Just in time

At the time it first came out, that was a popular slogan. Its the idea that Trump wants to make himself king of the U.S.A., so its an anti-trump and pro democracy slogan.

Its been a minute since I was active in that space, but I imagine it is the functioning national parts of the 50501 and similar progressive liberal resistance movements that Our Revolution PAC is putting their resources into.

When I was involved, I wouldn’t have called them neoliberal. The mass current was mostly progressive liberal, with militant radical elements on one side pushing no work with police, recognition of Palestinian genocide; and the other side being quite conservative, sort of “a lot of MAGAs are angry too!” who pushed for depoliticization and police collaboration. There were some genuine socialist radicals fighting on a national level, and winning ground. Also lots of local radicals like PSL and various abolitionist anarchists on the local level fighting for their communities and providing education.

The character is more like liberal social democrat, if I had to judge the first no kings protest. But things have likely changed since then.

I think there are some misunderstandings about what capitalism is and how it actually works as a mechanism of class rule and oppression rather than a neutral system. I absolutely think your heart is in the right place, but I’ll try to help clear up common misunderstanding.

First, you are confusing capitalism with markets. Capitalism isn’t markets, that would be like marketalism or something. Capital is assets that that produce more than they cost to maintain. Basically its stuff that creates profit, not stuff that is sold on a market, though it is the market where a particular transformation occurs, its where potential profit is transformed into real profit.

But what is done with the extra is the fundamental contradiction of capitalism. The production process is socialized, which means that it is many people involved. But the excess, the profits, are individualized, not socialized.

Because of this dynamic, capitalism is not an optimization. It is not efficient, it extracts social productive value, and shunts it into private coffers, or more accurately, private bank accounts. Those banks are part of a global system of finance, that every country in the world is paying into in various ways. In endless ways these banks distribute resources according to a particular set of rules that benefit a particular sort of set of incentives: the incentives of imperialist capitalism.

Every link in the chain of production bleeds money. A parts manufacturer has to turn a profit, those parts are shipped to an assembler that has to turn a profit, the assembled commodities have to be sold on a market that had to earn a profit. The shipping companies that are moving parts and commodities, has to turn a profit. The warehouses that store the goods have to be profitable. Does an object have to be profitable in order to exist in the real world? Absolutely not. Things have to be profitable in order to fulfill a certain set of obligations imposed on the real world.

You want to separate socialism from capital, the social from the economic. This way of thinking creates illusions. Capitalism is not rational, it’s anarchistic. Things are not created and distributed according to human needs, they are created according to the desire for profit. The competitive drive for profit eliminates firms who fail to take more profit, which leads to monopolization, vertical integration, etc., Large firms are able to influence legislation, to create laws which are enforced with violence to make the consequences real.

Your view is not unique. It was the view of the capitalist class during the heyday of the new deal. After pushing workers to the brink of actually overthrowing the capitalist system (see 1934 nationwide rail strikes) in 1935 we got our new deal, and the capitalists were all saying “we just need responsible, kinder capitalism. Social democracy will be a big improvement!” But 90 years later, the new deal is a done deal. Even European social democracies are at least majorly funded by defense industrialists that extract value from the 3rd world, and are experiencing waves of well funded and politically organized fascist movements, like ourselves. There is no profit in social democracy, and it only came about in the first place because of the global expansion of socialism, which actively fought to eliminate capitalism but was defeated in various ways.

Capitalism is in fact extremely wasteful, and is optimized only to move value from workers to owners. A recent study shows that a better way of life for everyone, secure safe housing, healthcare, quality education; could be achieved with 1/3 of our current global productive capacity. That means there is in fact room for luxuries! But not under capitalism. We will have to dramatically change the global order, by the workers coming together and organizing for our own benefit, at the expense of capital and private property. We will have to seize the means.

I think the sort of compromise that you are trying to make is actually a historically settled issue. Concern about what to do about demand for luxury goods is very correct IMO, as well as is the belief that the economy should be organized around human need rather than the hunt for profit. This is one of the pillars of socialism! And I welcome you as a fellow traveller in these spaces. But there will be no compromise with capitalism this time. The new deal saved the ruling class of capitalists from extinction. And that view of having a good capitalism was the justification of the ruling class for their own parasitic existence. The sun has set on even the feasibility of a middle way.

