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IMPress Polly
07-19-2015, 06:54 AM
As the reader is doubtless aware, though I no longer count myself among their ranks, most of my political experience so far has been in and around Marxist circles, which I continue to keep up with because that remains the political space I feel most comfortable in overall. So anyway, now that there is a halfway viable self-described socialist running for the White House, you might be wondering what people to Sanders' left think about him. It's a good question because opinions on Sanders vary widely amongst the ranks of Marxists: some support him and his presidential ambitions, while others oppose. In this post I will share an article by Joelle Fishman of the Communist Party endorsing Sanders' presidential run and explaining why she thinks that endorsement is merited. In the next post on this thread, I will follow that up by posting an article by Tom Hall of the Socialist Equality Party arguing against offering Sanders any support. If any broader context helps, the Communist Party these days subscribes to a humanist variety of Marxism, having jettisoned Leninism a few years ago, while the Socialist Equality Party is a more traditional Leninist Marxist group that especially draws on the historical politics of Leon Trotsky in defining its particular stances.

(These articles will be quoted in their entirety, as I know how lazy people often get when it comes to prospect of having to *gasps for breath* click on links and because I know for a fact that both sources fully support and even encourage, as rare publicity, such complete re-posts of their online material so long as proper attribution is provided.)



Bernie Sanders 'political revolution'
by Joelle Fishman
June 25, 2015

The context of the amazing outpouring and response to Bernie Sanders campaign is the uprising underway for a more just society. Across the country, pressure is mounting and social movements are building for a livable wage, to end racist attacks and police brutality, to stop fast track for TPP in the interest of jobs, the environment and democratic rights over corporate rule, to expand Social Security and end student debt. ....

Bernie Sanders is getting a big response from people who are sick and tired of elections being bought by Wall St, people who have become angry and alienated from the political process, people who have been looking for a voice. His appeal is wide. Reports from grassroots house meetings and rallies in the south and mid west reveal that some Democratic leaders are on board, and some independents and Republicans are changing affiliation to support Bernie. ....

Soon after, the South Carolina AFL-CIO passed a resolution calling upon the national AFL CIO to endorse Bernie Sanders as the "strongest candidate articulating labor's values." The resolution says, "Labor must step up to fundamentally change the direction of American politics by refocusing on the issues of our time: growing inequality and pervasive racism; the power of concentrated wealth and its corruption of our democracy; an escalating pension and retirement security crisis, runaway military spending and a militarized foreign policy, Medicare for All, and the need for new, bold solutions to our shared problems." ....

Bernie Sanders has a life-long record and relationship with labor. To create the kind of unity that can move our country forward, such a specific outreach based in his strong record is critical as well with the African American, Latino, Native American, Asian Pacific communities, women and youth. ....

(See link for full article)

Original context (http://www.cpusa.org/bernie-sanders-political-revolution/)

IMPress Polly
07-19-2015, 07:32 AM
Alright, now here's the Socialist Equality Party's article opposing Sanders (the SEP being a more traditional Leninist Marxist group of a Trotskyist orientation):



The economic nationalism of Bernie Sanders
By Tom Hall
1 July 2015

Bernie Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination, is gaining a hearing among the public, due in large part to his focus on economic inequality. The support for the campaign of a politician who calls himself a socialist and regularly denounces the “billionaire class” is a reflection of widespread alienation from the political establishment and growing interest in a socialist alternative. Sanders’ campaign, however, is designed to channel this growing discontent back within the safe channels of the Democratic Party. None of his proposals challenge the basis of capitalist rule such as private ownership of industry and finance. Instead, he promotes the illusion that serious social reforms can be achieved within the existing political and economic system.

Sanders combines his populist appeals with economic nationalism. Far from pursuing genuinely socialist politics, which is based on revolutionary internationalism, he opposes the international unity of the working class, calling instead for American workers to rally in defense of “their” national state against foreign capital.

The general thrust of Sanders’ argument can be summed up as the following: global trade undermines the sovereignty of the United States and results in the off-shoring of American jobs overseas to authoritarian regimes, resulting in declining living standards for American workers. As an alternative, Sanders proposes various protectionist measures. ....

