Begun reading #Chokepoint #Capitalism by Rebecca Giblin and @pluralistic and it's interesting to see a very identifiable political thread in its blurb people- Adam Conover, Lawrence Lessig, Zephyr Teachout, Jimmy Wales.

These people, who I would, personally, characterize as left-liberals much of the time, provide an interesting anchor point in the political and economic movement for #socialjustice. Some of them have gained an amount of reach and are viewed as experts or at the very least accessible communicators.

In the introduction we see a point of tension in the dialectic between "the minimum demand" (mild, almost performative reform) and "the maximum demand" (#revolution from the root to a different system). #Trotsky is known for the transitional program, but *Reform and Revolution* by #Luxemburg, a bunch of #Kautsky. It's a very long current in the camp of people that want to replace the relations of society and production.

Fascists obviously have used critiques of capitalism in order to gain a political audience, but Germany during the Third Reich reminds one a lot of the kind of incestuous relationship of dominant industry and the political elite.

The question is basically, can what is in many ways a deep overhaul of the #administrative state, something everyone thinks of when they think of Sen. Elizabeth #Warren, really possible? There has to be enough "democracy in the system" to get to the end point, and the US in particular has both issues of #federalism and a federal judiciary that despises the administrative state. Also changes such as relate to monopoly, monopsony, and competition, may in some cases lack what I think is the core way that #reformism can be built upon- stickiness.

I mean essentially that universal benefit programs, well funded, are the most difficult to reverse from the free-market right. They have a very large supportive population that melds the poor, working class, and aspects of the petty bourgeoisie and professionals together in common interests.

Targeting, as is done in neoliberalism, creates inter-class conflict among those not in the elite, and can be stoked additionally by #race, #citizenship, and other factors. Neoliberalism by design when it does #welfare makes programs extremely brittle and easy to defund.

So even though the Tories have had two decade and a half long reigns in power since 1979, and Tony Blair was thoroughly a center-right New Labour PM, the #NHS has stubbornly stuck around even in its crisis state. It has resiliency.

But having enough #democracy in the system is difficult. We can look at Castillo in #Peru and #Boric in Chile, who both rode into power promising a fundamentally new, inclusive, and anti-neoliberal constitution. Actually getting through entrenched power structures, a right-wing #media apparatus, and the eternal riddle of many aspects of a #constitution being popular but at a referendum it adds up to less.

The phrase "#Chile will be the tomb of #neoliberalism imagines an end to neoliberalism- #AMLO talks about this a lot whatever you might think of his time in power. But how do you get over the hump? How do you dispatch it, and make sure it doesn't return? How do you hold sustained power so the capitalists can't just reverse all that can be done? How can genuine democracy and social justice come to fruition?

I don't have a lot of answers, but I appreciate how much was sparked just in the introduction of Chokepoint Capitalism

#wikipedia #socialism #leftwing #progressive

Geschrieben wurde es in #Brüssel, wo Marx im #Exil lebte. Mehr dazu in »Marx als Migrant«, eine digitale Erzählung bei http://marx200.org: https://marx200.org/marx-als-migrant?page=119 – dort sind auch einige Vorworte zum Manifest als Download aufbereitet - von #Engels über #Kautsky zu #Hobsbawm.

#OTD Am 5. Dezember 1918 tagte erstmals die #Sozialisierungskommission. Den Vorsitz hatte Karl #Kautsky inne. Wer mehr zum »Kirchenvater« des #Marxismus wissen will, kann in unserer biografischen Miniatur schmökern: https://dietzberlin.de/produkt/karl-kautsky-oder-der-kirchenvater-des-marxismus/ #Vergesellschaftung

I've been reading #Lenin's "The #Proletarian #Revolution and the Renegade #Kautsky", specifically the (admittedly first) section titled "How Kautsky Turned #Marx Into a Common #Liberal", and... well I'll just explain myself.

But TLDR: Is shitting on Liberals is an effective radicalization strategy? The answer may surprise you!

Oh also here's a link to the section. You can read the whole work on this site as well
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/prrk/common_liberal.htm

I like to think I'm more of a technical person, where I appreciate level headed #analysis in #text. This probably comes from the false dichotomy between school smarts and emotional intelligence imposed on us by a young age, but I digress. The way I've been so lucidly enjoying this reading makes me question the way I speak about my own beliefs.

