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- Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY) — Co-leading the initiative
- Rep. Adam Gray (D-CA) — Co-leading the initiative
- Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ)
- Rep. Susie Lee (D-NV)
- Rep. Don Davis (D-NC)
- Rep. Vicente Gonzalez Jr. (D-TX)
- Rep. Laura Gillen (D-NY)
- Rep. Janelle Bynum (D-OR)
- Rep. Kristin McDonald Rivet (D-MI)
- Rep. Maggie Goodlander (D-NH)
- Jessica Killin (candidate)
- Marlene Galán Woods (candidate)
- Bobby Pulido (candidate)
The man right here. Time to send some letters
They’ll listen to corporate donations, not their constituents.
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This is about the House of Representatives. John Fetterman is in the U.S. Senate.
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I can’t believe it’s not Fetterman.
There’s a brain as margarine joke in here somewhere.
Check this list against the Democrats who caved and ended the government shutdown.
Look at all those DINOS
Republicans: we’re going to try to repeal the 17th amendment and have permanent control of the Senate.
Democrats: like 6 socialists got elected, we’re going to shoot each other now.
These are the fascists who were screeching at you to just suck up a bit of genocide and vote blue no matter who. The ratchet effect is so real.
I’m still gonna scream blue no matter who, but I’d really prefer it’s not these guys.
If you continue to scream blue no matter who, you help ensure it’ll always be these guys.
Just like NYC.
Ah, yes, the race where these guys were famously supportive of the blue candidate and didn’t do everything in their power to make sure he would lose even if it meant giving the election to a Republican candidate. I certainly see the logic in your support for them.
Well, Mamdani was blue and he’s turning out pretty well.
You seem to have a foundational misunderstanding of what people mean when they say things like ‘vote blue no matter who’.
Doesn’t mean you have to vote for the blue who wants to genocide people a little, you can and very much should please god vote for the other blue who wants to do their fucking job, but either way, both are better and the worse blue is easier to recover from than the red who’s going to immediately gut everything he can and then blow up children just for fun.
Are you really going to ignore how the elected Dem officials who embody the “Blue no matter who” slogan did everything they could to undermine his chances, right up until they realized they couldn’t cripple his bid for mayor? In comment on a post about 13 such people going full Scooby Doo and pulling off the masks to reveal they’re just red guys in disguise who will gut everything and blow up children if it means stopping a candidate who could actually make good on being something other than a corporate bought stooge that’s padding the ranks of the controlled opposition party?
If anyone doesn’t understand what “Blue no matter who” means, I’d say it’s yourself. It’s a thought terminating cliché for liberals to make voting for the neoliberal ghouls running the party more palatable that, funnily enough, is completely forgotten by the aforementioned ghouls as soon as the wrong kind of blue appears as a candidate. It’s a tool used solely to browbeat people into voting for the shittiest candidate the DNC thinks we’ll stomach, yet is readily abandoned with a “No, not like that” when someone like Zohran rocks up and says “Hey, I’m blue, I’d like to represent my city.” and voters respond enthusiastically to them. Until Democratic electeds stop pulling out their knives for candidates that can be described as at least progressive, if not socialists, I don’t want to hear this blue maga bullshit again.
It’s quite telling that they’re quick trot out bullshit like Suozzi is championing in response to a popular leftist candidate, but when someone suggests primarying a Joe Manchin or a John Fetterman, suddenly the Democratic party is a big tent party, and we need to work together and maintain unity. Where is a censure for Suozzi and crew for violating the sacrosanct big party spirit that protects fascist collaborators like Fetterman? “Blue no matter who” is a lie, and has been since day one.
Are you really going to ignore how the elected Dem officials who embody the “Blue no matter who” slogan did everything they could to undermine his chances, right up until they realized they couldn’t cripple his bid for mayor?
I stopped reading after this. You’re not worth wasting breath to argue with, because immediately after I said don’t vote for the dems who want to keep the status quo, vote for the ones who want to make things better like Mamdani is, you go off making things up.