Sanders’ brand of nationalist populism is a phenomenon with deep historical roots in the US. In the 1980s, jingoistic “Buy America” campaigns were utilized by the trade union bureaucracy to disorient and demobilize workers in the face of a plant-closing and wage-cutting offensive by American capitalism. This found its most noxious expression in the racist anti-Japanese campaigns of the United Auto Workers, in which Japanese-made cars were smashed with sledgehammers, and which culminated in the 1982 murder of Vincent Chin, a Chinese-American worker, in Highland Park, Michigan. ....

While populists such as Sanders claim to be on the side of the American worker, they are in reality working to enforce the continued domination of bourgeois politics over the working class. They promote the line that American workers should seek the protection of “their” national state from the world economy and foreign governments and corporations (as well as “treasonous” American corporations doing business overseas). ....

(See link for full article)

Original context. (http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/07/01/sand-j01.html)

As to my own position on Sanders, I fall somewhere in-between where these two authors do. I feel that Mr. Hall's argument against Sanders is too one-sided and more idealistic than realistic about how communists can shift the political debate in this country in the direction of socialism, where Fishman's article seems closer to reality on that and correctly posits a wide range of genuine benefits to the entire political left of Sanders' campaign regardless of whether one counts him as a socialist (as he claims to be) or not: he is legitimizing socialism as an idea and making it respectable by running, and to particular affect by running within the Democratic Party. I can't help but notice that the Democratic Party has undergone a considerable ideological realignment since the 2008 crash in an increasingly anti-corporate direction and that Bernie's candidacy helps shift the debate therein further to left, to a place of accepting the ideological validity of socialism in spite of previous pervasive stigma against it that has existed in this country. I also agree with Fishman's case that there is tremendous benefit to his calls for a sustained mass movement against the political and economic domination of the financial and general corporate aristocracy in this country. So while I don't agree with Fishman's humanist philosophical standpoint (which can be easily seen in her frequent recourse to subjective terminology), I have to agree with her overall on the matter of whether Sanders is a presidential candidate worth supporting.

However, I also agree with what Mr. Hall says when he points out Sanders' economic nationalist and somewhat nativist record and, as the reader has probably noticed from some of my earlier PF posts, that is something that concerns me. Internationalism is very basic to the long-term goal of realizing a socialist and then a communist world and, as rightly pointed out in Hall's article, there really isn't but a hop, skip, and a jump's worth of palpable difference between protectionist trade war policies on the one hand and opposing foreigners in general, including foreign workers, on the other. They are two sides of the same coin that naturally go together. (For a more extreme example of how, witness the cases of Donald Trump and Mike Huckabee on the Republican side of the aisle!) In this connection, I feel that the Communist Party's adoption of a humanist philosophical orientation reflects just simply being absorbed by the American labor movement and adopting its prevailing outlook, including on foreign relations, rather than seeking to LEAD a popular movement toward the realization of socialism. Humanism is ideologically crippling that way, leading one to simply be blown about by the winds of popular politics at the expense of scientific observation and orientation thereabout! While it is not at all intrinsically wrong for communists to unite with and join labor movements, it is wrong for communists to allow their philosophical and political outlook to be shaped by the spontaneous whims of organized labor. More objectivity -- a more scientific approach -- than that is required on the part of communists in order to make sense of the world, which is necessary to establishing our credibility with the masses.

However, in the grand scheme of things, this is just one issue of many and Sanders' style of nativism, like it or not, is hardly any more extreme than that of the average Democrat, as shown by his support for a path to citizenship for the undocumented immigrants already in this country, even if he (wrongly) opposes permitting more foreign-born workers in. In the broader scheme of things, Sanders is legitimizing the idea of socialism and fostering a broad public debate on the subject even while actively mobilizing large numbers of people against the plutocratic political and economic arrangements we find ourselves confronted with at present and that's something I feel that I have to support!

PolWatch
07-19-2015, 07:48 AM
Presenting the views of 2 very different people is a great way to demonstrate what a candidate is saying & (more important) has been doing to further their stated goals. Both writers provide a different view of the same person that I found very informative.

I had to smile when Hall pointed out that Sanders & Paul shared a similar view of the WTO. Paul is the only candidate on the repub side of the aisle that has attracted my attention. I wonder if we could start a socialist/populist/libertarian party?

IMPress Polly
07-19-2015, 08:12 AM
PolWatch wrote:
Presenting the views of 2 very different people is a great way to demonstrate what a candidate is saying & (more important) has been doing to further their stated goals. Both writers provide a different view of the same person that I found very informative.

