What does a TRUMP presidency look like?

[Jacob]

So the American government now has a 10% stake in Intel just... because?

[Valmy]

I'm not wealthy enough to be a Marxist. 

Nah. If you have an internet connection you can read all of Marx's writings for free.

https://www.marxists.org/

Knock yourself out.

[Valmy]

So the American government now has a 10% stake in Intel just... because?

The end of history has arrived and Chinese style state capitalism has won.

[Sheilbh]

I'm not wealthy enough to be a Marxist. 

Nah. If you have an internet connection you can read all of Marx's writings for free.

https://www.marxists.org/

Knock yourself out.

And I'd definitely read The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte - it is fantastic.

[Valmy]

And I'd definitely read The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte - it is fantastic.

It is pretty short as well. And written while (well shortly after) it was happening with all the good and bad that comes with that.

[Jacob]

So the American government now has a 10% stake in Intel just... because?

The end of history has arrived and Chinese style state capitalism has won.

I think you're trending more towards Russian style capitalism than Chinese, but we'll see I guess.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah I think in China the Party controls capital. I think the US is looking more like an effective fusion and/or looting of the state.

But as Minsky's said there's a lot of ruin in a nation. The US is still incredibly dynamic and I was struck by this from Adam Tooze's Substack:

"Sell America" — the idea that investors were redrawing the world, reacting to a seismic shift in the global order — never really happened. Or, if it did, it was A) very brief, and B) more of a currency market phenomenon than a stock market one.

[Valmy]

Yeah the economy is very bad to live here right now. Prices are out of control, I am having to cut back my consumption everywhere.

But, for whatever crazy reason, the stock market is booming.

[Razgovory]

I'm not wealthy enough to be a Marxist. 

Nah. If you have an internet connection you can read all of Marx's writings for free.

https://www.marxists.org/

Knock yourself out.

It's always been an ideology that appeals to the more well off middle class types.  I don't think it is a coincidence that Marxists leaders rarely come from an impoverished factory worker background.

[crazy canuck]

I think everyone will enjoy this


https://www.instagram.com/reel/DNy3bGmZH9R/?igsh=MWxjeG5pNzVoM2sxNA==

[Sheilbh]

Sorry but that's nonsense and projecting current tendencies into the past.

There are challenges with what we mean by "Marxism" because historically there have been a lot of splits over various points (parliamentarianism v revolution etc). However Marxism was the basis of the German Social Democratic Party which was absolutely a party of the working class (and August Babel the iconic worker to political leader of early socialism/mass working class politics), not well-off middle class types and also other parties inspire by the SPD particularly in Northern and Central Europe. There are also lots of sometimes contentious attitudes between different strands of the left which affects the shape of the left in different countries, for example the relationship with anarchists (who were stronger in Spain and Italy) or utopian socialists (big in England and France).

However many parties and unions of the left were alliances of those different factions of the left - there is a Marxist story in the history of almost all trade unionism, perhaps especially in the US where the history of labour activism and radicalism is really important in "the left". So I think there was absolutely mass class appeal that was primarily in the working class - though there were middle class supporters, obviously. Similarly there have always been working class conservatives - identifying that strand and tapping into it through a bit of jingoism and a charismatic, if slightly shaky, leader was the genius of the Tories under Disraeli who was very big on an aristocratic working class alliance against the well-meaning but deadly serious meddling, puritanical, po-faced Liberal middle class (plus ca change). But in both cases the broad stream was workers absolutely backing Marxist or fluidly influenced by Marxist organisations. In most of Europe and the US, I think there only start to be very strong clear dividing lines across those strands of the left in the 1930s.

Now appeal is different from leadership and there is definitely an intellectual/intelligentsia and middle class wing to the Marxist tradition. I would position it more often as the slightly insecurely middle class. They were not the lawyers and the doctors or the clerks. Often because of their revolutionary politics, or profession - or because, often, they were Jewish the leaders were less secure in income and social position. However, at the same time, I think the great recurring image of 19th and early 20th century fiction is of the factory worker reading club. There was a huge culture of self-improvement and autodidacticism in that era. As well as the workers' social clubs and sports clubs there were workers' reading groups and lending libraries which were very well stocked with Marxist texts. This is partly why the factory was so key to Marxism - it was a place of class consciousness. I'd add that also that particularly key were the print unions producing the newspapers and pamphlets and also the journalists - because the "professionalisation" of journalism comes later.

