Leftists should stop talking about Taxing The Rich

The YouTube Channel Tribunate has a good video on the Grain Dole of Ancient Rome.  There is a lot that’s misunderstood about it including over stating just how progressive it actually was.  But regardless it was upon introduction a massive relief to the Poor and Working Class.

And the Rich did not in any way pay for it, it was paid for unfortunately by the exploitation of the conquered people of the colonies.  Not a single Grain of it was paid for by Taxing the wealthy.  Yet Rome’s Aristocratic Patricians hated it anyway, they despised it and never stopped trying to undermine and destroy it.  Because the more Desperate the poorest in a society are, the easier they are to exploit.

And that fact is even more true under modern Capitalism than it was in ancient economies.  

There are now a number of good YouTube videos on Modern Monetary Theory or MMT.  The fact is Modern States with Currency Sovereignty like the United States create the money they spend and do not need a source of income to have enough money.  One of 1dime's videos on the subject is about how wrong it is to claim social programs are funded by Taxing the Rich.

However 1dime said one thing in that video I do disagree with, he said we should still Tax the Rich for “moral reasons”, well in my opinion as doing things for “moral reasons” is the height of immorality actually, it’s founded upon an Idealist rather then Materialist framework.  Morality should be based on reducing harm and benefiting society.

These videos do explain why some Taxation is still needed for the Government Backed Currency to have it’s objective value.  But once we understand that the Rich will oppose social programs like UBI and Free Healthcare and so on regardless and that how much money the Government has doesn't actually matter, I say we should stop giving them the excuse of perceived victimization, because however hallow to us online Leftists that is, America’s ruling ideology has made most even working class Americans very sympathetic to the idea of wanting to keep what you think you’ve earned.

And another added benefit is that if CasualHistorian is right about Lowering Taxes being the only truly unifying principle of the Republican Party, then once self proclaimed Communists stop pretending we need to tax the rich to achieve even our short term goals we can start trying to run in primaries even when only the Republican Party is having one.  Their Primaries are easier for a GrassRoots candidate to win anyway, and the right kind of Communist can build a coalition based on being pro Gun Rights and being Libertarian on Social Issues and courting the non-interventionist Anti-War wing of the Party.

I wish I understood this MMT stuff 4 years ago when I tried to argue something similar after the 2020 Election.

A lot of Leftists like to use Austerity as a scare word, as a core embodiment of the Capitalist Economics they oppose.  Well the actual way to be the exact opposite of Austerity is to propose increased spending and lowering taxes at the same time.

We need to start making it more clear that our objective is for the masses to have more, not inherently for anyone to have less.  

But if the existence of the Ultra Wealthy bothers you that much, I believe what they have will naturally start to diminish once the masses are less exploitable, we don’t need to take from them directly.

Napoleon Restored the Revolution of 1789

The notion that Napoleon’s 18 Brumaire Coup represented the complete undoing of everything the French Revolution fought for is the greatest misnomer in all Historical Discourse.

The radical even by modern standards political visions of the Girondins, Colliders, Jacobins and Enrages had already been dead for years but were themselves the product of the Revolution moving beyond its original goal.  After half a decade of rule by the Centrists devoid of any real political vision Napoleon was supported by multiple key leaders of the original Revolution.  

Emmanuel Joseph Sieyes was the original ideological leader of the Revolution, his “What is the Third Estate” was the Declaration of Independence of the Bourgeoisie.  He had faded into the background when the Revolution was radicalized and then became a vital backer of Napoleon’s Coup.

Of course he and a lot of the well known spokesmen of Bourgeoisie ideology were not strictly speaking of the Bourgeoisie themselves.  Someone who was would be Claude Perier who played an overlooked material role in starting the Revolution in 1789, was not fond of the Radicalism of 1792-94 and then was another vital backer of Napoleon and was among the founders of the Bank of France.

Even when Napoleon later became Emperor he was embodying the Pre-Revolution Philsophe concept of the Enlightened Monarch.

This is the problem I have with Peter Coffin’s “Leftism is the Left Wing of Capitalism” nonsense.  The French Revolution started and ended as a Bourgeoisie Revolution because of its Right Wing.

The Enrages were Proto Marxist-Leninists and the Conspiracy of the Equals were proto Libertarian Socialists.  The Girdondins may not have been Socialist enough to fit an official definition but they would have been enough for the CIA to overthrow them in a Coup during the Cold War with their calls for Agrarian Land Redistribution.

Am I a Marxist?

Marxism is strictly speaking not a Socio-Economic or Political Ideology but a way of looking at History.  That can have implications on how one looks towards achieving their political goals, but you can in theory agree with a Marxist analysis of history while having politics that are the opposite of Marx’s.  And you can in turn have the same political goals as those who call themselves Marxists politically while rejecting a Marxist analysis of history.

At its broadest most basic sense Marxism is viewing history as primarily driven by Class Conflict and Material Conditions.  And in that I am essentially Marxist.  And my political goals are also the same, I am a Communist who desires a Moneyless, Classless Stateless Society.

However I view a lot of the specifics of how Marx and Engels framed their History of Class Conflict as gravely mistaken, which many contemporary Marxists and especially MLs still cling to dogmatically.  The division of eras simplistically into Primitive-Communism then “Slavery” then “Feudalism” then Capitalism being where we are now is very problematic in how biased towards a Western Perspective it is.  But even within that Western Perspective is still an oversimplification and tied to now outdated terminology.  The Socio-Economic Mode of Production of the Middle Ages is better defined as Manorialism not “Feudalism” for one example.

I have prior posts on this Blog already talking about aspects of all that.  But for further understanding of how wrong both the Marxist and common Liberal understanding of “Feudalism” and the Middle Ages is I recommend reading the book Those Terrible Middle Ages Debunking The Myths by Regine Pernoud and/or watching the YouTube videos on this Playlist I made.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4CWxmx4wepgNS9Ql6ZQfxjbA5XkJ4OSP

Marxism is an Apostate child of Hegelianism.  Hegelianism was all about viewing History as driven by Conflicts, New Atheists are very Hegleian in their devotion to the discredited Science vs Religion Conflict thesis.  But I say Apostate because while keeping a form of Conflict in his view of History Marx also rejected the Idealism that Hegel inherited from Kant and Plato preferring to see things Materialistically like an Empiricist or Epicurean or Aristotelian or Stoic.  But Marx and Engels were not the first Materialist Worker focused Socialists, before them came Flora Tristan and Moses Hess.

TIK ignores the ways in which Marx Apostatized from Hegelianism in building his little Ideological Genealogy.  He recognized Aristotelianism as ultimately independent of Platonism in-spite of how Aristotle started as a student of Plato, well Marx is to Hegel as Aristotle was to Plato.

However the Marxists have brought this on themselves by not rejecting all the Hegelian terminology they should have.  “Dialectical Materialism” is an Oxymoron, Dialectics is definitionally an idealist concept having its roots in Pythagorean Dualism.  It no longer means what it originally meant in how Marx and Engels use the word, but modern Marxists fall right back into Hegelian Idealism for example in how Slavoj Zizek refuses to see a third option existing for anything including Gender.

Being a Communist and being a Zionist on the Internet are very similar.

I can explain how I'm a Communist because I believe in Collective Ownership of the means of production while working towards the goal of a Moneyless, Classless, Stateless Society.  Or that I’m a Zionist because I support the Israelis right to self determination in their Ancient Homeland.  And for every response that does attempt to engage with what I said I support there are far more that just go “look at the obviously evil things done by this Nation-State” which has nothing to do with those principals.

So let me make myself clear, I am no apologist for the actions of Israel especially not recently, or of Modern China or North Korea or the Soviet Union for most of its history.  Now Cuba, Vietnam and Laos I do think are reasonably successful Communist experiments, but they aren’t hills I’m willing to die on either.

Many calling themselves Anti-Zionist have had what Zionism means defined for them by bad faith actors.  The reverse also happens of course, I know most American Leftist self professed Anti-Zionists do not advocate the forced removal of the Jewish population currently living there.  However they refuse to face the material reality that the dominant factions in the Palestinian Authority do want that. 

If you support a Binational State where Jews and Arabs and other residents all have equal Citizenship and you're a Communist, then you basically have the same final goal as the founders of Labour Zionism like Aaron David Gordon and Ber Borochov.  At a certain point the disagreement becomes a matter of semantics, whether the Binational State should be called Israel or Palestine. But I think the supposed Anti-Colonialists should stop wanting to be named after what Hadrian called the region.

Also as an American Citizen I firmly oppose the U.S. getting involved in any Middle East conflict on either side, in any way, either Military or Financially.

Even if a given Nation-State’s ruling ideology has no significant differences on paper from the specific form of Communism or Zionism I espouse, that would still not make every action that State took a reflection of the ideology.

