https://twitter.com/stealyoredbull/status/1369310124125413379

  • CyborgMarx [any, any]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Doesn't matter how regressive the US was, it was still a social democracy, GI bill, Cola contracts, Reuther's Treaty of Detroit, creation of Social Security and Medicare, Section 8 Housing Program, Federal Works Agency, Mutual Ownership Defense Housing Division, the US being the primary backer of the Bretton Woods system, the US was the world's leading innovator in socdem tech

    Social democracy ain't about being woke

    • Pezevenk [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Since when did I say it is about being "woke"? Regressive doesn't only mean "not woke". And what even is "socdem tech"? European social democrats went far beyond any of what you are describing, nationalizing big sections of the economy, creating public health systems. You can even see what Europe social democrats said about Roosevelt, Truman etc at the time, who were explicitly emphasising they weren't "socialists" which is what they used to call themselves. The US never had as powerful a labour movement as Europe.

      • CyborgMarx [any, any]
        ·
        3 years ago

        lol what are you talking about, Europe was a post/pro-fascist pile of rubble while the United States was busy establishing the Keynesian global consensus, eurotrash need to cut it out with this utopian "socialist" pan-European mythology bullshit, that's not how anything happened, while the US dropped the ball on healthcare it wrote the entire rulebook on how to create a Keynesian export lead macro-economy which is the only reason the barbarous snow-apes of Europe can claim to even have healthcare

        Regressive doesn’t only mean “not woke”.

        Yes it does, since you can't claim the US wasn't a social democracy on political and economic merits, it has to be the social repressiveness alone, which is literally why a word like "woke" or "not woke" is used

        • Pezevenk [he/him]
          ·
          3 years ago

          Oh my god this is embarrassing. Beyond the fact that you obviously don't know what progressive or regressive means in terms of leftist politics and are apparently unaware that it has meaning beyond its use by Democrats, the rest of your post is also aggressively ignorant of history.

          First of all, do you know what country Keynes came from? Furthermore, since apparently you seem to think social democracy and keynesianism have been one and the same throughout all history, wanna know what party he belonged to?

          The US was last or almost last in most of the big demands. For instance, almost all of Europe had nationally established the 8 hour work day before 1920, it took the US until the New Deal to do that. Something similar happened with prohibition of child labour, union protection, etc. You talk about healthcare as if it is only a thing because of US Keynsianism (lmao) when the first social health insurance system was in Germany in 1883, and it wasn't even socdems who did it, it was fucking Otto von Bismarck. Socdems had been in power on many places within Europe long before FDR, even for many years in some places (look up Red Vienna for example). Also does the Popular Front in Spain ring any bells?

          Post war, the US went through a period of keynesianism but again it was still the preeminent proponent of limited concessions and limited intervention compared to everyone else, and allowed much less labour power, which is evidenced by how hard they tried to sabotage or antagonize not just communists but even some socdems in Europe. For instance Olof Palme in Sweden, which lead to a brief rupture of US-Swedish relations in the 70s. Meanwhile the US had installed a bunch of puppet regimes the intelligence services of which they DIRECTLY controlled and which they used to prevent the rise not just of communists, but also persecute more radical socdems such as PASOK and its predecessors. Most European countries didn't go through as crazed anticommunist fervor during the Cold War as the US, except for the ones with US puppet regimes, which helped with labour power. The much larger public sectors, broader welfare states and much stronger unions in Europe didn't come out of nowhere, they were for the most part built BEFORE the mid 80s and started deteriorating together with the American ones, and the concessions by FDR didn't come without precedent, stuff like that had been happening in Europe even before the 20th century, and especially when the social democrats were in charge even before the great depression. Throughout the 20th century and especially post WWII the US and to a lesser extent the UK were considered the preeminent bulwarks of conservatism, and I don't mean social, but especially economic. Does the fact that unlike pretty much every place in Europe, the US never had a socdem party or a particularly powerful communist party not sound any alarm bells for you? A number of European counties had explicitly communist parties coming in first or second in elections (though they never managed to form a government or do a successful revolt, although they tried in at least 3 different occasions).