I had to smile when Hall pointed out that Sanders & Paul shared a similar view of the WTO. Paul is the only candidate on the repub side of the aisle that has attracted my attention. I wonder if we could start a socialist/populist/libertarian party?

The essential content on the Sanders-Paul alignment being referenced lies in that both have a certain anti-foreign flair that applies both against foreign capital and foreign workers alike. I'm really not interested in uniting with people on the basis of being anti-foreign because I am not.

However, it has not been unheard of for libertarians and economic populists (including socialists and communists) to work together in mass movements. My experience in the Occupy movement of 2011 immediately comes to mind, as there was a certain section of libertarians that participated in that movement alongside the political left and I made some libertarian friends through that experience. :smiley: As for here, XL strikes me as being someone of a similarly populist or quasi-populist approach to libertarianism; one that's not as one-sidedly friendly to the world of commerce as the likes of more prominent libertarian figures like Glenn Beck, Paul Ryan, Ted Cruz, Scott Walker, and so forth have been and are.

Mac-7
07-19-2015, 09:04 AM
As the reader is doubtless aware, though I no longer count myself among their ranks, most of my political experience so far has been in and around Marxist circles, which I continue to keep up with because that remains the political space I feel most comfortable in overall. So anyway, now that there is a halfway viable self-described socialist running for the White House, you might be wondering what people to Sanders' left think about him. It's a good question because opinions on Sanders vary widely amongst the ranks of Marxists: some support him and his presidential ambitions, while others oppose. In this post I will share an article by Joelle Fishman of the Communist Party endorsing Sanders' presidential run and explaining why she thinks that endorsement is merited. In the next post on this thread, I will follow that up by posting an article by Tom Hall of the Socialist Equality Party arguing against offering Sanders any support. If any broader context helps, the Communist Party these days subscribes to a humanist variety of Marxism, having jettisoned Leninism a few years ago, while the Socialist Equality Party is a more traditional Leninist Marxist group that especially draws on the historical politics of Leon Trotsky in defining its particular stances.

(These articles will be quoted in their entirety, as I know how lazy people often get when it comes to prospect of having to *gasps for breath* click on links and because I know for a fact that both sources fully support and even encourage, as rare publicity, such complete re-posts of their online material so long as proper attribution is provided.)




Original context (http://www.cpusa.org/bernie-sanders-political-revolution/)

No need to waste time reading the whole thing.

Marxists may be crazy but they aren't stupid.

bernie is more Marxist than Hillary so why not Bernie?

.

IMPress Polly
07-19-2015, 10:14 AM
Mac-7 wrote:
No need to waste time reading the whole thing.

Marxists may be crazy but they aren't stupid.

bernie is more Marxist than Hillary so why not Bernie?

Maybe you'd have been able to offer a comment that actually made contextual sense if you HAD bothered to read on. :rollseyes:

Sorry, but people who are too lazy to read the original material shouldn't respond.

Chris
07-19-2015, 10:56 AM
The essential content on the Sanders-Paul alignment being referenced lies in that both have a certain anti-foreign flair that applies both against foreign capital and foreign workers alike. I'm really not interested in uniting with people on the basis of being anti-foreign because I am not.

However, it has not been unheard of for libertarians and economic populists (including socialists and communists) to work together in mass movements. My experience in the Occupy movement of 2011 immediately comes to mind, as there was a certain section of libertarians that participated in that movement alongside the political left and I made some libertarian friends through that experience. :smiley: As for here, XL strikes me as being someone of a similarly populist or quasi-populist approach to libertarianism; one that's not as one-sidedly friendly to the world of commerce as the likes of more prominent libertarian figures like Glenn Beck, Paul Ryan, Ted Cruz, Scott Walker, and so forth have been and are.


That's because "Glenn Beck, Paul Ryan, Ted Cruz, Scott Walker, and so forth" are not libertarian.

Nor is Bernie a socialist, but a little less than a populist social democrat like the rest, just a little more honest about it.

Chris
07-19-2015, 10:58 AM
Maybe you'd have been able to offer a comment that actually made contextual sense if you HAD bothered to read on. :rollseyes:

Sorry, but people who are too lazy to read the original material shouldn't respond.

Even if he had read it all you'd get nothing more deep than Marxists are crazy, a statement that has no meaning at all.