However, that's not the case.  I’m a Labour-Zionist, and yes a lot of Israeli Prime Ministers were too, but their Labour party was diluted not unlike the British Labor Party.  Israel isn’t the only Capitalist State to ever have nominally Socialist Prime Ministers, even Japan had one briefly in the mid 90s.  But now Israel has for nearly 30 years been dominated by Likud, the Israeli equivalent of the LDP, an Authoritarian Socially Conservative and Economically Capitalist Party.

And with Communism every Communist State has been not just specifically Marxist but more specifically Leninist.  Lenin was actually already controversial within Marxism, both in Russia and outside of it, before even the 1905 Russian Revolution happened.  So no Bolshevism didn’t become what makes it distinct from other Marxisms as a result of being a ruling party.  Rosa Luxemburg predicted why Lenin’s Vanguardism would prove inherently corrupt and what happened vindicated her completely.  

One of her main points was the innate spontaneity of a true Popular Revolution, something Lenin refused to accept after the February Revolution spreading conspiracy theories that it was an Allied plot (his "Revolutionary Defeatism” was always just an excuse for siding with the Central Powers, he was no true Pacifist).

Another of her main points was about Bureaucracy, which Lenin mocked people for being concerned about.  This is why Trotskyism, as sympathetic to Trotskyists as I sometimes am also fails, you can’t pretend you are rejecting only Stalin not Lenin when Lenin mocked you in advance.

I don’t claim to have all the answers to figure out how to do either Communism or Zionism correctly.  But I do know good Zionism needs to also respect the right to self determination of the other people living west of the Jordan.  And any desire to expand Israel’s border East of the Jordan is unacceptable.

Capitalism was never Progressive or Revolutionary and Liberalism is not inherently Pro Capitalist.

The problem with the common depiction of the history of the transition from Feudalism to Capitalism in England being focused the Enclosures of the Commons is that the existence of the Commons was actually a problem for either Feudalism or Capitalism, they both require all the land monologized by a ruling class.  And indeed most Enclosures that happened during the Middle Ages and even into the 17th Century were for the Feudal Aristocracy not the proto Bourgeois.

Liberalism in the modern English Speaking world began during the English Revolution with The Levellers led by John Liburne and Richard Overton, just like how Communism was revived with the Diggers led by Gerrard Winstanley.  Overton called for the unenclosing of previously Common Land, the Levellers didn’t want to abolish Private Property entirely like the Diggers, but there being Common Land was a vital piece of their vision.

Under Capitalism Private Property is not actually a Right, it’s a Privilege, but people with Privilege love to treat an attack on their privilege as if it violates their rights.  The early Liberals from the Levellers to John Locke to Rousseau saw Property as a Right that all are entitled to.  I am still a Communist who sees ending Private Property entirely as the correct answer.  But I refuse to see these true Liberals as inherently more aligned to Capitalism than Communism simply because of one thing Karl Marx said.

Robert Filmer in Patriarcha created a Private Property ideology much more like what modern Capitalism Apologists believe, and he did so as a Jacobite Royalist supporting Feudalism not as a Liberal, he was a Reactionary not a Revolutionary.  He is who John Locke wrote his discussion of Property to refute as James Tully documents in A Discourse on Property: John Locke and his Adversaries. Also The Inclosure Act of 1773 was passed by the Tory Government of Lord North.

I also recommend reading The Cercle Social, the Girondins, and the French Revolution by Gary Kates.

However, in time some wealthy landowners became influenced by Liberal ideology and slowly started corrupting it with Laisseze-Fair and Meritocratic ideas, principally David Hume in England and the Physiocrats in France.  Real Liberalism is not an ideology that Justifies Capitalism at all, that’s it’s corrupt Prodigal offspring.

The first half of The Communist Manifesto has been described as the most Pro-Capitalist text ever written.  The idea that Capitalism was good when it started, that it “resolved the class contradictions of Feudalism”, that it was necessary for Capitalism to happen before we can do Socialism or Communism is still dogmatically held to by too many modern Marxists especially MLs.

The Liberation that actually happened during this period was accomplished by Liberalism, but even then not everything they were fighting for was achieved.  Then Capitalists Co-Opted Liberalism as they destroyed the only upsides of Feudalism.  Then Marxists start giving Capitalism credit for what Liberalism accomplished while calling Liberalism the Justifying Ideology of Capitalism so they can label any Leftist with actual Democratic Values a “Bourgeois Liberal” while they slowly turn into Fascists with a USSR Fetish.

We also have MLs now rejecting the concept of being Left Wing anymore because of how that terminology originated with the French Revolution and so they say to call yourself Left Wing is merely “the Left Wing of Capitalism”.  The problem is NO the French Revolution didn’t truly create a modern Capitalist state out of France until its Right Wing prevailed on the 18 Brumaire.  The Left during the Revolution included the Enrages and the Conspiracy of the Equals who Marx acknowledged as true Communist precursors, but it also included Anti-Capitalist Liberals like Claude Fouchet and Nicolas Bonneville.

And the problem with Marxism being too Pro-Capitalism was becoming apparent already in the 19th Century when Russia was still under Feudalism.  Early Russian Marxists like Georgi Plekhanov argued that Russia needed to become Capitalist first, and this was vehemently opposed by the Narodniks who went on to form the Socialist Revolutionary Party.  This issue in Russian Marxism led directly to Leninism. 

The belief that we needed Capitalism for the benefits of the industrial Revolution is ridiculous, I frankly find it incredibly unsettling that so many people who claim to believe in the Collectivist values of Communism think Industrialization required the Profit Motive.

The Youtube channel veritas et caritas has a video on how Co2 emission was known to inevitably be a problem even in the early 1800s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSRzAYqbKxc&pp=ygUhdmVyaXRhcyBldCBjYXJpdGFzIGNsaW1hdGUgY2hhbmdl

If Society was never Capitalist the issue could have bene solved way sooner.  Now we're on the verge of it being too late and those in power still refuse to put their short term profit motive aside and do anything about it.  Even though we already found out how to make Electric Cars in the 19th Century.

The Continuity between Pre-Civil War Parties and their Modern forms

There's a lot about both the Democratic and Republican parties that have changed during their long histories, but also a lot about both parties that has stayed the same.

The Party Switch narrative is correct in that specifically Southern White Supremacists switched from being Democrats to being Republicans in the mid 20th Century, which in turn impacted how both partied as whole were on Racial issues.  How and why it happened is a longer and more complicated story than the common simplified narrative that makes it about 1 or 2 presidential elections in the 1960s, but the gist of that narrative is true. 

In fact I’ll even say there’s another type of voter who switched from being more likely to be Democrats to more likely to be Republicans slightly sooner and that’s Classical Liberals or Pro-Capitalism Libertarians like Grover Cleveland.

However, the problem I have is when people act like this means in every way they completely switched, that there was nothing Liberal about any of the Antebellum Democrats and nothing Conservative about the Antebellum Republicans.  The fact is that what political positions seem to innately go together today did not always innately go together, many of them seemed innately at odds in the past.  At their philosophical core the continuity between what these parties were when they were founded and what they are today is greater than the divergence.

Typical attempts to in any way deconstruct the Party Switch narrative are done with an agenda of supporting the modern Republican Party.  But that’s not what I’m doing, I don’t like either party in its current state and think both had more redeeming qualities in the past then they do now but would not fully endorse either at any time period.  Which one I would nominally consider the lesser Evil depends on the circumstances. But the basic fact that the Republican Party is today the party of the Racists is not a fact that can be denied no matter how you look at its history.

I shall start with the origins of the Democratic Party.

Andrew Jackson was a Slave Plantation Owner and a Racist against both Blacks and Native Americans.  But he very much demonstrated that he did not prioritize his positions on those issues over the Unity of the Union.  He opposed “States Rights” during the Nullification Crisis creating tension with other Southern Democrats like John C. Calhoun, and even predicted the next Crisis to provoke Secession would be the Slavery question.  Regardless Jackson was also the first U.S. President who was an active vocal defender of Slavery.

The reasons Jackson is a villain to modern Leftists were unfortunately not divisive issues at the time. People on the right sides of them did exist but they were not what principally animated any Presidential Elections of the 1820s and 30s.  The organized vocal anti Jackson sentiment of the time came from the Right, from New England and New York aristocrats and also the Anti-Masons, modern Conspiracy Theorists lionizing Jackson have it backwards, at the time people who believed in the Illuminati saw Jackson as an Illuminati puppet.

The Democrats were named what they were because they wanted to make the country more Democratic, there is a reason why in both the 19th and 21st Centuries every Presidential Election with a discrepancy between the Popular Vote and Electoral Vote it was the Democrats who lost even though they got more votes.  And both then and now the Party was partly driven by Anti-Wall Street Populism.

The Republican Party when it was founded is often mischaracterized as a Single Issue Party with that issue being opposition to Slavery.  The thing is there had already been Anti-Slavery single issue parties and they were no more successful than any other single issue party.  The Republican Party was simply the first major Political Party that was not internally divided on the Slavery issue.