“Vote Blue, No matter who,” doesn’t apply to Primaries, because EVERYONE is Blue. It’s for the General Election, where a centrist Dem voter is faced with voting for a Blue Democratic Socialist, or a Red MAGA.
Now they’ll finally understand how we Unaffiliated Independents feel for Every election.
these guys
I mean, I fucking wanted Mamdani.
Yeah, I wanted Mamdani, too. I’m just pointing out the fundamental contradiction in “Vote blue no matter who” when a significant portion of the blue are like these 13 assholes, and will leave no stone unturned to actively oppose people even having a chance to see Mamdani’s name get past the primaries. The Democratic Party is absolutely rotten with such candidates, and following the blue no matter who mantra only ensures that you have people like them ready to pull out all the stops to go and kneecap a primary candidate who’s to the left of Reagan so that you don’t get a chance to vote for someone like Mamdani.
fwiw, I think naming and shaming these 13 is valuable.
I don’t like “Democrats are bad” in general when the other side is fucking Nazis. And I think that’s overdone a bit.
“Vote Blue, no matter who” is for General Elections, and it still holds true. These sorts of DINO MAGAs need to be dealt with in the Primaries.
Make THEM “Vote Blue, No Matter Who” in the General, for a change. Make THEM hold their noses and vote for a Socialist, the way we’ve had to vote for barely disguised centrist Republicans with Ds next to their name, for decades. It’s THEIR turn now.
The alternative is you abstain and the unequivocally worse group wins by default. Not really an improvement.
“Blue no matter who” is a peace deal, which these guys are breaking.
It matters who, but better blue than red.
So what’s the solution in your opinion?
Revolution. Start organizing your community so that real people have political power, not the rich ghouls.
Disrupt their operations by ensuring that they lose elections, even if it’s at the cost of handing the seat to a republican. If they are willing to cede a seat to a republican to stop a leftist, leftist must be willing to cede an election to republican in order to stop disrupt anti-socialism.
Obviously, replacing the anti-socialist with a socialist would be the best outcome.
Ok, we’ve further ceded all elections to Republicans and now they’re throwing all leftists and dissenters in prison/camps and have ruined the economy, the education system, started a bunch of wars we can’t fund nor win, ruined the environment and privatized every public good. Now what?
Do you think the Democrats would not do the same if a revolutionary movement was built up? They don’t even like this wave of social democrats taking office and are working to disrupt that. The tasks remain the same: educate, agitate, organize. Study theory, spread it and create a correct political line, and create a comprehensive political party that is dominated by the working classes.
No, I do not think Democrats would do all of the things I outlined above that I think would happen if Christofascist conservatives got complete power for consecutive terms.
Given that all those things are already happening, with most Democrats refusing to put up any sort of effective resistance, you don’t really have a point.
If they are willing to cede a seat to a republican to stop a leftist
Are they, though? I get the feeling your definition of that is someone getting elected in the primary that you don’t like.
They pushed the guy Mamdani primaries to run as an independent which, for them, only makes sense as an act of sabotage.
“They”. Pretty sure that “they” was pretty specific in this case.
I’m still gonna scream blue no matter who
And it’s going to continue not working
In an intelligent, rational country demsocialists and liberals would each have their own separate party.
The US is constitutionally saddled with first past the post voting, which makes more than two parties difficult to represent at the national level. For some reason the two existing parties are unwilling to change that.
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Nothing stopping us but the people in various states that vote down attempts to implement it or the legislature critters that seek to outlaw it.
No we aren’t. It’s tradition. We can switch to STAR
Misinformation. I literally vote rank choice in the US.
Over a dozen states have already banned ranked choice voting. The establishment knows that if it were to catch on then elected officials will more accurately reflect the actual will of the people and undermine the liberal hegemony, so they banned it.
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demsocs are liberals
demsocs are liberals
Clearly the liberals disagree.