IMPress Polly
07-19-2015, 11:24 AM
Chris wrote:
That's because "Glenn Beck, Paul Ryan, Ted Cruz, Scott Walker, and so forth" are not libertarian.

Considering that their base of support principally consists of social conservatives and religious political organizations like the Faith and Freedom Coalition, I can't help but feel that there's some very real truth to the idea that their libertarianism is limited, to say the least. However, they do all claim to be libertarians and I'm trying to be as reasonably respectful as I can be to how people see themselves. (I think most libertarians, or at least most of the older ones anyway, are primarily economic libertarians and aren't really very permissive when it comes to cultural issues.)


Nor is Bernie a socialist, but a little less than a populist social democrat like the rest, just a little more honest about it.

It's debatable. He considers himself a socialist anyway, though there are only so many objective measures by which one could say that that's true. He's described various Scandinavian countries as exemplifying the kind of economic structure he considers the most ideal, so if you consider countries like Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Norway to be socialist, then Bernie is a socialist. Otherwise, no. (Incidentally, nobody I'm aware of uses the term "social democrat" anymore. People just say "reformist" or "economic populist" these days instead.)


Even if he had read it all you'd get nothing more deep than Marxists are crazy, a statement that has no meaning at all.

Yeah you're probably right. I just thought I'd at least make the effort to encourage some kind of a serious contribution. You'd think at some point I'd learn better than to waste my time on people like Mac.

Boris The Animal
07-19-2015, 03:15 PM
I see Polly loves Komrade Bernie. I bet she wept when the Soviet Union fell. After all, Democrats want the US to be Marxist.

IMPress Polly
07-19-2015, 03:21 PM
I was seven years old when the Soviet Union collapsed, Boris. :grin:

Boris The Animal
07-19-2015, 03:44 PM
I was seven years old when the Soviet Union collapsed, Boris. :grin:
No wonder you are enamored by the failed idea of Communism. As a young Liberal waif who was likely thoroughly indoctrinated into the I-Hate-America bilge that seeths out of the academia, I bet you would love to see the Soviet model enacted here.

IMPress Polly
07-19-2015, 04:35 PM
Clearly you don't follow my posts very closely, Boris. The type of communism I advocate is a long-term project to be realized realistically over the course of the next century or two and is actually one that's very voluntary, not command-based, and, believe it or not, rooted to a very large degree in the private sector.

The Xl
07-19-2015, 05:43 PM
The essential content on the Sanders-Paul alignment being referenced lies in that both have a certain anti-foreign flair that applies both against foreign capital and foreign workers alike. I'm really not interested in uniting with people on the basis of being anti-foreign because I am not.

However, it has not been unheard of for libertarians and economic populists (including socialists and communists) to work together in mass movements. My experience in the Occupy movement of 2011 immediately comes to mind, as there was a certain section of libertarians that participated in that movement alongside the political left and I made some libertarian friends through that experience. :smiley: As for here, XL strikes me as being someone of a similarly populist or quasi-populist approach to libertarianism; one that's not as one-sidedly friendly to the world of commerce as the likes of more prominent libertarian figures like Glenn Beck, Paul Ryan, Ted Cruz, Scott Walker, and so forth have been and are.

I was pro Occupy. Being anti banker and anti Wall Street with the way it currently functions is completely logical. Don't get me wrong, there are a segment of 'let them eat cake' libertarians, but there are also many libertarians that not only support libertarianism because of the freedom element to it, but because they actually believe that free markets with no government cronyism would topple these huge corporations and their monopoly over everyone, and would help the lower classes. I'm one of the latter kinds of libertarians.

Any libertarian that doesn't recognize the fraud and theft that big banks and big business perpetrates with the help of a bought government is a fraud.

I strongly feel that occupy was co-opted by that collusion of banks and governments, there were obviously plants wrecking havoc as a means to both discredit the movement and to justify the law enforcement crackdown of the movement. They weren't going to let that build anymore momentum.

Chris
07-19-2015, 05:52 PM
Considering that their base of support principally consists of social conservatives and religious political organizations like the Faith and Freedom Coalition, I can't help but feel that there's some very real truth to the idea that their libertarianism is limited, to say the least. However, they do all claim to be libertarians and I'm trying to be as reasonably respectful as I can be to how people see themselves. (I think most libertarians, or at least most of the older ones anyway, are primarily economic libertarians and aren't really very permissive when it comes to cultural issues.)



