The Politics Thread v2

[Samwise]

I'm sorry, when exactly did Sanders say he was an authoritarian and nationalist?  Was it when he was railing against the big interests controlling government and putting power to the people?  Or was it when he was advocating a more international approach and accepting stance in the world?  When did he say "I want absolute power in the president, and USA!  USA!"?

He is authoritarian when he wants to centralize all power at the federal level.
He is nationalist when he talks about ending foreign trade in favor of American workers.
How exactly would classify these things other than as authoritarian and nationalist?

[Solo]

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htm

Private property has made us so stupid and one-sided that an object is only ours when we have it – when it exists for us as capital, or when it is directly possessed, eaten, drunk, worn, inhabited, etc., – in short, when it is used by us. Although private property itself again conceives all these direct realisations of possession only as means of life, and the life which they serve as means is the life of private property – labour and conversion into capital.

Marx himself seems to disagree.

To quote from the Communist Manifesto, where he defines what the goals of Communism are,

The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products, that is based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few.

In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.

Marx is only concerned with private ownership of the major means of production.  Private ownership of things that are not means of production do not need to be abolished. In effect, this means that consumption goods such as houses and shirts may remain in private hands.

http://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs181/projects/communism-computing-china/intelproperty.html

This theory, that all property is owned collectively, stipulates that everything a person creates and owns is also collectively shared with everyone else.  The core principle behind the concept of public ownership is that every person is a product of society.  Because each human is a product of society, anything he or she produces is also a product of society by translation.  Therefore, anything that a is produced should be owned by the society itself because no one person has solely produced it.

Those Chinese-type Communists don't seem to agree either.

I find it odd that you question the Houston Communist Party's interpretation of Marxism, but a 90's computer side made by Stanford computer scientists is apparently right on Communist Doctrine. Notice how they don't have a direct quote saying that private property and personal belongings and possessions are the same thing?

[Raineh Daze]

I'm sorry, when exactly did Sanders say he was an authoritarian and nationalist?  Was it when he was railing against the big interests controlling government and putting power to the people?  Or was it when he was advocating a more international approach and accepting stance in the world?  When did he say "I want absolute power in the president, and USA!  USA!"?

He is authoritarian when he wants to centralize all power at the federal level.
He is nationalist when he talks about ending foreign trade in favor of American workers.
How exactly would classify these things other than as authoritarian and nationalist?

First one: that's not authoritarian. Authoritarian would be blanket increase in state power. That's centralisation. Unless he's advocating a surge in state control, that isn't authoritarian, unless your definition includes slight increases to food safety requirements. Which then makes basically every state that isn't a self-declared communist or... Venezuela and Singapore (I think) fascist.

Second one: refer to my former point. It's a statement that argues from the position essentially any economy wants to be closer to: positive balance of trade. Get money into the country. However it's distributed eternally, absolutely no political entity is going to advocate shafting itself when they want to get more people on their side.

[Samwise]

They aren't dissociative at all, at least not in the sense psychiatrists mean.  Saying one thing while doing another is part and parcel of any totalitarian system.  Lie until you've consolidated power and don't need to lie anymore.

So we do agree on that.

As for the rest of the specifics about Ohio, I'll defer to you on that since I simply don't live there. We don't get too many in NYC other than publicity seekers, which is fine as we have plenty of other racists here.

However:

They vote in lockstep with the GOP for the most part because politically they believe the republicans/tea party have similar goals.  The Nazis oppose homesexuality, immigrants, minorities, civil rights, human rights, women's rights, etc, and they're fairly certain the GOP does too (mostly because they do.  The local republicans are more fascist than libertarian.).

Many Republican/Tea Party people do not "oppose" homosexuality as a private practice. They simply do not approve of it receiving special treatment, particularly at the expense of religion, which it has. Many would be quite satisfied to have universal civil partnerships instead of government marriages.

Only false Republican/Tea Party people (like various conspiracy nuts) have any issues with immigrants. Disliking the flood of illegal immigrants disrupting the economy, and the corporate abuse of guest worker visas, is in no way identical to wanting to close the country to immigrants.

