Absolutely! A brilliant summary of history and late stage capitalism. And as for what is killing ( or has killed) the Democratic Party is corporatism, failing to fight for the average person, and continuing to prop up the aged old guard who are clueless about the reality of most Americans’ lives. Thank you for posting this! Sharing!!!
What is killing the Democratic Party is the leadership giving preference to corporate lobbyist$ and themselves, and not taking care of working families. Clinton pushing NAFTA caused millions of rust belt voters to lose their union jobs which greatly reduced their standard of living, now working at 1/2 prior pay, little or no benefits and no retirement or job protections. Did anyone think those millions whose livelihoods were greatly diminished by Clinton were going to vote for a Clinton in 2016? Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. That set up people voting for a false populist and got us Trump. There were other negative contributions for a later in depth analysis after we all unite to stop us falling into complete authoritarian rule. P. S. Check out my substack “Life on a Pale Blue Dot”. It is free. Inspired by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan.
The Democratic Party is what's killing the Democratic Party. Democratic Socialism is the only thing that might have a chance at saving it. A remote chance, but a chance nonetheless.
No as we practice Democratic Socialism in our country. Capitalism without Socialism is Fascism. Socialism means simply, For The People. And without the middle class, there is no democracy. If anything, getting back to the people is what’s needed or we willl lose the Democratic Party because Centrists are Capitalists for corporations and the majority of the voters seems to have had enough of that.
Nice reminder of the history. As someone who knew folks who participated in the fights like the 1934 Minneapolis Teamsters I still think about how far the public discourse has drifted and shifted and been reframed by lousy corporate propaganda and by a lazier chicken-shit middle and working class, apathetic voters easily fooled and frightened by false fire.
Let's fight again. Start by talking about it. I work with fascists and they are not serious people. But they talk all the time and parrot empty slogans. Their emptier heads are full of sound and fury. They are old and will die soon, as will I.
But nor before I share a few things and help keep hope and the fighting spirit alive.
"The communists, at their extreme, think the state should own and control all of it"
That's not what communism is. These 3 forms of government are not separate entities; Marxism and dialectical materialism state that these are stages of society that progress one after the other. Socialism will replace capitalism (as a "dictatorship of the proletariat", where the means of production are seized by the working class).
Communism is Marx's theoretical endpoint of civilization - a stateless, classless, moneyless society.
Its impossible to give up some idealism isnt it? Democrats thought that education for all could help us understand our ideals and work towards better goals, capitalists give us space myths to misdirect/use our idealism.
I dearly wish that people who should know better would stop conflating:
- communism and socialism
- socialism that proposes social policies for public service with with socialism that calls for abolition of all private property
- socialism with well regulated capitalism.
There is plenty of socialism in the USA: public schools (so far), tax supported police, fire, roads, parks, and some vital utilities.
Unregulated capitalism with governmental protections such as tariffs, bail outs, tax "incentives", depletion allowances, a foreign service dedicate to promoting the interests of American corporations free of charge to them, and so on and so on.
As it is this phony debate between "democratic socialism" that is scary and the self-bestowed labels of "centrist" and "moderate" for the Democrats who favor corporations and share markets over the interests of the majority of the citizenry is a dishonest and destructive discussion.
Even those who should know better continue to muddy the waters.
The simple question is who governments should serve: the only real majority in the country - working class and middle class citizens or a smaller and smaller group of people who taking more and more of the wealth under laws that favor them instead of all of us.
I agree with you. Marx also recognized that the middle class is the seat of intellectual, creative and progressive ideas and action. That is why of course the Capitalists, with Reagan a good marker, have been working to destroy what middle class is left. Trump is interesting because he so openly exemplifies this.
I hasve sa few problems with the way you develop your thesis, Corbin.
First, you keep saying "we" gave this and that away. Yes...and no! While we allowed the neocons and capitalists to clean the table and leave only crumbs for the rest of uss, it was a long term business strategy to poison discussion by labelling anything for the people as "communist" or "socialist." Let's be clear that "we" didn't give anything away. It was taken from us through long term, manipulative, and clever messaging by folks with a vested interest in an outcome that favored them. I think it's important to name them and shame them - to call it what it really is.
Second, because of that very clever and successful campaign, the word "socialism" has become poison in the United States. It would certainly be better branding if the Democratic Socialists called themselves something else. Let's stop using the term socialism altogether. Rather, let's just talk about sensible and common sense solutions for problems that plague the vast majority of Americans. Those are solutions that most Americans would vote for, I think.
