DNC 2024

[Big RR]

I recall hearing about Daley's Chicago the saying was, in Chicago they cherish the right to vote so much that even the dead get a vote.

[liberty]

This explains why the Ukrainians have been forced to fight with our hands tied. What would you think if you learned a presidential candidate's father was a Nazi; how would that strike you? I just learned that Harris's father Donald Harris is a Marxist communist. That makes him a mass murder by proxy; don't you agree? She is working behind the scenes to sabotage the Ukrainian war effort: she wants Putin to win. She was raised by a communist so what else would you expect from her. She's supposed to be Estranged from her father, but have you ever heard her denounce him? However, it would not surprise me if she did; communists have no morals or loyalty the only thing that matters to them is power.

[MajGenl.Meade]

This explains why babble babble babble babble ignorant babble babble babble babble rubbish babble babble babble babble ignorant babble babble babble babble rubbish babble babble babble babble ignorant babble babble babble babble rubbish babble babble babble babble ignorant babble babble babble babble rubbish

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_J._Harris

[Bicycle Bill]

The only bit of accurate information that you can draw from anything liberty posts is that his computer is powered on.

-"BB"-

[liberty]

The only bit of accurate information that you can draw from anything liberty posts is that his computer is powered on.

Are you saying Harris's father is not a Marxist?

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/harri ... economist/

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris' father was a marxist economist.
Rating:
True
True
About this rating

In July 2024, after U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris entered the race to become president, a claim that her father was a marxist economist began to circulate online (archived):

[Burning Petard]

Sorry. I followed the link and read the entire 'proof' and I am not convinced. It seems to say any post Keynesian economist is a Marxist. But it does a poor job of establishing that.

snailgate.

[Scooter]

Yeah, claiming that any criticism of capitalism makes a Marxist is pretty weak sauce.

[Sue U]

It's like saying any physicist today is a Newtonian. You might as well say Donald Harris is an Aristotelian economist for all that means. Virtually every economist doing national government economic policy today is a product of Keynesian theory and application, which was a critique of the unrestrained capitalism that resulted in boom-and-bust business cycles and which built on certain arguments that had been made by Marx more than a generation earlier. But to call Keynes (or Harris) a Marxist would be idiotic.

Oh, but look who's doing it.

ETA:

Here's a fun chart I found on the Wiki illustrating the cross-pollination of current economic thinking:

[Big RR]

And FWIW, even if he did embrace Marxist economic theory, it says nothing about whether he would support Russia or not, and especially, support
Putin, who appears to be more capitalist than many in other countries. Russia is hardly the workers' "paradise".

[Burning Petard]

In Econ 101 class many years ago, the Prof said 'Marxism" is the ONLY economic theory; it is the only body of scholarship that attempts to explain all economic behavior. He also said the Soviet system if far from Marxist, the the only country coming even close to a Marxist system is Israel.

He went on to say every other 'economic theory' only attempts to cover a carefully limited sector of economic activity, and no country has ever successfully used a free-market capitalistic system. In my own observation, NOBODY wants a real free-market, capitalistic system. Everybody wants the market tilted by government interferance to their particular advantage, same goes for the 'level playing field'. There are some sectors of economic activity that are free-market capitalist. Usually those things are called 'organized crime'

Back in 1950's when I was a freshman in a public school high school, a required class was called 'civics.' It covered the basics of the popular rules of the federal government. Most of the time was spent explaining the evils of the USSR and Communism. The teacher demonstrated a remarkable vocabulary of Spanish cuss words when I asked "If communism and the USSR are so bad, why do we work so hard to fight it? Shouldn't it just collapse of its own failures if we just leave it alone?" And of course that is exactly what ended the 'communist state' of Albania.

There is an amazing quality of tolerance by Trump's followers. Veterans cheer as he sneers at the Medal of Honor. Christian preachers cheer as he demonstrates no respect for the greatest commandment. Social conservatives cheer the man who has three wives and no demonstrated family values beyond those of The Godfather. (what the heck is going on now as he takes the fictional Hannibal Lector as a role model?) The true believers in no government regulation cheer as he walks away from frequent debts by bankruptcy protections. It is Trump people who are screaming the loudest that the government should interfere in the private sector to lower cost of living and inflation.

snailgate.

[Big RR]

BP--I have to agree about Marxism and your professor's statements about the USSR; although I think he was likely referring to the kibbutzes in Israel and not the country as a whole being Marxist. Personally, I think Marxism can be the basis of a democratic society if a group is sufficiently small; after college I had some friends who moved into a commune and lived their for a years. All the resources were shared according to need and the commune was run on a town meeting democratic basis with all decisions being made by the community, subject to an underlying statement of individual rights. I visited several times and it was doing fine, although it was a distance from where I lived and I eventually lost touch. The "trick" from what I saw, is that all were treated the same and no one had any higher status position than anyone else; the doctor had the same status as the farmer--all performed their work for the benefit of themselves, their families, and the community--it did work with a democratic form of government.