          I don't know if that nonsense you are spouting comes from genuine ignorance or some kind of weird nationalist sentiment but it is objectively wrong and ridiculous. Idk where the meme calling the US a social democracy came from but it is very new. This has nothing to do with Europe being "utopian", it wasn't, it was a horrible place and the restrictions of social democracy became horribly evident especially when it started deteriorating, but what you are saying is simply ahistorical. Excluding a brief period around the New Deal, throughout the 20th century the US was the most anti-labor country around, because its isolation from other countries as well as rapid economic growth and establishment of a robust surveillance state meant it was harder for labour movements to grow and get influenced by movements in other countries, and the white population was more content because they could expect wages to grow just by virtue of the ridiculous growth.

          • CyborgMarx [any, any]
            ·
            3 years ago

            Beyond the fact that you obviously don’t know what progressive or regressive means in terms of leftist politics and are apparently unaware that it has meaning beyond its use by Democrats

            Claims I don't the meaning of the words yet fails to provide the actually apparent meaning, subtly revealing that you yourself are fully aware that these words are fluid in meaning and based on definitions that shift depending on the person using it

            First of all, do you know what country Keynes came from?

            Keynes was famously ignored in his own country by Parliament in favor the infamous 'Treasury View' this state of affairs continued all the way into the post-war era and is a contributing reason for Churchills loss, I know my history bruh :)

            since apparently you seem to think social democracy and keynesianism have been one and the same throughout all history, wanna know what party he belonged to?

            lol WTF is this gibberish, there is no social democracy without Keynesian general theory, it was the foundational organizing principle of the post-war consensus and provided the social liberals with the necessary academic clout needed to shift certain factions of industrial capital toward state-broker capitalism

            Post war, the US went through a period of keynesianism but again it was still the preeminent proponent of limited concessions and limited intervention compared to everyone else

            Limited social democracy is still social democracy, you're undermining your own point, all social democracies had differing regimes of capital accumulation which necessitated differing manifestations of Keynesian economic theory and practice

            and allowed much less labour power, which is evidenced by how hard they tried to sabotage or antagonize not just communists but even some socdems in Europe

            Competition and power plays between different national factions of global capital is perfectly in line with the nation-state ethos at the heart of the social democratic vision of society

            Meanwhile the US had installed a bunch of puppet regimes the intelligence services of which they DIRECTLY controlled and which they used to prevent the rise not just of communists

            We're talking about the manifestation of social democracy in Europe and the United States not the oppression of communist in Europe by US empire, you're deliberately trying to conflate socdem political movements in Europe with communist movement in Europe,

            Throughout the 20th century and especially post WWII the US and to a lesser extent the UK were considered the preeminent bulwarks of conservatism, and I don’t mean social, but especially economic

            I'm sorry you can repeat this horseshit all day long, it isn't true, the US literally underwrote the economies of the European social democracies, that fact alone made it the preeminent broker of the post-war era, along with massive public works projects, unprecedented expansion of the industrial sector and creation of the housing and education programs that dwarfed anything attempt by both cost and population, US conservatisism were only bulwarks in the realm of culture and social relations not economic management

            but especially economic. Does the fact that unlike pretty much every place in Europe, the US never had a socdem party or a particularly powerful communist party not sound any alarm bells for you?

            That's not simply an expression of economic conservatism, that is the result of POLITICAL institutional structures centered around the electoral systems of those specific countries, and let's not pretend the so-called communist and socdem parties were a universal expression of proletariat organizing, many of these parties were explicitly liberal in outlook, theory and structure. Most of their members wouldn't have been seen as out of place among the country clubs of the American New Dealers, you simultaneously over-sell the radicalism of European socdem movements and under-sell the radicalism of the American New Deal, you have a poor grasp of American labor history

            Excluding a brief period around the New Deal

            The New Deal lasted thirty years, the Bretton Woods system lasted thirty years, the subsidized expansion of the American middle class lasted THIRTY YEARS, what are you talking about, the US was a social democracy, a racist, imperial, blood soaked social democracy that collapsed in the 70s

            and the white population was more content because they could expect wages to grow just by virtue of the ridiculous growth.

            This was literally every social democracy, you are describing a feature of the socdem ideology, not some American particularity