13 Jan 2024 7:32 am
Zeets2: "Sorry, but you don't get to pick and choose which policies are and aren't socialist. [R]adical left-wing politicians like AOC and Bernie Sanders continually promote huge socialistic reforms, including his $2.5 TRILLION plan for 'Housing for All,' a new $3 TRILLION tax on oil companies, and a $16.3 TRILLION proposal for the hoax of a 'Green New Deal.' Other socialist demands include higher taxes for everyone, free college tuition for all, a commission to study black reparations, doubling the federal minimum wage, all while supporting the dictatorships of human rights abusers like the Sandinistas and Castro tyrants. You cannot deny that those POLICIES that are ALWAYS present in a socialist's campaign are deeply rooted in their true socialist makeup. What you see as them being fraudulent socialists is nothing more than true socialists simply taking small bites of the socialist apple at a time to implement the full agenda of governmental economic control they desire in their aim to bring full socialism to the country gradually."
Although a reading of the Communist Manifesto will show that revolutionary socialists support reform legislation designed to ease the burdens created by capitalism, we do so with the understanding that, as alluded to in this thread's parent post, capitalist states tend to claw back those reforms eventually. (I wrote: But with the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. and, therefore, the elimination of a countervailing system, the U.S. capitalist state began to claw back New Deal programs and other social reforms. Capitalism is, again, free to be as mean as it needs to be.)Nonetheless, to assert that specific laws and policies created by the capitalist state are socialist is to admit ignorance as to the meaning of socialism. Socialism has one intent: eliminating the capitalist system, not its "reform." Yes, liberal politicians like Bernard Sanders and AOC introduce legislation meant to lessen the devastating social effects of capitalism's massive transfer of wealth from the producing working class to the parasitic capitalist class. Capitalism creates a lack of affordable housing and homelessness via speculation and other factors, and Sanders, AOC, and other typically worthless politicians introduce $2.5 trillion "housing for all" plans in a futile effort to end homelessness. And they propose $2.5 trillion tax plans and $16.3 trillion proposals to alleviate capitalism's disastrous environmental consequences. But those things aren't ever going to happen. To understand that, one only has to consider that then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the Green New Deal “the Green Dream or whatever.” She also literally eulogized Pete Peterson on the House floor. Pete Peterson’s life’s ambition was to destroy the Social Security and Medicare programs. To be sure, to confuse reformist legislation with socialism is to confess that one doesn't understand socialist thought.
Zeets2: "You cannot deny that those POLICIES that are ALWAYS present in a socialist's campaign are deeply rooted in their true socialist makeup."
But I and millions of other revolutionary socialists (do) deny that. If that weren't the case, virtually all other revolutionaries and I would support those politicians rhetorically and monetarily. But we don't because they're not socialists.
Zeets2: "Other socialist demands include higher taxes for everyone, free college tuition for all, a commission to study black reparations, doubling the federal minimum wage..." Again, those things will fail to come to fruition because capitalism is free to be as mean as it needs to be. Finally, what books penned by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Mao, Trotsky, etc., have been read by Zeets2?