I think if you want to join the movement for democratic socialism, you’ll be able try and work with others for ways to make sure that human needs such as housing, food, education, healthcare are not commodified on a market. But there will be no compromise. That happened before we were even born. Capitalism is more than just markets, it is the way that the ruling class is organized against the working class. This IMO is the missing piece from your analysis, the class analysis. But we live in a time where the class character and distinctions between the owning capitalists and the workers is becoming clear to many many more people. I def sympathise with your urge to find a compromise, I think it is admirable and a quality that our movements desperately need.

But in this particular instance, it is not possible to strike a compromise between the people who get their wealth from stealing the value of others work, and the people who are having their work stolen.

Why are you calling me buddy? It comes off patronising, so i would love to hear about your involvement in left wing organizing, or any actual organizing. Are you in DSA? Or are you a democrat talking down to DSA, as dems do compulsively to the working class, telling us to stay in our lane? I honestly cant tell. DSA should run lower level campaigns in addition, i agree, and I think Mamdani is going to inspire much much more of that.

True but the problem isn’t just money, its private property. Money is how social relations under capitalism are managed. It isn’t the root of the problem, but it creates lots of avenues for exploitation. I would like to live in a world without money but we have to organize and fight for it.

Debatable, as you mentioned, but I love your energy. It was shocking how much of a party focus we had this year compared to 2023.

What a time to be a democratic socialist!

Capitalism needs homelessness, joblessness and poverty in order to function. Probably preaching to the choir, but it doesn’t create poverty because it is bad as an economic system, it creates poverty because it works so well.

The Democrats aren’t a party. They’re a voting blob. When DSA becomes an actual party it will shake the foundations of the whole political system.

80000 members, and they’re terrified. Not because we are socialists, but because we are organized. Wanna scare the ruling class, give em a taste of DSA derangement syndrome? Join.

How can someone completely innocent inspire violence?

Innocent until implied guilty I guess

Yes its definitely the major pitfall most comrades make. Fortunately, we also have the most comprehensive theory of change! Today, for example, a local leader in our city who we would only have described as a moderate socialist for many years, someone who once told me “i wouldnt read theory i read enough theory books in school” is pitching hard into Marxism, consuming large amounts of theory and history, and making radical demands for radical action. Very interested to see where he will be in like 6 months. Another comrade who once mocked my “ideological” views has become one of my closest cadre comrades. Honest good comrades learn from experience that we Marxists are consistent in our beliefs and fight the most important struggles, time after time, changing everything around us. The time we live in is so dangerous and frightening, and yet the movement is growing rapidly, and sloughing off opportunism and reformism for revolutionary principles. “Decades where nothing happen, weeks where decades happen,” hits pretty hard in this period of struggle.

Anyway thanks for letting me dump, I think I’m just eager to get back to an essay I began a couple days ago!

I wouldn’t disparage people for anything that brings them to socialism though I def agree, but the question of how theory is practice gets neglected quite often. There’s a dialectical relationship between the two, Marxism is what gives us the capability of fully fusing theory with practice, subject with object, individual with the social. We can read theory and commit to practice and learn nothing, accomplish nothing, because we still have the insidious dualist mindset. Everything we learn gets categorized and atomized. We learn words and phrases to signal understanding to others, but understand very little. Feeling accepted is perhaps the first step for the stubborn individual to let go of individualism and embrace socialization, so its natural for new comrades to want to make themselves sound radical, and they should be accepted by cadre and celebrated for their achievements. But of course radical talk and radical action can be quite distinct, and experienced cadre should know how to tell the difference, and challenge comrades to continually improve and fix themselves. I’ve seen people able to be very inspiring and educated in speeches, but opportunistic reformists in practice. This must not be how comrades develop, this is not self actualization, it is bourgeois affect.

Theoretical study opens up many avenues to understand material conditions, through practical analysis, discussion and criticism. Then, once the actual conditions have been assessed we can take action – but based on material conditions and not theoretical abstractions. Taking action changes conditions, changing conditions requires more analysis and critique, which may require deeper understanding of theory in order to assess conditions accurately. Once assessed, we act, rinse, repeat. Evaluate and take action, reevaluate, and take another action.

