Mediaboss Marketing

I am increasingly of the opinion that the basis for the inflamed, visceral hatred of President Donald Trump in some quarters is neither his occasional vulgarity, nor his propensity to toss out un-presidential insults, nor the misogyny and sexism the left pretends to see in his every word.

Rather, its that his presidency has torn the veil off of the lefts inexorable and until recently largely obscured march toward a socialist America. Trump has exposed and discredited many of the institutions and mechanisms the left uses to execute its fundamental transformation: the media, the entertainment industry and academia.

Furthermore, he is an unabashed capitalist, a walking manifestation of American achievement through commerce.

And for this, they despise him.

Health care is a pristine example of the battle being waged. Obamacare is collapsing. The GOP is too terrified to repeal it. Democrats know that its failure, particularly in the absence of legitimate free-market alternatives, will virtually ensure the single-payer system theyre now openly pushing.

Single-payer is a recipe for failure and abuse. (Exhibits 1 and 2: the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Indian Health Services.) Except in relatively small, largely homogenous populations, collectivism fails because in the absence of financial incentives, more people want to receive things than want to make or provide them. The government must therefore insert itself into every transaction: You must make X. You can only charge Y. You only get so much of Z.

Thus does single-payer health care morph from being a provision system to a rationing system. And those who control the rations control the people.

There is plenty historical evidence of socialisms disasters, most recently in Venezuela. Detractors will no doubt scoff: The Venezuelan government took over most private enterprise; theres no indication that such a thing would ever happen here.

However, socialist and communist regimes tend to expand not because they succeed, but because they fail.

Those who espouse the glories of collectivism in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary are ideologues. And ideologues never accept defeat. Instead of admitting the collapse of a failing business model, the lefts impulse is to take it larger: We just need more money. We need higher taxes. We need the government to take control of more.

This produces larger, systemic failure and more widespread misery. Then cometh the political oppression. To preserve the regime, it becomes necessary to silence anyone who complains or dares to point out the painfully obvious truth that these ideas destroy whatever systems they infect. Ordinary citizens starve. If they are entrepreneurs or industrialists, their businesses are stolen. Members of government are removed in fraudulent elections, run out of town or arrested on trumped-up charges and imprisoned.

When no one in power will face reality, there are few options left, and they are almost always catastrophic: civil war, revolution, anarchy.

Failed policies. Collapsed economies. Political repression. The examples are so numerous as to strain credulity: Venezuela, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, North Korea, China, Cambodia, East Germany, Angola, Somalia, the former Soviet Union. Hellholes created under siren promises that government would provide everything for free.

So much suffering, and so avoidable.

But were not supposed to know any of that. Our educational system is supposed to be indoctrinating children to think that capitalism is greed and collectivism is compassion. The media willingly conspires to keep us ignorant. (The New York Times is running a series which The Federalist author Robert Tracinski rightly decries as an effort to rehabilitate Communism. Lenin and the Bolsheviks were well-intentioned people trying to build a better world out of a crisis? Little has changed since the days of Walter Duranty, apparently.) Millionaire entertainers dutifully spout politburo propaganda in exchange for escaping the accusations of hypocrisy that should accompany their sky-high incomes and royal lifestyles.

As middle-class voters are realizing, Democrats have been pushing their party in this direction for decades. Republicans (at least at the congressional level) suck their thumbs and pretend it isnt happening, whilst falling for the bipartisanship ploy that makes them ineffectual fools even when as now they hold political power.

Donald Trump may not have intended to be the man who pulled down the curtain, but pull it he did. He has become the face of the opposition to the plans of the cultural elite. For that he must be destroyed.

Ultimately, however, the lefts war isnt with Trump. It is with those of us who see socialisms failures, and who refuse to sit back and watch while our freedoms are dismantled and our country is destroyed.

See more here:
Socialism's failures and the war on Trump - WND.com

To quote Winston Churchill: 'No-one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.'

Also: 'The inherent vice of Capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.'.

Tieetso paints a glowing picture of Socialism. Unfortunately he omits to mention a few very basic facts:

1) Public services have to be paid for: e.g. health, education, policing, roads, railways, social grantsetc etc.

2) Where does this money come from? Well, the State of course.

