If I want to read The Hill or the Center for Effective Lawmaking or whatever center-right think tank makes it to the top of c/politics I would watch MSNBC.

Stop with your “body language expert” tier horseshit and actually criticize these succdems from the left how fucking hard is that.

  • Chomsky [comrade/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Revolutionary socialist doesn't mean a socialist who is armed with a gun, a revolutionary socialist is someone who believes that the status quo of bourgeois rule is unacceptable. They believe that the problem isn't with figurehead A or B or that the problem problem isn't a conspiracy X or Y, but that the problem is systemic and that the system needs to be overturned.

    It would be impossible, even by the wildest straining of credulity and imagination, to see Joe Biden as a revolutionary figure. Not least because he admits in plain English to not be a socialist, that his mission is to "prove that capitalist democracy works." Not democracy, not even the thinly veiled term liberal democracy no. Capitalist democracy.

    So when she says that anyone who attacks Joe Biden from the left as someone that can't bring about about change as privileged bad faith actors when he says "nothing will fundamentally change" I think that's a pretty serious statement. It is a clear repudiation of revolutionary politics. Very clear.

    • MarxMadness [comrade/them]
      ·
      4 years ago

      She didn't say anything about Biden as a revolutionary figure, and she's did say anything like "no criticism of Biden is allowed." She's criticized Biden herself! How is this not a bad faith reading of her comments? It's a sweeping, negative inference that goes far beyond what she actually said.

      It sounds like she's making this point:

      He’s not a bad president because literally every action he takes is bad, he’s a bad president because none of the actions he takes, even the good ones, pose any threat to the structural imbalances that are at the root of his country’s problems.

      The problem with acting like Biden hasn’t made any improvements whatsoever, is that someone who reads articles about Biden giving legal status to millions of immigrants or canceling the keystone XL pipeline will just assume you’re arguing in bad faith and stop listening.

      That's not portraying Biden as a revolutionary figure -- "none of his actions pose any threat to structural problems" -- but it makes the extremely practical point that if you just ceaselessly dump on Biden no matter what he does, even persuadable people will eventually tune you out. That's the type of "bad faith criticism from the left" (i.e., criticism even when something's an objective improvement) that's reasonable to infer from her comments.

      • Chomsky [comrade/them]
        ·
        4 years ago

        It's not bad faith, that's just how I read it. Maybe she has a secret plan to establish socialism via one of the most murderous right wing organizations in history. I wish her the best of luck in that endeavor.

        • MarxMadness [comrade/them]
          ·
          4 years ago

          You're making negative inferences that go well beyond the words she's actually using. What is bad faith if it's not that?

          Say we make plans for tonight and you have to cancel late. You say something came up with your family so you can't make it. If I make a negative inference that goes beyond what you said -- maybe I assume you never wanted to hang out in the first place because you don't really like me -- that's treating your words in bad faith, right? You never said any of that.

          • Chomsky [comrade/them]
            ·
            4 years ago

            Who do you think class reductionism refers to if not Marxists? The folks that say we should take class seriously and that is the principal contradiction in society?

            Any marxists knows what she means because they have been called class reductionists dozens of times by anti Marxists.

            And you know what? She has every right to be anti marxist, and Marxists have every right to not be supportive of her politics, which to be honest I think are laregly irrelavent.

            • MarxMadness [comrade/them]
              ·
              4 years ago

              She has every right to be anti marxist, and Marxists have every right to not be supportive of her politics

              Do you not see how this mentality is poison? A guaranteed way to lose is a bunch of small leftist groups doing their own thing because of imagined slights.