Sadly, the bigger a society gets, the more the human urge among some to one-up others and lead/subjugate them becomes a driving force. Some people are just not content to do their work and live well, they need to feel that they are rewarded for being "better" than the others. I seriously it could work on a large scale basis.

And your assessment of capitalism in the US (and elsewhere) is true as well; those in power want a government who protects their advantages and guarantees their power over others.

[Bicycle Bill]

The true believers in no government regulation cheer as he walks away from frequent debts by bankruptcy protections. It is Trump people who are screaming the loudest that the government should interfere in the private sector to lower cost of living and inflation.

snailgate.

To be truthful, what the Trump 'True Believers' want is little or no government regulations on things like air quality, environmental impact, safety of workers, quality and purity standards, and so on, claiming that it's the cost of meeting these standards that drives prices up ... and like with any lie or legend, there is a germ of truth in it.

But at that point they are still trying to beat the broken economic voodoo drum of Reaganomics — the trickle-down theory, which posits that the cost savings realized by this will then be reflected in lower prices...   and we all know how that went, don't we?   Fact is, the cost of production would go down — but experience has show that the end price to the consumer will remain static, profits will go up, stock prices will soar and speculators and those in the market will make bank, and the rich fat-cats in the penthouses and boardrooms will vote themselves another bonus.   And the people who are at the bottom of the 'trickle-down' drainpipe will see nothing but dust.

Voodoo economics didn't work for Ronnie, it didn't work for either of the two Bushes, it didn't work for Dumb'old the first time — we all know the only reason some prices on things like gasoline declined during Trump's tenure was because the entire fuckin' country was shut down for almost a full year due to his mishandling of the initial COVID-19 crisis, and it ain't gonna work should he (God forbid!) get another crack at it.

-"BB"-

[MajGenl.Meade]

From each according to his ability; to each according to his need.

Marx's phraseology of a statement that would be approved by most US Americans, even teens in South Carolina. And is also found in various guises in the 1700s, the 1600s and considerably earlier:

Acts 4:32 All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. 33 With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all 34 that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales 35 and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.

IIRC the Acts passage was once rewritten in modern English without reference to Jesus and a survey taken: the majority of US Americans rejected it as Communist propaganda.

Or maybe not. Could be one of them there Urging Leg Ends we hear so much about from lib.

[Sue U]

BP--I have to agree about Marxism and your professor's statements about the USSR; although I think he was likely referring to the kibbutzes in Israel and not the country as a whole being Marxist.

As a pedantic side-note, Israel was founded as a socialist state, with societal organization features that ranged from near-communist (e.g.. many but not nearly all kibbutzim) to cooperative agricultural collectives (moshavim) to the broadly democratic-socialist welfare state developed by Mapai (the then-dominant Labor Zionist party) and Histadrut (the general labor federation).

In Econ 101 class many years ago, the Prof said 'Marxism" is the ONLY economic theory; it is the only body of scholarship that attempts to explain all economic behavior.

I don't think it's fair to say Marx or (Marxism) "attempts to explain all economic behavior," but it provides a moral perspective and a lens through which to examine it. What we think of today as "orthodox" or "mainstream" economics with its emphasis on mathematical models is pretty far removed from the socio-political grounding of Marxism, but it still attempts to answer the same questions about how the exchange of value works; when you start making judgments about for whose benefit it works, that's pretty much the whole point of "Marxism."

[Big RR]

Sue, but do you think the Israel form of socialism is particularly Marxist? As far as I understad it, I would think it was more wester. European socialism.

[Sue U]

Sue, but do you think the Israel form of socialism is particularly Marxist? As far as I understad it, I would think it was more wester. European socialism.

The origins of Labor Zionism were contemporaneous with Marx in the mid to late 19th Century, and the movement had a, um, complicated relationship with Bolshevism in the early 20th Century. I think one of the reasons Israel never formally declared exactly what kind of socialism it was pursuing -- and one of the reasons it has still never drafted a formal constitution -- was to avoid the kind of factionalism that had riven the political left in Europe and that had been bubbling barely under the surface in the Zionist movement as a whole since the turn of the 20th Century. Mapai adopted a big-tent vision of socialism, with a focus on building the national enterprise rather than ideological particularities. It was more like "Yeah yeah, we're all socialists, now help me with this tractor."

ETA:

It's worth mentioning that in the early years of statehood the next largest political party after Mapai was Mapam, which was explicitly Marxist in its orientation and was largely the party of kibbutzniks.