It's debatable. He considers himself a socialist anyway, though there are only so many objective measures by which one could say that that's true. He's described various Scandinavian countries as exemplifying the kind of economic structure he considers the most ideal, so if you consider countries like Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Norway to be socialist, then Bernie is a socialist. Otherwise, no. (Incidentally, nobody I'm aware of uses the term "social democrat" anymore. People just say "reformist" or "economic populist" these days instead.)



Yeah you're probably right. I just thought I'd at least make the effort to encourage some kind of a serious contribution. You'd think at some point I'd learn better than to waste my time on people like Mac.



Well, people claim a lot of things. Doesn't mean it's true. Wasn't it Paul Ryan said he was a great admirer of Ayn Rand but denounced her days later when he found out she'd been an atheists? How could he have been an admirer and not know? He couldn't.

Libertarians tend to adhere to economic and social freedom, see the Nolan Chart.

Socialist can mean various things. Robert Owen meant almost the opposite of Marx, anarchy vs statism, and Hayek saw it as central planning. Sanders may use the term but I don't see him issuing any explanations what he means so I take it as the system socialists adopted in Europe when socialism started failing there, social democracy, and best defined by people like Reich in The Answer Isn’t Socialism; It’s Capitalism that Better Spreads the Benefits of the Productivity Revolution (http://robertreich.org/post/22542609387).

Perhaps Sanders has some position papers on his socialism?

The Nordic nations are abandoning state socialism. It worked for small homogenous nations but since joining the EU has resulted in an influx of foreign immigration the people have turned against it.

Bob
07-19-2015, 06:15 PM
Alright, now here's the Socialist Equality Party's article opposing Sanders (the SEP being a more traditional Leninist Marxist group of a Trotskyist orientation):



Original context. (http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/07/01/sand-j01.html)

As to my own position on Sanders, I fall somewhere in-between where these two authors do. I feel that Mr. Hall's argument against Sanders is too one-sided and more idealistic than realistic about how communists can shift the political debate in this country in the direction of socialism, where Fishman's article seems closer to reality on that and correctly posits a wide range of genuine benefits to the entire political left of Sanders' campaign regardless of whether one counts him as a socialist (as he claims to be) or not: he is legitimizing socialism as an idea and making it respectable by running, and to particular affect by running within the Democratic Party. I can't help but notice that the Democratic Party has undergone a considerable ideological realignment since the 2008 crash in an increasingly anti-corporate direction and that Bernie's candidacy helps shift the debate therein further to left, to a place of accepting the ideological validity of socialism in spite of previous pervasive stigma against it that has existed in this country. I also agree with Fishman's case that there is tremendous benefit to his calls for a sustained mass movement against the political and economic domination of the financial and general corporate aristocracy in this country. So while I don't agree with Fishman's humanist philosophical standpoint (which can be easily seen in her frequent recourse to subjective terminology), I have to agree with her overall on the matter of whether Sanders is a presidential candidate worth supporting.

However, I also agree with what Mr. Hall says when he points out Sanders' economic nationalist and somewhat nativist record and, as the reader has probably noticed from some of my earlier PF posts, that is something that concerns me. Internationalism is very basic to the long-term goal of realizing a socialist and then a communist world and, as rightly pointed out in Hall's article, there really isn't but a hop, skip, and a jump's worth of palpable difference between protectionist trade war policies on the one hand and opposing foreigners in general, including foreign workers, on the other. They are two sides of the same coin that naturally go together. (For a more extreme example of how, witness the cases of Donald Trump and Mike Huckabee on the Republican side of the aisle!) In this connection, I feel that the Communist Party's adoption of a humanist philosophical orientation reflects just simply being absorbed by the American labor movement and adopting its prevailing outlook, including on foreign relations, rather than seeking to LEAD a popular movement toward the realization of socialism. Humanism is ideologically crippling that way, leading one to simply be blown about by the winds of popular politics at the expense of scientific observation and orientation thereabout! While it is not at all intrinsically wrong for communists to unite with and join labor movements, it is wrong for communists to allow their philosophical and political outlook to be shaped by the spontaneous whims of organized labor. More objectivity -- a more scientific approach -- than that is required on the part of communists in order to make sense of the world, which is necessary to establishing our credibility with the masses.

