I consider myself a socialist (albeit, not a tankie, since I don’t agree with mass centralization of power, since that would inevitably lead to corruption). I like Prof. Wolff’s idea of forcing all companies to be worker-owned cooperatives, which will help to take away power from the owner class, who currently has control over the government via donations, paid lobbyists, super PACs, etc.
I hate Biden with a passion. I think he’s a neoliberal corporatist warmonger, and he’s very, VERY far from my ideal candidate. I’d even go so far as to say I hate him as a candidate. I’m still voting for him though for a few reasons, though.
We have a FPTP voting system, which leads to only having two parties to choose from, as George Washington warned against.
The Supreme Court is probably going to have some vacancies soon. We’ve seen how Trump’s appointees turned out. Biden vowed to appoint progressives to the SCOTUS.
Biden has been the most pro-labor, pro-union president we’ve had in a very long time, even if he still isn’t perfect on that front.
Lina Kahn is sweet (current head of the FTC), and I want her to remain the head for the forseeable future.
I think Trump being elected is going to lead the country into literal fascism. I didn’t think his first term was going to, and I took him to be a joke, but then January 6th happened. Also Trump is worse on basically every domestic and foreign policy compared to Biden. Project 2025 is all I really need to say when it comes to Trump’s policies.
I think people who shame voters are causing people to want to be less involved in politics, rather than voting for the non-fascist. As Hillary Clinton showed us in 2016, voter shaming is actively harmful and helps the other side win. There was absolutely no reason that Trump should have won in 2016, except Clinton was so full of herself, and didn’t care to listen to anyone who was to the left of her, especially after she helped rig the DNC primary against Bernie (as the John Podesta email leaks have shown). Hillary also helped Trump win the RNC primary in 2016 (see: the Pied Piper strategy), since she incorrectly thought that Trump was the easiest candidate to beat.
The DNC continued to rig every primary against the progressive candidate after that (against Bernie in 2020 by forcing all the other neoliberal candidates to drop out prior to Super Tuesday to prevent splitting the vote against Biden, and against Williamson in 2024 by essentially not even having a primary, even though they technically did), and they wonder why people hate them.
I don’t hold out much hope for the US to be a prosperous nation for anyone but the wealthiest class anytime soon. I genuinely believe that the wealthy would rather have fascism over any kind of socialism, because fascism will at least keep them in power.
But still, I’m going to hold my nose and throw up a little in my mouth as I cast my vote for Biden this coming election, because the only other option is literal fascism.
The US does support international genocide, and Capitalism is declining, but it hasn’t quite declined within the US for fascism to become possible, otherwise Jan 6 would’ve been met with massive popular support.
The conditions for fascism are approaching under Biden still, so he isn’t really an “anti-fascist” candidate, but Trump does represent support for far more reactionary views.
The US does support international genocide, and Capitalism is declining
Neither of those are mutually exclusive; capitalism is actually quite friendly to fascism and many definitively non-fascist states stand idly by or conveniently profit while genocides happen.
If Boomers had any interest in reaching a legitimate compromise with everybody else they would have voted for a reasonable compromise candidate in the 2020 primaries. Instead they voted for a geriatric old man who’s spent his entire political career enacting terrible policies we’re all paying for.
Biden vowed to appoint progressives to the SCOTUS.
While his appointees would be better than more Trump nutcases, people seem to be making way too much of Biden’s words on this. His words from the piece I saw the other day were this: “The next president, they’re going to be able to appoint a couple justices, and I’ll be damned — if in fact we’re able to change some of the justices when they retire and put in really progressive judges like we’ve always had, tell me that won’t change your life.”
Unless there’s another quote I missed, that’s not a vow, it’s just normal campaign stump speech talk.
Good analysis. But I have to disagree on number 5. IMO, Trump and his cadre won’t be able to do a facist takeover, for precisely the reason you listed - Jan 6. That was their moment, the time for all the shittalkers to get off social media and do something, the high water mark. Aaaand what did they accomplish? They freaked out a bunch of Congresspeople, put some cops in the hospital, did some light property damage, and went home. Promptly leading to, if not a crackdown, than an investigation of everyone involved.
I dunno man, I don’t see any future that involves them doing anything more than some scattered violence against ‘woke’ targets, which will only hurt them in the long run due to the reactions against it. There just…aren’t enough of them to do anything.