3) Where does the State get its money from? Ummm...the taxpayer. No dodging that fact.

Now Socialism can work in countries like the Nordic ones where over 60% of the population pays tax. However, here in South Africa, Schussler - an eminent economist - worked out a couple of years ago that only about 5 or 6 million South Africans pay 95% of all taxes. Note: ALL TAXES. That's income tax, VAT, corporate tax and all the other dozens of stealth taxes like petrol tax and carbon tax the ANC has foisted on us. Paid for by about, say,6 million people now out of 55 million or more. And those 6 million people are currently being taxed half to death - just to support the other nearly 50 million people - with social grants and all the rest. Plus we have over 9 million unemployed people.

So how can 6 million support 50 million, Tiietso? Maybe, print more money??? Right - then we'll soon have trillion rand notes just to buy a box of matches, like Zim.

The only way to turn this country around is to get more people working. That will take decent education from pre-school level (something the ANC doesn't do). Decent primary and high school teaching (destroyed by SADTU.) Proper training colleges and technikons - which the ANC closed in their infinite wisdom.

Communism has destroyed every country where it has been. Look at West Germany vs East Germany before the wall came down. Utter poverty vs wealth. Look at North and South Korea today. I rest my case.

The whole problem with Communism and Socialism is summed up in this old Polish proverb: 'If I lie down , I get 1000 kopeks a month. If I stand up I get 1000 kopeks a month. Why stand up?'

Just how is Socialism the answer in SA, Tieetso? How are 6 million going to pay for the other 50 million? Did you ever do maths at school? If so, please let us know what the answer is.

Disclaimer: All articles and letters published on MyNews24 have been independently written by members of News24's community. The views of users published on News24 are therefore their own and do not necessarily represent the views of News24. News24 editors also reserve the right to edit or delete any and all comments received.

The rest is here:
A reply to TiietsoMakhele - in reality, Socialism is a dead duck in SA - News24

POWER IN NUMBERS: Membership for DSA swelled after the election of Trump. About 700 delegates went to Chicago last week for the groups annual convention. Sebastin Hidalgo

Nobody wants to read about socialists.

My boss tells me so the day before I'm scheduled to fly to Chicago to cover the national convention of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which recently became the largest socialist organization in the United States since the 1940s.

DSA's membership has swelled to 25,000 since the election of President Donald Trump, more than tripling its ranks in a single year. New members tend to be young, fed up with centrist Democrats, and very good at Twitter. With all this fresh interest and attention, the big challenge facing the group is proving they're more than a well-branded online phenomenon and turning their growth into real political change. The question for DSA as its members headed into the group's annual convention: How exactly do they plan to build a new American left where basically everyone else has failed before?

But Stranger editorial director Dan Savage doesn't care about any of that. In a stuffy meeting room, he notes that the share of voters who backed Green Party nominee Jill Stein in several swing states exceeded the difference between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in those states. With that in mind, Dan has just two questions about the DSA: "Are they going to be spoilers? Are they going to run someone for president in 2020?"

At the muggy University of Illinois at Chicago campus, 1,000 delegates, observers, and journalists from around the globe arrive for the convention. The line to check in is dotted with different variations of a red shirtthe signature rose, a local chapter name, "socialism or barbarism."

As I wander around campus, the crowd is largely young, white, and male, though not overwhelmingly. (Contrary to stereotypes, some of DSA's most active leaders and organizers are women. Attendees talk about socialist feminism, and organizational rules require diversity on the group's leadership committee. During the weekend, DSA members vote to create a national Afro-socialist caucus.)

In the food court, one table discusses Lenin and another mocks the Democratic Party's new slogan (A Better Deal: Better Jobs, Better Wages, Better Future). When I check in, I'm given a name tag, a campus map, a copy of the lyrics to "The Internationale," and a yellow piece of paper that says "SOCIALIST STRETCHING" at the top. The first step instructs me to "reach all the way up to our raised expectations of a visionary socialist future (stretch arms up, hold for 10)." I do not do this.

On the schedule for the weekend's convention: setting the group's political priorities for the next two years; considering resolutions expressing support for movements like the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS); and administrative issues like how the group should collect dues.

