Sorry that I haven't been back, been busy working. Running a small business really contextualizes how much capitalism sucks for the self-employed who don't reach the heights of market trading, it kinda comes at you all at once. I'm constantly exhausted. And to top that off, I'm in isolation now because some prick decided to come into the store COVID-positive and physically interact with me and my mother without consent. ANYWAYS...
To start, thumbs up to Chile. A full constitutional re-write is a massive undertaking, but one that offers up so much to gain. If anyone with the power to do something would actually listen, I would make one recommendation, it's to try not to make it completely unassailable. Constitutions need to be living documents with opportunities to change it as a reflection of the modern world. There's a delicate balance to make sure the will of the people is respected by not making it TOO easy to amend and thus subjecting it to conflicting political interests, while not making it too hard to adjust for (hopefully) many generations to come and their likely different material conditions.
You cannot end racism under capitalism, even temporarily, as long as it relies on imperialism and exploitation of the global south. Neocolonialism is an important bedrock of modern white supremacy.
Debatable. I think it's theoretically possible to end racism under capitalism, but that would mean capitalism collapses, as it's one of its main pillars, and I very much doubt capitalism could survive long without the cheap labor of either local black/brown people, or faraway Asian workers.
Of course, you're 100% right to insist that ending capitalism won't solve racism/sexism/transphobia/etc by itself, as these can totally exist in other systems even if less systemic, and could even serve as pillars of another system entirely. But as they're the pillars of the current capitalistic system, ending them requires ending capitalism one way or another.
Otherwise, I think I mostly agree with your post (at work here, not much time to read 😭 ).
Well... isn't ending capitalism kinda the entire first half of the whole "fun" of being a socialist? This only encourages the notion of ending racism ASAP, as far as I'm concerned. ;)
That little giggle of a response aside, even with the "end" of racism (which is just shorthand for reducing it to a very small minority, since I doubt anything could purge it utterly from society outside of making it a felony), exploitation of the global south and Asia would continue, because that is arguably less motivated by racism and more a sort of xenophobic ambivalence that may or may not be rooted in racism, depending mostly on the individual. If one of the Western nations had utterly collapsed into a similar state as the nations of the global south, you can bet that the imperialist mindset of the West would have worked double-time to exploit them for their nation's resource and agriculture wealth (modern Russia does that with the global east with a slight degree of regularity... but modern Russia and China have become no better than the West with regard to imperialistic behaviour of their neighbours, even the socialist ones). The difference would only be visible by how they might actually lift a finger to try and stop such a collapse at first because it would be a majority-white population, before sliding into the same bullshit behaviour.
Also
Terrell I would again urge it's not as simple as "capitalism/neoliberalism or socialism, which do you prefer?"
If it was as simple as "the marginalized realize capitalism screws them over and socialism is the future" then we would have had a revolution in America decades ago. Capitalism/neoliberalism has gotten
incredibly good at co-opting the imagery and spirit of progressive and radical movements; just look at the whole #girlboss thing as one example. Meanwhile the radical history of black socialism in this country has been completely erased by mainstream media and education. This is a strongly antisocialist country down to its bones, where even the tiniest scraps of welfare are fought, bled and died for. Just look at the demonization of unions. So working class people are already worked to the bone and don't have the time or energy to read theory/history or organize.
See, this is precisely where I see the issue. "The marginalized realize capitalism screws them over" is something a huge swath of the marginalized already fully understand. Where the failure occurs is not being convincing enough to have them complete that sentence of yours. Because you are correct, there are many presented options, including continuing on with capitalism and trying to reform it (quite literally applying the "bootstraps" mythology to capitalism itself and not seeing the irony in that, but instead seeing a false sense of potential in a broken-from-inception system that demands class division), but socialism is simply not seen as a compelling answer to their uniquely-expressed oppression, and part of that falls on those of us who are already a part of the socialist movement in whatever capacity and have been for a considerable amount of time.
I know that I have spent a considerable amount of time realigning my ideals over the past 10 years or so to ensure comfortable advocacy for socialism to the Indigenous population of Canada, to frame it as the closest expression to the societal traditions of their ancestors as they would be applied in modern life before colonialism attempted to completely strip those traditions away. In fact, I think Indigenous peoples would have a great wealth of information from their cultures to impart upon socialist discourse overall and, again, that should be encouragement enough to advocate for a MUCH greater participation from marginalized groups, just as with arts & culture opening new perspectives with their inclusion within those spaces.
The modern American socialist movement is incredibly nascent (maybe what, 5 years?), so yes, it has started largely with middle class white people who have the means and luxury to learn and study this history and theory. And it's still an example of a greater racism in our society that the Chapos of the world are the most well known faces while the many great black and brown leftist media voices are drowned out, and we should absolutely do better to promote those views. I personally though turned to leftism around 2014 in the wake of the rampant police brutality and learning of the history of black socialism in America. We have our work cut out for us, but we should not cede ground to the liberals that socialism is a white man thing.