In part I think this is more to do with the transformation of the order around the middle class than anything else. I think much of the middle class still fundamentally trend to small-c conservatism who like and defend the ideological order they are sort of swimming in. In the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century that was an order that I think absolutely believed in class hierarchy, which was communicated through institutions like the church, various political and social societies. I think in the second half of the twentieth century it's an order premised on equality and, I'd argue, a degree of individualism and self discovery (to an extent I think we're seeing the tensions of this play out right now). The key place where the ideology of that order is reproduced is still core to middle class identity but it's not the church but the college (for now).

[crazy canuck]

You are taking Raz's disassociation with reality far too seriously

[Crazy_Ivan80]

Let's change it to trade hating orangutan with a typewriter, better matches the colour pallette

Is an insult to orangutans which are quite smart apparently.  Considering one is librarian in ankh-morpork

[Razgovory]

You are taking Raz's disassociation with reality far too seriously

If I wanted the opinion of a piece of shit, I'd clean the cat box.

[Razgovory]

Sorry but that's nonsense and projecting current tendencies into the past.

There are challenges with what we mean by "Marxism" because historically there have been a lot of splits over various points (parliamentarianism v revolution etc). However Marxism was the basis of the German Social Democratic Party which was absolutely a party of the working class (and August Babel the iconic worker to political leader of early socialism/mass working class politics), not well-off middle class types and also other parties inspire by the SPD particularly in Northern and Central Europe. There are also lots of sometimes contentious attitudes between different strands of the left which affects the shape of the left in different countries, for example the relationship with anarchists (who were stronger in Spain and Italy) or utopian socialists (big in England and France).

However many parties and unions of the left were alliances of those different factions of the left - there is a Marxist story in the history of almost all trade unionism, perhaps especially in the US where the history of labour activism and radicalism is really important in "the left". So I think there was absolutely mass class appeal that was primarily in the working class - though there were middle class supporters, obviously. Similarly there have always been working class conservatives - identifying that strand and tapping into it through a bit of jingoism and a charismatic, if slightly shaky, leader was the genius of the Tories under Disraeli who was very big on an aristocratic working class alliance against the well-meaning but deadly serious meddling, puritanical, po-faced Liberal middle class (plus ca change). But in both cases the broad stream was workers absolutely backing Marxist or fluidly influenced by Marxist organisations. In most of Europe and the US, I think there only start to be very strong clear dividing lines across those strands of the left in the 1930s.

Now appeal is different from leadership and there is definitely an intellectual/intelligentsia and middle class wing to the Marxist tradition. I would position it more often as the slightly insecurely middle class. They were not the lawyers and the doctors or the clerks. Often because of their revolutionary politics, or profession - or because, often, they were Jewish the leaders were less secure in income and social position. However, at the same time, I think the great recurring image of 19th and early 20th century fiction is of the factory worker reading club. There was a huge culture of self-improvement and autodidacticism in that era. As well as the workers' social clubs and sports clubs there were workers' reading groups and lending libraries which were very well stocked with Marxist texts. This is partly why the factory was so key to Marxism - it was a place of class consciousness. I'd add that also that particularly key were the print unions producing the newspapers and pamphlets and also the journalists - because the "professionalisation" of journalism comes later.

In part I think this is more to do with the transformation of the order around the middle class than anything else. I think much of the middle class still fundamentally trend to small-c conservatism who like and defend the ideological order they are sort of swimming in. In the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century that was an order that I think absolutely believed in class hierarchy, which was communicated through institutions like the church, various political and social societies. I think in the second half of the twentieth century it's an order premised on equality and, I'd argue, a degree of individualism and self discovery (to an extent I think we're seeing the tensions of this play out right now). The key place where the ideology of that order is reproduced is still core to middle class identity but it's not the church but the college (for now).

In the US, at least, Marxism has always been fairly minor.  Prior the Russian Revolution the main current of radicalism was more anarchist, than Marxist.  Marxism was the revolution of the educated, of the University.