However, in the grand scheme of things, this is just one issue of many and Sanders' style of nativism, like it or not, is hardly any more extreme than that of the average Democrat, as shown by his support for a path to citizenship for the undocumented immigrants already in this country, even if he (wrongly) opposes permitting more foreign-born workers in. In the broader scheme of things, Sanders is legitimizing the idea of socialism and fostering a broad public debate on the subject even while actively mobilizing large numbers of people against the plutocratic political and economic arrangements we find ourselves confronted with at present and that's something I feel that I have to support!

Post #2

Just how did Adelaide edit Impress Polly's post?

Can someone explain this to me?

IMPress Polly
07-19-2015, 06:28 PM
The Xl wrote:
I was pro Occupy. Being anti banker and anti Wall Street with the way it currently functions is completely logical. Don't get me wrong, there are a segment of 'let them eat cake' libertarians, but there are also many libertarians that not only support libertarianism because of the freedom element to it, but because they actually believe that free markets with no government cronyism would topple these huge corporations and their monopoly over everyone, and would help the lower classes. I'm one of the latter kinds of libertarians.

Any libertarian that doesn't recognize the fraud and theft that big banks and big business perpetrates with the help of a bought government is a fraud.

What, you don't recognize the legitimacy involved in a collection of megabanks systematically defrauding millions of yeah mostly working class people by convincing them that they could afford loans they couldn't in order to then get rid of that consumer debt by defrauding countless investors around the world by selling it (the consumer debt) over and over again in what they hoped would somehow be an endless cycle whose ramifications would never come home to roost...and then, upon it all inevitably coming home to roost, transferring the resultant private bank debt into public debt by way of government bailouts...then claiming the right to collect the resultant public debt in a plethora of countries in southern Europe like Greece, Portugal, Spain, etc., thus converting the new public debt back into private profit, causing whole nations to go bankrupt instead of the banks that created the debt in the first place? You mean to tell me that you see all that as somehow unfair and criminal? Wow, you ARE crazy! :wink:


I strongly feel that occupy was co-opted by that collusion of banks and governments, there were obviously plants wrecking havoc as a means to both discredit the movement and to justify the law enforcement crackdown of the movement. They weren't going to let that build anymore momentum.

Oh the whole thing was just simply crushed with state force! That's all there was to it. The mayors of numerous American cities literally got together in secret meetings to coordinate police crackdown strategies. The next question is: who paid for their campaigns?

As far as "plants" go, I don't know if that was involved, but I do know the frankly wealthy and powerful people who hated the movement from the beginning and wanted to see it brought down would use anything as an excuse to do so. To be sure, there were some real problems from time to time that did hurt the image of the movement. One of the foremost of these problems was the occasional Nazi Party member joining in with their signs proclaiming that "the Jews" own all the banks and other assorted racist nonsense like that. Statistically speaking, there couldn't have averaged more than one of these people per encampment and nobody liked them, but we never formally banned them from Occupy Wall Street or Occupy Boston or in any other encampment that I knew of and as much was highlighted by some rather opportunistic press outlets to make us look bad, and it kinda did. We should've banned them.

Another problem were the handful of rape cases, which the encampments for some time did an ABYSMAL job of handling, telling the victims not to report anything for fear that the cops would then come in and shut the whole encampment down! THAT really damaged the image of the movement and rightly so! However, before long something was mercifully done about it at Occupy Wall Street in New York City, where a women's movement emerged within the encampment in response and success got the Assembly to commit to preventative night watches. This was a healthy form of self-policing that showed we could address those sorts of problems within our camps. It was not right though that it took negative national press attention to make that happen.

Really though, these types of developments were so rare that I can't help but feel that they really were just being used as excuses to shut the movement down.

Peter1469
07-19-2015, 06:34 PM
Post #2

Just how did Adelaide edit Impress Polly's post?

Can someone explain this to me?

Mods can edit posts. If you have questions PM me.

Bob
07-19-2015, 06:51 PM
Reading Impress Polly really blows me away.

She explains how dishonest banks are to make you promises, borrow your money from you for free or very cheap costs, lend it out over and over and over and make profits, when what she describes to me looks just like government.

Government sees us as hens. We lay an egg called a tax. They collect and promise. They wage wars. They borrow our money plus money from other countries. It won't stop. Sanders complains about the rich when it is him and his fellow borrowers that are the problem.

I have heard these promises since at least age 21 when I perhaps got interested a bit in politics.