We only cede ground to liberals if we refuse to own our failures and deficits. If a liberal comes at a socialist by saying it's a position for white men, we can simply say "yeah, we know there's a problem there, it's partly created by segregation and an inequal access to higher learning or resources to inform of alternatives among marginalized communities due to capitalism and McCarthyist "red scare" tactics of removing socialist/anti-capitalist discourse out of all but university settings (
as shown here as recently as this year), and we are with you in ending that knowledge disparity, but here's the litany of examples of what we've done and are trying to do to fix the problem
right now" in lieu of just being indignant or hostile to the suggestion as so many tend to be, then it takes all the teeth out of the argument. And that includes doing things like trying to replace folks like Chapo with more meaningful voices that can speak to a wider range of experiences.
To this point, it's perhaps time we utterly and completely stopped turning a blind eye to the lousy faux-socialist shock-jocks who use far-left/socialist talking points merely to rattle cages, who are strictly "anti-establishment" (which is itself a dogwhistle for "anti-liberal") and care a fair bit less about how that anti-establishment position is expressed or the fact that it's expressed unevenly (such as conveniently ignoring that bigotry is one of the world's longest-entrenched establishments) and those who that appeals to, who believe that the modern fight for equality is propagandized and near-exclusively used as a convenient political weapon (especially when they believe it to be an attack on a social status quo that doesn't warrant dismantling), folks who believe that social justice is an unneeded insertion or distraction into discourse of economic equality and the means to achieve it.
I think we have enough decent people on-side that we can start being picky-choosey about who it is that gets an abundance of the oxygen in the room and who gets to monopolize the megaphone. Do we REALLY want our detractors weeding the undesirables out so that they can give themselves another pat on the back and act like they cleaned up our mess while we allegedly sat idly by? Because that's one way that a movement loses momentum.
Banglish getting banned sucks, I was enjoying his presence. Feel like this OT is cursed, once people start posting in it they get banned lol
Yeah I've deliberately avoided saying things I want to say so I don't get banned lol
And boy sometimes it's hard!
Can't say I've ever held back on anything ever and I only ever got a single 48-hour ban if I recall correctly, and I'm pretty sure I legit deserved it.
Good. Honestly, my biggest concern with Morales was he seemed to be under the misconception that his party and their popularity could not survive without him and refused to groom a replacement so he could step aside. If those numbers are truly accurate, then Morales definitely should have had more faith in the people of Bolivia to be more interested in the policies themselves and not the face behind them.
That being said, I understand what motivates the impulse behind term limits, but in party politics, leaders should be ousted in intra-party primaries and leadership votes and then give the populace the option to oust that leader if the party won't, not have them forced to resign because of the implication that extended stays in power inherently increase the likelihood of corruption and authoritarianism.
"Human Rights" is such a weird seemingly progressive yet imperialistic concept.
"Here are the rules WE say YOU should comply to."
Reading on the history on human rights statements is pretty interesting on how women were excluded from the first statements, how "property rights" have come and gone in various statements, etc.
Some human rights are pretty self-evident and only needed codifying in laws because of people who ignore self-evident reality. They're also an evolving concept as we better understand humanity and the human condition a little better than the people who came before us, rather than being beholden to those old ideals.
But yes, those are things that should be arrived at naturally or imparted compassionately, not through imperialistic force.
But considering we were just talking about Bolivia, seems to me that imperialism usually chooses to force people into power who oppose human rights, if the past few decades are any indication, because of how favourably it works out for the imperialists.
how do you do, fellow communists
Is that you, Steve Buscemi?
I work in the field of conflict resolution/peace building and it is more than a bit of a bummer to see just how fucking white the field is when you are looking at the bigger national and international agencies. And honestly "nonpartisan violence prevention" seems to be synonymous with maintaining the status quo. Was in a meeting with people from all over talking about violence prevention that could result during or after the election in the US, and every single example provided was preventing violence from civilians. When I pointed out that violence is also likely to come from the police, they were stumped. Like, the idea of police being dangerous was something they hadn't considered. I swear these people write a few books and then get stuck sniffing their own farts and don't bother evolving. The field seems to attract the worst kinds of white saviors.
For any of y'all interested, Fania Davis is one of my favorite voices in the field right now, particularly with the idea of combining the warrior and the healer. You can read a short exerpt from one of her books
here.
I want to talk about this bit in particular though, especially the last paragraph quoted.
That last paragraph in particular, I feel like I see this all the time and it is so fucking deflating. You see orgs and groups that sound great on paper and have individuals doing great work, but those individuals are not being supported by their "leaders" who tend to have the most fragile fucking egos. Do as we say not as we do. :/
This is part of what I have been talking about.