Third, you raise the question of AI at the end of your post. I think it's a serious issue that needs to be addressed. But it's a specific issue within the larger question you pose: who should control and benefit from the productive capacity of the country?
In my view, capitalism encourages diversity and maximizes alternatives. That makes any system extremely robust and flexible. (Compare it to the brittleness of centrally controlled, top-down systems.) However, capital tends to concentrate in fewer and fewer hands over time, which ultimately defeats the strengths of the system. Accordingly, it needs to be controlled and regulated for the public good. The easiest way to accomplish this is for a shared ownership in the fruits of the system.
So, to answer the question you pose in your title, I think common sense solutions to serious problems definitely have a place in the Democratic Party!
I appreciate the pushback. There's a real reason I keep saying "we.
If Americans keep treating the government as an "other," then we lose our agency to fix it. Our government is a reflection of us, deeply manipulated and undemocratic right now, sure, but still a reflection of us. Look at the 1960s and 70s. When civil rights burgeoned, the elite weaponized racism, xenophobia, and racial resentment to push the corporate blueprint laid out in the Powell Memo. They tricked us into dismantling our own power. The problem is us. That's the bad news and the good news, because it means the fix is us too.
And that's why we can't give up on words like "socialism" or "public ownership." Every time we run from a word because they scream "communism," we surrender the actual solution. We tried that branding retreat with reproductive rights, healthcare, and infrastructure, and we lost the capacity to compete on all of them.
Capitalism builds great products and turns a profit, but it can't build a society, a community, or a culture. Those investments have to come from us. And if we just outsource those public goods to private corporations and try to "pay the bill," that bill balloons way past the point of reason or affordability. We have to stop letting them dictate the dictionary imo.
One of the strangest things about this modern dialogue is to hear the GOP lament the loss of manufacturing base in the US - which was the primary fruit of their decades long 'right to work' fight through the rural states. Once the unions were broken, and the Dems were 'playing the game' (i.e. the 'globalization' game), there was no resistance to this process. Now comes the Donald talking about this and the union leaders, clutching at straws, begin to support him.
The Dems did not support the unions at the state level and allowed this to happen. And it is all a big surprise that the Deplorables switched parties?!?
The capitalist owners didn’t give away the means of production to eg Mexico they still owned it and extracted more profit , that is, surplus value —the differential between what it takes to reproduce labor power and the remaining profit. So 1) The Democrats failed to raise taxes sufficiently on off shore extraction. 2) they failed to raise minimum wage in the jobs that remained. 3) companies them off-shored many of the remaining customer service jobs 4) credit cards became more necessary and their usury (more extraction) ballooned. But what caused the Democrats to surrender in this way to the Republicans was as you begin with, anti-communism and attacks on so-called socialism meaning anything the state did to regulate or provide a safety net or “the commons”. DSA is reversing both anti-socialism and the idea that state provision and regulation is undemocratic. But the sticking point has always been Americanism, nationalism, imperialism. Labor made the ill-fated choice of choosing not only narrow trade interest but nationalism. We now have a faint but crucial chance to make globalism mean not corporate extraction elsewherebut recognition that nationalism, permission to extract others resources and labor, is not good for the working class. Unfortunately the New Left and Labor were in conflict about this. This is what DSA with its unifying the theme of Palestine and affordability could finally break through. We wouldn’t need to exploit others if we didn’t have a humongous military, and vice versa.
That's actually becoming less and less, though. As you can see now, with the number of companies that are owned by the Chinese and are producing the tangible products that the world uses, you can see that they actually did indeed sell off or give away the means of production. It's largely died in America. It being the means of production.
Agreed. But large scale military stuff is still made in US and is a major portion of our taxes. I don’t know how much of the new tech is produced here v. Israel. The consumer economy became increasingly separate and produced abroad. My main thought is that unlike in the Vietnam war period anti-communism and nationalism are increasingly irrelevant to younger generations. What about a proposal to break up Amazon as a monopoly? Undo the new Ellison Paramount merger etc
Is it a ridiculous idea to focus on policies, projects, and outcomes? Forget about labels. Look at Mamdani. Be like that.
As for US military power relative to the rest of the world and whether the dollar will continue to be the world's reserve currency, or the US a beacon on a hill if ever it was, those things like being famous after death are well out of anyone's control.
Absolutely! A brilliant summary of history and late stage capitalism. And as for what is killing ( or has killed) the Democratic Party is corporatism, failing to fight for the average person, and continuing to prop up the aged old guard who are clueless about the reality of most Americans’ lives. Thank you for posting this! Sharing!!!