I’ve seen too many comrades trying to apply the tactics of 1910s Russia to american struggles. They quote Lenin on a particular tactic or strategy, when Lenin was often changing tactics, and rhetoric, in order to most effectively address changing conditions. Too many comrades read Engel’s 3 rules of Dialectical Materialism and apply them like an orthodoxy, but have never closely studied Theses on Feuerbach nor unveiled the human spirit that thrives within Marx’s works.

So I’m not contradicting you, or I don’t mean to, but theory and practice is not necessarily our objective. Marx explicitly called for theory in practice, which means our theory must itself be practical. Theory helps us to see through the illusions, it must not be made into yet another illusion. But IMO therein is the most important benefit of surrounding ourselves with good cadre, they’ll call me out on my shit, and help me up when I stumble. Anyone who encourages us to be better, to be more practical, to center the human perspective in our work is following the same spirit as Marx, and it doesn’t matter what they’ve read if they’ve read anything at all.

But also, its no coincidence that good cadre Marxists are also exceedingly comradely, good natured, fair and fearless. The practice transforms us, so we can transform the world, together.

Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy is pretty easy, good bones, but Marx revises a lot of his views later, by Capital he’s abandoned concepts like “Lumpen Proletariat” and the idea that socialism can only be achieved after a capitalist developmental phase.

Socialism: Utopian and Scientific by Engels is one of the best intro Marxist works: comprehensive, practical, and easy to follow.

Wage Labor and Capital is another short and pretty digestible work by Marx that lays out a lot of the economic ideas without a deep dive such as Capital. But “economic Marxism” is kind of its own kind of confusion, and Capital shouldn’t be read to understand his economic ideas but his actual methods.

Marx wrote for the workers, not the academy, his works can be difficult but they make more sense as someone trying to learn more to understand about their lived experiences of exploitation, than an academic view that only wishes to compete in an intellectual marketplace, rather than empower the working class to liberate ourselves and each other.

But Marxism isn’t a book to be studied or a method to be applied. You can be a Marxist without ever picking up one of his works, I think there are a lot of “organic” Marxists who know through experience but doubt through shame and misinformation. Marx ultimately wanted to teach us to understand material conditions, but without the various distortions that have been introduced by bourgeois philosophers (some of them even considered themselves Marxists!)

Put yourself in touch with people who can get you involved in actual work in your city and community, doing real social work with the people who need supported. You’ll get an education from the work and take your time with the written works of Marx and Marxists to let it enrich your actual work, not define your idealistic beliefs.

After all, “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point is to change it.”

Y’know his dad was almost definitely in the KKK, believe it or not

Yes but many is required to put up a fight. Illustrative of the failed dem strategy that rhetorically expedient is practically ineffective, and ultimately cedes power to the fascist right.

In other words, “I’m not owned! I’m not owned!” I continually insist as I cash in political points for fundraising emails and my constituency is quickly loaded onto busses bound for concentration camps

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I also have an inkling in that direction too, and I’m just not an economist. But when he says deporting immigrants will raise inflation, he is saying it will raise wages based on these same mechanics

Their market cap is 20B, I wonder if it will even sting

It’s so funny, because it means it will raise wages. I will never understand why these people wont just be honest. Economists will go to whatever lengths necessary to avoid making a class analysis.

increased wages leads to inflation, according to the rules of capitalist profit accumulation. Its what happened during covid, when so many people died the “surplus population” that keeps wage growth stagnant was depleted by a meaningful degree. Wages went up, then inflation followed. And we saw that most of that inflation was just companies raising prices so they could make more money.

Obviously the mass deportation of workers is an act of class war, and should be fought against. But it will increase profits for his buddies in the short term, and buy him some political clout among his base in the shorter term. The problem is, who will do those agri jobs which rely on hyper exploited labor, and why? It is going to cause mayhem for masses of workers.

But also, that is the point. He wants to crash our economy on purpose. The endgame is to force an asset bubble onto China and the EU, through a long painful global recession.

So the problem isn’t Trump, he is a symptom, an accelerant. As always, the problem is capitalism which dominates every part of our lives.

Look up “reserve army of labor”, called “surplus population” by mainstream economists, and the stupidly named “Mara-Lago accords.”

Joining the war on Mexico, on the side of Mexico https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4jT05670l-U