And that includes the Democrats, Anti-Slavery Democrats always existed, particularly in the northern States.  Martin Van Buren was a co-founder of the Party who came down against Slavery when that became a divisive issue.  In New York the Pro-Slavery Faction were called the Hunkers and the Anti-Slavery faction the Barnburners.  Remember when I said above the Classical Liberals were mostly Democrats in the 1800s? Well they were usually with the Anti-Slavery Democrats like Samuel Tilden, which is not surprising since Classical Liberals followed the Economic Ideology of Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill who both made their opposition to Chattel Slavery well known.  Local and State level Politicians in the North often didn’t concern themselves with Slavery one way or the other which is why I have trouble even finding the Anti-Slavery Democrats outside New York, but one example is Nelson Dewey the first Governor of my home state of Wisconsin.

The most vocal and uncompromising Pro-Slavery Southern Democrats were not Liberals, Classical or Otherwise, nor were they “Conservative” by any modern American understanding of Conservatism, they were Agrarian Neo-Feudalists who self identified as Anti-Capitalist and loved Thomas Carlyle.  But those two types were not the only types the Democrats had, they also had the ideological ancestors of the future Progressive Democrats.

Slavery was not the only issue early American Parties were internally divided on, for the most part they were not even truly Ideologically defined parties to begin with.  America’s first party system was during Washington’s first term primarily about the fight over Hamilton's Bank but after that issue was settled it became principally Political Anglophiles (Federalists) vs Political Francophiles (Democratic-Republicans).  However the French Revolution context of that made it so Anglophiles tended to lean Tory (or at least Burkean) and Francophiles tended to lean Jacobin (or at least Girondin).

However one interesting exception would be how after the Hattian Revolution many former Saint-Domingue Slave owner emigres settled in the Southern United States, especially the Carolinas.  Some of them were Royalists but some supported The French Revolution in-spite of how popular Abolitionist Sentiment was across all the factions of the Revolution in Paris.  And then there's how Napoleon complicated things.

The story of how the Democratic Party is related to prior American political parties is usually oversimplified as just being a daughter of the Democratic-Republicans.  And there is some truth to that especially in New York where Tammany Hall is the continuity between them.  The problem is after the Federalist Party was basically dead and the U.S. became functionally a Single Party State for awhile, many Federalists just joined the Democratic-Republicans without really changing their positions on anything, this is especially true of John Quincey Adams.

Jacksonian Democracy is basically the partial fulfillment of the vision of Northern Federalist James Wilson.  While the Ethos of the Southern Democrats arguably began with Charles Cotesworth Pinckney who was Hamilton’s handpicked successor as leader of the Federalists.  Oliver Wolcott Jr was an important Federalist who became a Jacksonian at the end of his life.  And James Buchanan was a Federalist till 1824.  Meanwhile Thomas Jefferson who was still alive in 1824 was vocal in his distaste for Andrew Jackson.

Another interesting detail of the Jackson era Nullification Crisis was that James Madison came out in clear opposition to allowing states to Secede from the Union.

Early American Labor Unions were already more inclined to support the Democrats over Republicans even before the Civil War.. William H. Sylvis supported Stephen Douglas during the 1860 Election but was Loyal to the Union during the Civil War. Before that just look at the history of the Locofocos and the Working Men's Party.

Also pre Civil War it was already the Democrats who were more supportive of Immigrants while the Nativist WASP Xenophobes like the Know Nothings and Bowery Boys were more inclined towards first the Whigs then the Republicans.  George F. Edmunds was of the founding generation of the Republican Party being elected to office as a Republican in 1954, and went on in 1894 to be a founding member of the Immigration Restriction league which throughout its history was lead by Republicans like Henry Cabot Lodge though most Democrats also wound up voting for the Legislation it backed in 1917.  The principal sponsors of the even worse 1924 Immigration Act were also Republicans, Albert Johnson and David A. Reed.

The reason so many people want to believe the “party switch” represented a more complete switch then it actually was is because the simplistic shorthand definition of what a “Conservative” is makes one assume a Conservative could only ever claim to oppose Slavery in Hindsight.  However Edmund Burke is popularly referred to as the father of Modern Conservatism, and he was very vocal in his opposition to Slavery.  John Wesley was an Abolitionist to the right of even Burke actually calling himself a Tory and opposing the American Patriots.  The Federalists in the United States were very much the Edmund Burkes of America, especially Alexander Hamilton, Gouverneur Morris and John Adams, all three opposed Slavery with Morris being the one person at the Constitutional Convention trying to get Slavery outright Abolished at the country's inception.  And they equally shared Burke’s hatred of the French Revolution.

The Whigs were born out of the ashes of the Federalist Party, especially Northern Federalists, and then the early Republican Party was entirely led by Former Whigs.  During it's brief existence the Confederacy never developed much of a Party system, but in North Carolina an opposition party made of former Whigs did exist for a bit and called itself the Conservative Party.

Alven R. Bovay was a former Whig co-founder of the Republican Party who in 1874 denounced the Party considering its Anti-Slavery Mission statement complete at a time when Reconstruction was already on the verge of failing and went on to join the Temperance movement.  So he sounds exactly like a modern “Racism is already solved” type Conservative.

Following the various “Compromises” of 1850 and 1854 the most recent changes to the Status Quo were in favor of the Slave States.  So in that context fighting those changes became definitionally Conservative and Abolitionism full on Reactionary.

The appearance of the Republican Party being a single issue party was marketing, they got the Votes of even Marxists because Marx himself rightly deemed opposing Slavery the most vital issue in the U.S. at that time, and also many Anti-Slavery Democrats left to join the Republicans.  But the leadership of the Party was almost entirely former Whigs who were a Burkean Conservative Party.  At the 1856 Convention their platform already treated another issue as of near equal importance, opposing Polygamy on the same false Biblical Logic that their 2004 opposition to Gay Marriage was based on.  At the 1860 Convention’s Platform they downplayed the Slavery question refusing to call for outright Abolition.  This platform condemned Disunion but also affirmed the sovereignty of the States, so no the Republicans didn’t start caring about States Rights only when former Southern Democrats joined them a century later. 

Opposing Slavery was always objectively good, but not everyone who opposed Slavery did so for the right reasons.  Some were Racists who didn’t want Black people in the country at all.  But more influential than that were the Northern Capitalists who viewed the Southern Plantation owners as Economic Rivals they wanted to crush, and the South as a whole as a Pre-Capitalist Society ripe for Imperialist exploitation.  And that’s why most of the Republicans never really wanted Reconstruction to go all the way, actually making the Freed Slaves truly fully enfranchised citizens would make them more difficult to exploit.  Giving them ownership of the Land they spent Generations working on would get in the way of Proletarianizing them.

Meanwhile a lot of the founding Republicans were mainly just opposed to Slavery expanding westward and/or the Fugitive Slave Act and not actively calling for Abolition in the states where it was already entrenched.

With the Democrats the unifying factor that enabled Neo-Feudalists and Classical Liberals and proto-Social Democrats to be able to coexist in the same party was their shared hatred of Wall Street and Bankers.  Benjamin Tilman was one of the most vile and despicable openly racist Southern Democrats, but he also has his name on one of the most important pieces of Progressive Era Antitrust legislation, the Tilman Act of 1907.  There were even pro New Deal Segregationists like Tom Connolly.

Republican President Calvin Coolidge was Fiscally Conservative and also Anti-Racist.  The 1924 Immigration Act passed with a Veto Proof Majority, but Coolidge's singing statement heavily implies he would have Vetoed it if he could.

No one actually denies the Republican Party had Conservatives before 1960, but they desperately want to pretend that in the Roosevelt era Republican Party there was no overlap between the Conservative Republicans and those who were still fighting Racism.  However Robert Taft and Hamilton Fish were absolutely leading the fight to get Anti-Lynching legislation passed while self identifying as Conservative at the same time, and Taft at least is who later Conservative Republicans sought to claim they were carrying the mantle of even while squabbling with each other.  

That said the Republicans party also already had Racists at that time, James Wolcott Wadsworth Jr. opposed Anti-Lynching legislation on States Rights grounds, as did William Sterling Cole, Harold Knutson and Clare Hoffman who voted against the 1937 Anti-Lynching Bill. And the Republicans even already had a full blown Nazi in Jacob Thorkelson.  

Even the Progressives the Republican Party had during the era of Teddy Roosevelt Progressivism did in fact take what we now see as Conservative positions on things like Prohibition.  And their Conservationism was much more Eco-Fascist then actually Environmentalist.

Athenian Democracy’s Dark Side

I myself have fallen into the trap of over Romanticizing Athenian Democracy.  

Usually people talking about Athens will acknowledge the issue of them having Slavery and how Slaves weren’t even the only people denied the vote, Women, and “foreigners” couldn’t vote either.  (I’ve also read contradictory things on whether or not “Bastards” could vote.)