Looking at their approval ratings, the Democratic Party is already near death. Perhaps the Democratic Socialists can save it.
What is killing the Democratic Party is the leadership giving preference to corporate lobbyist$ and themselves, and not taking care of working families. Clinton pushing NAFTA caused millions of rust belt voters to lose their union jobs which greatly reduced their standard of living, now working at 1/2 prior pay, little or no benefits and no retirement or job protections. Did anyone think those millions whose livelihoods were greatly diminished by Clinton were going to vote for a Clinton in 2016? Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. That set up people voting for a false populist and got us Trump. There were other negative contributions for a later in depth analysis after we all unite to stop us falling into complete authoritarian rule. P. S. Check out my substack “Life on a Pale Blue Dot”. It is free. Inspired by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan.
The Democratic Party is what's killing the Democratic Party. Democratic Socialism is the only thing that might have a chance at saving it. A remote chance, but a chance nonetheless.
Brilliant analysis thank you Corbin 🙏🏻
No as we practice Democratic Socialism in our country. Capitalism without Socialism is Fascism. Socialism means simply, For The People. And without the middle class, there is no democracy. If anything, getting back to the people is what’s needed or we willl lose the Democratic Party because Centrists are Capitalists for corporations and the majority of the voters seems to have had enough of that.
Nice reminder of the history. As someone who knew folks who participated in the fights like the 1934 Minneapolis Teamsters I still think about how far the public discourse has drifted and shifted and been reframed by lousy corporate propaganda and by a lazier chicken-shit middle and working class, apathetic voters easily fooled and frightened by false fire.
Let's fight again. Start by talking about it. I work with fascists and they are not serious people. But they talk all the time and parrot empty slogans. Their emptier heads are full of sound and fury. They are old and will die soon, as will I.
But nor before I share a few things and help keep hope and the fighting spirit alive.
Thanks for your efforts.
The Soviet Union (Socialist Republic) had far more to do and made far more sacrifices than Capitalist countries in defeating the Fascists.
"The communists, at their extreme, think the state should own and control all of it"
That's not what communism is. These 3 forms of government are not separate entities; Marxism and dialectical materialism state that these are stages of society that progress one after the other. Socialism will replace capitalism (as a "dictatorship of the proletariat", where the means of production are seized by the working class).
Communism is Marx's theoretical endpoint of civilization - a stateless, classless, moneyless society.
Ok, the StarTrek future then.
Its impossible to give up some idealism isnt it? Democrats thought that education for all could help us understand our ideals and work towards better goals, capitalists give us space myths to misdirect/use our idealism.
I would have titled this op ed "Can Democratic Socialists Save the Democratic Party?"
I was going for open rates. oops
I dearly wish that people who should know better would stop conflating:
- communism and socialism
- socialism that proposes social policies for public service with with socialism that calls for abolition of all private property
- socialism with well regulated capitalism.
There is plenty of socialism in the USA: public schools (so far), tax supported police, fire, roads, parks, and some vital utilities.
Unregulated capitalism with governmental protections such as tariffs, bail outs, tax "incentives", depletion allowances, a foreign service dedicate to promoting the interests of American corporations free of charge to them, and so on and so on.
As it is this phony debate between "democratic socialism" that is scary and the self-bestowed labels of "centrist" and "moderate" for the Democrats who favor corporations and share markets over the interests of the majority of the citizenry is a dishonest and destructive discussion.
Even those who should know better continue to muddy the waters.
The simple question is who governments should serve: the only real majority in the country - working class and middle class citizens or a smaller and smaller group of people who taking more and more of the wealth under laws that favor them instead of all of us.
I agree with you. Marx also recognized that the middle class is the seat of intellectual, creative and progressive ideas and action. That is why of course the Capitalists, with Reagan a good marker, have been working to destroy what middle class is left. Trump is interesting because he so openly exemplifies this.
I hasve sa few problems with the way you develop your thesis, Corbin.
First, you keep saying "we" gave this and that away. Yes...and no! While we allowed the neocons and capitalists to clean the table and leave only crumbs for the rest of uss, it was a long term business strategy to poison discussion by labelling anything for the people as "communist" or "socialist." Let's be clear that "we" didn't give anything away. It was taken from us through long term, manipulative, and clever messaging by folks with a vested interest in an outcome that favored them. I think it's important to name them and shame them - to call it what it really is.
Second, because of that very clever and successful campaign, the word "socialism" has become poison in the United States. It would certainly be better branding if the Democratic Socialists called themselves something else. Let's stop using the term socialism altogether. Rather, let's just talk about sensible and common sense solutions for problems that plague the vast majority of Americans. Those are solutions that most Americans would vote for, I think.
