https://twitter.com/quaxon1/status/1385819905077825536
Like only case of being rich but not bourgeoisie is if you sit on a pile of cash in the bank and don’t invest :shrug-outta-hecks:
if you're not an Inherently Good Person in the depths of your Soul, you're a fake leftist
Woah poor people wants to improve their material condition.
Marx literally never thought about this.
material circumstances drive beliefs, yes, but i am online, and the only politics i am capable of is making statements of my own moral superiority
The conservative talking point of "nothing's free" is like a child's viewpoint of economics.
Like, of course nothing's free, there are materials and labour that go into anything. Communists of all people understand this and actually think about pricing and value. We just disagree with the capitalist system of value and pricing.
So yeah, nothing's free, because the materials and labour costs are remunerated, but imagine cutting out large portions of what constitutes the price and making the payment for the cost embedded in a system that provides worry free access to necessities and also pays properly for their production. Taking this farther, this can all be taken care of without money.
And so on.
"free" college and M4A weaken imperialism by freeing the proletariat from the burden of illness and debt.
do they tho? Was there more opposition to imperialism under socdem governments or welfare states in Europe than under neoliberal or conservative ones? Did the enactment of socdem policies coincided with weakening and lesser participation to werstern imperialism and colonialism by western nations where that enactment happened ? Was there an spread of class conciousness or international solidarity or any increase in anti-war /revolutionary organization that followed or was connected to welfare state policies ?
I wish americans do get m4a and free college and its a good thing overall and significant harm reduction domesticaly and you should organize for it just because of that. But saying that it weekens imperialism or will increase the opposition and organizing of the proletariat of X country against their countries foreign policy or against imperialist/colonialist exploitation is a jumb based on exactly zero trends or instances historicaly. Its just make believe cause "it makes sense as a probable correlation at first glance"
Even if it may be true in the future stating it as a fact despite post ww2 history providing little to no instances of that happening and dispite many chances to in many different nations participating and even spearheading western imperialism and colonialist is a bit strange
The main reasons a lot of people join the US military are for college and healthcare, so yes, it would weaken US imperialism.
As far as i remember from actual academic analysis and reshearches more active military members cited patriotism/duty etc as the reason they joined than benifits and dept etc (smalish difference in those numbers) with the disparity between those numbers being way bigger in actual active troops and marines and demographic wise poorer layers of society or minorities arent overrepresented and if anything the middle class/middle-upper class is slightly overrepresented with the entire demographic and income background being almost indistinguishable from the police. Of course a significant % join for social upwards mobility and benifits but still the military is hillariously overstaffed and any dent welfare state will make will be counterbalanced by the pentagon by mercenaries/private contractors (we see it happening in afghanistan) and just improving economic benifits to promiss labour aristocrassy and even higher income benifits to people who will.
There is a big difference between self-reported reasons and actual reasons
As far as i remember from actual academic analysis and reshearches more active military members cited patriotism/duty etc as the reason they joined than benifits and dept etc (smalish difference in those numbers) with the disparity between those numbers being way bigger in actual active troops and marines and demographic wise poorer layers of society or minorities arent overrepresented and if anything the middle class/middle-upper class is slightly overrepresented with the entire demographic and income background being almost indistinguishable from the police.
From what I can tell, this argument comes from a 2008 study done by The Heritage Foundation, which imo has some major issues, and was put out by a right-wing think tank that openly pushes for privatizing the VA.
This 2018 RAND study probably gives a bit more accurate view of why people join. While there is a mix of reasons cited, economic factors do seem to play a major role:
Soldiers stated that a desire to improve their current and future prospects helped motivate them join the military. In particular, many soldiers sought to gain access to the military’s benefits (n=25; 32 percent). These particularly included health care, tuition assistance during service, and the GI Bill. Some participants saw these benefits as a lifeline; one single parent said she joined “just because I had my son and I needed the benefits, I guess you could say” (CMF92). Others used the Army to look to the future and create a better life after military service:
The Army can provide me with great education benefits, great career benefits later on. So... why not start that and do that, instead of just working at some dead-end job that’s only paying minimum wage, maybe $10 an hour when I can go and get fantastic benefits, all that.
(CMF13) A quarter of soldiers (n=19; 24 percent) joined for the stable pay, knowing they “needed to make money” (CMF92). Some soldiers saw joining as an opportunity for short-term employment, while others sawthe prospects of a steady career: “After I weighed the pros and cons I was like, well, why not, and if I stay in for 20-plus years [I can] retire at 40. So it seemed like a good deal to me, especially in the economy we’re in” (CMF68). Some soldiers (n=17; 22 percent) joined the military to get away from some aspect of their prior lives. In some cases, this was simply escaping a hometown without prospects, but in others, soldiers described leaving bad family situations or unsafe environments.
demographic and income background being almost indistinguishable from the police
what's their skulls shaped like?
You're right, of course.
But at the same time, having our proletariats in top shape is useful, and tax money going to keeping people healthy as opposed to paying for the imperial war machine is always good.
All of us in Europe will tell you that's not true. The only argument for this is that it costs money they can't spend elsewhere. That's it.
It comes at the cost of people being more complacent, more switched off and significantly less likely to take radical action.
Eh. As small as the socialist movement is in Europe, it's still miles ahead of Amerikkka, where the most basic of succdems are seen as the second coming of Lenin. Western European countries are still imperial core, mind, but I don't feel like you need to fight against quite as much ingrained propaganda to make progress with people. To the point, you don't have to start your conversations at "taking care of the sick and suffering is good actually" when, really, you want to be talking about international solidarity. That last one is still an uphill battle though. :eu-cool:
That is in spite of having those concessions, not because of them.
Those concessions hurt our movement rather than helped it.
If you make living in capitalism nicer you don't move a step closer to socialism you just make people less willing to fight against capitalism because it is hurting them less.
If you make capitalism easier to live in you make people less willing to fight it, not more willing to fight it. It becomes harder to argue against it, not easier.
People are more willing to fight it the harder their conditions get.
Ask western leftists not what they're doing to advance the interests of their working class, but rather what they're doing to destroy their own countries
Broke: Free Healthcare will destroy America!!!!!111!!!!
Woke: Free Healthcare will help America and its people!!!!!11111!!!!
B e s p o k e: Free Healthcare will destroy America :lenin-shining:
love to see barely veiled classism upvoted on the pmc website lol
classism
It's sexist to say that "Hillary is an evil woman for enslaving Libyan women"
the pmc website
FAILED pmc website :michael-laugh:
we get it, poor people bad
your next line is "not a poverty cult"
Uh no, you don't actually have to lure honkies, just do whatever you were thinking of and the good ones will show up if they exist.
My first question to test the waters is "what does socialism mean to you?"
Anyone who fails to mention at least some variant of "from each according to their ability, to each according to their work" (with the exceptions for those unable or unfit to work) as an important part of the process that equalizes and neutralizes class is questionable.
The tweet itself is kind of just holier-than-thou grandstanding, but it does raise a point I've worried about before. The U.S. government has offered reforms to the white working class in order to defuse domestic socialist movements in the past, with great success. If they did the same again with student debt forgiveness and some version of M4A, I really do worry that a lot of the fledgling socialist energy we're seeing now would dissipate. At least among the (very large) downwardly-mobile white millenial contingent.