This is even more true with minorities in general. Indeed you might want to check which party has any minorities running for President this cycle, and which party just elected the first black woman to statewide office in Kentucky.

For civil rights and human rights, those apply to everyone, and it is not the Republicans trying to justify excluding Asians from colleges in California. Instead it is the Republicans/Tea Partiers standing up from them, insisting they have an equal chance to get in.

For women's rights, abortion was long a tool of eugenics through racial and class selection and remains one. Worse, it is tool for sex selection. When many Republican/Tea Party people oppose it they are doing so because they don't want to see women selected out as they have been in China.

As for "libertarians", whatever they might have been at one time, today they are a mix of libertines, conspiracy nuts, and anarchists, with the barest lip service connection to classical liberals. The only reason they appear to be fiscal conservatives is because they don't want any government with any budget at all. They are absolutely not Republicans, and latched on to the Tea Party Movement just as they latched on to the Occupy Wall Street Movement.

Finally, regarding your local GOP, while I might be inclined to make a pro forma objection on general principle, given Kasich's recent performances, I have to admit you may be correct.
The thing is, that leads into highlighting one of the critical differences between the Republican "establishment" and the "outsiders/Tea Partiers" - the outsiders feel the establishment is too cozy with the crony capitalism perpetrated by the current administration, and they want it ended. Tell some of them that the GOP is full of fascists and they will reply "Damn straight! We don't want to kick those danged commies out just to replace them with a bunch of worthless fascists!" So when you get to that element at least, you really need to treat the Republican Party and the Tea Party as two very different groups.

People using those identifiers may be different in Ohio, but that is what my experience has been with "typical" ones around the country via the internet.

[Raineh Daze]

... equality at the legislative/judicial level is special treatment? Given the whole tendency towards separating church and state, defining marriage (given that it has legal consequences) on religious terms would be the special treatment.

[Samwise]

First one: that's not authoritarian. Authoritarian would be blanket increase in state power. That's centralisation. Unless he's advocating a surge in state control, that isn't authoritarian, unless your definition includes slight increases to food safety requirements. Which then makes basically every state that isn't a self-declared communist or... Venezuela and Singapore (I think) fascist.

He is in fact advocating a surge in state control as well, so he meets that requirement.

Second one: refer to my former point. It's a statement that argues from the position essentially any economy wants to be closer to: positive balance of trade. Get money into the country. However it's distributed eternally, absolutely no political entity is going to advocate shafting itself when they want to get more people on their side.

Smith demonstrated that balance of trade thing wasn't essential back when the U.S. was being founded.
Retrogressing international trade to the various protectionist theories would actually harm the economy and individual workers in the U.S., something even advocates of Hamilton's American System recognized.
Whether or not it is politically expedient to advocate open trade is quite distinct from the economic viability of open trade.
That leaves excessive pandering to protectionist urges as rather blatantly nationalistic.

[Samwise]

... equality at the legislative/judicial level is special treatment? Given the whole tendency towards separating church and state, defining marriage (given that it has legal consequences) on religious terms would be the special treatment.

Forcing people to host ceremonies and provide services against their beliefs is very much special treatment.

As for the second, that is why a sizable portion of Tea Partiers favor defining marriage as purely religious and leaving government to regulate purely secular civil unions.

[Raineh Daze]

First one: that's not authoritarian. Authoritarian would be blanket increase in state power. That's centralisation. Unless he's advocating a surge in state control, that isn't authoritarian, unless your definition includes slight increases to food safety requirements. Which then makes basically every state that isn't a self-declared communist or... Venezuela and Singapore (I think) fascist.

He is in fact advocating a surge in state control as well, so he meets that requirement.

Second one: refer to my former point. It's a statement that argues from the position essentially any economy wants to be closer to: positive balance of trade. Get money into the country. However it's distributed eternally, absolutely no political entity is going to advocate shafting itself when they want to get more people on their side.

