everyone from the so called “ruling class” is today?
‘So, progressives have to face reality. The dream of “converting” the democratic party is dead’
It seems like this person is equating “progressives” and “socialists”, which is a completely ridiculous thing to do. I may be in the minority these days, but I do like to use well defined terms and I will agree that the idea that the Democratic party is ever going to become a socialist party is absurd.
“The only option is to build a mass-based movement that can reclaim the working classes and mobilize a political vehicle…”
The idea that socialism is electorally viable, when we very obviously just saw a SIGNIFICANT shift to the right is ABSURD. Its obviously still really early, but the stats that I’ve seen today suggest that “47 percent of voters thought Kamala Harris was too progressive, while only 32 percent thought Donald Trump was too conservative.”
“Democrats have proven over and over again that they cannot accept even basic steps like”
Personally I support a single payer option, but the idea that its democrats fault that we don’t have this is silly. The unfortunate reality is that a single payer system has simply never been a politically viable idea. Remember that while Biden did have the house senate and presidency, the majority in the senate relied on the vote of the vice president to break ties as well as retaining the votes of BOTH Joe Manchin and Kristen Sinema.
This is actually a typically a bad policy (at least according to most economists), especially with the way it is used in practice (in effects as an excuse for NIMBYism). The biggest housing problem that we face is really just that there is not enough housing supply and we are not doing enough to stimulate building. We need to relax zoning law more than anything else, IMO.
This is absurdly speculative and assumes nefarious for no apparent reason. Do you really think that Barack Obama is really worried about the right to capital accumulation. Why can’t socialists accept that people might just actually disagree with them on economic policy and think that there are real issues with command economies/syndicalism/whatever way they want to run the economy? Assuming bad faith on the part of those that disagree with you is not a good way to build a coalition.
Again this is just assuming a degree of nefarious intent that is absolutely crazy. I mean this is conspiratorial to a degree that just makes no sense to me. Why does the explanation that Democrats actually believe that sometimes foreign intervention is justified not make more sense here?
My guess is that it feels better to demonize those that disagree with you than to accept that the set of policies that you prefer are not the set of policies that most prefer. Its probably more cathartic to radically oppose everyone else instead of doing the hard work of persuading others (or acutally coming to understand the world enough to see why your solutions might not be as obvious as you think they are).
Its really easy to take the “war/MIC is bad”, “make more affordable housing”, “the fact of the existence of billionaires is inherently evil” side of things – they all comport with our intuition and it doesn’t really require a deep understanding of how the world works to get on board with them. IMO, they’re all probably wrong and deeply naive. You can try to argue that I belive that for self serving reasons, but I promise you that I do not, and I’m also quite certain the majority of people who are not on board with the socialist project are not against it for self serving reasons.
‘The Democrats have done all this purposefully and knowingly not as some kind of “mistake”’
Holy shit this is such a bad take. Liberalism (and lets just say it, capitalism), the enlightment concept that along with the scientific revolution was really the main development that allowed the industrial revolution to take flight and bring about the modern world that is, by literally any metric you can choose, miles better than what came before it has failed?
This is not to say that there aren’t any issues with capitalism – income inequality is out of control, we are seeing more and more market failures in many different industries, but I’m really not convinced that the answer is “abandon capitalism”, or the even more insane “abandon liberalism”. The answer is to acknowledge the reality that market failures do exist and figure out how to develop smart policies to counteract them:
We don’t want to throw the baby out with the bath water, and at the risk sounding like a republican, I do accept that there is SOME truth to the idea that “a rising tide lifts all boats”. There is a lot of evidence that suggests that socialism is not the best way to run an economy. If you think this isn’t true:
How do explain the DRASTIC difference between east and west germany before the fall of the Berlin wall? Sure, make the argument that West Germany was always more economically powerful, but come on, you think that accounted for 100% of the difference.
Why is it that China’s material conditions improved SO DRASTICALLY when they started economic liberalization in 1978?
I understand much of the opposition to Israel’s actions in gaza, but words have to mean something and calling it a genocide is laughable. You can read about what genocide actually means here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocidal_intent , and note in particular the requirement of dolus specialis, which is quite obviously NOT MET in this case.
Anyway, I’m not here to defend netanyahu, but this is just another point where its completly clear that the author the author just does not have deep command of the issues they are discussing.
None of that is bad, but the unfortunate reality is that power is increasingly concentrated in the Federal government. Technology has connected the world to an unprecedented degree and everything is interconnected now and the things that matter the most are undeniably the ones that are happening at the largest scales.
“I really hope you’re wrong about needing to recreate the conservative media engine to compete - I was really hoping fake news was going to have an answer that wasn’t ‘more fake news but with an opposing slant’”
I’m not saying we should resort to “more fake news but with an opposing slant”. I’m just saying that we need to play the alternative media game (youtube/podcasts/twitter/twitch) more intelligently. Here’s an example of the kind of thing that I’m talking about:
You might not like either of these people but I think they do a great job:
Destiny does a great job arguing against 25 trump supporters here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SH0M83drPAw&t=3296s
Buttigieg absolutely kills it with undecided voters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YE1f3n_n9UA&t=41s
Unfortunately, Ben Shapiro’s video doing a similar thing got more than twice the views that either of those did:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QK-liQhqPjs&t=71s
Other alternative media people that I think do a good job:
David Pakman https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvixJtaXuNdMPUGdOPcY8Ag
Crooked Media/Pod Save America: https://www.youtube.com/@podsaveamerica
but the problem with these sorts of entities is that they are a bit too polished and a bit too establishment oriented.
I think we need people that are more like Destiny/Buttigieg (have you seen him on fox news) that are willing to get combative and are willing to have authentic and deep conversations.