The Myth of Late Stage Capitalism - Page 4 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15194164
late wrote:
I had a lousy birth name, so when I was 5, Mom asked me if I wanted a different one. So I picked one.

My internet moniker, late, was a serendipitous accident. I started out as rninl8 (running late). But I was playing a internet WW2 aerial combat sim called Warbirds. People were complaining that it was too hard to type out rninl8 so they could warn me I was in trouble. So I shortened it to late.

I slowly came to realise there were several ways in which I was late. Which was a revelation. I don't talk about it much with strangers, but I was a late Boomer.



Interesting, thanks.


late wrote:
The early Boomers had it made, they had their pick from tons of jobs and girls and everything else.

One of the things I remember hearing a lot was "You should have been here last year."

C’est la vie.



Yeah, I'm Gen X so I heard much of the same, coming off the slope of the postwar prosperity.

And, given *my* love life lately, during COVID, I'm going to *need* the Fuck Bot 3000.


x D
#15194172
late wrote:
Cherry 2000 Trailer (1987)

BR542tQhXJo



Yeah, I must've been referencing that movie subconsciously.... (grin)

And, here we are, 21 years past that date, and my adolescent fantasy *still* isn't here, and no micro-CDs either, like in the movie. (grin)
#15194260
B0ycey wrote:
As for Communism, you are still confusing Soviet fascism with actual Communism. Until you understand the difference, you will never understand the difference between the two ideologies.



viewtopic.php?p=14965570#p14965570



Regarding the misnomer you used, 'Soviet fascism', I'll point to *your own* treatment of the term, elsewhere, on this same thread:


B0ycey wrote:
Because whilst SolarCross is still confusing Socialism with fascism,



viewtopic.php?p=15083069#p15083069



(Soviet / Socialism indicates a fundamentally *left-wing* political history, while 'fascism' indicates a fundamentally *right-wing* political history.)


---


SolarCross wrote:
Governments do not have any money. They can get it from only two sources taxes on private citizens and money counterfeiting. Money counter-feiting is part of the problem. Most governments have massive debt issues to boot. It is hard to say who will go bankrupt first. Regardless even if your preferred scenario comes true where a few big businesses get taken over by a government that is not the end of capitalism unless the government nationalises EVERY SINGLE business no matter how small or how healthy. There is no way they would do that because is it just crazy and will just result in mass starvation and total collapse.



viewtopic.php?p=15083075#p15083075



This is just bullshit, based on your own ideological premises.

You seem to think that nationalization would have to *conform* to the highly *redundant* patchwork / landscape of private enterprises, in every detail -- you're not-understanding that nationalization / centralization allows for the *streamlining* of material-economic-logistical societal functioning, so that the multitude of petty-bourgeois proprietorships can be folded into a *single* administration, as for government health care or public utilities, or roads / infrastructure, or whatever.


SolarCross wrote:
Bureaucrats tend to be pretty lazy and they like nice things, so it is not in their interests to do more than skim off the top of private enterprise. Actually running businesses themselves is too much like hard work for them and they will tend to run them into the ground through incompetence and neglect. Since all the nice things they like to buy for themselves would no longer be available if they ruined the companies than made them then they will have to go without too.



So you're displaying a fetish for *localism*, as though customization (of products) can only be done with bricks-and-mortar, mom-and-pop owner-operator proprietorships, when today we have the resounding examples of Amazon, eBay, etc., each of which *centralizes* the point of distribution for all conceivable consumer products, while allowing *customization* and *variability* to the consumer. If these corporations -- and *all* corporations -- were nationalized there would probably be hardly any difference since a private-sector *corporate* bureaucracy is almost the same thing functionally as a *government* bureaucracy, while the latter would also have to be *publicly* accountable, through typical electoralist / democratic processes.


SolarCross wrote:
The "collapse" of 2008 was the direct consequence of decades of money counter-feiting. Free market libertarians have been warning about this for just as long.



