Here’s how Bernie can still win

You’re right, he does have a prescription…it’s just one that doesn’t work in practice despite being tried over and over again for more than a century at this point.

It does and has worked. What do you believe is sufficient to decide if something does or does not work?

Sure seems like this country at least gets a say in voting for who runs it, unlike many, many socialist examples (with great reading scores! yay!) where they are not only not doing that, but it is prohibited structurally (or behind the scenes through radioactive tea administration).

Socialist countries do in fact have elections, voting, and so forth.

Also, don’t bend my ear with all the grand achievements of socialist countries that are decidedly not democratic and then pay lip service to democracy.

Why not? Why do you say Socialist countries aren’t democratic?

America was always too far gone, any good candidate would’ve gotten Allende’d.

What?

What do you mean? I have already provided evidence.

That doesn’t happen either. You get “Communism with Chinese characteristics”. You get the USSR that falls apart and was never really communist to begin with. You get Cuba with great food and nice looking old cars, but in an otherwise isolated and somewhat dire state and in consistent poverty. You wind up with Russia with sham elections and an international alliance of creeps including North Korea. You get czars and emperors masquerading as “presidents”. It’s all a worthless facade: still authoritarianism but comrade-chic; dictatorship but by che guevara wannabes.

So 1. You get drastic improvements on material conditions for the vast majority of people as opposed to life under the nationalist KMT

2. You get a doubling of life expectancy, massive increases in literacy rates, housing rates, free education, and consistent growth in a Socialist economy until it liberalized and collapsed

3. You get a functioning country doing the best it can for its people despite a brutal blockade designed to punish the people for throwing off their fascist dictator and slave society

Not sure what your point is here.

I don’t like capitalism either, and I think Marx’s critiques of it are well founded. He just doesn’t have a prescription: exactly like many other analysts throughout history and various wanton technocrats today.

He does, did, and I linked the sources. The fact that you’re ignoring this directly in spite of said sources is incredibly dishonest.

I’ll stick with democracy until the cossacks come knocking at the door thank you very much, and I’ll do it while reading whatever I please instead of useless theory.

Capitalism cannot be truly democratic, only Socialism can be. If you don’t want to read theory that is your personal choice to make, but that also makes all of your opinions of said theory worthless.

Yeah. I do mind. As I’ve said, I’m not engaging with you on this. Your bad faith false equivalence rhetoric is not worthy of discussion because you have NO MODELS to compare against America.

How have I been bad faith? What part has been false-equivalence? What do you mean by a Model, are you referring to another country with similar material conditions? There can’t be, as America is history’s most developed and exploitative empire, and no former empire has become Socialist straight from said Empire.

So your life expectancy,” your “literacy rates,” your housing rates,” your scientific progress” and “poverty reduction” are irrelevant things to compare.

So improving conditions is irrelevant, got it. Is your point that you want these to lower, like what happened in the Russian Federation?

Again, there is NO WORKING MODEL that can show pure socialism working in America. And you cannot provide one.

I’m sure I could if you ever once explained what you meant by this.

Because it predictably goes the same way it always goes. You start with your “temporary period of single-party state socialism” after a half decade of bloodshed, and then the party never wants to give up power. So again you’re just following what some stupid asshole / dear leader wants to do and that’s never the real actual communism.

This right there is why I recommended you read Critique of the Gotha Programme. Socialism being temporary never was meant to mean it was supposed to be a short term sacrifice, but an improvement on Capitalism and with the continual goal of improving production to get to the stage where Communism can be accomplished.

"But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.

In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life’s prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly – only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!"

It’s not that there’s a secret cabal that never wants to give up power, but that government cannot simply dissolve and become Communism. Marx was no Anarchist! There has never been a point in time that the entire world has been made up of Socialist Republics, free from Capitalist interests, and thus trying to say that every single Socialist state should have simply collapsed themselves into magical Communism is nothing but idealism and speaks nothing of the Material Conditions of society.

Thinking that we’ll take down capitalism with some revolution and then going through a period of single-party state socialism and then eventually moving to communism is a weak ass half-thought out idea that’ll never winds up getting implemented in whole. So, I stand by my characterization there.