I want to clarify something about the “foreigners” who were denied citizenship in Ancient Athens.  I’m a Far Leftist who wants to expand the vote even to so-called “Illegal Immigrants” who can’t even speak proper English.  But this issue in Ancient Athens went beyond that, there were families who had been living in Attica for Generations who the Athenians still saw as foreigners ineligible for citizenship, many did not descend anyone who had ever lived anywhere else yet it was still impossible for them to ever become citizens.  

But there is a desire to paint those issues as mere glitches that could have been patched out.  However Athens political system was built on more than just the technical facts of how Laws were made and enforced.  

People praise how Athens was a “participatory” Democracy, how there was no such thing as an “ironic detachment from Politics”, how the word “Idiot” was first coined to insult those Citizens who seemed politically disengaged.  It’s not just that everyone who could Vote did, but that they didn’t simply vote on voting day and stop thinking about politics during their regular lives.  It’s easy to romanticize a society built on all the Citizens being actively politically engaged 24/7 when you aren’t thinking about why that was possible.  

No one who qualified as a Citizen had a Job, not a Job as we would most strictly think of it.  The Manual Labor was all done by Slaves, from tilling the farms to mining in the mines to the household servants of the wealthier citizens.  In families that couldn’t afford household slaves the domestic labor was done by their Wives who also couldn't vote.  If anyone was doing paid Labor for a wage it was those non enfranchised “foreigners”.  In fact Athenian culture considered it shameful to be a worker.

People talk about how by 500 BC there were no longer any Property or Wealth requirements to Vote in Athens. The problem is even the absolute poorest landless person who could Vote was still part of a Privileged Class benefiting from the systemic oppression/exploitation of the majority of the people living in Attica.

A certain kind of person, often Conservative leaning but not always, will talk about how the average citizen of the United States isn't as politically engaged as the average citizen of Ancient Athens as if that’s a failure on their part, as if they’re willing political ignorance is why our Democracy is failing.  But someone who has to work 40 hours a week to make sure they and their family don't starve to death doesn’t have the time to make themselves just as politically educated and informed as the people fortunate enough to be a Political YouTuber.

Remember that episode of The Mandalorian season 3 where they visit the planet that’s a Direct Democracy but where all the work is done by the Droids?  On the one hand I like that this episode acknowledges that such a society is dependent on its Slaves, but it also does the Hogwarts House Elves thing by assuring us the Droids like their state of servitude.

I have an internal personal conflict in how I react to Sentient Robots or AI being used in ways like this in fiction.  I personally don’t think Artificial Intelligence becoming truly Sentient is theoretically possible, I’m fully prepared to accept being proven wrong if I see one show the same unambiguous signs of Sentience that so many fictional Robots have.  But right now I don’t think it will happen and I do think technology is part of how to create a Post-Capitalist Utopia.  So it’s frustrating that every fictionalization of a future society where machines greatly lighten humanity's workload presumes they will become Sentient.

But let’s return to the present.  A functioning Democracy where the people actually doing the work that keeps society functioning are also the ones making the decisions, is going to be a lot more complicated to figure out then a society where everyone who votes has the ability to be a full time Politician.  

Every prior post on this Blog where I’ve even mildly looked to Athenian Democracy as a model to be emulated has been in the context of favoring Direct Democracy over Representative Democracy.  In theory many fellow Communists also prefer Direct Democracy.  Usually the reason given for why Athenian Direct Democracy couldn’t work for a modern Nation-State is that Athens was a City-State and so true Direct Democracy can only work on a local scale.  However modern mass communication technologies have made it so geographical distance is no longer a valid obstacle to Direct Democracy.

So actually if there’s any reason to defend Representative Democracy it’s the issues I have devoted this post to.  In a society where the Workers are the Citizens it’s going to be necessary for there to be some Citizens whose Job is Politics.

However I still think the current balance of power between the Representatives and the full Citizenry is tilted too far in favor of the Representatives, especially in The United States on the Federal Level. When the majority of the population, by a significant margin, wants a Single Payer Healthcare System but the Government is still refusing to make that happen, it’s objectively failing to be a Democracy at all, representative or not.  And now I’m worried I’m rambling too far off the initial topic of Athens.  

None of this changes that Athens was preferable to Sparta, and thar the more well known Classical Critics of Athens from Xenophanes to Plato to Aristotle to Polybius to Plutarch to the Founding Fathers and Jacobins had basically the opposite problem with Athens.  They acted like Athens was a society where the lowest people and slaves held the power, or at least like their system was a slippery slope inevitably leading to that.  

Athens is also preferable to the Roman Republic as it was from 500-100 BC.  The Popularies tried to Reform Rome into a society that would still be far from a Communist Utopia but could at least not be as bad as Athens since it was at least possible for people with non-citizen Ancestors to become Citizens.  But that movement died with Fulvia, under Augustus and the Claudians the Principate became no less Aristocratic than the Republic had been.

Reformism is Good Actually

Now Reformism can mean different things to different people in different contexts.

Bad Mouse made a recent video critiquing Electoralism and I agree with most of it. I also refuse to be bullied into voting for the lesser of two evils, but he then ties that into his overall Anti-Reformism.  You can be an Anti-Reformist who engages in Electoralism, getting allies into the state to help the Revolution from within is a valid strategy.  And you can be a Reformist who rejects Electoralism, but even I don’t reject Electoralism entirely, I am willing to vote for someone who isn’t even a fellow Communist, but they have to be advocating for actual meaningful Reforms like the Basic Income or Universal Healthcare, not the mere bandages the Democrats run on.

When Karl Marx famously said about certain Socialists in France "ce qu'il y a de certain c'est que moi, je ne suis pas marxiste" ("what is certain is that [if they are Marxists], [then] I myself am not a Marxist"). He was talking about the radical Anti-Reformists, Jules Guesde and Paul Lafargue, and their opposition to reformist tactics is exactly what he was objecting to, not any of their policy goals (I very much like and recommend LaFargue’s The Right To Be Lazy).

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/05/parti-ouvrier.htm

After the programme was agreed, however, a clash arose between Marx and his French supporters arose over the purpose of the minimum section. Whereas Marx saw this as a practical means of agitation around demands that were achievable within the framework of capitalism, Guesde took a very different view: “Discounting the possibility of obtaining these reforms from the bourgeoisie, Guesde regarded them not as a practical programme of struggle, but simply ... as bait with which to lure the workers from Radicalism.” The rejection of these reforms would, Guesde believed, “free the proletariat of its last reformist illusions and convince it of the impossibility of avoiding a workers ’89.” [4.] Bernard H. Moss, The Origins of the French Labour Movement, 1830-1914, 1976, p.107.

Now I’m not the kind of Leftist who thinks Marx was infallible and thus his opinion is all I need.  There are in fact some things that I feel History has not vindicated Marx on, however his assessment of the nature of French Anti-Reformists was very vindicated.

During the Boulanger Affair and  Dreyfus Affair the Anti-Reformists said that Socialists shouldn't get involved in such internal conflicts of the Bourgeois with the one exception of Jean Allemane, besides him the Socialists actively fighting to oppose the birth of Fascism and modern Anti-Semitism were the Reformists like Jean Jaures and the Possibilitists lead by Paul Brousse and Benoit Malon.  Honestly it sounds a lot like today where a certain type of Marxist-Leninist sees it as a distraction to get involved with anything that even remotely seems like a “Culture War '' issue or “Identity Politics”.

Wikipedia is very frustrating, the Wiki Pages for some of these Reformist figures I just mentioned have clearly been partially edited by people who just accept at face value that notion that Reformism is itself Non-Marxist even though on other pages Wikipedia itself quotes what Marx said in favor of Reformism.

Modern Anti-Reformists like Bad Mouse love to cite the history of the SPD as a vindication, that their support of entry into WWI and every betrayal of the working class they committed after the German Revolution is the result of them once being well intentioned Marxists who were corrupted by involvement with the State.  And the funny thing is these Marxists wind up without realizing it agreeing with the very Kropotkin Anarchist attitude that is the very reason I largely stopped calling myself an Anarchist, their very cartoonish “Power corrupts absolutely” worldview.

First of all Germany wasn’t the only country with an established Socialist Party when WWI started.  In Italy and Britain and the United States it was the Pro-War Socialists who were the minority forced out of the established Party to start new ones, and those new parties they started became early Fascism or something analogous.  And no, those Socialist Parties were not any less engaged in Electoralism and Reformism then the SPD was.  The Labor Party had Pro-War elements but no one claims they were ever Marxists.

In France the split the war caused was closer to being 50/50 but it was mostly the surviving Anti-Reformists (with Allemane not being an exception this time) who supported the War and became Nationalists, Guesde, Hubert Lagardelle, Gustave Hervé and they too like other Pro-War Leftists are tied to the origins of French Fascism.  Meanwhile the leading French Reformist Jean Jaures virulently opposed the War and was Martyred for it, he’s the Rosa Luxemburg of France. 