SHAUN SCOTT: A DSA member and Seattle resident, he grew up in New York City public housing. He says Seattle is proof of how deep-seated the structural issues that were taking aim at really are. Sebastin Hidalgo

"We are part of a new left-wing insurgence," DSA national director Maria Svart tells delegates in her opening remarks.

"When we look at what got us here, we don't just blame Wall Street Democrats," Svart tells the crowd. "We don't just blame the sexism and racism of Trump [and] voter suppression by the Republicans. We also recognize the failures of the left to reach beyond the choir to build a multiracial, working-class mass movement."

"We are not interested in losing," she adds. "We are not interested in performing our politics. We are here to win."

Here to win what, exactly?

At the last convention, DSA decided its top priority would be working on the Bernie Sanders campaign. This year, there's very little talk about presidential politics. Instead, the group plans to focus on a full-throated campaign for Medicare for All and work to deepen its roots in the labor movement. Endorsing and campaigning to elect socialists to office comes third. And when DSA endorses, it endorses in local races. All weekend, there's more excitement about union organizing and campaigns for city council members than about trying to draft a presidential candidate. In other words: No, they're not spoilers.

"When people look at DSA, they should be thinking about the value that it would give to a broader progressive movement to have a strong socialist pole in it," Bhaskar Sunkara, a DSA member and founder of socialist magazine Jacobin, tells me, "and not thinking about what it could mess up. It's a pretty reasonable, pragmatic organization."

The question facing DSA is not who they plan to run for president in 2020 to "spoil" the Democratsthe group "will almost without a doubt not put up an independent candidate," Sunkara saysbut how they use their newfound enthusiasm now. A small socialist organization is better positioned to phone-bank for a city council candidate or knock on doors in support of Medicare for All than do presidential campaign work. And there's a lot of local work to be done before 2020.

The spoiler question is an oversimplification, just like the assertion that leftists who critique both Republicans and Democrats see "no difference" between the two. It's possible to believe the Democratic Party has failed to deliver on policies that sufficiently address the failures of capitalism and to still see that Trump is a worse prospect.

"I think the consensus within DSAI don't think I'm being provocative to sayis that if you're in a swing state, of course you vote for the Democrat in the presidential cycle," Sunkara says. "We'd rather be in opposition under a Democrat than a Republican."

ASH CLARK: As vice chair of Seattle DSA, she says millennials are attracted to socialism because we are really out of options. Sebastin Hidalgo

But the socialist strategy over the long term is to buildfrom local elections upan alternative that does more than settle for the current Democratic Party. Whether DSA can successfully achieve that goal remains to be seen.

"Our project is less about being a short-term electoral spoiler or anything like that. It is to build an alternative pole, alternative opposition, because you can't beat the right by just allying with the center if the center is alienating people and fueling that right itself," Sunkara says. "In order to break the cycle, at some point we need to articulate our own vision and promise of politics."

Throughout the weekend, delegates split their time between small group trainings and gathering on the convention floor to vote on resolutions and amendments using the arcane system of Robert's Rules of Order. They excitedly point out the closest thing the online left has to celebrities: the hosts of the podcast Chapo Trap House (or the "dirtbag left"). A leader from London Young Labour (the teens and twentysomethings arm of Jeremy Corbyn's party) serves as a proxy for the world's newest socialist hero. Throughout the weekend, the whole group breaks out in chants of "Ohhh, Jeremy Corbyn" to the tune of the White Stripes' "Seven Nation Army."

For Ash Clark, the vice chair of Seattle DSA who joined the group after Sanders's loss in the Democratic primary, the millennial attraction to socialism should come as no surprise. They simply haven't been conditioned the same way. They have not lived through a red scare. And, in the meantime, capitalism hasn't won any loyalty.

"We really are out of options," Clark says. "You can't just get a better job. You can't just go to college and everything's going to be great... There's almost an element of nihilism with it, where we're kind of just like, fuck it."

Clark, a member of DSA's Left Caucus, wants to see DSA move further left, "away from Democratic centralism, away from neoliberalism."

But, she adds, "I understand that people in Kentucky maybe don't have that same mind-set because they haven't seen that work successfully... There's room for everybody."

Max Lewis, a former draft-card burner and Seattle delegate who's been involved in socialist politics for decades, says modern acceptance of socialism presents a "golden opportunity."

