...any article based on the premise that "both parties are the same" regarding whatever metric the writer wants to talk about should be instantly ignored to combat the widespread media obsession with false equivalence in the name of "balance"

The parties are wildly different in their approaches. If the lazy idiot article writer cannot be bothered to deal with those differences and instead can only bring themselves to write about some perceived high level ideological equivalence they are part of the problem.

Yet they still scratch their heads wondering why they get no respect.

"won" partly by the media and GOP convincing enough others that "GOP and Democrats are really virtually the same".

Well, guess what? We've now got Bill Clinton's 2 terms and almost 5 years of Obama presidency to contrast against the GINORMOUS FRONTAL ASSAULT on Americans during Bush to know that is absolute bullshit.

after 8 years of peace and prosperity, and seeing what Bush launched this country into, should dispel any notion of the two parties being the same

and then there's equivalence. It was the Clintons who flogged NAFTA and let Summers and Rubin get their mitts on the economic levers of government. The differences are at the margins, while the similarities are bone deep.

so that's a straw man. It says the parties are the same when it comes to supporting the capitalist system. A fair assessment, and not equating the two parties as a whole.

If the author wants to write an article talking about how the two parties are the same regarding whatever metric the writer wants to talk about (in this case they both support Capitalism) then into the ignore pile they go.


I'll read what they have to write when they write about something useful instead of playing the "they're both bad because..." game. It is the differences between the parties that are relevant for any purposes of evaluating them come election time, or lobbying time, or any other time that matters for political action. And those differences are massive and profound. To waste everyone's time bitching about their similarities when there are differences of such urgent import is ridiculous.

You are saying, and I agree, that there are large and important differences between the parties.
You therefore say that discussing a point where the two parties do not differ, is not relevant.

But that reasoning implies you accept the two party system and the (current shape of) capitalism they support and advance. You have then limited the debate and limited the options. Which I can understand, from an "I need to make the right choice in the election" standpoint.

But where I'm coming from, the system is THE problem. It's the stupid economy, to change the old phrase. It dwarfs other issues, for me, because it's Big Money that is subverting democracy in a whole host of ways. I'm sure you can also see that viewpoint. We'll have to agree to disagree, probably.

It should not be, at least not for those who watch these issues.

unless they at least pay lip service to our capitalist system. We can talk about all the abuses of capitalism, but we can't say that capitalism is the cause of those abuses.

Socialism has been so demonized in this country that people can't really talk openly about its merits, at least not anyone who wants to be taken seriously as a political contender. So for now, the best we can do is blame Republicans for the death of the middle class and out-of-control corporations. They're guilty of so many things that it really isn't necessary for us to get into a fight about capitalism vs. socialism.

completely dysfunctional, unless, of course, you are big monied special interests. We've been sold out.

This is not about left or right. We fight amongst ourselves, and left against right, while the issues are always argued & never acted upon.

Denying what is in our faces on a daily basis needs to stop. We need to acknowledge the disease.

Why should rule of law and accountability be optional?

All of this chaos did not happen by chance. It's been a planned dismantling, certainly we've been pushed into the abyss by BushCo.
Unfortunately, it's being continued with the façade of infighting and extreme opposition in Congress, does it matter what the media paints for us?

In the end, we get dysfunction & the biggest profits to the wealthiest while the majority suffers & struggles. This has all been by design.

What is off limits to these criminals? We can be lied into war, our economy decimated by a banking system that is clearly criminal, yet who is made accountable? Who is left with the tab?

They can't even agree on a starting point for negotiations most of the time.

Whether the divide is nothing or the most polarizing ever, ONE SIDE is gaining, the wealthiest.

The criminals who brought us the greatest economic divide go unpunished and our president seeks immunity for GW & RC.

Tax rates for the "job creators" remain off the table, but safety networks are on the table.

the fact that you can find a few areas of agreement in a massive sea of disagreement and discord is not compelling.

issues dems seem to win...is that by accident? I think not, I think our system as a whole is beholding to the campaign financiers.

There's a whole lot of serious discord in the way big monied interests are served even when it goes against what's best for the citizens.

People may scoff that the question of degree is beneath their notice, but if you are a black pregnant teen (for example) in a pro-life right-to-work state, you might have a different experience.

Which isn't an endorsement of our system, which does suck, but isn't going to change until large social forces shift.

if it took fascism to "save" capitalism, then both parties would be fascist.

...along with progressive taxation and a solid social safety net, I'm not at all bothered that the Democratic party isn't calling for the end of capitalism.

I'd certainly like Democrats to be a lot less beholden to big corporations and the 1%, but they're still a lot better for the 99% than Republicans by a long shot.

If you're waiting for a Democratic party who's official platform is the end of capitalism, you're going to be waiting a long, long time -- not just for the party to change, but for the American public to decide they're against capitalism too.

social safety net..." thing working out for ya? One nice thing about holding a Marxist viewpoint is that you're trained to look on time scales longer than a single lifetime. It's a systemic outlook that goes from primitive, communal prehistoric tribes to slave culture, to feudalism, to capitalism and then expands this idea of a progression into the future to socialism and finally communism where a social steady state is found.

To a Marxist, the "well-regulated and non-crony capitalism" of the middle decades of the previous century was a aberration that wouldn't hold forever. It was the Keynesians who thought they could "tame" capitalism. Marxists always knew that the capitalism that we have now would return sooner or later because that's what capitalism IS. And it has returned with a vengeance.