Even Anarchists, the people more Anti-Electoralism than any Marxists back then had a split over the War with even Kropotkin himself supporting it.  Lately a lot of MLs on Twitter have been trying to build an “Anarchism to Fascism pipeline” thesis based on how many Italian Anarchists became Fascists, however it was only Pro-War Anarchists who became Fascists and plenty of Pro-War Marxists and even Leninists became Fascists in Italy.

The problem with painting the SPD’s history as Bad Mouse likes to is that the SPD was founded by Ferdinand Lassale not Marxists, the German Socialists who never even claimed to believe that the State should ever be abolished or wither away.  Marxists wound up being in the Party but its leadership was always more Lassalean even if they sometimes paid lip service to Marxist ideas.  So they can’t be identified with any internal disagreement between Marxists.

The Reformist Marxists were Kautsky and Bernstein, they were different from each other in a lot of well documented ways, but Kautsky was always a Reformist the claim of Leninists that he betrayed his early ideals while reacting to the Russian Revolution is a lie, he in the 1890s sided with the French Reformists I talked about above.  Tristam Pratorius has some Medium articles defending Kautsky and Bernstein, they seem to be more a Bersnteinist while I like Kautsky more but still her articles are good.

One important observation they make is that when Marx and Engles talked about “Bourgeois Democracy” they were being literal not euphemistic, Britain, Germany and even much of the United States still had property requirements on the very right to Vote.  It never meant that Communists are supposed to reject anything that a Liberal would recognize as Democratic.  Now I do believe we need more Direct Democracy and less Representative Democracy, but even a Representative Democracy as corrupt as ours can still be used.

Let’s take this historical analysis even further back.  The Marxist view of history is often oversimplified as making The French Revolution of 1789 the key turning point from Feudalism to Capitalism.  And that helps cause some Marxists to think of Reform as futile, if it took a full blown violent Revolution for Capitalism to overthrow Feudalism then certainly it will have to be the same for the replacement of Capitalism.

The problem is France was closer to being the Last nation to become Capitalist than the first.  Marx was born and raised in Prussia then lived in Britain from 1848 till he died.  So the Capitalism he knew was Capitalism as it functioned in countries that became that way by Reform not Revolution.  

But even France had also been subject to a lot of Capitalist Reforms before 1789 without which the Bourgeois Revolution could not have happened.  Anne Robert Jacques Turgot was doing Reaganomics already in the 1770s.

As I explained in a prior post about Basic Income and The New Deal, when the so-called Working Class Party is opposing something obviously helpful to the Working Class on the grounds of “it’s a Capitalist Appeasement” or whatever it alienates the Working Class from that party.

The Protestant Work Ethic is a Nonsense Theory on many Levels

 And honestly I feel embarrassed that I ceded more ground to it then I ever should have in the Capitalism is Atheistic in Nature post. 

It began mostly as a Correlation Equals Causation Fallacy.  Decades ago both Anti and Pro Capitalists tended to casually think of about 1500 as the end of the Middle Ages and thus say the Economic Developments that would eventually be called Capitalism and the Protestant Reformation started at about the same time and in about the same places.

However as far as the history of Capitalism goes that timeline is long outdated.  Scholars and Historians have firmly documented that Decentralized Free Market Capitalism had been emerging in The Netherlands and maybe also Switzerland for centuries already before Martín Luther was born. Meanwhile Mercantile Capitalism was being practiced by Italian Sea Faring City-States like most notably Venice for even longer then that.

Medieval Origins of Capitalism in The Netherlands by Bas van Bavel

https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/49555/1/MPRA_paper_49555.pdf

Pioneers of Capitalism The Netherlands 1000-1800  by Maarten Prak and Jan van Zanden

The Dutch Roots of Capitalism by Edwin an De Haar

https://lawliberty.org/book-review/the-dutch-roots-of-capitalism/

Why Was Venice the Spring of Capitalism?

https://andrewlainton.wordpress.com/2013/09/07/why-was-venice-the-spring-of-capitalism/

Recent Studies on the Economic History of Venice Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 February 2011

Now one can also argue that there was Protestantism already before 1500 as well, but it was not in the same places.  On that subject we're talking about the Waldenses of Lyon and Piedmont, the Lollards of England and the Hussites in Bohemia.  And it was only the last group that ever took over and became the ruling religion, and among the Husites of Bohemia the only ones that ever considered trying to Socio-Economically rework society in the wake of this Religious Reformation were the Taborite who were Anarcho-Communists.  There was also an Anarcho-Communist tendency among the Lollards represented by John Ball.

But even back when the correlation seemed to be true I'd still say the Protestantism caused Capitalism idea was dumb logic.  This was an era when for Material reasons much of Europe was ready to try new ideas, some were good ideas and some were bad, but certain places were more ready then others. Martín Luther however was firmly in bed with the established Feudal Aristocracy of northern and eastern Germany.  

The Protestant Reformation was founded upon Martin Luther's hyper face value reading of Romans 3:27-28 that is often simplified and paraphrased as "Justified by Faith Alone apart from Works".  Because of that in the Protestant mind "Work" is a Dirty Word.

I've watched Moon Channel's Video on the Protestant Work Ethic and seen other BreadTube videos that mention it.  It often seems to be more specifically Calvinism.  That because of the Predestination Theology people become obsessed with proving their Salvation by their hard Work.

1. Calvin like most followers of Augustine held the view that it's impossible to know who is "truly saved" or not.

2. When Protestant Christians do talk about Works as Evidence of Faith they mean morality in general, those Romans verses treat the word "work" as interchangeable with "deeds of the law" as in The Torah.  Labor and economic productivity was not the point at all.

3. Economic Liberalism, The Justifying Ideology of Modern Capitalism, is founded upon a belief in Free Will and Individualism while Calvinism's emphasis on Election creates a far more Collectivist mindset.  But unfortunately not always the good kind of Collectivism.

4. Among American Evangelicals, the ones actually creating the Video Games people usually mean by "Christian Video Games" proper Calvinism is kind of rare actually, with either Arminianism, Free Grace Eternal Security or Hypergrace being more common.  Hypergrace as a product of the Charismatic Movement is tied to the Prosperity Gospel, it is the final form of Protestantism being molded by Capitalism, not the other way around.  Hypergrace may be the subject of it's own post.   Prosperity Theology has it's roots in Wesleyan Methodism and Free-Will Baptists like Russel Conwell, E.W. Kenyon and Oral Roberts, so more Arminian then Calvinist.

"How was The Netherlands able to be Calvinist and Capitalist at the same time for so long then" you may ask?  The simple answer is they separated their civil values from their spiritual values.  It actually took till the late 19th Century for people who are both Christians and Capitalists to start arguing they inherently go together.  And then Cold War Propaganda under Eisenhour cemented the marriage.

The secular developments of the early modern period that the Reformation does deserve credit for is the return of Democracy to Western Society.  Something I already argued for elsewhere.  

https://solascripturachristianliberty.blogspot.com/2022/05/the-reformation-and-resurgence-of.html

And among what I talk about there is how quickly Communist ideas popped up among these same Congregationalist Democratically inclined Reformers.

Liberals and Libertarians and American Conservatives love to claim Capitalism and Democracy are inherently inseparable, but we Leftists should know it's really the opposite.  

But too many still want to concede "Parliamentary Democracy" to Capitalism, Marxist-Leninists and others who use "Reformism" as a dirty word abuse what Karl Marx meant by "Bourgeoise Democracy".  As Tristam Pratorius The Social Democrat explains in their articles defending Kautsky and Bernstein (I support Kautsky but not Bernstein so much) when Marx and Engles used similar language it was literal, in most of Europe back then literally only Property Owners could vote.  It was never meant to imply that Communists should abandon everything a Liberal recognizes as Democratic.

No amount of Failures will ever prove Success is Impossible.

That is my opinion as an optimist, and it's why it's so annoying how often discissions about Communism in a Facebook group just come down to the Anti-Communist treating every failure of every ML State as the ultimate trump card.  I have no interest in defending or excusing them since no matter how I feel about them our objectives for the future should be to build something new.

It's doubly annoying when it happens in specifically a Christian group, all the Christian Facebook Groups I'm in are espousing fairly niche currently outside the mainstream forms of Christianity.  So we should all agree that no Church serving as the mainstream majority religion of it's Nation has ever succeeded in being what Jesus intended The Church to be, if not I feel you have fairly impure notions of what The Church is supposed to be.

So if all those failures don't debunk Christianity then the same should go for Communism.  And so when I start arguing to you that The Bible supports Communism, ranting about all the people Mao killed is NOT a Sola Scriptura response.  The failures of Atheistic Communism certainly do not debunk Christian Communism.

And claiming there have been no successful Communist Societies is predicated on limiting that discussion to Nation-States founded upon Marxism, more specifically in fact Leninism.  It ignores the existence of Anarcho-Communist societies that have existed in many forms both Christian like the Anabaptists and Secular.

Capitalism has incredibly obvious and unavoidable conflicts with Christian values.  So The Christian response to the failures of Secular Communist Societies should be how can we use Christian values to avoid repeating those failures.

