The Ratchet Effect isn’t quite correct, Dems push the Reps right and the Reps pull the Dems right. It’s like a spring linked between em.

Almost every democratic structure practices Democratic Centralism, it just means the group is bound to the democratic results.

Soviet Democracy. Workers elect delegates from among themselves, who can then be subject to instant recall elections at any time. Remove the “career politician” aspects from government.

If you earnestly believe that Kamala Harris doesn’t give a damn about children in Gaza, then I can see how you’d make such a charged statement.

It doesn’t matter if she’s laughing or crying, she has promised to always continue to supply Israel with what it’s using to commit genocide. The US supports Israel for economic reasons, not moral.

That’s a fair point, 9/11 did fundamentally change America. But then, that feels like it makes your point about FDR even less relevant - do you really think America is back to how it was pre-9/11? Do you think kicking a couple extra points to Stein leads to comparable leftward pressure to the Great Depression, in a post-9/11 America? I say, reward the leftward gains the DNC has already made so they’re incentivized to keep pushing.

The DNC specializes in pretending it’s left wing, when they’ve been sliding to the right. They only bend to pressure.

I appreciate you sourcing your argument, but this article touches on a ton of historical conflicts with very little context given to each of them. The premise is that NATO is a chief and unjustified aggressor in all of those conflicts, but I’d need to do further reading on them. This article is not a good starting point as it’s biased and doesn’t provide citations of externally collected data, e.g. on its claim that NATO is responsible for >10m deaths in 25 years (Is that just from every joint NATO operation, or from all of the fighting done by constituent countries? Who were the chief aggressors in the individual conflicts? What was the justification? There’s a lot of info to be broken down).

Everything is biased, everyone is biased. You aren’t going to find many people supportive of NATO openly talking abouy its atrocities.

If you’re talking specifically about the alleged genocide in Donbas, then that’s an unsubstantiated claim by Russia. If you’re only suggesting that Russia had interest in involving itself in the war in Donbas, started by Russia-back separatists in the first place, that still doesn’t even excuse every other region of Ukraine hit by Russia at the start of the war.

I’m referring to the fully substantiated shelling of breakaway regions of primarily Ethnic-Russians in Ukraine. I never said it justifies Russian invasion, but that it provoked it.

Even if it were justified…why make intervention conditional on NATO operations? If something truly horrifying and unjustifiable were happening in Ukraine, but NATO agreed to stop expanding, then Russia would agree to ignore atrocities in Ukraine…why exactly?

Because Russia has been targeted by NATO since NATO’s inception as an anti-Russian coalition of Imperialist nations who serve as parasited on the Global South. Russia is not acting “morally,” the RF is acting in their material interests. Russia wants NATO to back off, and NATO openly and flagrantly disprespected that wish for decades, leading to the current conflict. There is no conflict without NATO.

Why not? It absolutely did.

Those Capitalist concessions are weakening in Social Democracies, and were only ever brought about by fear of revolt. The USSR paved the way for it.

Either the wall or the house because the people going in the doors happily add termites.

Wow, you’re telling me the people who were brainwashed into believing their country is the best (not saying it doesn’t happen nowadays (cough cough USA), voted to retain it?

“Brainwashing” narratives are false, thought-terminating cliches. The people supported the economic system that had free healthcare and education, doubled life expectancies, dramatic improvements in science, made it to space, rapidly industrialized, and dramatically reduced inequality. The idea that they were simply “brainwashed” is an idealist, anti-materialist analysis.

In my country (Romania) the only point I hear people praising the communist regime about is infrastructure. Why? Because, as it turns out, it’s much easier to build infrastructure when you have slaves prisoners which you don’t have to pay. Of course, the corruption in our post-communist government doesn’t help either.

Even prisoners were paid in the USSR for forced labor, this is ahistorical.

I agree, capitalism is VERY far from ideal, but, please, stop glazing the USSR regime just because it was “communist”.

I don’t glaze the USSR, I dispel lies and myths about it in defense of Actually Existing Socialism.

Capitalism is changing, yes, but towards Monopoly Capitalism, aka Imperialism, not feudalism. Centralization of Capitalism isn’t the same as feudalism.

Because the Nazis were Anticommunist, antisocialist Capitalists.

The State is the weapon by which any class asserts their control, not the other way around.

No, as the Petite Bourgeoisie are proletarianized by the formation of Monopoly Capitalism, the Petite Bourgeoisie aligns with the Bourgeoisie against the Proletariat, who at the time gain class consciousness and are increasingly sympathetic to Socialism and Communism. Fascism is a defense mechanism against Communism.

Not really. Capitalism was born from feudalism, but is entirely different in character.

The vast majority of Eastern Europeans wished the USSR never dissolved. Furthermore, the vast majority of people voted to retain the USSR, then it was dissolved anyways.

Why do you say “historically it has not worked,” then vaguely gesture towards people who believe it very much did work better than their current Capitalism?

I’m suggesting that voting will never be enough.

I mean, I think religion is stupid but they’re still people, none of them should be subject to genocide and neither side is ever going to stop fighting because religion.

If this is your analysis of why the Israeli State is commiting genocide via settler-colonialism and why Palestinians are fighting against it, legitimately believing religion to be the driving factor, you were never doing any kind of Materialist analysis and thus at minimum reject the core of Marxism.

Yep, and that’s why it’s the extent 99.9% of libs are willing to go, and no further.

Paying lip-service to the support of Israel’s defense is not equivalent to personally supporting genocide.

No, she agreed to send bombs for children.

I think an example in favor of what I’m talking about is the 2000 election. Bush won Florida by less than 1000 votes, but 100k votes were cast for the socialist candidate, most of which would’ve otherwise gone to Gore. The result was Bush not only winning in 2000, but again in 04. And in 08 we get someone who appealed moderates as much as he did to progressives.

You’re missing 9/11, which fundamentally changed America.

I’m not shifting the entire conversation back to Russia, just this portion of it, because that’s where this portion started, and your point about dissolving NATO being an anti-imperalist move contradicts my take that removing the check against Russia is a pro-imperialist move. Also I don’t see how disbanding NATO would be “the single great act for the majority of Mankind that any US President could do“, feel free to elaborate.

It’s simple, NATO is the most Imperialist offensive coalition on the planet. These countries hyper-exploit the Global South and defend themselves via NATO. Here is an article on it.

Russia could have simply…not invaded Ukraine? NATO is just a defensive alliance, it getting bigger doesn’t put Russia in danger unless Russia has imperialistic tendencies.

No, NATO is not “just a defensive alliance,” go on, have a read. It’s a millitary alliance of Imperialist countries. Yes, Russia could have just not invaded, thougj given the shelling of ethnic-Russians within Ukraine by Kiev it’s impossible to say NATO wasn’t deliberately provoking it as well.

You could argue that Russia feared that NATO getting bigger meant that the individual countries get bigger, meaning they may choose to attack Russia themselves with larger power. But Russia could use that as an excuse to shore up its own alliances and continue building its own military (both actions taken in case of Russian invasion), not to invade a non-NATO country for no other reason?

Given the shelling of Donetsk and Luhansk, areas with majority ethnic Russians within Ukraine, Russia decided to take advantage of that and cripple Ukraine’s military. It isn’t “justified,” but that’s what happened, and the invasion never would have happend if NATO wasn’t deliberately encircling Russia. Russia even tried to join NATO, but was denied.

What “specific example” did you give? Is “religion” a specific example? Lmao

They can be entirely disregarded.