Smith demonstrated that balance of trade thing wasn't essential back when the U.S. was being founded.
Retrogressing international trade to the various protectionist theories would actually harm the economy and individual workers in the U.S., something even advocates of Hamilton's American System recognized.
Whether or not it is politically expedient to advocate open trade is quite distinct from the economic viability of open trade.
That leaves excessive pandering to protectionist urges as rather blatantly nationalistic.

#1) Once again, a position that effectively declares Europe fascist based on an American viewpoint. Such wonderful logic. "They're totally a fascist because they want more state control than the USA presently has, which for some reason prides itself on these things". Guy's not authoritarian with his models, let alone the democratic stuff.

#2) Have fun telling people that it's better for them if they lose their jobs because of vague economic benefits. Yeah, sure, it's nationalism when you aren't advocating "accept being fucked because it vaguely helps the country as a whole over time in non-easily quantifiable ways". This is clearly equivalent to a push for autarky and sheer xenophobia.

Local purchasing has its environmental benefits. Especially with food.

[Samwise]

To quote from the Communist Manifesto, where he defines what the goals of Communism are,

The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products, that is based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few.

In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.

Marx is only concerned with private ownership of the major means of production.  Private ownership of things that are not means of production do not need to be abolished. In effect, this means that consumption goods such as houses and shirts may remain in private hands.

Yeah . . . see, that's not what that says.
Consumption goods are objects of production. They are to remain communally owned. Bourgeois buying and selling of those objects of production is to be eliminated. That includes bourgeois concepts of ownership of them rather than mere use.

I find it odd that you question the Houston Communist Party's interpretation of Marxism, but a 90's computer side made by Stanford computer scientists is apparently right on Communist Doctrine. Notice how they don't have a direct quote saying that private property and personal belongings and possessions are the same thing?

That's because they don't have to.
Objects of consumption are objects of production.
If they are not to be bought and sold but owned in common like the means of production, then there is a clear and direct consequence that there can be no personal possessions.
There is what you are using; and eating; and where you sleep; but you cannot "own" any of those in the bourgeois sense. You don't need to, and indeed don't want to, under communism. All you want is to labor for the collective good of society.

Clearly full communism is not attractive to you, but that is to be expected, and why Marx predicted an interval of socialism while society converted over to its final form.

As for which communists are actually right about communism, I leave that to the party purges to sort out. Things are much safer for us counter-revolutionaries when the communists are focused on killing each other over Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy than when they are trying to forcibly re-educate us.

[Raineh Daze]

... equality at the legislative/judicial level is special treatment? Given the whole tendency towards separating church and state, defining marriage (given that it has legal consequences) on religious terms would be the special treatment.

Forcing people to host ceremonies and provide services against their beliefs is very much special treatment.

As for the second, that is why a sizable portion of Tea Partiers favor defining marriage as purely religious and leaving government to regulate purely secular civil unions.

If you have moral quandaries about doing something, then there's no legal compulsion to make you. Now, if you choose to keep a role knowing that it now violates your personal beliefs, but expect the job to fit itself around you...

The second one is long, convoluted, involves rewriting far too many pieces of law across too many states, and then hands over the most contentious issue to the decisions of religious groups. Essentially, you hand over social equality to the decisions of the most conservative portions of the country in its entirety. The current approach is less stupid.

[Solo]

Yeah . . . see, that's not what that says.
Consumption goods are objects of production. They are to remain communally owned. Bourgeois buying and selling of those objects of production is to be eliminated. That includes bourgeois concepts of ownership of them rather than mere use.

To quote from the Communist Manifesto, again,

We Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing the right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man’s own labour, which property is alleged to be the groundwork of all personal freedom, activity and independence.

Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean the property of petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of property that preceded the bourgeois form? There is no need to abolish that; the development of industry has to a great extent already destroyed it, and is still destroying it daily.

Or do you mean the modern bourgeois private property?

