>>2742033But there's lots of small, potentially tractable problems with that idea. What if you lose an election? haven't you considered that all political reforms create winners and losers, and the losers will fight against your changes?
It's much better if we follow my idea:
first, we non-specifically "Organize" - maybe we start a party (I'll be in charge, naturally) and then the party will "organize" by recruiting people. Then, well, ???, then a revolution will happen and we'll be the driving force in that revolution, winning it by ??? (universal acclaim of the proletariat, maybe), then we'll implement certain organizational structures and policies like ??? (idk the ussr did something), which will immanentize the eschaton, maybe give-or-take a showdown against the world superpowers depending on how i'm feeling that day.
>>2742120This is a good thing and reflective of historical progress. Martial wank belongs with goat sacrifice on the dustbin of stupid things we did under worse material conditions. There is not one single dispute in the world that would be better solved by combat than by market competition, and market competition is itself so brutal that socialists and social democrats try to look past it.
>>2742141I am coming to believe that the most practical reformist attitude is as follows: high-welfare libertarianism.
Most regulations are unnecessary, either entirely so or an attempt to solve by regulation what should really be resolved by tax and spending. The handful of regulations that are necessary can be retained easily.
Foreign policy should consist almost entirely of securing trade and bilateral immigration/visa agreements. The military should be cut to the bone, perhaps abolished depending on the country.
State owned enterprises can in many cases be privatized. The darkest secret of social democracy is that there is in-fact no reason to presuppose that an SOE has the public interest at heart more than any private company.
The net result of this would be that if the state was captured by authoritarians it would be of limited use to them, and if the state was pushed by superpowers to join them on imperial conquests then it could only contribute economically, which is either of limited value (people weren't happy when Japan just sent the US a cheque for the gulf war) or even positive value. (by buying assets that would otherwise go to crooks.)
Neoliberals, of course, got everything backwards: they focused on their tax cuts. Sure, some early deregulation happened - much of it even worked! - but deregulation creates high-income losers in regulated industries, while everyone who matters likes tax cuts and welfare cuts. The net result is that the state didn't shrink at all, it just reformed itself in a way ultimately more amenable to repression. Social democrats still fantasize that they can restore the state capacity of the past and embark on grand projects. It might be more reasonable to say: No, state capacity is going to fall further, and when it does it's better to lose tanks and planning regulators than it is to lose welfare offices.
>>2742230Entry and exit to the class of people who dominate most (but not all) aspects of modern life has rarely been easier. In decrying the status quo, you've really got to compare it to the non-socialist alternatives than to the socialist alternatives. If we're in the second best of all possible worlds, you don't want a random throw of the dice to decide what replaces it.
The ultimate dismal failure of the USSR demonstrates that the socialists have done no better than the socdems, with the exception perhaps of China. (which, in its own way, part parallels my suggestion that an intermediate term program should be deregulatory, pro market, pro trade, etc.)
>>274736590% of the best people alive are radlibs. radlibs have the pure souls of the people of the immediate future. they dream of better things. they dream unrealistic dreams, but so does almost everyone else. "what if we just did lenin again?" "no, i think we should do mao again" - as much a LARP fantasy as any radlib could come up with. i am not immune to this: "start again in 1971 but this time, don't siege regulations, abolish them immediately" - nonsense. idle fantasies of a mind staring down the fact neoliberalism will be replaced not by socialism, not by social democracy, but by dumb trade disputes and pointless bloody wars.
>>2758297market mechanisms are an effective way of tackling many forms of oligarchy and oligarchic behavior.
it is true that they have their failure modes, obviously, but it is important to remember this because one of the things that's quite likely in the future is that the state will discourage market competition, with the consumer taking the hit and the inefficient crook taking the benefit.