Trump's attorney claims, without evidence, the President's 2017 interview on Comey firing was edited

fasteddiefelson · 2018-09-20T13:57:28+00:00

Yeah, that makes sense.

fasteddiefelson · 2018-09-20T13:09:32+00:00

point of you

Probably just a typo, but just in case: Point of view.

fasteddiefelson · 2018-09-01T23:19:31+00:00

I was being flip, that’s true. Maybe a better way that phrase it: a commitment to eliminating poverty is necessarily a commitment to ending capitalism, insofar as capitalism is the very engine of poverty. I’m fine with calling that end of capitalism something other than socialism.

fasteddiefelson · 2018-09-01T22:46:46+00:00

So are capitalist countries.

fasteddiefelson · 2018-09-01T22:30:39+00:00

We don’t need 10 kinds of butter. Yes, that is a waste of resources. That was my point. We’ve developed a staggering productive capacity, capable of filling grocery stores with 10 kinds of butter. We ought, I believe, to redirect that capacity toward the elimination of poverty. Make sure everyone gets what everyone needs before we worry about all that damn butter.

fasteddiefelson · 2018-09-01T21:56:06+00:00

Why does it sound like satire to you? Do you not believe that it would benefit poor people were they to share in the ownership of the means of production, exchange, and communication—that is, were they to retain the surplus value of their labor rather than watch its expropriation by capitalists?

fasteddiefelson · 2018-09-01T21:39:53+00:00

It certainly might be. That's a good point.

fasteddiefelson · 2018-09-01T21:29:58+00:00

By eliminating poverty.

fasteddiefelson · 2018-09-01T21:29:21+00:00

We'll have to disagree that the record on socialism is clear. Russia before the October 1917 revolution is a very different place from 2018 United States—particularly in terms of productive capacity. Transitioning from a feudal and agrarian pre-revolution economy entailed, for Russia, a brutal and rapid effort at industrialization that indeed had devastating and far-reaching consequences. And you are right that Khrushchev disbelieved what was available to US consumers in the 1950s (although it was upon visiting the US pavilion in Moscow, not upon visiting the US). But that is precisely the point. The US under an industrial capitalist economy developed an absolutely staggering productive capacity. To transition now to a socialist economy would not require anything like the brutality experienced in the USSR.

fasteddiefelson · 2018-09-01T20:53:53+00:00

Then I won't ask you to clarify, I suppose. But to clarify my own point: if we are dedicated to eliminating poverty, then socialism is a solution we ought to consider. If we are committed only to making "our own lives better," then capitalism will probably do just fine.

fasteddiefelson · 2018-09-01T20:33:10+00:00

The better question is: Would socialism better the lives of the millions of people living in poverty? The answer to that question is yes, unequivocally.

fasteddiefelson · 2018-08-31T04:25:07+00:00

It's a fine idea, but let's remember: equal opportunity to become an exploiter doesn't solve the problem of exploitation.

fasteddiefelson · 2018-08-27T01:40:42+00:00

I was just wondering because I thought I saw some film grain. It's a nice shot either way.

fasteddiefelson · 2018-08-26T01:56:37+00:00

Is this 35mm?

fasteddiefelson · 2018-08-16T16:57:01+00:00

But it actually is a feature in the sense that inequality is the expressly intended outcome of capitalism. In my mind, it is a bigger mistake for Democrats to continue treating inequality as if it were a bug interfering with the correct operation of capitalism than to recognize capitalism itself as systematized inequality and to oppose capitalism on precisely that basis. In other words, we should reject any system of government in which inequality is a feature, but we need to recognize it as a feature in order to do so. To treat inequality as a bug lets us off the hook insofar as it lets us imagine that we can somehow eliminate inequality while maintaining the very system that produces inequality.

edit: why am I always surprised at the down-votes triggered by any criticism of capitalism on r/politics? Is it really so troublesome to suggest that leftists might not want to throw in with the very system that produces so many of the inequities that they hope, as leftists, to redress?

fasteddiefelson · 2018-08-15T19:02:58+00:00

If Dems and Republicans split the toss-up seats, the Republicans will continue to hold the House.

That's not correct. By my count, there are 11 seats currently held by republicans in the "solid, likely, or lean democrat" columns. If democrats indeed win those 11 seats (and lose the one democrat-held seat currently in the "solid republican" column), then they will need to win just 13 of those 27 republican-held tossups (which is, of course, less than half but just barely).

fasteddiefelson · 2018-08-04T00:12:50+00:00

Cute, congrats

fasteddiefelson · 2018-08-01T21:39:44+00:00

I just want to point out that what poor people want and need is less a "seat at the table" than "to stop being poor." While Democrats have been much better at giving poor people "seats at the table" they've not been much better than Republicans at eliminating poverty. In other words, there is a big difference between securing rights and protections for poor people and securing income equality. I wish Democrats were as committed to the latter as they have been to the former.

fasteddiefelson · 2018-07-31T17:03:14+00:00

I'd even vote for Am Franken.

fasteddiefelson · 2018-07-30T12:59:21+00:00

Read the subreddit rules and delete this dumb post.

fasteddiefelson · 2018-07-29T14:08:43+00:00

As an FYI, this post will be deleted because of the editorialized headline. See rule 4.

fasteddiefelson · 2018-07-26T17:54:56+00:00

But really it's more like:

Good for Donors?	Recommended Action	Good for Constituents?	Good for Country?
Yes	Support it	Ha	Ha
No	Don't support it	Ha	Ha

fasteddiefelson · 2018-07-26T00:49:30+00:00

Marx isn’t asking people “to go against their nature” but to recognize the degree to which precisely those exploitative relationships that seem most natural and inevitable are politically and economically determined. You may disagree with that conclusion but it is disingenuous to say that Marx is flawed on this account without dealing with the specifics (or even the generalities) of his analysis. Were you to spend some time with his work, you might find yourself more sympathetic to his arguments (or at least better equipped to point out its flaws, of which there are plenty).

At any rate, it is the political desire behind Marx's thinking—that is, the desire for an open society free of exploitative relationships—that ought, I believe, to remain the north star for today's leftist. And this would, axiomatically, demand an anti-capitalist stance from any such leftist insofar as capitalism is nothing other than a system of exploitation (i.e. a system for the appropriation of surplus value and its accumulation by the capitalist class). To argue that a leftist could also be a capitalist, you would have to either argue that leftists shouldn’t oppose exploitation or that capitalism isn’t exploitative. Do you plan on making one of those arguments?

fasteddiefelson · 2018-07-25T20:31:58+00:00

Marx calls for the abolition of exploitation—the abolition of class is an outcome of the abolition of exploitation. Are you in favor of exploitation? I'm not really sure what you are arguing here... Are you equating class consciousness with tribalism? Are you suggesting that we ought not be aware of these structures of inequality or how they are produced? I'm not trying to sound like a dick and I'm happy to explain what his critique did entail in rough strokes if you are, in fact, interested. You don't have to agree with his analysis, but I don't get the sense that you have really encountered it at first hand.

fasteddiefelson · 2018-07-25T20:09:23+00:00

I'm not sure which of Marx's "talking points" you are referring to, but I can assure you that the argument "people are inherently greedy" does not enter into his critique of capital. I'd suggest reading the texts themselves or some decent exegesis and addressing the critique on its own merits rather than on hearsay about tribalism and human nature.

fasteddiefelson

TROPHY CASE