How to spot a threat to Democracy: Bernie Sanders and Philip K. Dick on radicalism and revolt

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49. I think you already know what's incorrect in your thinking...

it's called cognitive dissonance. The fight for real leftist change in human social relations can never be reconciled with any form of capitalism. The end result of capitalism will always be oppression and exploitation of workers and the complete degradation of the working class in the long run. So thoroughly do you identify with "some different type of capitalism" - as the only way forward - that you take any criticism of that stance as a personal affront. Leftist politics is not about what YOU think is real in the subjective. Leftist politics is about what's real and what isn't in objective material and historical reality. Capitalism can never provide an equitable distribution of production and resources in a way that takes care of the population as A WHOLE. That is the bottom line and there is no historical narrative that proves otherwise as evidenced by the impoverishment and the death of millions on the ground throughout the history of capitalist social relations.

The only thing idiotic here was your absurd premise that -- "We will have a new and improved capitalism that is nothing like the old capitalism and from there our movement will grow and lift the boats of the dispossessed and oppressed throughout the lands." There is a difference between calling you an idiot personally and calling your ridiculous illusions idiotic. Whether you're an idiot or not is irrelevant. That's a criticism of a bankrupt ideology and your inability to reconcile that fantasy with material reality and not you as a person. It is not possible to reconcile your vision - of "a new type of capitalism" that will "save humanity" - when the entire history of capitalism proves that to be a false notion.

It is also reality that the New Deal and the "middle class prosperity" - that some realized for a short period - was nothing more than a bribe and crumbs thrown from the capitalists to keep the working class in line and pacified. If Sanders wants to get out a message... he needs to address and start talking about working class political power and put this feel good "help for the middle class" bullshit to rest. The middle-class is a decomposing social structure that was nothing more than a few decades long aberration in capitalist social relations that lifted SOME and certainly not ALL. Capitalism IN ANY FORM makes a "social contract" of what's good for THE WHOLE impossible. A foundation built on the expropriation of labor of the working class (which is the vast majority) and the commons is not a social contract at all.

As far as your block goes... that is on you. Sticking their fingers in their ears to avoid the truth is the easy way out for many who can't take the next step and denounce capitalism as the parasitical scourge on the human condition it is and always has been. I'll leave you with this old bit below from an actual leftist on such matters as it describes such thinking with perfect clarity.


"You know you are a reactionary Philistine when you insist on attaching an adjective to the word "Capitalism", as in "Crony Capitalism", "Financial Capitalism", "Disaster Capitalism", "Shock Capitalism", "Unregulated Capitalism", Private-Equity Capitalism, or that old standby, "Greedy Capitalism". It is Capitalism, pure and simple, and there can be no confusion. What we see is what it is.

Perhaps there was slightly more justification for this jive two decades ago. Today, there is no possibility of a debate. The End of Ideology has itself ended. Instead of bringing "stability" to the world, capitalism has brought depression and fragmentation. Instead of bringing democracy and prosperity to the world, it has wrecked local societies where they hung on by a fingernail. No extended criticism is needed because criticism itself - social, political, and economic - has become a criticism of capitalism.

It has been this way for a long time. In the 19th century, capitalism was that which ripped small holders from the land, chained children to machinery, and pushed entire populations, on threat of extinction, across the surface of the earth. In the first part of the 20th century, Capitalism was synonymous with War and Fascism. Imperialism? Colonialism? Famine? Genocide? All the faces of Capitalism...

They told you that Capitalism changed or can be changed ? They lied.

If you hang your hat on reforming Capitalism, believe that your "freedoms" depend on the continuation of Capitalism, or think that Capitalism is "still preferable to everything else", all it means is that your turn hasn't come yet...

and you speak in the tongues of the reactionary Philistine..."