But does wage-labour create any property for the labourer? Not a bit. It creates capital, i.e., that kind of property which exploits wage-labour, and which cannot increase except upon condition of begetting a new supply of wage-labour for fresh exploitation. Property, in its present form, is based on the antagonism of capital and wage labour. Let us examine both sides of this antagonism.

To be a capitalist, is to have not only a purely personal, but a social status in production. Capital is a collective product, and only by the united action of many members, nay, in the last resort, only by the united action of all members of society, can it be set in motion.

Capital is therefore not only personal; it is a social power.

When, therefore, capital is converted into common property, into the property of all members of society, personal property is not thereby transformed into social property. It is only the social character of the property that is changed. It loses its class character.

[Samwise]

#1) Once again, a position that effectively declares Europe fascist based on an American viewpoint. Such wonderful logic. "They're totally a fascist because they want more state control than the USA presently has, which for some reason prides itself on these things". Guy's not authoritarian with his models, let alone the democratic stuff.

That would be a valid complaint - if that is what was being done.
It isn't.
They are being classified as socialist-verging-into-fascism based on the book definition of fascism combined with their actual policies in action.
Whether or not you, or they, like that is irrelevant as to whether what they have structured meets a particular book definition.

Further, let us note that the reverse is also true - a position that effectively declares Europe is not fascist based on a socialist viewpoint that doesn't like to be called fascist is utterly spurious. Particularly since part of that outrage is based on having to confess that using "fascist" as a pejorative has more to do with demonizing competing socialists than it does with identifying any particular traits of democratic-republicans.

#2) Have fun telling people that it's better for them if they lose their jobs because of vague economic benefits. Yeah, sure, it's nationalism when you aren't advocating "accept being fucked because it vaguely helps the country as a whole over time in non-easily quantifiable ways". This is clearly equivalent to a push for autarky and sheer xenophobia.

Have fun telling people that it's better for them to be poor because of vague economic promises. Yeah, sure, it's not nationalism when you are advocating against foreign and multi-national corporations because it vaguely gets you votes. That is clearly not a push for sheer xenophobia.
Oh wait . . .

Local purchasing has its environmental benefits. Especially with food.

No it doesn't. Particularly with food.
It has even worse economic effects.

[Samwise]

To quote from the Communist Manifesto, again,

When, therefore, capital is converted into common property, into the property of all members of society, personal property is not thereby transformed into social property.

Right.
When capital, which is what all property is, is made common, personal property is not made either proletariat or bourgeois.
Thus,

It is only the social character of the property that is changed. It loses its class character.

The remainder of that sentence which you didn't include, where it becomes clear that the abolition is removing any class distinction from the property.
Further, considering the portions before that:

In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.

We Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing the right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man’s own labour, which property is alleged to be the groundwork of all personal freedom, activity and independence.

Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean the property of petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of property that preceded the bourgeois form? There is no need to abolish that; the development of industry has to a great extent already destroyed it, and is still destroying it daily.

Or do you mean the modern bourgeois private property?

But does wage-labour create any property for the labourer? Not a bit. It creates capital, i.e., that kind of property which exploits wage-labour, and which cannot increase except upon condition of begetting a new supply of wage-labour for fresh exploitation. Property, in its present form, is based on the antagonism of capital and wage labour. Let us examine both sides of this antagonism.

Note the progression:
First, the declaration - abolish private property!
Second, the rhetorical challenge - you mean personal possessions?!?
Third, the rhetorical bait-and-switch - "What do you mean by that?"
Fourth, the a priori exclusion - "It has already been eliminated!"
Fifth, the class warfare established - "bourgeois property"
Sixth, the class warfare as justification - "it cannot exist!"

After further twists, wherein it is made clear that he does in fact mean personal property as well as the "private", capital generating, property you wish to limit it to, Marx declares it openly:

You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.

Marx clearly does not agree with you.

[Keldar]

Oh lord, the political ideologues are arguing semantics again.  I thought they were banished.

[Raineh Daze]

Oh lord, the political ideologues are arguing semantics again.  I thought they were banished.

