Ask A Red V: The Five-Year Plan

[Gary Childress]

The CPUSA can rot.

Bernie Sanders can rot too.

The presidential election only provides you with the opportunity of vaguely influencing the selection of which ruling class stooge will rule over us until our next Instance of Democracy in four years' time.

In the US election, only vote for left-wing populist, socialist, or communist candidates in city, local, and state elections.



There is no socialist party in the US which behaves as the Green Party does and only goes for the national stage without paying attention to the local arena. Socialist movements are almost entirely local and grow out of local political situations, whether they're anti-racist movements, community organization around rent, water, or other municipal concerns, labor organization, or whatever the case may be. Very often there is not even but the barest framework of national organization, except for a few of the larger parties. So have no fear in that sphere.

Your advice on local elections sounds good. What would be your suggestion as far as the presidential election? Is it just as well to sit it out and not vote? Honestly I really feel like doing that. I was thinking of writing in "none of the above", since there is no option on the presidential ballot to vote "none of the above".

Would be nice I think if we could get this added to the ballot:

NOTA.Org A nonpartisan organization dedicated to enacting Voter Consent laws, giving voters the ballot option to reject all candidates for an office and to call for a new election, with new candidates, to fill that office.

http://nota.org/statementofprinciple.htm

@Azale: I've been eying Sanders also. However, I believe he doesn't take his chances of winning very seriously so I sense he seems like he isn't really playing to win. Which is a little disappointing.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Your advice on local elections sounds good. What would be your suggestion as far as the presidential election? Is it just as well to sit it out and not vote? Honestly I really feel like doing that. I was thinking of writing in "none of the above", since there is no option on the presidential ballot to vote "none of the above".

I generally don't vote for the president because I don't think it matters, but if I did it would be for a leftist Third Party like the Greens, hoping that they might get 5% of the national vote and win some federal funding with which to disrupt GOP-Dem business-as-usual. It's not out of any expectation that it will lead to real "change."

Would be nice I think if we could get this added to the ballot:



http://nota.org/statementofprinciple.htm

Would be nice, but again, it won't change anything. Elections decide who controls the government, not who controls the state. The state is an unelected apparatus of class rule, it's ownership can only be changed by force.

What's the problem with CPUSA?
Like antique stalinism, or something else?

Complete opposite: they've gone totally revisionist and support the Democrats. They've adopted liberal talking points and purged the party of critics. It's a farce and all the true Marxist-Leninists have fled the party. Some of them banded together to form the Party of Communists, which is a Hoxhaist organization (they now cooperate with the American Party of Labor, formerly the only Hoxhaist group in the US), which is itself a farce of Marxism-Leninism but in a totally different way. The rest of us fled to the PSL or FRSO, or are non-party for the time being, like me.

 

[Lohrenswald]

I don't know much at all about the declining rates of profits, what does it entail (Causes, nature, effects etc.)?

 

[Hygro]

I don't know much at all about the declining rates of profits, what does it entail (Causes, nature, effects etc.)?

Tight money. Pushes a Hobbso-Marxian race-to-the-bottom economy.

 

[Lohrenswald]

Tight money. Pushes a Hobbso-Marxian race-to-the-bottom economy.

Sorry, but this really doesn't do for an explanation I would like

Honestly, I don't think I really understand anything of what thoes two sentences mean, except maybe "Pushes a"

 

[Hygro]

Sorry, but this really doesn't do for an explanation I would like

Honestly, I don't think I really understand anything of what thoes two sentences mean, except maybe "Pushes a"

Tight money means that between interest rates and government spending, the money supply is kept (artificially) scarce. Tight money has immense social and economic consequences. One of them seems to be decreased profitability. Moments of greater profitability include 1933-1958, the end of the 90s, and right after the official end of last recession (so around 2010). The end of the 90s included interest rate cuts and financial liberalization, meaning the cost of credit (money) got a lot cheaper. Around 2010 many governments had just run large deficits so there was a few extra unleveraged (i.e. not via loans but raw money) trillion dollars worth of currency injected into the world economy. 1933-1958 (or 1933-1965, or 1933-73, or 1933-1979, take your arbitrary end-point) was the heyday of keynesian stimulus.

