Are Democrats turning into fascists?

All forms of government work to enrich and empower a ruling political class.
Socialist governments are not an exception.

 

Where does the funding for AntiFa/BLM come from?
The working class?

 

Timeline:

"Watt’s steam engine design incorporated two of his own inventions: the separate condenser (1765) and the parallel motion (1784)".

Smith: "Wealth of Nations" 1776. ie before the mass movement of workers to factories and mines really got underway.

Jefferson's letter to Madison: 1787, in pre-industrial America.

Marx: "Communist manifesto" 1848, with the Industrial revolution in full swing, accompanied by egregiously unjust conditions for factory and mine workers.

Jefferson foresaw a problem with monopolies, but he did not foresee a problem with access to reasonable working conditions: in fact he ignored slavery itself on the Southern plantations.

 

Marxists must have invented their own timeline.

In fact, Thomas Newcomen invented the first steam engine in 1712 shortly after the first industrial furnace started producing pig iron. Silk factories existed in England before 1720.

The South shunned industrialization, and Marxist nations have used slave labor.
Did the USSR provide better working conditions for labor than the US?

 

The TINA fallacy.

First step: get rid of your neo-liberal economic orthodoxy.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/johntharvey/2019/03/05/mmt-sense-or-nonsense/?sh=30c5521c5852

From those who support Antifa/BLM, and the activists themselves.

Meanwhile: your Conservative 'freedom' meme is being revealed as a hollow sham, as the seat of the democracy is sealed off from the nation.

 

"The first major improvement in spinning technology was the spinning jenny, introduced in 1764 by Thomas Highs (1718-1803) of Lancashire and named for his daughter. Highs wanted a machine for spinning cotton that would multiply threads more quickly, and he built a device with six spindles. James Hargreaves (1720-7, who is widely credited for inventing the spinning jenny and was also from Lancashire, apparently improved Highs' design by adding more spindles. Hargreaves acquired the patent for it in 1770, but by then the device had been widely copied. By the time of Hargreaves' death, more than 20,000 spinning jennies were in use. It spun yarn from between 20 and 30 spindles at one time, thus doing the work of several spinsters - a prospect that had made Hargreaves so unpopular in his neighborhood that a mob destroyed his spinning jennies and ran him out of town".

So my point about a nascent European industrial revolution in the 18th century remains, and Jefferson could have had no insight into capitalism's soon to be revealed failings in early 19th century Europe.

Both of which don't excuse capitalism's failings faced by Marx.

Well thousands of American workers went to Russia in 1932, when Ford was shooting his workers for wanting to return to work...

 

The rather obvious and very inconvenient truth: All forms of government work to enrich and empower a ruling political class. Socialist governments are not an exception.
There are no exceptions.

AntiFa/BLM are funded primarily by Big Business.

 

The Marxist timeline is way off.
1.The problems associated with monopoly capitalism became apparent shortly after the creation of the East India Company, a joint stock company in 1600.
2.The first silk throwing factory, Lombe’s Mill, opened in 1719.
3.The Flying Shuttle was the critical invention that enabled the expansion of the textile industry.
4. Darby began the mass production of iron using coke in 1709.
5. Jefferson clearly had similar insights into the nature of corporatism as those expressed by Marx.

Marxists in power did not liberate the working class and they certainly did not create a "workers' paradise".
Even serious Marxists, like Lenin, in power ignored Marx. Big mistake.

"How self-government is to be organized and how we can manage without a bureaucracy has been shown to us by America and the first French Republic, and is being shown even today by Canada, Australia and the other English colonies." "The State and Revolution", VI Lenin, Penguin, 1992, Lenin, 66.

 

Mere Libertarian anti-governement ideology.

If you say so.... why do Big Business do that?

 

OK

What were workers wages and conditions at that time?

Yes the expansion, and what were the workers' conditions at that time?

Yes, and what were the conditions for workers at that time?

Maybe, but Jefferson certainly did not have similar insights (to Marx) into the conditions faced by workers a half a century later, when the industrial revolution was in full swing, and children of the lower classes were forced into quasi slave labour in coal mines....

Marx intended his ideas to be implemented in industrial Europe, not subsistence agriculture Russia. Marxists did not achieve power in Europe because universal-suffrage democracy did not exist until the late 19th century.
[And now Bernie Sanders was denied power because people believe "Marxists in power did not liberate the working class"....]

"Without a bureaucracy"? Lenin did not reckon on the neoliberal free market ideology of those nations.

