anarchiddy

I don’t see anything wrong with talking about the oligarchs as “kings” as well. I think that language could work just as well with Zuck, Bezos, etc. as it would with Trump.

I disagree, I don't think people would resonate with that language as applied to other, 'good'/quiet billionaires like Gates, Buffet, or Page - in fact I think that's exactly the point of swapping terms because it sounds more specific to how those billionaires utilize their wealth and influence instead of the fact that they have it to begin with.

It’s the guy who is trying to play king

yea.... except he's just the end result of a far broader problem

This is exactly the concern with hand-wringing over semantics- the democrats aren't losing because they aren't being vocal enough about their opposition to Trump, they're losing because they're actively avoiding the root problem.

Pick another word for oligarchs if you want, so long as the attention is being drawn to the root problem of wealth inequality and the billionare class. Don't just abandon the issue because you're afraid it looks like you might be critiquing our economic model when that's absolutely what we're doing

Yea but opposing 'kings' isn't even close to the problem of 'oligarchs'

One is very clearly a result of a capitalist system, the other is a looser critique of authority generally.

If it was really not ideologically tilted she'd suggest 'billionaire' instead of oligarch, but the dems are afraid of losing the support of the 'good billionaires

A 'dictatorship of the proletariat' has elements of democracy, but it is explicitly not the same as a liberal democracy (nor is it really the same as a straight-out dictatorship). It's possible that some people prefer the Trotsky version of socialist states (one where multiple socialist parties might compete for power), but the ML single-party version is still very much within marxist theory.

The Chinese political system is democratic, just not in the same ways a western democracy might be. Western liberals seem to either not know (?) how the Chinese system works, or miss-understand what 'democracy' means as it pertains to Marx's 'dictatorship of the proletariat'. Either way, @[email protected] seems to be operating under a liberal-democratic understanding of democracy, but that's really not a given in marxist theory.

on behalf of and within the confines of the ruling proletarian state party

Yup.

Yes, that famous part of Das Capital where marx coins the term "democracy of the proletariat"

The workers control the means of production?

More than 60% of the Chinese economy is state owned and controlled, and as of I think a year ago they democratized Chinese company structures by mandating assemblies of employee representatives. The state having majority control and direction of the Chinese economy and market is the primary complaint of western trade partners, I don't know why people are always surprised by this.

I get that people really do not like the authoritarian aspects of the Chinese government, but state-controlled economies are pretty much the exact intent behind 'worker-controlled means of production' in marxism.

China is very much a socialist economy

But what I can’t stand is commenters saying that anyone and everyone possessing as much money as him is equally evil. Basically the equivalent of so many school “Zero tolerance” policies.

The existence of billionaires while millions of people are starving and homeless is the evil those commenters are pointing to.

Almost as if those people are upset about a system that valorizes and encourages immense wealth inequality, and not, like, which people get to be billionaires.

It’s not a rhetoric that was used before that much. Electing republicans was always a little bit correlated with stupidity but not like: Go full Trumpler/Hitler, full on conspiracy

You must not be old enough to remember the 2008 election, then. People were accusing Obama of being the literal antichrist, and was among the first to prominently feature conservative conspiracy theorists on national news (Don was calling in to talk shows to accuse Obama of being a Kenyan Muslim and demanding his birth certificate, then his long-form).

Maybe in hindsight it's hard to make a comparisons, but every election since then has represented the same choice between 'sane' democrats and 'crazy' conservatives. You can only have so many of those before they start to feel like the norm.

It's because the democrats simply cannot fund-raise on the kind of populist progressive policy Americans actually want.

Democrats are up schitt's creek without a paddle - they can't fund-raise without the support of the large donor-class, and their increasingly populist progressive base are simply not satisfied by the kind of economic policies those donors are desperate to preserve.

If democrats stay this course they will never hold more than 45% of congress again and only win the white house maybe once every 3 or 4 terms.

This was one of, if not the easiest, election we’ll ever have in our lives

If you honestly believe this then the next 50 years are going to be a WILD ride for you