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matthew--sorry you didnt get it.
there is sometimes a problem in trying to talk on a general level in a message board.
earlier in the thread, yakk posted a series of general propositions about various political systems and their relations to what was taken to be a list of economic regimes.
the list was really quite odd, and was certainly not anything that could or should be defended on either conceptual or historical grounds.
i could have chosen any number of points to go after, but this seemed the simplest.
i figured that you or others who occupy roughly your political position here could use the attitude i outlined toward the right in a single post in a thread some months ago as a way to dismiss whatever i say when you dont like it--go for it, friend--it really makes no difference to me---it seems like a thinly veiled ad hominem---which is the usual recourse for conservatives who (here as elsewhere) have nothing of substance to say.
the thread is starting to move away from its here is very strange intitial premises of debate. for example:
that democratic socialism can be opposed to democracy is simply nuts. i dont know anyone, anywhere (outside the planet limbaugh) who has actually looked at democratic socialism in any way who could possible maintain this position.
it not even worth laughing at.
what this argument from the planet limbaugh does reveal, however, is how far these folk are willing to go in their opposition to any redistribution of wealth---the right is willing to ridicule the very ideas of social justice, of economic justice, etc as correlates of their hatred of the redistribution of wealth (and along with that of the functionality of captialism--they prefer fictions like horatio alger stories, which they treat as documentaries).---democratic socialism has problems, but the one thing that you can say in its favor regardless is that it is a way of interacting with capitalism that takes those ideas seriously and tries to implement relations between capital and the rest of us built around them.
how dare anyone try to limit the absolute prvileges of the holders of capital, particularly in the interests of something as trivial as social stability?
that soviet-style "communism" can be opposed to capitalism is questionable--how you see it depends upon what you take as your point of departure--if you look at relations of production (how things were organized in actual production), it looked much more like a mutation of capitalism in terms of ownership that resulted in a system of production with all the worst features of capitalism fully intact, and even the minimal the brakes on exploitation capitalism provides at the structural level (that you can leave your job) removed...but i am sure that in a context where arguments like the above about democratic socialism are somehow operational that these questions will not even register.
another, even more obvious point:
you cannot say that "marx invented socialism"--unless of course you know nothing about the history you are talking about, in which case you can say what you want, and it can be understood as fantasy.
you cannot say that stalinism was the necessary result of marx's work or of a politics based on that work. this too is historically wrong, etc.
what is really funny is that you also hear conservative pundits equating actual democracy with socialism. the right is really not interested in anything resembling democratic debate, is not interested at all in ceding power to people in anything like a meaningful way.
manx is right: the present american regime uses democracy as a marketing category. democracy is to america as jiffy is to peanut butter--a brand name that indicates a general attitude, a way of patterning consumer demand. in bushworld in particular, the term democracy tells you no more about the nature of the american system in either its domestic or colonial variants than jiffy tells you about the nature of peanut butter.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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