They crept back in via stating that a political candidate is a fascist, on a tenuous semantic argument that requires extremely broad views on everything to fit one field.

Sadly, we're bad at not taking bait. Probably because the BLYHT subforum is rarely contentious and more a place for venting.

[Solo]

Samwise, I can only disagree with your interpretation.

For example,here:

In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.

We Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing the right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man’s own labour, which property is alleged to be the groundwork of all personal freedom, activity and independence.

Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean the property of petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of property that preceded the bourgeois form? There is no need to abolish that; the development of industry has to a great extent already destroyed it, and is still destroying it daily.

Does property here mean personal possessions, or the means of production? I find it hard to interpret as meaning personal belongings, as the development of industry doesn't destroy the individual's possessions. In fact a consumer based economy wants individuals to have more possessions. But the development of industry does rob the individual (the petty artisan, the small peasant) of their ability to produce something.

Or:

You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.

When Marx says private property here, does he mean that nine-tenths (or rather, the majority) of the population does not have personal possessions, or that they do not have access to the means of production?

This is stated more clearly here, just a bit further down:

The average price of wage-labour is the minimum wage, i.e., that quantum of the means of subsistence which is absolutely requisite to keep the labourer in bare existence as a labourer. What, therefore, the wage-labourer appropriates by means of his labour, merely suffices to prolong and reproduce a bare existence. We by no means intend to abolish this personal appropriation of the products of labour, an appropriation that is made for the maintenance and reproduction of human life, and that leaves no surplus wherewith to command the labour of others. All that we want to do away with is the miserable character of this appropriation, under which the labourer lives merely to increase capital, and is allowed to live only in so far as the interest of the ruling class requires it.

In context, it is quite clear that personal property refers to the means of production.

Sadly, we're bad at not taking bait. Probably because the BLYHT subforum is rarely contentious and more a place for venting.

He's very entertaining.

[Samwise]

Samwise, I can only disagree with your interpretation.

For example,here:

. . .

In context, it is quite clear that personal property refers to the means of production.

Yes, I reviewed the section quite thoroughly, and Marx weasels his way back and forth through it several times.
In context, it is quite clear that he doesn't have a clue about either economics or politics, and is just babbling on a purely emotional level, hoping his audience is so caught up in the moment they won't notice that he never really gets to the point, never mind that he simply doesn't know what he is talking about.
Ultimately, what he "really" meant is going to be subject to a Plenary Session of the Central Committee, and anyone not in agreement with their decision will be purged.

He's very entertaining.

So are people who try to defend Bernie and socialism (whatever it may mean).

[Samwise]

They crept back in via stating that a political candidate is a fascist, on a tenuous semantic argument that requires extremely broad views on everything to fit one field.

No, it crept in via stating that a political candidate is a standard Marxist, and a rather simple and direct argument that required taking the word "socialist" at its core meaning.
When that was challenged on a spurious semantic argument, I allowed you could just call him a fascist instead, and then answered when people requested clarification.

Sadly, we're bad at not taking bait. Probably because the BLYHT subforum is rarely contentious and more a place for venting.

I was venting, and I wasn't trying to be contentious.
I simply don't think some candidates are centrists and that the socialist candidate really is a Marxist because that's what socialists are, or how venting about that is somehow contentious.
But hey, you learn something new.

[bhu]

Many Republican/Tea Party people do not "oppose" homosexuality as a private practice. They simply do not approve of it receiving special treatment, particularly at the expense of religion, which it has. Many would be quite satisfied to have universal civil partnerships instead of government marriages.

Allowing gays to receive the same benefits as straight couples does not take away any rights or power from religion or straight people, it just means they need to share their rights now with people they previously and deliberately excluded.  As far as opposing homosexuality, locally at least, the conservatives very much do oppose homosexuality.  If you're LGBT and murdered/assaulted openly in the streets here no attempt is made to find your killer at all.  The conservative government and law enforcement simply tells victims that's what they get for not conforming.

