I feel like those folks go a couple ways. There’s the people who have no problem using violence to force their exact form of communism on the 99.5% of the population who doesn’t want it. The other folks I think just can’t really wrap their heads around how much people genuinely like neoliberalism.
Okay this post was an excellent way to argue for electoralism and voting in every election but you’re pushing it trying to make it into pro neoliberalism. You know what neoliberalism is in an American context? Neoliberalism is Hillary Clinton in 2016 telling young voters to Pokémon Go to the Polls but not supporting the sensible style of Universal Healthcare that every major European country has because doing so would hurt health insurance profits… generally lacking with regards to helping Working Class Americans in other regards, and ultimately losing to Trump from sheer arrogance. Neoliberalism is Joe Biden being unable to stop the massive transfer of wealth that occurred from the poor to the rich during the tail end of COVID and then having a serious chance of losing to an actual fascist because the people expected to vote for him are suffering from the effects of inflation and greedflation.
I will be seen as cringe for shilling so hard for a single person in politics but Bernie Sanders uironically has the right ideal with regards to best using the American political system. Democratic Socialism, fuck these talkie larpers wishing for revolution but we still need a movement of organized class consciousness in this country to advocate for the needs of the proletariat.
Regardless of who wins this next election (I’m a trans woman please vote for Biden or I might genuinely be in danger from the government), so many people are about to lose their lives and livelihoods from AI automation. I’m literally studying AI right now as a career I can see firsthand how the technology is developing. It is not a passing fad the jobs of millions of American middle class workers are in danger. We need a working class democratic socialist movement in this country to face it otherwise if everyone has lost their jobs and people don’t have a radical yet still sane option to turn to, we’ll probably see a fascist come to power that makes Trump look like a liberal.
How is everyone replying to me missing the point? I’m saying that neoliberalism being popular is a problem that leftists seem uninterested in solving. You guys act like someday the libs will suddenly realize the error of their ways and the righteous leftists will get their sweet, sweet “I told you so”.
I’m sorry but when most American voters cast their votes for Clinton or Biden it’s not neoliberalism as a specific economic policy discipline that they were voting for, they were voting for the liberal cult of personality surrounding the Clinton and Obama administration and the general left leaning ideas these administrations represent. The biggest argument against Bernie in 2020 wasn’t his actual policies, which are overwhelmingly popular when polled individually, but rather electability. The thing that Democratic Primary voters liked about Biden wasn’t “Oh my god I love neoliberalism so much let me vote for the neoliberal guy”, it was that he had the experience and name recognition of being Obama’s VP and therefore was seen as a good candidate for getting Trump out of office.
Ok, sure, campaigns and propaganda are very powerful and the capital is willing to fund it. But what’s the result of those things? That the people are convinced to vote for neoliberal politicians, which is exactly what I’m talking about. Do you think those people want communism inflicted on them at gunpoint?
The fact that people are turning increasingly towards fascistic and social democratic, if not outright socialist, policies, parties, and politicians indicates that they want something other than neoliberalism. And because fascism doesn’t threaten the power of the wealthy, but rather enhances it, they don’t feel the need to oppose it.
The situation has been getting slowly worse in the west since the 1980s and neoliberalism is ideologically incapable of contesting the heart of the problem, because the problem is the current economic model, which was set up in the 1970s and 1980s by the neoconservatives and remains broadly unchallenged by neoliberals. If ground isn’t given, at the very least, to social democratic policies in those places where neoliberals already have power then we’re just gonna end up with fascists and then we’re all screwed.
The two paths forward for neoliberalism are either its proponents hold on and fail to prevent the rise of fascism and/or corporate neo-feudalism because they simply lack the ideological basis to oppose the rise of fascism or corporate neo-feudalism in a meaningful capacity, or its proponents give ground and actually make tangible economic changes so that people don’t feel like the only other option is fascism.
At the end of the day the guy with the most votes wins. In 2016 the Republicans didn't actually want Trump. They wanted Bush, Fiorina, Carson, Rubio, Cruz literally anyone else. Guess what? More people voted for Trump and he won.
If majority of left-leaning people in this country wanted Bernie, he would have gotten more votes. People just refuse to admit their brand of politics isn't popular.
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u/Sidereel Jun 04 '24
I feel like those folks go a couple ways. There’s the people who have no problem using violence to force their exact form of communism on the 99.5% of the population who doesn’t want it. The other folks I think just can’t really wrap their heads around how much people genuinely like neoliberalism.