No -- bullshit *again*, since the financial crisis wasn't due to issues of money *supply*, per your strong-dollar ideology, but rather it was due to *bad debt*:



Predatory lending targeting low-income homebuyers,[1] excessive risk-taking by global financial institutions,[2] and the bursting of the United States housing bubble culminated in a "perfect storm". Mortgage-backed securities (MBS) tied to American real estate, as well as a vast web of derivatives linked to those MBS, collapsed in value. Financial institutions worldwide suffered severe damage,[3] reaching a climax with the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers on September 15, 2008 and a subsequent international banking crisis.[4]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial ... %80%932008



---


late wrote:
When technology makes a higher level of organisation possible, it happens.

The real choice is between letting China get there the old school way, or by voting.

Anyway, you would have authority to regulate.

But I think you may have lurched accidentally into the general neighborhood of the truth, that might be beyond the ability of humans to deal with. Please note that I didn't say they couldn't do it, just that they couldn't plan it out and rationally build a world spanning democracy.



SolarCross wrote:
It has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with human wilfulness, diversity and general rebelliousness / self-respect. Any polity however decentralised needs some basic agreement on values to hold together. There is no way the CPC is agreeing on anything like that with say for example the US, so one will have to dominate the other through successful war. Given both have nukes then hopefully that will not happen. This is not even considering all the other countries. What does Somalia have in common with Sweden? Why would the Russian take orders from the Japanese? Why would the Australia give up the XXXX for the Iranian. It is never going to happen. Even relatively homogeneous polities have their splitters and rebels. A fair number of Scots want independance from England, Texas and California have secessionist elements, Taiwan is in no hurry to join China and Hong Kong wishes it was still under British rule. Catalonia wants to undo 600 years of Castilian hegemony. I could go on indefinitely. It is a hopeless dream that would probably be dystopian to the extreme even if it could happen. You may as well give it up. You are the only one in the world that imagines it could happen and will not live much longer anyway (are you not a boomer?). The world will be as divided as it ever was forever.



viewtopic.php?p=15083175#p15083175



Your fatalism is based on nothing but an arbitrary approach to matters of *scale* -- all you're doing is being glass-half-empty regarding any of the polities that you *did* mention, like China, or the U.S., or the UK, or Spain, etc.

The world's political geography as we know it today is mostly due to *historical inertia*, but that's entirely the politics of the *ruling class*, anyway -- the world's *working class* has no objective interests in such an international competitive nationalist landscape, and can certainly run their workplaces *without* the nationalist bourgeoisie in *any* country.


Political Spectrum, Simplified

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#15194265
ckaihatsu wrote:Regarding the misnomer you used, 'Soviet fascism', I'll point to *your own* treatment of the term, elsewhere, on this same thread:
....

(Soviet / Socialism indicates a fundamentally *left-wing* political history, while 'fascism' indicates a fundamentally *right-wing* political history.)


And in response to that I would just say that the left and right wing narrative we use doesn't mean anything of substance actually. I guess I am as guilty as anyone else given I use the terms also. But Fascism does mean something. And so does Communism. And sure they are on opposite sides of the political divide but I guess that is why I said what I said (a while ago).

Stalins SU was fascism in all but name. It was run by a dictator, was authoritarian and ultranationalistic in nature and was centred around the benefit of state. Communism is stateless. It doesn't have a ruler. It is meant to be communal, cooperative and equal. So given I was responding to Solarcross, a user I remember very well who never understood what Communism was, I suspect he was on one of his SU is Communism rants at the time of writing.

The Soviet Union never referred to itself as a Communist state by the way. They called itself a Socialist Republic. Sure they were ran by the Communist Party. But the name of the party isn't the same as achievement is it?
#15194269
B0ycey wrote:
And in response to that I would just say that the left and right wing narrative we use doesn't mean anything of substance actually. I guess I am as guilty as anyone else given I use the terms also. But Fascism does mean something. And so does Communism.