All you have to do is study some history of the USA and you'll see that that mythical "well-regulated capitalism" was a mirage all along. Every time capitalism gets out of control, it's "regulated" AND THEN IT THROWS OFF THOSE REGULATIONS! Regulation happened at the end of the Gilded Age and was thrown off during the Roaring 20s. After it crashed the world economy, it was "regulated" AGAIN, until it threw off those 1930s regulations AGAIN and crashed the world economy AGAIN. What makes you (or anyone) think that "regulation" will ever work over the long term?

Because capitalism concentrates wealth and power in a small elite group (that's it's purpose), that group WILL ALWAYS SEEK TO THROW OFF ANY STRICTURES PUT ON IT. And because they DO have the wealth and power, THEY WILL ALWAYS SUCCEED IN DOING SO.

Regulating capitalism is like riding a tiger. It's very hard to do and you're always in danger of being eaten.

There's no human system or institution that's pure, perfect, or free from decline and corruption over time. Everything takes vigilance, everything is going to have its ups and downs, everything that humans do on a large scale is going to fail big sometimes, and be imperfect even at its best.

When you can show me a large real-world Marxist society that's gone perfectly for a century or more, please, do get back to me.

with one that was only developed in theory about a century and a half ago? Long term time scales, remember? We'll have to see what the future holds, but I'm firmly convinced the answer isn't capitalism, regulated or not. It's socialism or barbarism/fascism.

...for a system that's performed badly to the extent that it has been tried, and that I have no reason to believe can be reinvented to be particularly any more immune to human greed, power hunger, and corruption than other human systems and institutions.

In the case where the word "socialism" is used to mean Democratic Socialism, where it includes better-regulated capitalism rather than banning capitalism, I have no problem with that because we've seen that work fairly well -- as measured on the scale of everything else humans have tried, not measured against theoretical unproven ideals.

which set the pattern for stillborn and deformed versions later and attracted actors akin to Stalin. That model is dead and didn't have very much kinship to Marx's thoughts on an actual socialist system in the first place. At least from about 1928 on it didn't. IOW, it degenerated quickly under pressure, overt and covert, militarily and economic, from international capitalism. And even under Stalinism the USSR went from being a feudal, agricultural country to a modern industrialized nation in just a few decades. It took the capitalist United States approximately twice as long to get to the same point under capitalism. So even the degenerated USSR using just a FEW Marxist principles (mostly central economic planning rather than the anarchy of the market) was successful to a degree.

Trotskyism, the Marxist road not taken and the true inheritor of Marx's legacy, could have quite possibly had a MUCH different outcome.

As to your Democratic Socialism, those systems face the same pressures from capitalism that any other alternative system does. Even the vaunted Scandinavian countries are facing the same neo-liberal pressure as the rest of the world to cut and privatize. They are a couple of decades behind us on that neo-liberal curve (as we are a couple of years behind Europe on the neo-liberal path), but who's to say if they'll be any more successful in stopping rampant capitalism than we are?

What we have IS capitalism. If you support capitalism, you support what we have in place now.

...that distort and corrupt the distribution of power and wealth? Or is all you've got "What's we have now is terrible! I can't support that! Anything has to be better!", when history clearly shows that "anything" is often worse.

The usual catalog of supposed problem of capitalism is mostly a catalog of the problems of humanity, not at all unique to capitalism.

which elect representatives that are immediately recallable. It's called workers democracy.

...will ever do anything bad, will never try to game the system, will never play favorites, will never succumb to bribes or sexual favors or nepotism, or if they do, your system is so well designed that its safeguards will contain and eliminate such threats quickly and efficiently.

Certainly we won't have to worry that the system implemented to keep everyone in line won't grab too much power itself, won't find suppression of individual rights an "efficient" way to get their work done, won't ever become repressive in their tactics... nah, just couldn't happen, because pure and noble workers will be in charge!

And if there are enough of them then the good actors will overbalance the bad.

Socialism does not work. A capitalist system with a safety net does.

[hr][font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font][hr]

There are actual American socialist parties, why not support them if you're frustrated? Or what about the Green party? The "both parties are the same "meme" can be a kind of anti-Democratic party propaganda.

They also feature high rates of taxation and income redistribution payments via the government.

Different countries feature different ratios but the main characteristics are similar.

The 19th century is over.

The 19th and early 20th century attempts at "socialism" were in fact nothing more than industrialization with good intentions. Immediately after the capitalist revolutions, Marx and others were already looking to the next stage before the dust had even settled. Quite a bit premature, if you ask me.

Socialism will arrive in the next century or two, followed by Communism as it must be.

Nobody today who is a proponent of socialism or communism would agree with Lenin's sentiment here, whether he was being serious or just making a rhetorical point.

Let's stick with this definition: a classless, stateless society.

"Stateless" is a reach, since it is necessary to have an organization which maintains a monopoly on the use of violence, and that is functionally a state.

and they engage in political theater while the 1% steals everything that isn't nailed down.

shilling the rubes, baby . . . shilling the rubes.

Sid

mother earth

I sympathize with your outrage and capitalism has got some major flaws but I'm not ready to give up on it. Socialism or social democracy are not the alternatives. We need a revival of democratic liberalism that will make capitalism work better. While living wages, revitalized unions, and the break up of big financial firms are all necessary none of this is possible without a grassroots movement first. People need to mobilize and fight for real economic freedom and justice the same way they do for marriage equality and abortion rights. Liberals and progressives politicians need a push, but they also need muscle that can only come from a mass movement. In some ways liberal minded and left leaning rank and file are to blame for not taking a broader view beyond cultural issues.