In fact a treasury and reserve bank - as part of a consolidated government sector - creating money and spending into the economy alongside private bank money creation in the private sector, is an alternative to "managing without a bureaucracy".

 

Will you wind up on the list:

 

The Big Government factions are an existential threat to humanity.

"However, this analogy between totalitarianism and despotism holds only for the first
stages of totalitarian rule, when there is still a political opposition. In this as in
other respects totalitarianism takes advantage of, and gives conscious support to,
nontotalitarian misconceptions, no matter how uncomplimentary they may be.
Himmler, in his famous speech to the Reichswehr staff in 1937, assumed
the role of an ordinary tyrant when he explained the constant expansion of
the police forces by assuming the existence of a "fourth theater in case of
war, internal Germany."
THE ORIGINS OF TOTALITARIANISM, By Hannah Arendt, Meridian Books, Cleveland, New York, 1958.
https://archive.org/stream/TheOriginsOfTotalitarianism/The-Origins-of-Totalitarianism_djvu.txt

 

In our fast changing modern world, your contention that "The Big Government factions are an existential threat to humanity" is erroneous; and the experience of past totalitarian regimes as proof of your contention is invalid.

Indeed it is the insanity of the Left-Right divide in the democracies in general, and the US in particular (with armed citizens currently loudly protesting the Biden victory) that IS the existential threat.

Explanation:

The Conservative position is morally indefensible, given there is no actual shortage of resources that would preclude above-poverty participation by all, in modern AI and IT assisted economies.

Note:

Marx said "from each according to his ability, to each according to need".

Conservatives say " from each according to his ability, to each according to his ability.

[That's why 100 people in the Conservative US have a combined wealth of $1 trillion, while 60 million people in the US have negative wealth (av. minus $8000]

Marx made one mistake in not recognizing reward for individual effort above basic need.

Conservatives make two mistakes: the first is assuming all have an equal chance to participate (which is the "from each" part) - wrong, because unemployment, under-employment, and hidden unemployment (due to participation rate issues) are the realities in modern "invisible hand" free markets with global supply chains; and the second is the opposite to Marx's mistake mentioned above, ie, conservatives don't recognize basic need at all (hence entrenched homelessness and poverty).

So there you have it.

We are all motivated by self-interested, competitive, survival instincts, but the Right in particular with its appeals to individual freedom, resists developing an awareness of that instinctive motivation which requires seeing it through a lens of 'justice', or fair access to basic resources, because in history the development of resources has been subject to scarcity and competition.

That scarcity no longer applies in the AI and IT enabled economies.

Just to understand the ferocity of the partisanship in the electorate.

 

More ties between Democrats and rioters:

 

Marx, Engels and Lenin were all opposed to the Big Government model.
That is their saving grace and distinguishes them from the National Socialists/Fascists.

"R. J.. Rummel, a professor emeritus of political science .... has painstakingly compiled statistics accounting for the number of people killed worldwide by "democide," a term he coined to describe governments' intentional killing ... of civilians....

...Rummels books on the subject - particularly "Death By Government" (1994) and "Statistics of Democide" (1997) - provide the most comprehensive estimates currently available, and the ones most often referenced by scholars.
Rummel estimates that from 1900 to 1987 governments murdered almost 170 million people - a figure that far exceeds the 34.4 million battle deaths thought to have resulted from all the international and civil wars fought during the same period....
Democide often occurs under authoritarian regimes... Indeed democratic governments were responsible for only about one percent of the twentieth century's death toll from democide...."
THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, "The World In Numbers," "Murder By The State," Vol. 292 NO. #4, 11/2003.

The Big Government factions are obviously an existential threat to humanity.
Many "conservatives" and "liberals" are on the Big Government end of the political spectrum.

The Early Communists had some excuse. They did not have access to the historical record of the 20th century after 1924.

 

AntiFa/BLM is now rejecting the DP and Joe Biden.
Little steps ....

 

Let's define our terms. By "big government" I understand you to mean government intervention in "invisible hand' markets, to achieve desirable social outcomes not addressed by private sector free-market activity alone.

Marx's prime axiom was "from each according to ability, to each according to need".

Now leaving aside the inadequacy of the 2nd phrase (inadequate because it doesn't address incentive and reward for extra effort),
the manner in which Marx envisioned how his axiom could be achieved, and whether that would involve "big" or "small" government, is debatable. (Marx died in 1883, before any government based on his economic theory was established).