Only false Republican/Tea Party people (like various conspiracy nuts) have any issues with immigrants. Disliking the flood of illegal immigrants disrupting the economy, and the corporate abuse of guest worker visas, is in no way identical to wanting to close the country to immigrants.

And yet closing the country to immigration is the platform of the two most popular candidates on the conservative side of the aisle.  Granted neither one is really conservative or republican, so I imagine their voters are in for quite a surprise.

This is even more true with minorities in general. Indeed you might want to check which party has any minorities running for President this cycle, and which party just elected the first black woman to statewide office in Kentucky.

Are they pushing them because they believe in them, or out of cynical political belief that it's hard to call someone a racist, even if they sport racist ideology, when they happen to be that race?  It's easy enough to pluck someone off the streets whose always been an outsider and promise them a title and power if you just vote their way.  It's how fascists worm their way into power.

For women's rights, abortion was long a tool of eugenics through racial and class selection and remains one. Worse, it is tool for sex selection. When many Republican/Tea Party people oppose it they are doing so because they don't want to see women selected out as they have been in China.

  Based on my experiences here it seems more like they oppose women's rights in the theocratic belief that women don't have the smae rights and privileges men do.  The local city councilman is often quoted as saying the three greatest failures of the united states was abolishing slavery, allowing blacks to vote, and allowing women to vote.  He's republican.  Coasted to easy re-election despite being quoted as saying blacks should be euthanized because they're parasites instead of humans.

As for "libertarians", whatever they might have been at one time, today they are a mix of libertines, conspiracy nuts, and anarchists, with the barest lip service connection to classical liberals. The only reason they appear to be fiscal conservatives is because they don't want any government with any budget at all. They are absolutely not Republicans, and latched on to the Tea Party Movement just as they latched on to the Occupy Wall Street Movement.

Yes but as they have latched on to the conservative movement, they are in many places now the defacto conservatives.  Ohio was for a time politically moderate (by which I mean sane despite it's embedded racism).  Now people I have known who would have once been considered right of center have stopped paying taxes, quit their jobs, and cashed out their life savings to stock up on food, guns and ammunition for "the coming race war during Obama's emergency third term".  2 locals actually attempted suicide when the supreme court decided for gay marriage because they thought the biblical Armageddon had arrived.  There's a reason I often refer to Ohio as the 7th Circle of Hell.

Finally, regarding your local GOP, while I might be inclined to make a pro forma objection on general principle, given Kasich's recent performances, I have to admit you may be correct.
The thing is, that leads into highlighting one of the critical differences between the Republican "establishment" and the "outsiders/Tea Partiers" - the outsiders feel the establishment is too cozy with the crony capitalism perpetrated by the current administration, and they want it ended. Tell some of them that the GOP is full of fascists and they will reply "Damn straight! We don't want to kick those danged commies out just to replace them with a bunch of worthless fascists!" So when you get to that element at least, you really need to treat the Republican Party and the Tea Party as two very different groups.

 

That's little more than semantics here, or in much of the Midwest/South.  If the establishment candidate feels he has to pander to the tea party to prevent an attack from his right during the campaign, the he's giving in to their desires, and he votes much the way they want ot for fear of them.  Establishment republicans are dying of to be replaced by conspiracy theorists and people who claim to be conservative, but who really seek some moral justification for selfishness and brutality they think voters will accept. 

[SolEiji]

There was an election today? Huh. I'm still registered, but I don't even get the notices anymore. Helps that I avoid the news like the bile-spewing plague that it is.

To be fair, I follow the news, and I had no idea there was an election until 24 hours in advanced.  It's a mark of shame, but I had to do my research quickly in order to make an educated choice.  I'm afraid this one caught up on me since I was all focused on midterms and the primary.  Its exactly the kind of problem I think is pretty bad; they advertise nothing, and with many people cutting cables, even more lack information that these things are going on.  Whenever there is an election, they need to make sure everyone knows.  This is why no one votes in anything but the general, nevermind low voter turnout in general due to disenfranchisement.