Folks, that is like 56 years of those broken promises.

Socialists will fix it? Nonsense

I vote republican for only one reason.

Best party on the planet. Hell no.

Worst? Next to worst. Democrats are the worst.

Sanders ran as a Democrat so he could skip the part where he is a socialist.

Why does Bernie have maybe $460,000 net worth despite the many many millions he has been paid in Congress? 34 years of him and his promises. Why is his net worth less than homes of very low grade cost here? He can't pay cash for our cheapest home. And what about VT where he is from? Does he rent still?

Bob
07-19-2015, 06:53 PM
Mods can edit posts. If you have questions PM me.

It strikes me strange she is not participating yet edits Polly's posts for her. I think Polly edits her own posts.

I guess to lay it out, are they actually one person and not two members?

Chris
07-19-2015, 07:05 PM
It strikes me strange she is not participating yet edits Polly's posts for her. I think Polly edits her own posts.

I guess to lay it out, are they actually one person and not two members?

You were told to use PMs for such questions.

Chris
07-19-2015, 08:19 PM
IMPress Polly, some of what Sanders himself says: 14 things Bernie Sanders has said about socialism (http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/14-things-bernie-sanders-has-said-about-socialism-120265.html#ixzz3gOF0v1d9):


...1. In the summer 1986 issue of a now-defunct magazine called Vermont Affairs: “All that socialism means to me, to be very frank with you, is democracy with a small ‘d.’ I believe in democracy, and by democracy I mean that, to as great an extent as possible, human beings have the right to control their own lives. And that means that you cannot separate the political structure from the economic structure....

2.... I had that feeling when I first read Eugene Debs, for example. If you read what Debs said about the goals of socialism, it’s no different from what I’ve been saying — that all socialism is about is democracy.

3. From the 1988 dissertation of Steven Soifer, a professor of social work at the University of Memphis, who wrote about Sanders’ time as mayor of Burlington: “What being a socialist means is … that you hold out … a vision of society where poverty is absolutely unnecessary, where international relations are not based on greed … but on cooperation … where human beings can own the means of production and work together rather than having to work as semi-slaves to other people who can hire and fire.”

...8. In the book he wrote with Huck Gutman, Outsider in the House, published in 1997: “Bill Clinton is a moderate Democrat. I’m a democratic socialist.”



What I call social democrat I think aligns somewhat with democratic socialist, but the latter is probably more accurate.

OGIS
07-19-2015, 11:01 PM
Presenting the views of 2 very different people is a great way to demonstrate what a candidate is saying & (more important) has been doing to further their stated goals. Both writers provide a different view of the same person that I found very informative.

I had to smile when Hall pointed out that Sanders & Paul shared a similar view of the WTO. Paul is the only candidate on the repub side of the aisle that has attracted my attention. I wonder if we could start a socialist/populist/libertarian party?

Join me in agitating for a new "Straight Talk Party" which will be funded by The Donald and will run Sanders for President and Trump for VP. Yes, it is insane. But God, would it be fun to watch.

OGIS
07-19-2015, 11:03 PM
That's because "Glenn Beck, Paul Ryan, Ted Cruz, Scott Walker, and so forth" are not libertarian.

Nor is Bernie a socialist, but a little less than a populist social democrat like the rest, just a little more honest about it.


Thank you.

Safety
07-19-2015, 11:15 PM
It strikes me strange she is not participating yet edits Polly's posts for her. I think Polly edits her own posts.

I guess to lay it out, are they actually one person and not two members?

Because Bob, if you make a post, and the time for you to edit it elapses, you can request a mod make the edit for you.

I've done it before, it isn't something that is that unusual. Remove the tin foil.

Captain Obvious
07-20-2015, 09:31 AM
I would think Sanders would be perceived as a sort of marxist poser.

A real marxist wouldn't have much popular support.

del
07-20-2015, 09:33 AM
the only ones who claim he's a marxist are rightist loons.

*shrug

OGIS
07-20-2015, 09:35 AM
I would think Sanders would be perceived as a sort of marxist poser.

A real marxist wouldn't have much popular support.


Have you actually read anything by Marx?

Captain Obvious
07-20-2015, 09:36 AM
Have you actually read anything by Marx?

Bits and peices

OGIS
07-20-2015, 09:38 AM
the only ones who claim he's a marxist are rightist loons.