Why do you believe it is weak ass and half-thought out? Have you read the texts I linked? I’m not even asking you to read every Marxist text by every major Marxist who ever lived, I just think currently you have very little idea of what you’re actually trying to talk about and would be better off getting some idea of what the source material actually states and see how it has panned out in context would be better than just resorting to ad-hominem and dodging.

If the leftists get their way, Claudia de la Cruz, representing PSL, would win.

He slipp

Not arguing this. Socialism has never worked anywhere that is even remotely comparable to America. This is a fact.

It has, mind explaining what you mean when you say it hasn’t? Does improving life expectancy, literacy rates, housing rates, scientific progress, reducing poverty, and more not count as success?

I don’t argue against people that dispute facts. The facts do that themselves.

What facts have you presented? So far you’ve been sharing your opinion.

ROFL… I relay hope Everyone reading along are able to understand false-equivalency like I do. Because you seriously have no argument here.

Give me something to argue with, you are currently just slamming on your keyboard and sending whatever stream of consciousness happens to spill out.

You tried arguing that because Marx was of Jewish decent- he couldn’t possibly be antisemite. So I gave an example that argued against this, and you come back with- “well he didn’t kill the Jews!”

That was one part of what I said, and the least important. I specified that Marx was of Jewish descent to add context, as Jewish Antisemites are far more rare than non-Jewish Antisemites.

Your reply was that Hitler was of Jewish descent too, which doesn’t say anything about Marx. The fact that people of Jewish descent can be antisemetic does not mean that people of Jewish descent are antisemetic, which is what the Hitler point meant.

Additionally, you keep dodging the fact that Marx wrote an entire book defending Jewish people and criticizing one of the most vocal antisemites of his time, while offering no proof or evidence of his supposed antisemitism.

Regarding the rest of the nonsense you babbled… as I said, I’m not going to argue with you on this. My purpose was to point out the absurdity of what you’re saying. Nothing more. I believe all arguments should fairly display both opposing points, and you were preaching nonsense. So… sense needed to be injected into it.

What part is absurd? Can you make a coherent point, so that we can have a conversation? You’re continuing to vibe.

And the .ml by your name is pretty much a dead giveaway to not allowed the discussion to go any further as it’s pretty well known that most people from there tie up the discussion by trying to put people on the defensive by wall-of-text accusations and demands for “proof” that their theoretical pipe-dreams are utter nonsense

I am indeed a Marxist, I think anyone can tell that by now given that I have recommended people read Marx. I don’t think having a .ml account makes much of a difference at this point.

Not arguing with you. Socialism is a fucking stupid idea for America and history has shown it has been pretty much EVERYWHERE it’s been attempted.

In what manner? If Socialism has been shown to drastically increase housing rates, life expectancy, literacy rates, and the majority of people living in post-Socialist states wish to go back to Socialism, and the people living in currently Socialist states continue to support their governments and economic structure, in what manner is Socialism a stupid idea that has been “a fucking stupid idea?”

Okay dude. I said I’m not arguing this with to. And I said there are no VIABLE working models that show socialism working in America.

What is a “viable model of Socialism working in America?” Are you asking for a think-tank to model Socialism for you, or are you just saying Socialism can’t work because you say it can’t, despite historically working?

And if anyone reason along wants to know what a pure socialist system will do to America, just look at what happened in Bulgaria

Why look at Bulgaria, specifically? What does Bulgaria share in common with the US that you would pick it over any of the other AES countries? Why do you think these presumed similarities mean the same events in Bulgaria would happen in America?

Do you have anything coherent to say?

The only people that think Marx WASN’T an antisemite, are marxists. Imagine that!

Any proof?

But wait! Marx said he isn’t? Well I guess that settles it! He can’t be if he says he isn’t!!!

Are you telling me that writing a book to deliberately take down one of the most antisemetic pieces of literature of his time isn’t a pretty good point in favor of him not being antisemetic? What books taking down antisemitism have you written?

And Hitler was also…. Of Jewish descent so by this example, it can’t ipso facto make him not antisemite.

Let me know when you find evidence of Marx mass murdering Jewish people.