I wouldn’t entirely discount them. January 6th showed that Trump could rile up enough support to literally get a crowd of a few thousand to enter into open treason on his behalf. If anything, I wouldn’t be surprised that the convictions stemming from it thus far have further radicalized some of those who held back into believing they’re legitimately at risk of persecution, leaving them more likely to take such extreme actions in the future. While I don’t think Trump himself could pull it off, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if more competent individuals on the far right took note of this and will do their best to channel the passion and loyalty Trump inspires in his supporters towards much more effective and dangerous action if he gets another shot.
I like Prof. Wolff’s idea of forcing all companies to be worker-owned cooperatives
How would that work in the real world? Like if I work somewhere there’s 100 employees, I’d have a 1% share of the company. So I’d be getting 1% of the profits. I work really hard and now the company is making a lot of profit and so I’m making a lot of money because my share in the company. That’s cool. But we’re doing so well we kind of need to expand. So we need to hire 50 new employees. Do those new employees get an equal share as me? So now I only get 0.75% share of the profit after spending a decade working on developing an awesome product and the person hired yesterday now gets the exact same 0.75% share? Do new employees have to take out a loan to buy a share to be employed? Or do we just give away the shares which will lessen the value of of my share for no compensation. Maybe we shouldn’t hire anyone new, my retirement plan involves my share in the company not losing value.
If I leave the company do I sell my share of the company? To who? The other employees? Do they pool together their money to do a buy-back? What about that person just hired doesn’t have the money to buyback the share of someone leaving the company? Are they forced to take out a loan?
It feels like an idea that sounds nice until you consider the details of how it would actually work in real life. But I guess that’s just socialism in general I guess.
Worker owned coops are already a thing in many parts of the world, so examples in the real world can already be used as models. It’s not just a theoretical, “on paper” idea that has never been implemented before.
Being worker-owned does not necessarilly mean that everyone gets paid equally. What it means is that there is a democracy in the workplace. For example, imagine if your manager was elected by you and your coworkers instead of your manager deciding whether or not you get to work at your job. Also imagine if you were able to vote on wage increases for you and your coworkers (of course, taking company profits into account. Wages aren’t going to appear out of thin air) based on the job position. Generally speaking, people are going to vote for higher wages for people who have a heavier workload/more responsibilities. Currently in non-worker-owned, publicly traded companies, wages are indirectly decided by a board of directors, who then elect the chief officers, and ultimately, who make the decisions for the company.
It feels like an idea that sounds nice until you consider the details of how it would actually work in real life. But I guess that’s just socialism in general I guess.
Richard Wolff is a doctor and professor in economics and is an economic historian. He knows what he’s talking about. I’d recommend watching one of his talks on his version of socialism, which you can find on YouTube. Here is one of his talks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1WUKahMm1s
OR, imagine in your “Democratic” work environment, sentiment eventually split into 50/50 over which manager to vote for and one manager had been bought and paid for by a rival business to undermine your co-op business in the same space, but but his followers were racist and anti-abortion and anti lgbt and cult like and threatened violence to the other side?
All roads lead to some percentage of authoritarianism.
Sorry, but there is no way socialism works. Or really any single system yet devised by man.
Humans gonna human.
No matter the system, there will always be born some greedy psychopath with the intelligence to attempt to get power, and the type of people that would follow.
People need to learn to live with a balance of each ideology mixed.
You completely made up this scenario. Not every vote is 50/50, because not every voting system is first past the post. Also, in a system where all companies are worker-owned coops, you have the very real option of just changing jobs and/or reporting your manager if they are acting unethically; there is also the option of just voting to oust that manager and hold a new election for a new manager. In this system, there is no owner class to influence the government to weaken labor protections like there is under capitalism.
All roads lead to some percentage of authoritarianism.
Source?
Sorry, but there is no way socialism works.
So how has it been working all over the globe? Again, worker-owned coops already exist. The Mondragon corporation in Spain is one of the largest companies in that country, and is a worker-owned coop. There are many examples in the US as well, like Ocean Spray. Just because you don’t believe something works doesn’t change reality.
No matter the system, there will always be born some greedy psychopath with the intelligence to attempt to get power, and the type of people that would follow.
Which is why people work together to create a system that makes getting that kind of power impossible, which is the entire point of socialism (especially 21st century socialism as described by Wolff). If you just give up, then the greedy psychopaths win by default. The phrase Marx used is “seize the means of production” and not “just accept that greed exists and let the owner class continue to own the means of production.”
People need to learn to live with a balance of each ideology mixed.
Why? So the owner class can continue to have control over our society and continue to push our government towards fascism? No, thank you. Just because you have given up doesn’t mean everyone else should.
All the things you worried about really do happen, it’s just that currently they’re done in the interests of wealthy investors instead of in the interests of the employees.