Liberals also think they are on the left, so what the disagree on is irrelevant
Here in the US people use liberal and left interchangeably out of ignorance. But the liberals being referenced in this story understand that they are not left wing which is why they refer to themselves as “centrists.” Demsocs are to their left. Demsocs might be to your right, but demsocs are definitely left wing in the context of US politics. We have established over and over again that to more radical people such as yourself, demsocs are “just liberals” and not left wing. That’s fine, that’s your perspective. The liberals who call themselves centrists have a different perspective, and theirs is far more common in US politics than yours, and therefore it is very relevant to anyone who cares about what’s happening in US politics.
Demsocs being to their left is as meaningless as Democrats being to the left of Republicans when they all defend the same systems of oppression and want to work within the lose systems
Well its liberal infighting. DemSocs mild reformist approach is too much left for the centrists that unironically praised Reagan, so the DNC then fights the DSA harder than they fought Trump.
I get that from your perspective the DemSocs are mild reformists, but from the perspective of people who are in the center of liberal ideology, the DemSocs seem radical. It’s all relative. To you they’re all just liberals, and you don’t make a strong distinction between them, but the two groups see themselves as strongly distinct from one another. And thus, to my original point, that’s why in any other democracy each would have their own separate party, instead of having to fight each other for control of one of only two parties.
@TheDemonBuer Fully aware, but i was under the impression we are discussing it inside a radical left space?
Liberalism already dominate 80% of online non chud spaces and i want to not pretend that someone like nancy pelosi is on the left.
So yeah they themselves may see it that way but leftist do not.
i was under the impression we are discussing it inside a radical left space?
Indeed. And since I’m not a radical leftist (even though, as we’ve already established, liberals would view me as such), I’ll move along.
Leftists ain’t going anywhere but in circles anyway, so I don’t see the point of looking down your nose at people that are finally beginning to generate a bit of positive momentum.
There’s not gonna be some grand workers revolution that disembowels capitalism. Capitalists won’t give up without a fight, people won’t want to pay that butcher’s bill, and Communist states have historically not fared well under pressure from capitalist rivals. Unless some global natural disaster threatens modern civilization on a fundamental level, capitalism or something like it but worse (cyberpunk-style “corporations are basically the real nations” thing I guess?) is likely here to stay.
What do we gain by playing No True Scotsman with people who are pushing in the same general direction?
@grinning_serpent WE already did have plenty of SocDem Countries including Germany, where even the conservative party CDU pushed for it in 1949
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%BCsseldorfer/_Leits%C3%A4tze
Those policies will always get overturned eventually. Think ofthe New Deal in the USA only took till the 70’s to undo it and reagan to implement the opposite.
Liberal policies cant work longterm its an historic fact.
Also stop coming to leftist spaces and berate us for not thinkign like you.
Socialist states have generally suffered as any country would under outside pressure, but fared better than capitalist peers to similar pressures.
You can fight people barely to the left of you
Kinda. The establishment liberals are trying to discipline the social democrats and prevent them from gaining in influence. However, the social democrats are, at the moment, not actually in favor of establishing socialism nor doing what is required to do so. It’s liberal infighting.
The more millitent rank and file of the DSA is largely what’s pushing this grassroots support in this wave, but without a correct analysis of the structure and role of the capitalist state the DSA’s reformist strategy is a dead-end.
It’s liberal infighting.
So I have been told by at least a dozen people with lemmy.ml handles.
Sure. I don’t see what the handle has to do with it.
The love to compartmentalize groups of people and make broad generalizations.
Seems to be a pattern.
What makes you think that?
13 corpo-democrats that need to be primaried with democratic socialists.
Israel first coalition
Honestly, 13 is not a lot. It’s certainly possible that they’ve got silent backing of many of the other dems in the house, but even if they do, the fact that they’re silent about it tells you that they know this is a risky position to take.
They’ve been doing this for a while though. It only takes a handful of votes to torpedo a bill, so they get a handful of Democrats in safe districts to be the bad guy of the week. The rest of the party gets to look progressive without any risk of actually passing a good bill.
That’s 6% of Dems in the house, and we get some slackjaw crowing about scratching liberals. This could be the rise of a new, better Democratic party, and people are still insistent on being unpleasant about it!
I wouldn’t say the party is. The party itself is very firmly neo-lib to centrist and pulling further right. I would say that individuals associated with the party are democratic socialist, but at this point they should start their own party.