Well, which *is* it -- is the 'left and right wing narrative' 'of [no] substance', or does [Nazi] fascism 'mean something', and so does [Stalinist] Communism -- ?


B0ycey wrote:
And sure they are on opposite sides of the political divide but I guess that is why I said what I said (a while ago).

Stalins SU was fascism in all but name. It was run by a dictator, was authoritarian and ultranationalistic in nature and was centred around the benefit of state.



I'll posit that -- without defending Stalin's nationalist 'socialism-in-one-country' politics -- he *did* have to operate *defensively* in relation to the existing, prevailing world powers of the time (the Allies), because of then-recent history:



The bitter price: the seeds of Stalinism

The failure to spread the revolution left Russia isolated, and it had to suffer not just a material blockade but all the horrors of foreign invasion by some 16 armies, civil war, devastation, disease and hunger. Industrial production sank to a mere 18 percent of its 1916 figure, and the small rump of the working class which remained in the cities could only feed itself by travelling to the countryside to engage in individual barter with peasants. As typhus spread and even cannibalism appeared, the Bolsheviks increasingly held on to power through a party regime rather than as direct representatives of a virtually non-existent working class.



Harman, _People's History of the World_, p. 446



---


B0ycey wrote:
Communism is stateless. It doesn't have a ruler. It is meant to be communal, cooperative and equal. So given I was responding to Solarcross, a user I remember very well who never understood what Communism was, I suspect he was on one of his SU is Communism rants at the time of writing.

The Soviet Union never referred to itself as a Communist state by the way. They called itself a Socialist Republic. Sure they were ran by the Communist Party. But the name of the party isn't the same as achievement is it?



Yes, I appreciate the distinction between 'small-c' communism, and 'big-C' Communism, as you delineated.

*Historically*, though, there *was* a distinction, also, between (left-wing) Stalinism, and (right-wing) fascism:



The ruling group split down the middle. Bukharin desperately wanted to continue as before. But that would have meant the bureaucracy surrendering some of its power at home to placate the peasants and abandoning any real hope of resisting future foreign demands. At first Stalin was at a loss to know what to do, but then moved to a policy which offered the bureaucracy a possibility of strengthening itself at home and abroad—enforced industrialisation, to be paid for by seizing grain from the peasants by force. Such a policy suited those running the industrial plants. ‘The drive for further expansion’, one study of the period reports, ‘came as much from officials and managers—many of them now party members—as from party leaders’.167 It also provided the means to produce tanks, battleships, aircraft and machine-guns on the same scale as the Western states and to ward off threats of foreign attack.



Harman, _People's History of the World_, p. 475



Note:



Soon after the pact, [Nazi] Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E ... ntrop_Pact
#15194272
ckaihatsu wrote:Well, which *is* it -- is the 'left and right wing narrative' 'of [no] substance', or does [Nazi] fascism 'mean something', and so does [Stalinist] Communism -- ?


That the left-right wing narrative means nothing. The terms merely describe what side a political party sits within a chamber. Today it is even more confusing given Left wing can mean liberationism, Socialism, Social Democracy, Marxism, Stalinism, Maoism, SJWism, Wokeism, equal rights, immigration, transgenderism blah blah blah. Right wing means Conservativeism, Fascism, Authoritarianism, Nationalism, Trumpism, Nazism, Censorship, Corporatism, Hate, Racism, Gun Rights, Constitutionism, Globalism, Far right, KKK, Wars, blah blah blah. Don't you see? The lines are so blurred the terms are used as a slur and are meaningless. They mean anything. And as such if your only criteria for separating Stalin with Mussolini is one is right wing and the other is left wing, then you actually haven't said much at all.
#15194274
B0ycey wrote:
That the left-right wing narrative means nothing. The terms merely describe what side a political party sits within a chamber. Today it is even more confusing given Left wing can mean liberationism, Socialism, Social Democracy, Marxism, Stalinism, Maoism, SJWism, Wokeism, equal rights, immigration, transgenderism blah blah blah. Right wing means Conservativeism, Fascism, Authoritarianism, Nationalism, Trumpism, Nazism, Censorship, Corporatism, Hate, Racism, Gun Rights, Constitutionism, Globalism, Far right, KKK, Wars, blah blah blah. Don't you see? The lines are so blurred the terms are used as a slur and are meaningless. They mean anything. And as such if your only criteria for separating Stalin with Mussolini is one is right wing and the other is left wing, then you actually haven't said much at all.