For example, read the following excerpt from the aforementioned reading:

"The question of the dictatorship of the proletariat is a question of the relation of the proletarian state to the bourgeois state, of proletarian democracy to bourgeois democracy. One would think that this is as plain as a pikestaff. But Kautsky, like a schoolmaster who has become as dry as dust from quoting the same old textbooks on history, persistently turns his back on the twentieth century and his face to the eighteenth century, and for the hundredth time, in a number of paragraphs, in an incredibly tedious fashion chews the old cud over the relation of bourgeois democracy to absolutism and medievalism!

"It sounds just like he were chewing rags in his sleep!

"But this means he utterly fails to understand what is what! One cannot help smiling at Kautsky’s effort to make it appear that there are people who preach “contempt for democracy” (p. 11) and so forth. That is the sort of twaddle Kautsky uses to befog and confuse the issue, for he talks like the liberals, speaking of democracy in general, and not of bourgeois democracy; he even avoids using this precise, class term, and, instead, tries to speak about “presocialist” democracy. This windbag devotes almost one-third of his pamphlet, twenty pages out of sixty-three, to this twaddle, which is so agreeable to the bourgeoisie, for it is tantamount to embellishing bourgeois democracy, and obscures the question of the proletarian revolution."

This was literally just like 3 paragraphs dedicated to defaming Kautsky's character. And while on further reflection I noticed how the arguments weren't very substantial (Lenin does go on to make a real argument, but not before further laying into Kautsky), I ate that shit up. It's one of the first parts of the section and launched me into my current fervor.

It makes me wonder if the human condition is to emotionally respond to ideas before intellectually responding to them (or something more general than this probably). If so, one could use this to their advantage by emotionally baiting someone and then filling the intellectual hole with drivel. As I type this out, I am realizing this is both the Republican and Democratic agenda, they just use the emotions of fear and self-righteousness (coupled with fear) respectively.

Something that has been effective in getting the conservative people in my life to take my ideas more seriously is by waiting for them to bring up their hatred of liberals (give it 5 minutes, it's fucking crazy how that seems to be the only conservative talking point) and then going "yeah me too, but I think I fall to the left of that spectrum." Emotional response is opened by them, so the subsequent filling of information does not feel imposed (as I often find it does, at least in the way that I bring it up lol). Further, the information provided is very "outside the box" for your average political thinker (in my area), so I've noticed people will sometimes act like you let them in on a lil' secret political party, and we all know exclusivity = cool (under capitalism, which repubs and dems goddam love).

I kinda lost the plot in this post, but my ultimate point is that Liberals and Conservatives HATE each other and thus impose a false dichotomy on a limited part of the political spectrum. Radicalizing (misguided) liberals is easy, because anything that gets them further from Repubs is an inherent good in their ideology, but Conservatives are tough cookies to crack. But talk to a conservative using their programming language (the language of hate), and all of a sudden they start to see your side.

And that's the best part of #anarchism. Once someone starts seeing it your way, it's really hard for them to stop.

»Nachher kam die ganze Gesellschaft zu mir, Lenchen hatte Berliner #Pfannkuchen und #Bretzel gebacken, Frau #Kautsky einen Wiener #Strudel, und nach 12 Uhr brach #Aveling|s Geburtstag an, der dann auch noch mitgefeiert wurde.« (#Engels an Natalie #Liebknecht, 29. Nov 1887)
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RT @SabineNuss
Und zum Verlagskaffee mit dem MEW-Editor ⁦@istuetzle⁩ und dem Auslandsschef der ⁦@rosaluxstiftung⁩ @Boris33994380 Boris Kanzleiter gab es heute den…
https://twitter.com/SabineNuss/status/1595766750804512768

#Kautsky ging mit ihm unter, erst intellektuell, dann physisch, verlacht und einsam. Was dazwischen geschah und warum, fächert der Historiker Harald Koth in seinem neuen Buch auf, mit fast 100 Seiten Einführung u. 9 ausgewählten Originaltexten Kautskys: http://dietzberlin.de/karl-kautsky-oder-der-kirchenvater-des-marxismus /2

We proudly present 📣 „Karl Kautsky oder: Der ‚Kirchenvater‘ des Marxismus“ – unser neues Buch! Ohne #Marx kein #Kautsky, ohne Kautsky kein Marxismus. Anfang des 20. Jhs gehörte Kautsky (1854–1938) zu den einflussreichsten Theoretikern der sozialistischen Bewegung. Nach 1914 …/1

Ohne #Marx kein Kautsky. Aber auch: Ohne #Kautsky kein Marxis­mus – ohne ihn hätte der Marxismus ein anderes Gesicht, falls es ihn überhaupt gegeben hätte. Eben in Druck gegangen: „Karl Kautsky oder: Der ‚Kirchenvater‘ des Marxismus“, hrsg. von Harald Koth. Erscheint vsl. Oktober