I’m not arguing to change your mind here. So I’m not goin to argue the subject with you. I just wanted the opposing argument to your bullshit to be seen so anyone reading along can be informed on either side of this argument

I can tell that you aren’t interested in arguing, you’ve been doing nothing but vaguely gesture and vibe. Instead, you’re doing an excellent job of showing how incoherent anticommunists are.

And currently there are no viable models that show that an outer socialist system will work in America.

Mind explaining why you believe that?

ROFL… so, you accue me of “vibes and mysticism” for saying that socialism is a failed experiment- which is pretty much accepted as fact if you take 30 seconds to look, yet offer no proof that it could work aside from some shit paragraphs worshipping an antisemite’s theories on how to achieve a perfect system?

Yes, you are operating on vibes and mysticism. You keep saying phrases like “pretty much accepted as fact” without referencing anything factual to point to. Additionally, as discussed in another comment, Marx was of Jewish descent and advocated for the liberation of Jewish people, and wrote a hit piece on the writer of The Jewish Question, which was one of the most antisemetic works of his time.

Nope. That’s not how this is going to work. You have to provide your own nonsense and let me attack the sources and poke it full of holes with long drawn out nonsensical rebuttals and paragraphs of quotes from my long dead theorists before I let you do the same….

I have listed sources previously in this thread that I recommend you read. Since I doubt that will actually happen, I’ll have to ask you what you genuinely mean by “Socialism doesn’t work,” because clearly you don’t care about metrics like Life Expectancy, Literacy Rates, Housing Rates, median hours worked, and more.

Marxism is a fun thought experiment, but changing a system of government popularized by a known antisemite while knowing it’s really never been successful anywhere else, is not really worth the damage it would create.

Marx was of Jewish descent and advocated for Jewish liberation, so now this is just a pure lie. He even went out of his way to take down the author of The Jewish Question, which was one of the most antisemetic works of his time, specifically to argue against antisemitism.

Additionally, Socialism has absolutely been successful, especially when compared to where Socialist countries were before they transitioned. You know what happened when the USSR dissolved? Millions of excess deaths, a plumetting of life expectancy, literacy rates, GDP, and more, and only in the last decade or so has the Russian Federation began to approach quality of life metrics that the USSR had.

You’re talking utter nonsense.

There is no viable plan or solution for full-blown socialism to replace our economical or political system. It’s been pretty much unanimously agreed to be a bad idea.

Vibes and mysticism, lol. Do you have an actual point? None of what you said here is true or backed up by anything.

The only people that seem to be suggesting it as a viable option are college kids and washed up economists that no one takes seriously.

Definitely not true, and again not a real point, nor is it backed up by anything.

America adopting pure socialism is a dream many have that will never happen.

Back to vibes and mysticicm.

Can you explain the why or how of any of what you just said? It’s all vibes.

Critique of Capitalism was just one of Marx’s 3 major pillars, the other two being Dialectical and Historical Materialism, and Socialism.

If you think Marx simply ignored the process of what to do, then you aren’t understanding why he didn’t fully. Marx believed that every country would have unique circumstances, and that there is no one size fits all solution. That being said, he also did believe these would have Socialism in common, as well as revolutionary means.

If you want to see Marx give his thoughts on how to get to Socialism and then Communism, Critique of the Gotha Programme is a good place to reference. Marx talks about a weak Socialist program, and what they ought to do instead. As for Dialectical and Historical Materialism, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific by Engels goes over past failures of Socialism, and how Marxism and Marxian philosophy solves these issues.

Calling Marx and Marxist contributions “weak ass half-thought out ideas that never wind up getting implemented in whole or even in part because of their obvious flaws” is just plain silly. There’s tons of coherent thought in how to achieve Socialism, and why. Analysis of Capitalism was Marx’s focus because everything else hinged on it, and is why he devoted so much time and energy to Capital.

That one’s kinda weak for learning why fascism is inevitable in a Capitalist system. Wage Labor and Capital and Value, Price and Profit both do a much better job of actually explaining the inherent unsustainability of Capitalism.

As fun to read as the CM is, it’s ultimately a pamphlet to radicalize workers, it isn’t really a solid overview of Marxist theory.