I consider myself a socialist (albeit, not a tankie, since I don’t agree with mass centralization of power, since that would inevitably lead to corruption). I like Prof. Wolff’s idea of forcing all companies to be worker-owned cooperatives, which will help to take away power from the owner class, who currently has control over the government via donations, paid lobbyists, super PACs, etc.
I hate Biden with a passion. I think he’s a neoliberal corporatist warmonger, and he’s very, VERY far from my ideal candidate. I’d even go so far as to say I hate him as a candidate. I’m still voting for him though for a few reasons, though.
We have a FPTP voting system, which leads to only having two parties to choose from, as George Washington warned against.
The Supreme Court is probably going to have some vacancies soon. We’ve seen how Trump’s appointees turned out. Biden vowed to appoint progressives to the SCOTUS.
Biden has been the most pro-labor, pro-union president we’ve had in a very long time, even if he still isn’t perfect on that front.
Lina Kahn is sweet (current head of the FTC), and I want her to remain the head for the forseeable future.
I think Trump being elected is going to lead the country into literal fascism. I didn’t think his first term was going to, and I took him to be a joke, but then January 6th happened. Also Trump is worse on basically every domestic and foreign policy compared to Biden. Project 2025 is all I really need to say when it comes to Trump’s policies.
I think people who shame voters are causing people to want to be less involved in politics, rather than voting for the non-fascist. As Hillary Clinton showed us in 2016, voter shaming is actively harmful and helps the other side win. There was absolutely no reason that Trump should have won in 2016, except Clinton was so full of herself, and didn’t care to listen to anyone who was to the left of her, especially after she helped rig the DNC primary against Bernie (as the John Podesta email leaks have shown). Hillary also helped Trump win the RNC primary in 2016 (see: the Pied Piper strategy), since she incorrectly thought that Trump was the easiest candidate to beat.
The DNC continued to rig every primary against the progressive candidate after that (against Bernie in 2020 by forcing all the other neoliberal candidates to drop out prior to Super Tuesday to prevent splitting the vote against Biden, and against Williamson in 2024 by essentially not even having a primary, even though they technically did), and they wonder why people hate them.
I don’t hold out much hope for the US to be a prosperous nation for anyone but the wealthiest class anytime soon. I genuinely believe that the wealthy would rather have fascism over any kind of socialism, because fascism will at least keep them in power.
But still, I’m going to hold my nose and throw up a little in my mouth as I cast my vote for Biden this coming election, because the only other option is literal fascism.
Look at that! An adult!
Most reasoned response I’ve read on this sub. Thanks!
In before “bruh, we already have literal fascism”!
The US does support international genocide, and Capitalism is declining, but it hasn’t quite declined within the US for fascism to become possible, otherwise Jan 6 would’ve been met with massive popular support.
The conditions for fascism are approaching under Biden still, so he isn’t really an “anti-fascist” candidate, but Trump does represent support for far more reactionary views.
Neither of those are mutually exclusive; capitalism is actually quite friendly to fascism and many definitively non-fascist states stand idly by or conveniently profit while genocides happen.
I understand, I was pointing out that voting for Biden is voting for a slow descent rather than rapid into fascism.
Basically “let the boomers continue to enjoy the futures they stole from everybody else”.
That’s the real unspoken reality here. A vote for Biden is just propping up a lifestyle for the people who fucked us over in the first place.
As opposed to trump who believes that blood sacrifices will fix the problem
If Boomers had any interest in reaching a legitimate compromise with everybody else they would have voted for a reasonable compromise candidate in the 2020 primaries. Instead they voted for a geriatric old man who’s spent his entire political career enacting terrible policies we’re all paying for.
My app failed to load any of the replies, which probably means I blocked all of them lmao.
While his appointees would be better than more Trump nutcases, people seem to be making way too much of Biden’s words on this. His words from the piece I saw the other day were this: “The next president, they’re going to be able to appoint a couple justices, and I’ll be damned — if in fact we’re able to change some of the justices when they retire and put in really progressive judges like we’ve always had, tell me that won’t change your life.”
Unless there’s another quote I missed, that’s not a vow, it’s just normal campaign stump speech talk.
Good analysis. But I have to disagree on number 5. IMO, Trump and his cadre won’t be able to do a facist takeover, for precisely the reason you listed - Jan 6. That was their moment, the time for all the shittalkers to get off social media and do something, the high water mark. Aaaand what did they accomplish? They freaked out a bunch of Congresspeople, put some cops in the hospital, did some light property damage, and went home. Promptly leading to, if not a crackdown, than an investigation of everyone involved.