Let the Republican party collapse, the dems take up the right wing reins, and then actually have a party that pulls left full of progressives and socialists. Pipe dream, I know.
If you start your own party you will not find it easy to get on the ballot.
13 useless “representatives”
Very disappointing. This is why I haven’t donated to the party itself in years, only to individuals.
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The problem with this framing is that it erases the role of capital ownership on shaping the state and the rest of society. Focusing on form and structure while erasing the mode of production and distribution from its necessary role as dominant over the rest of society misses the forest for the trees.
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This isn’t quite accurate. The purpose of markets is allocation of resources in the service of accumulation and centralization of capital. In the early stages, this is fairly progressive, as markets stitch together and unify many disparate producers into one cohesive system. The problems arise as this process ages, and competition dies out in favor of monopoly and eventually imperialism, which is what the west presently is in the latter stages of.
The flip side to this, is that capitalism necessarily prepares the basis of socialist production. By socializing production, central planning in a democratic fashion is made possible. Trying to plan an economy of many tiny producers would be economic suicide, but pivoting from late-stage imperialism to a democratically planned and accountable society? Much more feasible, as the large scale production gas already been developed. Revolution, smash the bourgeois imperialist state, end imperialism, establish a new socialist state.
Competition dies away. We cannot keep it around permanently, large production necessitates monopoly. The major difference is that the social surplus is divided up amongst a tiny class of capitalists, rather than used for pro-social ends in the hands of those actually creating value, the workers. Usually, revolution happens in underdeveloped countries, this is what causes the socialist construction period to be more difficult. They are definitely progressive, but new problems emerge, like the question of how best to develop socialism when starting in a largely agrarian economy. All existing socialism has had to answer this same question.
Your solutions all ignore the very real fact that the state is a product of class struggle, and therefore serves a given class. We cannot regulate capitalism out of its structural failures. Capital makes the laws in capitalist society because capitalism is the mode of production and distribution. To supercede capital is to progress to socialism.
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The purpose of a system is what it does. The intentions behind implementing a system may be varied, but the way markets function is well-studied and understood. The fact that markets reward accumulation and centralization is not a political opinion, but instead sober analysis of a material process as it exists in the real world.
“Crony capitalism” is just capitalism of a different stage, one I and many others understand to be the imperialist stage of capitalism. Imperialism, in the capitalist context, is the era of capitalism where industrial and bank capital have merged into finance capital, and finance capital comes to dominate the entire economy, shifting it to focusing on export of capital instead of commodities as primary. This is how the IMF functions, for example. This system did not arise because any individual willed it to, but instead because this is a natural consequence of aging markets.
To the contrary of what you state, “market socialism” (which does not exist in the real world) would still result in centralization of the economy. Competition results in some firms growing and others being absorbed or dying out, until the entire economy is under the dominance of a few firms. Why not centrally plan the economy instead, with ownership and distribution collectively handled?
Socialist market economies do exist, such as what’s implemented in the PRC, Vietnam, etc. These economies rely on public ownership of large and critical industries, and utilize markets for small and secondary industries. This allows the working classes to dominate the economy and steer its direction, while taking advantage of the progressive nature of markets with respect to socializing smaller firms and creating an interconnected system.
The shift from late-stage capitalism to socialism isn’t horrific at all, it’s the transition from autocracy to democracy. It’s basic Marxism, basic scientific socialism. Marx believed socialism to be necessary not because he thought of a good model, but because it dialectically emerges from what capitalism is necessarily setting up. Under capitalism, production is gradually socialized, while distribution remains individual. Socialism advances to an economy where both production and distribution are socialized, this is the birth of actual democracy.
Of course corruption still will exist, but when the state is under the control of the working classes, this is far easier to manage. As long as private ownership is principal, the state can never be made to represent the people. Socialist countries are generally very stable despite facing intense scrutiny, sanctions, invasions, destabilization campaigns, and more. This stability is often because of their centralization, decoupling production from profit and being more flexible in turn.