*shrug

There are at least as many flavors of Marxists as there are of Free Market radicals. Rand-LeFevre-Rothbard-Von Mises... and that's only four out of at least several more distinct and individual varieties of free-thinkers.

del
07-20-2015, 09:39 AM
There are at least as many flavors of Marxists as there are of Free Market radicals. Rand-LeFevre-Rothbard-Von Mises... and that's only four out of at least several more distinct and individual varieties of free-thinkers.

thanks for clearing that up

Captain Obvious
07-20-2015, 09:45 AM
thanks for clearing that up

A chart would have made it clearer

Chris
07-20-2015, 11:07 AM
I would think Sanders would be perceived as a sort of marxist poser.

A real marxist wouldn't have much popular support.

Pretty much the same as Obama whom Marxists do not like.

Sanders is a social democrat/democratic socialist, in his own words, not a Marxist.

Common
07-20-2015, 11:09 AM
Sanders isnt a true socialist even though he has ideals that are socialist. He is and would be considered a far left progressive.

Hes too far left for my liking.

Chris
07-20-2015, 11:12 AM
Here's a great example of how a leftist gets political principles confused: I gave up Ayn Rand for Bernie Sanders: How I grew up and traded libertarianism for a progressive “socialist” (http://www.salon.com/2015/07/20/why_libertarians_should_love_bernie_sanders/).

Anyone at all familiar with the history of Rand and Rothbard would know the two were at loggerheads. Objectivists and libertarians are in different camps. (It is possible to fuse Objectivist Philosophy with libertarian politics, see Oliver's The New Libertarianism: Anarcho-Capitalism.)

I do agree with his criticism of the right's adoption of socialism however:


Sanders calls himself a socialist, which is just about as big an American insult as you get. Conventional politicians and business people decry the evils of socialism, except when they are wallowing in it. America has the most generous socialist government that has ever existed in human history, but it only applies to millionaires. If you’re on the board of a bank or massive corporation, the government has unlimited socialism for you. No cost loans, favorable bankruptcy laws, bailouts and tax breaks without limit. At the same time, unemployed students cannot discharge student loans no matter how bleak their financial circumstances. Socialism has been inverted. Rather than deployed for the poor and struggling, it’s doled out endlessly to people who don’t need it.

Not that the left is any different.

Chris
07-20-2015, 11:16 AM
A chart would have made it clearer

http://i.snag.gy/y30O6.jpg

Captain Obvious
07-20-2015, 11:19 AM
"love of diamond shaped diagrams"

:biglaugh:

Mac-7
07-20-2015, 05:23 PM
Maybe you'd have been able to offer a comment that actually made contextual sense if you HAD bothered to read on. :rollseyes:

Sorry, but people who are too lazy to read the original material shouldn't respond.

Get back to me when Tom Hall officially become spokesman for all the Marxists.

The far, FAR lefties with no other function in life than blogging not be completely sold on Bernie.

But I repeat, left wing wackos may be crazy but the aren't stupid.

Faced with choice of a reasonably left democrat of a conservative republican they will take the fellow lefty.

Boris The Animal
07-20-2015, 05:26 PM
Clearly you don't follow my posts very closely, Boris. The type of communism I advocate is a long-term project to be realized realistically over the course of the next century or two and is actually one that's very voluntary, not command-based, and, believe it or not, rooted to a very large degree in the private sector.Does not matter. Communism, by its very nature, is anti freedom, anti individual liberty.

Chris
07-20-2015, 05:57 PM
Does not matter. Communism, by its very nature, is anti freedom, anti individual liberty.

Not in theory. :D The problem as I see it is the road to communism is paved with the totalitarian bricks of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The workers by coercive if not violent force take over the farms and factories from their owners.

Green Arrow
07-20-2015, 06:19 PM
Hall's article was a bit long for me to focus on right now, as I just got off work and I'm quite exhausted. But I did read his first few paragraphs. My question would be...why is the TPP such a good thing, exactly, that being against it is considered "anti-trade"? Sanders is very clearly for trade, but he's not for trade agreements like NAFTA, CAFTA, and the TPP that are supported and promoted by the billionaire class because such agreements advance THEIR interests and not the interests of workers.

IMPress Polly
07-20-2015, 06:31 PM
You've gotta read the rest of the article, GA. Hall is actually opposed to the TPP too, but for very different reasons than Sanders.