6 Comments

In full agreement that building out the U.S. welfare state must come first, along with mitigating climate change as much as possible under capitalism.

Instituting full socialism is both necessary and desirable to save our species (and others) and to make human life happier and healthier. But the socialist movement, such as it is, is obviously not large enough and strong enough to achieve that. There's also the matter of timing. Actual opportunity for society to "put on a new suit of clothes" is best during one of capitalism's long-term structural crises.

We're (hopefully) beginning to come out of one of those long-term crises, the one that began around 2008. A robust socialist movement might have been able to change society's clothes during this crisis, but that was of course not the reality. Social Structure of Accumulation theory (as per Kotz) suggests that the next long-term crisis of capitalism will be due approximately the 2050s. Neither the sustainability of human life on earth nor humanity's economic wellbeing can afford waiting till then for major improvements. Hence building out the U.S. welfare state, i.e., green social democracy.

Simultaneously, socialists need to be at work building the movement for the next three decades so that the next time capitalism goes into long-term crisis, we may actually have the ability to "put on a new suit of clothes"

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I will accept that we are perhaps starting to recover from the financial crash of 2008. But we are full on in the long-term crisis of climate change. I am persuaded that a vast reduction in international inequality is a requirement for relieving this crisis.

We here in North America were predicted some time ago to be in the least affected global region. When I read this in an early IPCC report, I thought: we're doomed. Because my countrymen lack the perspective that an imminent execution offers.

On the flip side, I recall a NY Review of Books article by Robert Heilbroner in which he suggested that capitalism might be the only thing that could save us from climate catastrophe, with corporations' international scope and penchant for self-preservation.

Withal, though pessimistic, I go along with the need for incremental social improvements as Max suggests. Obviously a good in the short term. And I suppose it's possible that people feeling like society gives a damn (contra Thatcher's "no society, only individual men and women"), a feeling arising from social improvements, might lead to wider horizons in people's thinking. Or so I hope, for both the premise and the conclusion.

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A Global Marshall Plan should be part of green social democracy

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Increased Socialization

of the market system

Some struggle fronts

macro max

Algorithmic effective demand

Cap and trade Price level regulation

Re industrialization

(Automated Green production)

Build out

The binary household income system

Market income / social income

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100 % agree

Job time is on kost cases

An individual sacrifice

to the greater society

Nothing can sweeten this sacrifice

like shorter hours & higher pay rates

Universal Participation in

Job site management is

95% Bunk

If jobs are mcjobs

Just count the mcjobs

non enrichable experiences

Are best left on the job floor at punch out

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Alienation

Is the intelligent respone

to.McJobs

Btw co ops are like violets

Require special environments

Employee ownership

Is a sucker game run by

FINANCZ kapital

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