There was another time of great profitability in the US, which was 1890-1913. We were on the gold standard so you'd think money would be super tight. However the 20 years before was a period of great deflation (aka The Long Depression, the original Great Depression before the 30s took the name, or aka The Great Deflation) so prices had adjusted downward. Meanwhile there was a huge influx of new gold with mines being opened around the world (like in South Africa). Since gold = money back then, that meant goldmines were almost literally money printing presses. So this period had immense profitability as well. It was the second greatest time for wage growth in America (after the mid 30s through mid 60s).

A common feature of prolonged times of profitability in the USA is that they seem to be in part driven by higher wages for workers, shorter work weeks, more unionization, etc. In other countries high profitability has been achieved the opposite way, with wage suppression leading to cheap exports sold to the USA (land of people with higher wages).


Marx wrote in a time before macro-economics existed. Marx, like Adam Smith and others pointed out the logical conclusion of capitalist competition would result in the a system in which a decreasing amount of capital owners would get the riches while wages would be pushed further and further downward in a competitive "race-to-the-bottom". Hobbes, England's preeminent enlightenment political philosopher, largely proposed a political system that in its most pure form would include a single ruler whose power was increasingly concentrated and assured, while the masses enjoyed increasing power-equality, pushed (relatively) further and further down away from that sovereign.

The thing that upsets both of those related equations of wealth and power is Keynes-prescribed economies, where interest rates are low and governments invest liberally. Keynes had a counterpart, a Marxian-economist from Poland named Kalecki who came up with a lot of the same formulas concurrently (technically right before) Keynes did. Kalecki said the problem with his [Keynesian] prescription would be that while economic growth would be amazing, including for the rich, it would lead to greater worker representation in government, and then lead to a backlash by capital owners who were happy to reduce their rate of capital accumulation to make sure they assured their political control.....

.....which if you know the history of neoliberalism, is exactly what happened 30+ years after that (I believe 1930s) prediction (continuing today).

 

[_random_]

A question for Cheezy specifically, although anyone can chime in:

Why do you have such different opinions on Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders? Speaking as someone who barely follows US politics and doesn't follow UK politics at all, they seem similar enough: members of the mainstream leftist party in their respective countries vying for leadership from the more extreme end. So what's Corbyn got that Sanders doesn't? Or what's bad about Sanders that isn't bad about Corbyn?

 

[Lohrenswald]

In briefing I heard the term new- or neo-marxism. Is this a sort of coherent school of thought, a general trend or just whatever is done in marxism these days? If not the latter, what is it about? What makes it different from "classical" marxism?

 

[aelf]

To my knowledge, Neo-Marxists are heavily influenced by the Frankfurt School. They are much less optimistic about the prospects of revolution and do not necessarily see communism as an inevitable outcome. Scholars like Theodor Adorno saw capitalism as having effectively invented the means to neutralise the impetus to revolution through things like mass entertainment. Because of this, Neo-Marxists tend to keep themselves busy with cultural critique and may even dislike disruptive acts (as Adorno was criticised for when he called the police on disruptive students at a public lecture).

Personally, I lean more towards this school of thought.

 

[Lohrenswald]

Excuse the follow up, but what does the Frankfurt school entail?
Regardless, thanks for the answer

 

[aelf]

I described it in the subsequent sentences. It is not a monolithic group, but I would say that they are in a way post-communist. Disillusioned with Marxism-Leninism and more scholarly than revolutionary, since they did not see salvation as forthcoming in the form of revolution.

 

[Lohrenswald]

Oh yeah, sorry, I read it wrong.

 

[Hygro]

I've been asking Lohrenswald this question, maybe someone can help answer:

How in a full equality system do we decide who does what work? Can there be freedom of choice in the matter? What if not enough people want to work gross jobs and too many people want to be rockstars etc? What's the mechanism for sorting that?