One thing I think you’re confusing is the impression that I am advocating leaving capitalists in their current positions in the transition to socialism. To the contrary, establishing socialism requires revolution, and the erasure of capitalists from political power. Capitalists will hate this, of course, but this works in establishing socialism. Contrary to fearmongering about famine, socialist countries have managed to end famine in regions where famine was historically common. We live in an increasingly centralized world, this does not mean we cannot come up with fallbacks and redundancies.
Socialism is the beginning of prioritizing the people over capital, not the end.
How familiar are you with Marxism? What I’m talking about is fairly standard Marxism.
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While I appreciate the flattery, I want to begin with a few misconceptions.
First, there is no such thing as “true” socialism. Socialism is not a religion, nor a holy vow, nor scripture to be followed to the letter. Socialism is a material system, one that exists in real life, and is compelled by real forces. Calling someone a true socialist is like calling someone a true scientist, in my opinion. There are scientists with wrong understandings of the world, but we don’t call them “false” or “fake” on the basis of purity.
Secondly, about consolidating power in the government. This is a bit misleading, I do not wish to consolidate power in just any government, but specifically states run and controlled by the working classes. The capitalist state must be smashed and replaced, it cannot become socialist. This is how the majority begins to run society.
With that out of the way, I’ll return to your main points.
First, your understanding of corruption. Corruption is not a supernatural force, a sickness to be overcome. Corruption is an expression of people acting in their own interests. In capitalism, since the state is under the control of capitalists, this manifests in naked bribery and revolving door practices. The class interests of those in power side with keeping private property and helping the largest and most corrupt capitalists stay afloat, which is why there can be no democracy in capitalism.
Socialist systems, on the other hand, are remarkably resiliant to corruption. Many socialist states feature recall elections, and communist parties often regularly kick out corrupt members, enforcing strict discipline. This is because the class interests of those in power in socialism is collectivization of production and distribution, which is the same as the broad population, because the class in power is the working class, which is the majority.
Secondly, your understanding of centralization. Collectivizing all of production and distribution does not mean there are no redundancies, no “rungs” on the ladder with regional autonomy. China, for example, has local, regional, provincial, and national organizations, and electoral candidates must win elections from the bottom upward in order to advance. They cannot come from the outside to the top, but must come from the bottom. This is why even western data like NIRA data find China and Vietnam (to a slightly lesser extent) to have citizens extremely confident in their democracy:
In actual fact, collectivization of all of production and distribution is a combination of centralization and decentralization. This is why I stressed the nature of autonomous zones and regions in China, for example. Each level of a system corresponds to that which is most relevant to it. Socialism can be best seen as both top-down and bottom-up.
Regarding your stated position, “electoral democracy with a market pluralism explicitly biased towards democratic institutions,” this sounds like you’re erasing class struggle from its existing and omnipresent role. It’s vague enough that I could say you are describing China, yet your issues with central planning make it seem like you aren’t. Further, China is leveraging markets as far as they contribute to advancing along socialist construction to communism (see here, from Cheng Enfu):
As for revolution, contrary to what you claim, they have in fact managed to successfully establish socialism. Revolution is the only way socialism has ever been established. That isn’t to say that they haven’t come at often enormous human cost, it’s more that reform is an impossibility, and thus the loss of life was never pointless. The working classes gave their lives for their future generations. For the results of reformist approaches, see what happened to Allende in Chile, what’s happened to Maduro in Venezuela, or Nkrumah in Ghana, etc. Marxists are revolutionaries not for the LARP of it, but because the state is a product of class struggle, and as such serves a definite class. You cannot ask the state to pivot to socialism, this can only happen through the conquest of political power via force.
If you’re curious about Marxism-Leninism, I made a basic study guide. The first section has some great introductory pieces, such as Albert Einstein’s case for planned economy in the Monthly Review essay Why Socialism? | Audiobook [~10 min / 22 min]. Lemmy was made by communists, there are lots of resources here you can find if you would like to see them.
Specifically, they’re what other lefties tend to refer to as tankies. Socialist authoritarians, essentially. They’ll see stuff like Marx talking about suppressing political dissent in the wake of the revolution and have no issues with it, or at least genuinely believe the ends justify the means.