In quoting Rummel, you have equated "big government" with totalitarian government; Bernie Sanders would (correctly) vigorously deny his "democratic socialist" stance is totalitarian.

Addressed above. Bernie Sanders' (Marxist?) policies are not "an existential threat to humanity". Obviously...though they might involve some redistribution of wealth from the very wealthy to everyone else, in a nation in which inequality itself is becoming a threat to social stability. But I don't know of ANY Conservatives who would embrace Bernie's policies.

Meanwhile, we see armed citizens disputing the results of this election....

Correct. ...followed by massive social convulsions of the 20th century, inc. the US-originated Great Depression in 1929, and WW2 1939-45 (in many ways a continuation of WW1).

 

I notice you liked my post #435. Somewhere in there is the key to solving the insane* Left-Right division displayed in liberal democracies....

*Jeremy Griffiths, author of "The Human Condition", characterizes this division as evidence of a universal psychosis.

 

“Now in 1917, in the epoch of the first great imperialist war, this reservation by Marx is no longer valid. Both England and America, the largest and ultimate representatives – in the world – of Anglo Saxon ‘liberty’ in the sense of an absence of militarism and bureaucratism, have completely sunk into the all- European filthy and bloody morass bureaucratic – military institutions which subordinate everything to themselves and trample everything underfoot. Today both in England and America the preliminary condition for every true people’s revolution, the smashing, the destruction of the ready-made state machine (developed in those countries between 1914 and 1917 to European and general imperialist standards of perfection).” VI Lenin, The State and Revolution, Penguin, 1992p. 35.

Yes, WWII was a continuation of WWI. It began immediately after the Armistice expired,

A reality based political spectrum would have totalitarianism on one end and anarchy on the other.

All Big Government factions are obviously on the same end. As the bureaucracy metastasizes government becomes more deadly.
Totalitarian governments are obviously the most dangerous. Rummel examined the level of danger from all forms of government and pointed out that governments that rely on the democratic process are the least deadly, but even those governments murder their own people, 1% of 180,000,000.

No poll watchers were allowed to closely observe the count for the first time in out history in key counting centers. So the election was obviously rigged. Do you deny that fact?

Americans have the right to bear arms, and the certainly have the right to peacefully protest a rigged election with or without arms.

Big Business serves Big Government for obvious reasons. It has no power to resist.

 

The Left Right division has always been politically expedient for factions trying to manipulate the democratic process in their favor.

 

Yes...government - to implement rule of law, to avoid anarchy and promote well-ordered community relations.

As a matter of fact, I support MMT which reduces the size of the bureaucracy by utilizing the currency-issuing capacity of the sovereign government, allowing the entire welfare industry to be eliminated via a government job guarantee.
....just to further illustrate the complexities around your (IMO, ideological) conception of "big government".

Since 1990, China has achieved stable and rapid economic development (post Tiananmen Square), and their government has murdered few people that we know of.

Yes I deny it, because widespread fraud of this type has never occurred before, and the DNC would not be capable of knowing before-hand where the fraud would occur (for the Dems. own advantage) .....but of course I don't know. Trump will have to bring the evidence before a court of law.

I was merely pointing out the insanity of the situation....of citizens shouting at one another (and worse) based on ideologies concerning "freedom" versus "fairness".

So....what about government (regardless of 'size') that delivers both fairness and freedom for the citizens?

 

I don't think mere political expedience is a satisfactory explanation of the insane Left Right divide.

Rather the conflict between self-interested, competitive, survival instincts (unconscious by definition) that reside in all of us, on the one hand, and conscious thought supporting concepts such as "fairness"*, on the other hand, are a more fundamental source of the political division.
* I heard Biden appealing to "fairness" today, and his supporters responded enthusiastically ..... but the other side are thinking: what's this "fairness" nonsense....

 

The American constitutional system, as Marx and Lenin, agreed worked well until the law was circumvented by the USG.

Government is inherently evil and cannot be perfected. It is also necessary.

 

Biden is a professional politician and notorious racist crook.
If DP party bosses believed in fairness or democracy they would not rig elections

 

When and how did that happen....oh don't bother, because according to you:

That view is unsupportable, defeatist, contradictory, and nihilistic.

I have explained the basis of your view; namely, the conflict between unconscious motivation sourced in the basal ganglia and conscious motivation sourced in the cerebral cortex(see post #43

Meantime, the more Trump disputes the election, the more he exposes the insane Left-Right division inherent in democratic neoliberalism that pits fairness against freedom.