 

[aelf]

How is it done in certain schools, small communities or households? The answer is probably through some sort of rostering, if compensation is not possible.

On the topic of compensation, I do think that some form of cash and even credit would likely exist even in very egalitarian societies. So there would not be absolute equality of outcomes. It's the creation of stratified social classes based on the ownership of the means of production that would be disallowed (this would also mean no one should be able to own credit facilities).

 

[Hygro]

How is it done in certain schools, small communities or households? The answer is probably through some sort of rostering, if compensation is not possible.

Well, school was always an authoritarian hell for me that was most enjoyable when I subdued my personal interests in favor of playing their grades-game so that sucks.

Small communities are still part of the money system. Those that aren't on the opposite end of communism being unable to provide an industrial standard of living.

Families are built on kids doing what they can based on the available largesse of their parents and the parents setting absolute rules while, generally, making their entire lives earning money where they can get the most while still making time for their kids.

Rostering is reasonable, maybe it's enough. I'd want to see more.

On the topic of compensation, I do think that some form of cash and even credit would likely exist even in very egalitarian societies. So there would not be absolute equality of outcomes. It's the creation of stratified social classes based on the ownership of the means of production that would be disallowed (this would also mean no one should be able to own credit facilities).

What if some guy is waaay better at providing a product and is getting a big surplus of credit and all the ladies want him and don't want you and me? Now a bunch of dudes are flattering him for attention because they genuinely are impressed by his biz while he has the means to live larger and we're on the other end, as we're stuck in our labors of love for some gizmo that's fallen out of style?

(for context: in school there were stratified social castes based on immediately recognizable subtle differences, more subtle than the above)

 

[aelf]

Too bad? As I said, I don't believe there would be absolute equality of outcomes.

 

[Hygro]

Too bad? As I said, I don't believe there would be absolute equality of outcomes.

Could it not ultimately feedback into social classes with power differentials?

 

[aelf]

It could, but we're entering into speculative territory that's not any better than imagining the abolishing of biological parentage.

It's probably also much more difficult to create social classes out of individuals' charm with ladies, at least in any permanent sense.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

A question for Cheezy specifically, although anyone can chime in:

Why do you have such different opinions on Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders? Speaking as someone who barely follows US politics and doesn't follow UK politics at all, they seem similar enough: members of the mainstream leftist party in their respective countries vying for leadership from the more extreme end. So what's Corbyn got that Sanders doesn't? Or what's bad about Sanders that isn't bad about Corbyn?

Corbyn is an actual socialist who has an incorrect approach to effecting social change: reformism, Fabian-style. He's a good man who is quite simply wrong about some essential questions.

Sanders is a left liberal, wholly wrapped up in all the baggage that carries, whose goal is not to change the capitalist system but to buttress it. He fears socialism and goes out of his way to denounce it and distance himself from it.

Sanders went on FoxNews to say "I'm not a scary socialist." Corbyn called Irish Republicans "heroes" and advocates withdrawing from NATO.

In briefing I heard the term new- or neo-marxism. Is this a sort of coherent school of thought, a general trend or just whatever is done in marxism these days? If not the latter, what is it about? What makes it different from "classical" marxism?

I mostly agree with aelf's assessment of the movement, although we diverge on its utility. I find some of the neo-Marxists interesting, like Zizek whom I suppose you could include in its ranks, but not particularly useful, mostly because of the aforementioned futile approach, particularly from Foucault and Lyotard.

I prefer to stick with Structuralists and anti-Humanists like Althusser and Balibar, but I have a certain affinity for Badiou as well.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

I've been asking Lohrenswald this question, maybe someone can help answer:

How in a full equality system do we decide who does what work? Can there be freedom of choice in the matter? What if not enough people want to work gross jobs and too many people want to be rockstars etc? What's the mechanism for sorting that?

That'll be up to each community to decide, it would be utopian for us to decide those things right now. But I will point out that the fault lies with your imagination, not ours, if the only way you can imagine people doing unpleasant jobs is through compulsion.