Not my cup of tea. I’m not convinced it would lead to a better and brighter future, just a different type of boot on your neck.
I’m not familiar with the doings of Vietnam in this century, but China has become progressively more market oriented and “open.” It likely would have followed the Soviets into insolvency if they hadn’t created those “special economic zones,” or whatever the term they use is.
I’m not really sold on the idea that Marx and Lenin got it all figured out. Most regimes that stuck close to their ideas ain’t around anymore, and the ones that still are aren’t the nicest places to be.
What’s important to recognize about the socialist market economy of China is that it’s entirely in line with Marxist understandings of socialism, in short that markets are useful at low levels of development for socializing production, and that larger firms are better off folded into the public sector. The dictatorship of the proletariat stands at the top, facilitating this economy, and gradually folding in the private elements as they grow.
I don’t agree that the PRC would have been dissolved had they not gone through with Reform and Opening Up. The soviets did not dissolve for economic reasons, even though their economy had slowed a bit it was still very healthy. Instead, reforms from Gorbachev and Khrushchev weakened the socialist system, creating disunity among the various SSRs and rising nationalist movements. The USSR did not collapse due to an unsustanainable economy, it was killed from the top-down.
I do believe that Reform and Opening Up was correct, arguably it was more traditionally Marxist than the Soviet model. The Soviet model was largely pivoted to in the 1930s to prepare for World War II, as they desperately needed heavy industry. Without such an immediate pressure, China has been able to take a different path. No country on Earth presently follows the same Soviet model, Cuba recently had economic reforms making themselves more similar to Vietnam, Laos, and China, and the DPRK practices its own form of juche socialism. Each socialist country however has its own unique characteristics, and thus are all similar yet different.
Marx and Lenin were overwhelmingly correct for their time, and the majority of what they wrote still holds true. However, conditions do ultimately change, and thus we enter new eras. Lenin never lived to see Neocolonialism become the basis of imperialism, for example. However, the core of Marxism-Leninism remains correct, and dialectical materialism allows us to infinitely adapt as the world infinitely changes. That’s why Marxism-Leninism is an “immortal science.”
I think people don’t really define the term capitalism well.
Like, people seem to think of it as ether “when corporate entities are greedy” or as “when the market decides what things are worth.”
So it feels like people are constantly talking past each other. Honestly I take the term to mean “when wealth (money/income/assets) and capital (tools/resources/labor/land) are synonymous, and thus the decisions about how capital gets used are made by those who have accumulated wealth.”
So like, a system based on democratically run co-ops would… not be capitalist in that framework because decisions about how capital get used are being made democratically, rather than based on who has the most money.
It’s just hard to have meaningful discussions or even understand what people are advocating for if people aren’t clear what each other means when they refer to abstract concepts.
Capitalism is a mode of production and distribution by which private ownership is the principal aspect of the economy, ie dominant and rising, and capitalists control the state. Socialism is a mode of production and distribution by which public ownership is principal, and the working classes control the state. Each can have markets, but socialism, in advancing production to a new, planned stage, necessarily erodes the basis of markets over time. The cooperative based system you describe is still capitalist, and still pits man against man, regardless of how democratic the firms are internally.
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Oh look, it’s my shitbag congressman. I’m actually really disappointed. All the electoralism talk made me finally bother to go vote in this primary after sitting a few out and… both establishment incumbents won in a landslide. I fucking hate my district. A lot of them fall into the “embarrassed Republican” category of Dems. There are some nice people out there. I did work along with our local DSA years ago, it’s just not nearly enough to overcome the fucking NIMBYs/Zionists who live here.
Name and shame. Who are the 13?
The list has been posted in the thread
Party of the elite. This is why the maga’s say both sides are the same. Someone could explain it to them but they would reject it.
MAGA isn’t the only one saying both sides are corrupt shitheels; it’s every single human being with a memory longer than a goldfish that actually pays any amount of attention to politics whatsoever. Both American parties are extremely far-right and only have the interest of America’s owners in mind.
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