Proletarian Patriotism

I find it interesting how none of the people simply mocking or dismissing out of hand this concept are calling it what they call themselves, they never use the word Proletarian and often try to construct a three word phrase for it to make it sound more ridiculous.

I don't like that the people embracing this concept right now are mostly the same Leftists who are simping for Putin and being Class Reductionist on Trans and other "Woke" issues.  But the concept itself I see as useful.

NonCompete had a video where he very cynically condemned the whole idea.  But now he has a two part series on the IWW's efforts to Unionize Black and Poor Whites together, that's exactly the kind of thing the Proletarian Patriots want online Leftists to do more often, to talk about the History of The Left in America, how they were a part of American Political history already before Bolshevism was ever even a thing.  At the same time the IWW was doing everything those videos talk about the Socialist Party of America was also providing Guns to Striking Coal Miners during the West Virginia Coal Wats.

The reason May First is International Labour Day is because of the actions of American Leftists in The Haymarket Affair.  The fact that May 1st wound up being the day Nazi Germany surrendered to the USSR gave the Soviets an excuse to ignore the Holiday's American Origins, then Conspiracy Theorists started saying it was the founding of The Bavarian Illuminati.

The original coining of the word Patriot during the lead up to the War of Independence was as a derogatory word, and then even once embraced by the Patriots it was understood as being in contrast to Loyalist.  The word was never meant to mean blind loyalty to the Government or the Status Quo.  Some of the Early Patriots even opposed the 1787 Constitution like Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams and John Hancock, some of these Anti-Federalists were even already making Renegade Cut's argument that the office of President is basically a King in all but name.  They also understood how it undermined the common people even though they lacked a fully developed Dialectical Materialism.

And that's why Anti-Authoritarian and Anti-Establishment Americans of various ideologies have called themselves the True Patriots, and have also said there is nothing Patriotic about the Patriot Act.

None of the Founding Fathers were Communist or even as Proto-Marxist as we know people could already be at that time.  But they also weren't a Monolith, they disagreed with each other on everything basically, even the two main camps we often group them into had their internal squabbles.  Some of the ones that had the best track record on opposing Slavery were on the wrong side of almost everything else.  But a couple like Aaron Burr and Thomas Paine were progressive enough that I honestly think they only needed a slight push.  Talking about them as if they were all Mustache Twirling Villains is just as Reductionist and Anti-Materialist as Conservatives treating them like they were all Divinely Inspired Prophets.  The South Carolina Delegates at the Constitutional Convention were the most evil, they do anticipate most of the eventual Confederate ideology, they however are not among the ones most people today know the names of.

And the problem with the people who most want to talk about American Socialism being Dogmatic MLs is that they think from 1920 onwards only explicitly Bolshevik Parties count as the real Left so they won't talk about the continued legacy of the Socialist Party of America which was always actually more popular then the CPUSA, or how the Teamsters were lead by Trotskyists during their most successful era.

I said above that none of the Founding Fathers were Socialists, and that's true in a Strictly Political Sense.  But there was a Communistic Spirit alive in the Colonies from well before them and that's via the Quakers who founded Pennsylvania and Delaware. The Quakers had their roots in the most Radical Elements of the English Revolution including connections to the Diggers.  They quickly became the forefront of the Abolitionist Movement largely because of an Enthusiastic Abolitionist Dwarf named Benjamin Lay, Pennsylvania was the first State to Abolish Slavery outright in 1780.  A colonial Quaker is also one of the oldest documented examples we have of a person with a Non Binary identity.

It's the common people of a country who Proletarian Patriotism claims solidarity with, in opposition to the State and the Ruling Class.  

It's about believing in what your Country could be not loyalty to the status quo or nostalgia of it's past.

Liberalism and Socialism

The only time in my life (prior to writing this post) when I ever Self Identified as a Liberal was after I was already a Socialist.  

I now understand that I was actually a type of "Classical Liberal" the entire time I was an Austrian-School Libertarian with some Paleo-Conservative Characteristics (or Ron Paul Libertarian for short). But at the time I was fully tricked by the way Conservatives used the word Liberal.  By this point I understood that not all Liberals were Socialists, the mainstream Democratic Party certainly wasn't.  But I still bought into the idea that Socialism is a line you cross from being very Liberal.  But I quickly learned that Socialists and Communists don't like being called Liberals, one person I interacted with on Twitter got really angry and offended at my associating our shared values with Liberalism.

But since at least 2018 I've been using the word Liberal the way most Online Leftists use it.  But lately as I've been learning more and more about the history of modern Political ideas in 2023, I'm starting to wonder if I was actually right the first time and Socialism should be thought of as Sub-Genre of Liberalism, as a child of Liberalism that got disowned at some point.

The Wikipedia Page for Liberalism defines the core definition this way "Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality, right to private property and equality before the law".  The only one of those values that even at face value looks incompatible with Socialism is Private Property.  And I already on this blog did a post on how Private Property existing or not is irrelevant to the definition of Communism, and it's relevance to Capitalism I would argue conflicts with the idea of viewing it as an innate Human Right, plenty of the Third World Governments the CIA considered Communist enough to overthrow and replace with a Junta were people who merely Redistributed Land Ownership.  But even if you feel Private Property can't exist at all under your interpretation of Socialism, is removing only one of six core values enough to make something not Liberal at all?

Wikipedia does go on to list Market Economics as one of the secondary optional values depending on the type.  Meanwhile Market Socialism also exists though I don't support it.  And to my shock the page didn't use Merit or any derivative words at all, Meritocracy is the real Justifying Ideology of Capitalism, not anything innate to Liberalism.

John Locke is often considered the father of Liberalism but James Tully argued that on property Locke's views were not compatible with Capitalist ideology at all, he was co-opted.  Rousseau was another Enlightenment Figure who both Liberals and Socialists see an intellectual ancestor.  David Ricardo was a Whig Economist who influenced certain strands of Socialism.  And even Adam Smith was cited as an influence on some Socialists not in merely an "I'm debunking him" way. American anarchist Benjamin Tucker wrote in Individual Liberty:

The economic principles of Modern Socialism are a logical deduction from the principle laid down by Adam Smith in the early chapters of his Wealth of Nations,—namely, that labor is the true measure of price. ... Half a century or more after Smith enunciated the principle above stated, Socialism picked it up where he had dropped it, and in following it to its logical conclusions, made it the basis of a new economic philosophy ... This seems to have been done independently by three different men, of three different nationalities, in three different languages: Josiah Warren, an American; Pierre J. Proudhon, a Frenchman; Karl Marx, a German ... That the work of this interesting trio should have been done so nearly simultaneously would seem to indicate that Socialism was in the air, and that the time was ripe and the conditions favorable for the appearance of this new school of thought. So far as priority of time is concerned, the credit seems to belong to Warren, the American,—a fact which should be noted by the stump orators who are so fond of declaiming against Socialism as an imported article.

Ryan Chapman described Marxism as a Critique of Liberalism.  But you can Critique something from within, Marx was literally employed by a Republican Party News Paper in New York where he and the Earliest American Marxists Campaigned for Abraham Lincoln, and also saw his ideas as developing out of certain factions of the French Revolution, not all of whom I would properly label Socialist.

I also recommend reading The Cercle Social, the Girondins, and the French Revolution by Gary Kates.

This notion that Liberal should be just as much of a Dirty Word to us as it is to Conservatives is weaponized by various NazBol or Class Reductionist types, seeing all the WOKE talk from Breadtube as fundamentally Liberal ideas and that's why they're Capitalist Torjan Horses.  But then even some Anarchists like CuckPhilsophy and Zoe Baker will make videos on how the Left shouldn't care about Equality or Human Rights.

But Breadubers also use Liberal as a Dirty Word.  They when not using the proper definition seem to define it based on Centrist Democrats, especially when critiquing what they call the "Liberal" takes on Race, Gender or Queer issues.  There are in fact non Socialist and even Anti-Socialist Liberals who are Woke SJW Critical Race Theorists.

It also factors into the Leftist Critiques of the Basic Income I've been fighting back against.  Leftists don't want to support something that sounds "Liberal" same as Conservatives don't want to support something that sounds "Socialist".

Etymologically the word Liberal and Libertarian both have fundamentally positive meanings coming from Liberty, so maybe we should stop conceding to Pro-Capitalists that they have a Monopoly on them.  

In fact if anything it should be Defenders of Capitalism who are excommunicated. 

Isaiah 32:5-8 

"The vile person shall be no more called liberal, nor the churl said to be bountiful.  For the vile person will speak villany, and his heart will work iniquity, to practise hypocrisy, and to utter error against the LORD, to make empty the soul of the hungry, and he will cause the drink of the thirsty to fail.  The instruments also of the churl are evil: he deviseth wicked devices to destroy the poor with lying words, even when the needy speaketh right.  But the liberal deviseth liberal things; and by liberal things shall he stand."