No, the meanings of left wing versus right wing are *not* blurred *whatsoever*. The terms are *not* just for name-calling and insults, as you're indicating, though they *are* often incorrectly intentionally used as slurs.

'Left-wing' implies *social equality* -- as before the law -- to various extents. 'Right-wing' implies *hierarchical* social relations, as we have today through wealth ownership and class and social-oppression social status.

Here's the run-down:

Left-wing:

- 'liberationism' -- presumably 'liberation theology' -- anti-oppression, civil rights / civil equality

- 'Socialism' -- presumably 'anti-imperialism' -- anti-imperialism, geopolitical / national / ethnic equality

- 'Social Democracy' -- internal nationalist democracy, democratic / representative / political equality

- 'Marxism' -- *labor* equality

- 'Stalinism' -- anti-imperialism, geopolitical equality

- 'Maoism' -- (ditto)

- 'SJWism' -- anti-oppression, civil rights / civil equality

- 'Wokeism' -- anti-oppression, anti-police-brutality, anti-Western-hegemonic-historical-narrative, civil rights / civil equality

- 'equal rights' -- racial- and gender-specific civil rights / civil equality

- 'immigration' -- national-origin citizen equivalency, open-borders, global-citizen equality

- 'transgenderism' -- gender-identity anti-oppression, civil rights / civil equality


Right-wing:

- 'conservatism' -- presumably *status-quo-maintaining* -- elitism

- 'fascism' / 'authoritarianism' -- presumably 'might makes right' war-machine corporatist politics -- elitism

- 'nationalism' -- presumably statism, including a standing military -- elitism

- 'Trumpism' -- nationalist retrenchment -- elitism

- 'censorship' -- presumably nationalist / ideological moralism -- elitism

- 'corporatism' -- nation-backed colonialist / imperialist enterprise -- elitism

- 'hate' / 'racism' -- racial-based 'otherness' and discrimination, to the point of violence -- elitism

- 'gun rights' / 'constitutionalism' -- legacy of slaveowning white settler plantations / slavocracy / aristocracy -- elitism

- 'globalism' ['NWO' hysteria] -- anti-United-Nations / anti-international-law / nationalist "sovereignty" -- elitism

- 'far right' -- white nationalism / fascism / executive power / corporatism -- elitism

- 'KKK' -- (see 'gun rights')

- 'wars' -- (see 'fascism')


Stalin was trying to achieve nationalist *parity* with the Allied countries, through catch-up industrialization, while Mussolini was *affiliated* with the Allied countries:



In 1917 Mussolini got his start in politics with the help of a £100 weekly wage (the equivalent of £7100 as of 2020) from the British security service MI5,



[T]he Fascists did not have an integrated set of policies and the movement was small, ineffective in its attempts to hold mass meetings, and was regularly harassed by government authorities and orthodox socialists.[59] Antagonism between the interventionists, including the Fascists, versus the anti-interventionist orthodox socialists resulted in violence between the Fascists and socialists. The opposition and attacks by the anti-interventionist revolutionary socialists against the Fascists and other interventionists were so violent that even democratic socialists who opposed the war such as Anna Kuliscioff said that the Italian Socialist Party had gone too far in a campaign of silencing the freedom of speech of supporters of the war. These early hostilities between the Fascists and the revolutionary socialists shaped Mussolini's conception of the nature of Fascism in its support of political violence.[60]



In political and social economy, he passed legislation that favored the wealthy industrial and agrarian classes (privatizations, liberalizations of rent laws and dismantlement of the unions).[16]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benito_Mussolini



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3-Dimensional Axes of Social Reality

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Ideologies & Operations -- Left Centrifugalism

Spoiler: show
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#15194275
The historians SI (Standard Interpretation) is that Nazis were/are Right wing.