Third, you raise the question of AI at the end of your post. I think it's a serious issue that needs to be addressed. But it's a specific issue within the larger question you pose: who should control and benefit from the productive capacity of the country?
In my view, capitalism encourages diversity and maximizes alternatives. That makes any system extremely robust and flexible. (Compare it to the brittleness of centrally controlled, top-down systems.) However, capital tends to concentrate in fewer and fewer hands over time, which ultimately defeats the strengths of the system. Accordingly, it needs to be controlled and regulated for the public good. The easiest way to accomplish this is for a shared ownership in the fruits of the system.
So, to answer the question you pose in your title, I think common sense solutions to serious problems definitely have a place in the Democratic Party!
John,
I appreciate the pushback. There's a real reason I keep saying "we.
If Americans keep treating the government as an "other," then we lose our agency to fix it. Our government is a reflection of us, deeply manipulated and undemocratic right now, sure, but still a reflection of us. Look at the 1960s and 70s. When civil rights burgeoned, the elite weaponized racism, xenophobia, and racial resentment to push the corporate blueprint laid out in the Powell Memo. They tricked us into dismantling our own power. The problem is us. That's the bad news and the good news, because it means the fix is us too.
And that's why we can't give up on words like "socialism" or "public ownership." Every time we run from a word because they scream "communism," we surrender the actual solution. We tried that branding retreat with reproductive rights, healthcare, and infrastructure, and we lost the capacity to compete on all of them.
Capitalism builds great products and turns a profit, but it can't build a society, a community, or a culture. Those investments have to come from us. And if we just outsource those public goods to private corporations and try to "pay the bill," that bill balloons way past the point of reason or affordability. We have to stop letting them dictate the dictionary imo.
One of the strangest things about this modern dialogue is to hear the GOP lament the loss of manufacturing base in the US - which was the primary fruit of their decades long 'right to work' fight through the rural states. Once the unions were broken, and the Dems were 'playing the game' (i.e. the 'globalization' game), there was no resistance to this process. Now comes the Donald talking about this and the union leaders, clutching at straws, begin to support him.
The Dems did not support the unions at the state level and allowed this to happen. And it is all a big surprise that the Deplorables switched parties?!?
The capitalist owners didn’t give away the means of production to eg Mexico they still owned it and extracted more profit , that is, surplus value —the differential between what it takes to reproduce labor power and the remaining profit. So 1) The Democrats failed to raise taxes sufficiently on off shore extraction. 2) they failed to raise minimum wage in the jobs that remained. 3) companies them off-shored many of the remaining customer service jobs 4) credit cards became more necessary and their usury (more extraction) ballooned. But what caused the Democrats to surrender in this way to the Republicans was as you begin with, anti-communism and attacks on so-called socialism meaning anything the state did to regulate or provide a safety net or “the commons”. DSA is reversing both anti-socialism and the idea that state provision and regulation is undemocratic. But the sticking point has always been Americanism, nationalism, imperialism. Labor made the ill-fated choice of choosing not only narrow trade interest but nationalism. We now have a faint but crucial chance to make globalism mean not corporate extraction elsewherebut recognition that nationalism, permission to extract others resources and labor, is not good for the working class. Unfortunately the New Left and Labor were in conflict about this. This is what DSA with its unifying the theme of Palestine and affordability could finally break through. We wouldn’t need to exploit others if we didn’t have a humongous military, and vice versa.
That's actually becoming less and less, though. As you can see now, with the number of companies that are owned by the Chinese and are producing the tangible products that the world uses, you can see that they actually did indeed sell off or give away the means of production. It's largely died in America. It being the means of production.
Agreed. But large scale military stuff is still made in US and is a major portion of our taxes. I don’t know how much of the new tech is produced here v. Israel. The consumer economy became increasingly separate and produced abroad. My main thought is that unlike in the Vietnam war period anti-communism and nationalism are increasingly irrelevant to younger generations. What about a proposal to break up Amazon as a monopoly? Undo the new Ellison Paramount merger etc
Is it a ridiculous idea to focus on policies, projects, and outcomes? Forget about labels. Look at Mamdani. Be like that.
As for US military power relative to the rest of the world and whether the dollar will continue to be the world's reserve currency, or the US a beacon on a hill if ever it was, those things like being famous after death are well out of anyone's control.
Whatever you are smoking, you should probably stop. 🛑 💨
Vape
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That's much easier to do in the email itself there, Sequoia.
Bye bye, Sequoia!
Bye Fellicia!