I dunno man, I don’t see any future that involves them doing anything more than some scattered violence against ‘woke’ targets, which will only hurt them in the long run due to the reactions against it. There just…aren’t enough of them to do anything.
Completely my opinion, of course.
I wouldn’t entirely discount them. January 6th showed that Trump could rile up enough support to literally get a crowd of a few thousand to enter into open treason on his behalf. If anything, I wouldn’t be surprised that the convictions stemming from it thus far have further radicalized some of those who held back into believing they’re legitimately at risk of persecution, leaving them more likely to take such extreme actions in the future. While I don’t think Trump himself could pull it off, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if more competent individuals on the far right took note of this and will do their best to channel the passion and loyalty Trump inspires in his supporters towards much more effective and dangerous action if he gets another shot.
How would that work in the real world? Like if I work somewhere there’s 100 employees, I’d have a 1% share of the company. So I’d be getting 1% of the profits. I work really hard and now the company is making a lot of profit and so I’m making a lot of money because my share in the company. That’s cool. But we’re doing so well we kind of need to expand. So we need to hire 50 new employees. Do those new employees get an equal share as me? So now I only get 0.75% share of the profit after spending a decade working on developing an awesome product and the person hired yesterday now gets the exact same 0.75% share? Do new employees have to take out a loan to buy a share to be employed? Or do we just give away the shares which will lessen the value of of my share for no compensation. Maybe we shouldn’t hire anyone new, my retirement plan involves my share in the company not losing value.
If I leave the company do I sell my share of the company? To who? The other employees? Do they pool together their money to do a buy-back? What about that person just hired doesn’t have the money to buyback the share of someone leaving the company? Are they forced to take out a loan?
It feels like an idea that sounds nice until you consider the details of how it would actually work in real life. But I guess that’s just socialism in general I guess.
Worker owned coops are already a thing in many parts of the world, so examples in the real world can already be used as models. It’s not just a theoretical, “on paper” idea that has never been implemented before.
Being worker-owned does not necessarilly mean that everyone gets paid equally. What it means is that there is a democracy in the workplace. For example, imagine if your manager was elected by you and your coworkers instead of your manager deciding whether or not you get to work at your job. Also imagine if you were able to vote on wage increases for you and your coworkers (of course, taking company profits into account. Wages aren’t going to appear out of thin air) based on the job position. Generally speaking, people are going to vote for higher wages for people who have a heavier workload/more responsibilities. Currently in non-worker-owned, publicly traded companies, wages are indirectly decided by a board of directors, who then elect the chief officers, and ultimately, who make the decisions for the company.
Richard Wolff is a doctor and professor in economics and is an economic historian. He knows what he’s talking about. I’d recommend watching one of his talks on his version of socialism, which you can find on YouTube. Here is one of his talks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1WUKahMm1s
OR, imagine in your “Democratic” work environment, sentiment eventually split into 50/50 over which manager to vote for and one manager had been bought and paid for by a rival business to undermine your co-op business in the same space, but but his followers were racist and anti-abortion and anti lgbt and cult like and threatened violence to the other side?
All roads lead to some percentage of authoritarianism. Sorry, but there is no way socialism works. Or really any single system yet devised by man.
Humans gonna human.
No matter the system, there will always be born some greedy psychopath with the intelligence to attempt to get power, and the type of people that would follow. People need to learn to live with a balance of each ideology mixed.
You completely made up this scenario. Not every vote is 50/50, because not every voting system is first past the post. Also, in a system where all companies are worker-owned coops, you have the very real option of just changing jobs and/or reporting your manager if they are acting unethically; there is also the option of just voting to oust that manager and hold a new election for a new manager. In this system, there is no owner class to influence the government to weaken labor protections like there is under capitalism.
Source?
So how has it been working all over the globe? Again, worker-owned coops already exist. The Mondragon corporation in Spain is one of the largest companies in that country, and is a worker-owned coop. There are many examples in the US as well, like Ocean Spray. Just because you don’t believe something works doesn’t change reality.
Which is why people work together to create a system that makes getting that kind of power impossible, which is the entire point of socialism (especially 21st century socialism as described by Wolff). If you just give up, then the greedy psychopaths win by default. The phrase Marx used is “seize the means of production” and not “just accept that greed exists and let the owner class continue to own the means of production.”
Why? So the owner class can continue to have control over our society and continue to push our government towards fascism? No, thank you. Just because you have given up doesn’t mean everyone else should.
Ans how would this system avoid people being greedy?
All the things you worried about really do happen, it’s just that currently they’re done in the interests of wealthy investors instead of in the interests of the employees.