The word Liberal didn't refer to an ideology at all yet in 1611, making these verses all the more Prophetic.

Basic Income could become the next New Deal

Andrew Yang liked to cite Thomas Paine's Citizens Dividend from Agrarian Justice as part of arguing that the Basic Income is a very American idea.  What's interesting though is that Thomas Spence criticized Paine in The Rights of Infants, he agreed with having a Basic Income but combined it with full Abolition of Private Property.  Spence was an influence on Charles Hall who Karl Marx cited as an influence.  The Basic Income was part of the Socialist Tradition before Marx was.

But in the last several years as the Basic Income has become a trendy proposal online among progressives and social democrats, a number of Socialist and Communist YouTubers have made videos on how it's bad actually because it's another Capitalist plot to appease the Proletariat with a mere reform of the Market Economy.  And the thing is The American Left has made this mistake before.

During the first term of the FDR administration both the Socialist Party of America and the CPUSA under William Z Foster opposed the New Deal because they saw it as a Capitalist plot to appease the Proletariat with a mere reform of the Market Economy.  And that decision more then anything else is what killed the early Socialist Movement in the United States.

In the 1932 Presidential Election the Socialist Party Candidate Norman Thomas got 884,885 votes and Foster got 103,307, which were both up from their 1928 numbers.  In 1936 Thomas got only 187,910 votes and the CPUSA Candidate Earl Browder got 79,315 votes.  Now Browder would actually reverse Foster's position on the New Deal but it was in 1936 itself he took over the party, it was kind of too late but still perhaps why the CPUSA didn't have as big a drop.  

Marxists love to talk about materialism, how our main objective Politically should be to advocate for The Working Class not get all caught up on some specific Utopian Vision.  It was absolutely possible to support the New Deal and Huey Long's Share Our Wealth project while still talking about how that's a drop in the bucket compared to what our Party wants to do and also criticizing the Racism in how the New Deal was being implemented.  Their decision not to do that but flat out oppose the New Deal destroyed most of the support the Socialists had in the country, they never returned to their 1932 numbers.

Caleb Maupin loves to white wash the CPUSA's New Deal era history, lying by omission to make it sound like they were always in support of the New Deal.  He calls himself a Foster Communist not a Browder Communist even though his opinions on the New Deal and the Popular Front are exactly what Browder's break with Foster was.  It also amuses me how all his hyping up of the early CPUSA's legacy ignores how the Socialist Party was always more popular, they Elected multiple Mayors the CPUSA elected none, they twice got a Representative in Congress the CPUSA never got anyone in Congress.

The Basic Income isn't Communism or Socialism, but as far as Goals achievable in the short term to do something for the Working Class it's doable alongside Universal Healthcare and Student Loan Debt Forgiveness.  We need to be seen fighting for them not against them.

Yet some Communists especially MLs actually have bought into the American fetishization of Work as a concept, and that is a problem.  Most people do want to work and not just sit around all day doing nothing, making it so they don't literally have to in order to not starve increases their bargaining power.  But some people don't, and that's why I recommend the book The Right to be Lazy by Paul Lafargue.

The thesis of that book has nothing to do with why Marx said of certain French Marxists "If they are Marxists then I am not a Marxist". Rather it was Lafargue and Guesde's militant Anti-Reformism that he was referring to.  Now someone who's still anti-Reformism as a general rule may say Marx supported those Reforms because they organically arose out of the demands of the working class, and I'd argue the same is happening with the Basic Income, it's growing broad popularity is at it's core coming from the left of center yet being supported even by some conservatives and libertarians makes it a true manifestation of the will of the Proletariat.

Neoliberalism doesn't exist

I have decided that I really do have to break with most of my fellow online Leftists and agree with Casual Historian that Neoliberalism isn't actually a thing.  But it's not just a talking point of self described Socialists and Communists but also of Progressive Liberals, Centrist History YouTubers and even some online Conservatives.

Now it is true that the Republican and Democratic Parties are really just variations of the same basic Economic ideology, that ideology being Free Market Liberalism, no Neo prefix necessary, and they exist alongside various other variants.

The Neoliberalism narrative typically goes like this. 

Milton Freidman developed the Chicago School of Economics in the 1970s and influenced the Economic Policies of Chilean Dictator Pinochet.  Sometimes a claim that his ideology is just a slight modification of Ayn Rand's is thrown in.

Then in the 80s Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher applied Freidman's ideology in the U.S. and U.K. overthrowing the prior Keynesian status quo.  

Finally in the 90s under Bill Clinton and Tony Blair the parties that were supposed to oppose those parties just caved and became just as Neoliberal and really still disagreeing with the other party only on Social Issues and sometimes maybe Foreign Policy.

I'm going to work backwards here, but I can only really comment on the U.S. since I don't have the lived experience of growing up in the U.K. during the 90s.

The core ideology of the mainstream Democratic Party is just as Keynesian as it ever was.  The destruction of Cash Welfare during the Clinton Administration wasn't spearheaded by Clinton himself, it was a consequence of the Republicans taking control of the House under Newt Gingrich.

Since then the Democrats have never had enough control necessary to undo all the Reagan era damage.  Even when controlling the White House and both Houses of Congress they've never had a Filibuster Proof Majority.  The last Presidential Election to ever be a true landslide was 1984.  We've been in a fairly perpetual stalemate for a Generation.  In my opinion to deny the Obama administration was Keynesian is as absurd as denying he was an born in Hawaii.

But another reason people fail to see Keynesianism in the modern Democratic Party is that some people waxing Nostalgic for the 50s have overstated just how Progressive Keynes actually was.  He was not anywhere near the Social Democracy of Bernie Sanders, he didn't want Nationalization of Industries and he wasn't even as big a fan of Welfare and Unions as you probably assumed he was.  If anything it might be possible to argue that modern Democrats are actually closer to Keynes then FDR or Kennedy were.

Now it is true thar Milton Freidman was an influence on Reaganomics, he was an advisor to Reagan and other Republican leaders, but he wasn't their only advisor, regular old William F. Buckley style Conservatives were the far greater influence.  And the U.S. Government becoming more fiscally Conservative actually started under Carter.  Opposition to Social Programs and Government hand outs for the Poor had been a part of Burkean Conservatism since Edmund Burke himself in Thoughts and Details on Scarcity, Reagan didn't need the Chicago Boys to get the idea.

Milton Freidman wanted the Federal Reserve Abolished, Decriminalization of Drugs and Prostitution and no Minimum Wage.  The last of those is indeed something Republicans want but simply aren't getting.  But the Republican Party as a whole never even began to flirt with even mild criticism of The Federal Reserve until after Ron Paul made his big impact in the 2008 Election.  And Friedman's opposition to the Federal Reserve was not some minor issue you can deem expendable, it was a core pillar of his ideology, as long as we still have the Fed you can't claim Freidman won.

Ron Paul was an outlier within the Republican Party, and even he wasn't a Chicago Schooler, he was Austrian School like Murry Rothbard.  Milton Freidman hated both Rothbard and Ayn Rand, and Rand hated all Libertarians from either school.

Frankly I feel Neoliberalism discourse is parallel to the old Neoconservatism discourse I remember from my Ron Paul supporting youth.  I've never seen anyone self describe as either Neoliberal or Neoconservative, and after watching some videos from a Trotskyist deconstructing the Trotskyism-Neoconservatism pipeline narrative I'm pretty sure it too isn't a real thing.

Neoconservatism was a boogeyman invented by Pacifist Conservatives to justify their denial that War Mongering has always been a part of the Conservative Tradition, but it has from William McKinley to how Joseph McCarthy became Senator.  Likewise I think the Neoliberalism narrative began among Progressive Liberals who wanted to deny that the problems of the last 4 decades are innate to Market Economies.  Then a bunch of those Liberals became Socialists after jumping on the Occupy Wallstreet or Bernie Sanders bandwagon and that's where Breadtube comes from.

I've also seen it suggested that Neoconservatism should maybe be considered an Antisemitic Dog Whistle, from the claimed Trotsky connection to the claimed Henry Kissinger connection to the sometimes claimed association with William F Buckley's Zionism.  And the way they would often be depicted as behind the scenes manipulators "Neocons don't win elections, they attach themselves to winners" was a quote I remember.

And since it's Milton Freidman and Ayn Rand who's actual influence on the current status quo is being massively overstated, and a WASP Gentile who's continued influence is being denied, maybe Neoliberalism should be considered an Antisemitic Dog Whistle as well.

Update: Here's an interesting Twitter Conversation I had after sharing this.

https://twitter.com/afran90/status/1689419942964199424

Another Update: John Todd

John Todd was in the 70s a Right Wing Evangelical Christian Conspiracy Theorist, one of the first to claim to actually be a former member of the Illuminati who left, before Warnke or Schneoblen made that a trend.  He specifically claimed that Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged was the Illuminati Blueprint for a Satanaic Take Over and even specifically predicted 1980 would be the year of that take over.