That there is disagreement about this is simply wackos trying to crawl away from the reputation Nazis have, not a thing more.
Last edited by late on 13 Oct 2021 18:54, edited 1 time in total.
#15194276
ckaihatsu wrote:- 'Stalinism' -- anti-imperialism, geopolitical equality


*Geopolitical equal* you say? Is that *laymen* for all to say all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others equal? I wonder if *Ukraine* felt the *equality*.

*Grin*
#15194277
B0ycey wrote:
*Geopolitical equal* you say? Is that *laymen* for all to say all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others equal?



No, I mean 'geopolitical equality' in the sense of *anti-imperialism*, particularly soundly-defeating-the-Nazis-in-World-War-II:



On 19 November, the Red Army launched Operation Uranus, a two-pronged attack targeting the weaker Romanian and Hungarian armies protecting the 6th Army's flanks.[22] The Axis flanks were overrun and the 6th Army was cut off and surrounded in the Stalingrad area. Adolf Hitler was determined to hold the city at all costs and forbade the 6th Army from attempting a breakout; instead, attempts were made to supply it by air and to break the encirclement from the outside. Heavy fighting continued for another two months. At the beginning of February 1943, the Axis forces in Stalingrad, having exhausted their ammunition and food, surrendered[23] after five months, one week, and three days of fighting.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Stalingrad



---


B0ycey wrote:
I wonder if *Ukraine* felt the *equality*.

*Grin*



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor ... _opponents
#15194278
ckaihatsu wrote:No, I mean 'geopolitical equality' in the sense of *anti-imperialism*, particularly soundly-defeating-the-Nazis-in-World-War-II:


Sure, Stalin was against the Nazis given they tried to take Stalingrad. But if the criteria for anti imperialism was defeating the Nazis, I wonder what you make of the all the allies? Also, the Eastern European land grab must have been a blip.

*Grin*

Nonetheless I never mentioned Imperialism but Fascism. Explain why two leaders that were nationalists, authoritarian, oppressive dictators that are similar in many ways should be separated by a label such as left and right wing when they both match the definition of Fascists in all but name?
#15194282
B0ycey wrote:
Explain why two leaders that were nationalists, authoritarian, oppressive dictators that are similar in many ways should be separated by a label such as left and right wing when they both match the definition of Fascists in all but name?



Politics is the art of give and take, of making deals. First thing a dictator does is kill or imprison his political enemies. That ends politics...

If you look at the history, Stalin nationalised industry, Hitler made arrangements with the industries he needed. They were different.

But you have a good point, once they became dictators, they were not doing politics.
#15194284
late wrote:If you look at the history, Stalin nationalised industry, Hitler made arrangements with the industries he needed. They were different.


Socialism is an economic model, Fascism is a political mainframe so they aren't mutually exclusive. Are you aware that Hilters party was the National Socialist German Workers Party? Not that I claim the Nazis were Socialists of course. But I don't claim Stalin was the Gentle Father either. :lol:
#15194287
B0ycey wrote:
Socialism is an economic model, Fascism is a political mainframe so they aren't mutually exclusive. Are you aware that Hilters party was the National Socialist German Workers Party? Not that I claim the Nazis were Socialists of course. But I don't claim Stalin was the Gentle Father either.




You are parroting BS again.

I gave you a partial point, you should have left it be. As I said, they were different. As I said, dictators kill politics, which is what they have in common.

Bringing up socialism in the context of Nazis is just stupid, it was just a label. You immediately tried to walk it back, but it's too late, you said it.

This has all been researched and debated to death, possibly before you were even born. This was red hot in the 1950s and Sixties. I grew up listening to those arguments. It's been over prob longer than you've been alive, you're beating another dead horse.
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