In other words the Neoliberalism Narrative actually claims the predictions of a 70s Conspiracy Theorist were essentially right, simply minus the accusing them of worshiping Satan.

Congregational Polity has lost it's original meaning.

Ready to Harvest is a YouTube Channel that makes educational videos about differences between Christian Denominations.  And overall I consider them pretty good and would recommend.  But there are a couple doctrinal issues relevant to these differences that I feel he defines incorrectly.

The relevant one today is Congregational Polity, because every time that comes up in one of his videos he defines it as simply meaning Local Autonomy with no reference to the fact that Congregational Polity is supposed to be Democracy.  He's not alone in this, sometimes even Wikipedia seems to do this.  

Ready to Harvest doesn't usually mention his own denominational affiliation in these videos, but it's not that hard to figure out he is an Independent Baptist.  I know in the past some of the Independent Baptist Pastors I've listened to who are a lot less interested in discussing Denominational Disagreements politely will often when they discus the Authority of the Local Pastor sound more Episcopal then the Episcopalians.  They seem to believe the only way to become a Pastor is to be ordained by another Pastor and that his authority over the Congregation is supposed to be absolute, the idea even of removing a pastor because the flock no longer approves of him seems anathema to them.

An emphasis on Local Autonomy was always a part of Congregationalism, but it was intended to help protect the Democracy.  Because it has always been the argument of some that true Direct Democracy can only work on a local level, the wider a scale you apply it to the more you risk situations where what's the majority opinion over all may have no support in certain areas.  There are schools of thought in both Liberalism and Socialism that come to this conclusion in opposition to Centralism.  Even Rousseau saw it that way.

The proof that Congregationalism was originally about Democracy lies in simply looking at the English Civil War which happened when English Congregationalism in both it's Pedo-Baptist and Credo-Baptist forms was still young.   Because as I discussed in my Reformation and the Resurgence of Democracy post during that era positions on Clerical Polity and Civil Politics almost always mostly lined up exactly, the Episcopalians were the Monarchists, the Presbyterians were the Parliamentarians and the Congregationalist Puritans and Baptists and Quakers were the ones trying to make England more Democratic.

Sometimes I feel like having the office of Pastor at all is the gateway drug to becoming functionally Episcopalian.  

But it's important to acknowledge that there is a school of thought that suggests that there is a certain kind of Monarchy that is compatible with Democracy, that under the right circumstances a leader with true overwhelming popular support should be allowed to just do what he sees best for the people unchecked until he loses that popular support.  Even John Locke said some things supportive of that idea. In Game of Thrones that's exactly how the Wildings reconcile their rather Anarchist worldview with occasionally having a King Beyond The Wall.  

I'm not entirely unsympathetic to that since I have became a bit of an apologist for Oliver Cromwell who was a Congregationalist.  I also know some of the Founding Fathers wanted the President to be such a Popular Monarch, some of the lesser known Congregationalist influenced Federalists wanted the President to have even more authority but also elected by direct popular vote.    Hamilton himself however was an Episcopalian at his core so he wanted a President who was King in all but name and definitely not chosen by popular vote.

It goes back to how the word "Tyrant" didn't originally have the inherently negative connotations in Ancient Greece that it has to our ears, Tyrants were Popular rulers and the term's evolution towards being inherently derogatory began with how it was used negatively by the exact same Philosophers who openly didn't like Democracy either like Plato, Aristotle and Xenophon.  This is also partially the reasoning behind support for Dictators among Marxist-Lenninists, I've seen Tankie YouTubers argue that Stalin wanted to step down actually but the people just wouldn't let him.

In that prior post I linked to above I also discussed potential documentation that the Church was still Congregational from a certain POV even past Nicaea deep into the 4th Century.  But in that case it's no longer direct democracy or localism but entirely lies in the the popular support certain regional Bishops had like Athanasius of Alexandria, Eustathius of Antioch, Cyril of Jerusalem and the Arab Bishop Moses who was allied with Queen Mavia.  Or maybe Regional isn't the right term, but they at least had authority over an entire City.

The real reason why American Baptists in particular lost sight of the original point of Congregational Polity is indirectly tied to another issue that greatly effected the history of Baptists in America, the issue of Slavery and Abolitionism in the 19th Century.  

Baptists first came to America in the North with other Congregationalists while the Sothern Colonies were founded by Episcopalians with a very Neofeudalist ideology.  When the Southern Baptists broke off from the greater Baptist Community to support Slavery they inevitably also adopted the so called "States Rights" ideology of the Southern Democrats that came with that.  Then once the Fugitive Slave Act came along the Anti-Slavery Northern Baptists had their own reason to emphasize local autonomy seeing that act as a violation of every Local Church's Right to help runaway slaves if that's what their Conscience or The Holy Spirit demanded them to do.

But up North there was no conflict between that and Democracy, while down South supporting Slavery did conflict with Democracy because in many regions the majority of people, even the majority of professing Baptists, were the Slaves themselves.  Keeping them Enslaved was fundamentally Undemocratic.

Today the SBC is the largest Baptist Denomination in the world and largest Protestant denomination in the US, and many other Baptist groups broke off from them, including I suspect the lineages of most Independent Baptist Churches inevitably go back to Churches that left the SBC.  I live in Racine WI a city in the most Northern State where when I was growing up 50% of the Independent Baptist Churches had a Pastor with a Southern Accent.

And that's how Baptist Pastors went from being Democrats to being Tyrants that don't even pretend to care about popular support.

Update August: But let's go back to how Rousseau had argued that Direct Democracy can only work on a local level.

In Gary Kates book The Cercel Social, the Girdonins, and the French Revolution, it is documented how some followers of Rousseau during the early stages of the Revolution felt advancements made in Mass Communications had rendered Rousseau's reasoning out of date and now Direct Democracy across large swarths of land was doable. In hindsight the idea that late18th Century Newsletters were sufficient to solve this problem was absurd, but modern mass communication absolutely can solve it thanks to TV and The Internet.

Ready to Harvest has a video on the issue with Multisite Churches and how they supposedly can't qualify as Congregational. It's because of this modern understanding of Congregational Polity that sees it as about localism but still usually with an absolute Monarchial Pastor that makes it a problem. But a true Democratic Assembly of Believers that Assembles via The Internet absolutely can work.

Update September: I want to make clear I do still mostly agree with the Localism principle of Congregationalism. But Independent Baptists in particular have become a bit too extreme with it.

Churches, plural, occurs 37 times in the KJV New Testament but not a single one in a context that supports the idea of a single city having more then one Church. The only Epistle to use Churches rather then The Church at/in/of a given location in it's opening address is Galatians, which was to an entire region Paul visited multiple cities in. The ones that are to Cities are addressed singularly as are the messages to the Seven Churches in Revelation even if in some of those cases their scope might be more then one city.

If you go back to Acts17 most of Paul's success in the area of Thessalonica was actually in the near by city of Berea, I feel like there's no way they aren't included in the original audience of those Epistles. I also have been speculating about the Scope of the Churches associated with Ephesus and Laodicea in Revelation since only they Jesus addresses as being The Church of ____ rather then The Church in _____. Paul met with the Elders of Ephesus at Miletus in Acts 20.

Some have interpreted what's said of the Seven Churches as implying they account for all of the Christians in Asia. Hierapolis and Colossae near Laodicea are known to have had Christian communities before Revelation was written while Magnesia and Tralles between Ephesus and Miletus are documented as having some not to long after via Ignatius.

Update June 5th 2024: Looking into the history more, originally the groups defined by their belief in Local Church Autonomy were called Independents and disagreed with each other about how the Local Church should be organized.

Robert Browne was much more absolute in his calls for Democracy, but also to him Separations from the Church of England was a means to an end not an end in itself, he did want some degree of relationship with the Church of England maintained.  All these people are often called Brownists even when they had significant disagreements with Browne himself.  

Henry Barrowe was more absolute in his separatism but distrusted full Democracy, he wanted basically Local Presbyterianism.  

Barrowe also called Browne a "Renegade" because he felt Browne has betrayed his earlier principals when in actuality Browne was very consistent, the context around him simply changed.  So because of that I consider Robert Browne the Karl Kautsky of Puritanism.

Some American Evangelicals like to say the Pilgrims weren't Puritans, this is is a misnomer that ignores how broad the Puritan label was.  The Plymouth Pilgrims were I would argue the purest Puritans in that they were more like Barrowe on separatism but more like Browne on Democracy being initially lead by John Robinson who ultimately sided with Henry Ainsworth in his dispute with Francis Johnson who was another Local Presbyterian like Barrowe.  The Baptists, especially Particular Baptists also had their origins among followers of John Robinson who agreed with Henry Ainsworth on Democracy.

The Puritans who founded Boston and Connecticut do seem to have been the most actually Brownist.

Congregational as a term for a Polity Position seems to have been coined originally in reference to Bronwe and Ainsworth's position on Church Governance regardless of how local it was, in contrast to Barrowe.