"We know sometimes movements are able to take opportunities and sometimes they slip by," Lewis says. "I think DSA is the organization to move forward with it."

ANDREJ MARKOVCIC: He is the chair of Seattle DSA and says socialists have little reason to back Democrats. Sebastin Hidalgo

Outside of DSA strongholds like New York, Seattle may prove the perfect testing ground. Shaun Scott, a Seattle writer who grew up in public housing in New York City, says some of his family members wouldn't have been able to get by without "one redistribution program or another, and all those things are steps up into a form of prosperity." Because of that background, Scott says, "class analysis is just kind of on the back of my eyelids at this point."

Seattle presents a case study of liberalism's failures, Scott says, as the city glimmers with growth but faces a worsening housing and homelessness crisis. Today, Scott is a field organizer for Seattle City Council candidate Jon Grant, a DSA member who's running on the promise of creating more city-owned housing.

"If there's discontent in the place that's supposed to be the most perfect, the place that other places are supposed to be aspiring to," Scott says, "then that lets us know how deep-seated the structural issues that we're taking aim at really are."

In a wood-paneled union hall two miles from the convention, 28-year-old Democratic Socialists of America member and Chicago City Council alderman Carlos Ramirez-Rosa hosts a fundraiser where $20 includes an open bar of PBR and Carlo Rossi.

Despite being a socialist, Ramirez-Rosa urges the room of young leftists against abandoning the Democratic ballot line. It's possible, Ramirez-Rosa says, to run true leftists as Democrats and "seize" the party from the inside. In some places, that's the only way to win.

Campaigning in Chicago, "one of the first questions you'll get when you knock on that door is 'Are you a Democrat?'" Ramirez-Rosa says. "And if your answer is noit doesn't matter if the answer is no because you're a Republican, or the answer is no because you're an independent, or the answer is no because you're from the Workers Partythey're going to slam that door in your face."

Ramirez-Rosa's argument wins both nods and winces in the room. It's one of the central questions facing the rapidly growing political organization: Just how should they work with Democratsif at all.

It's not a new question for the DSA. The 35-year-old organization has long been a "big tent," multi-tendency group. In general, DSA advocates for taking basic needs like housing and health care off the market, empowering workers to organize and control their workplaces, and weakening the influence of corporations, all toward the long-term goal of abolishing capitalism. Exactly how society should get there depends on who you ask. DSA welcomes socialists of various stripes, including some more willing to work with Democrats than others. DSA is not a political party (it's a nonprofit), but you'd be forgiven for assuming it is. (DSA members are running for local office across the country, including in Seattle.)

Ramirez-Rosa adds a caveat to his call to infiltrate the Democratic Party.

"There are places like Seattle where you can elect an independent socialist candidate like Kshama Sawant," he says, referring to the city council member who won election running with Socialist Alternative, "and in those places, where we can do it, we should do it... The bottom line is we need to win."

For Seattle socialists, there's little reason to back a Democrat.

"I think on the whole, we need to be less concerned about the Democratic Party and need to start developing our own center of gravity," says Andrej Markovcic, chair of Seattle DSA, who joined after Sanders lost the primary.

And for Seattle candidates, there's little to gain from calling yourself a Democrat.

JON GRANT: He is running for Seattle City Council and is one of six candidates for public office endorsed by national DSA. Nate Gowdy

When Jon Grant ran for Seattle City Council as a Democrat in 2015, he lost. "The entire Democratic establishmentalmost every single Democratic incumbent and much of labor tooall sided with [incumbent] Tim Burgess, who only recently saw the light on marriage equality and a woman's right to choose," Grant says.

This year, Grant is running as a democratic socialist. Several months after he launched his campaign, he officially joined Seattle DSA. Soon after, the group endorsed him. Grant says the Democratic Party is "having an identity crisis when it can't embrace the ideals and values that democratic socialism represents." Grant is now one of six local candidates endorsed by DSA national and is likely to get phone-banking help from DSA chapters across the country.

"Until we do [embrace democratic socialist values]," Grant says, "it made a lot of sense for us to just run as an independent, to run as a democratic socialist, so that we can really make it clear that we just can't accept market solutions when we see time and time again that they're failing us."

Getting Grant elected could bring Seattle DSA new prominencenot to mention access to city hallbut the campaign will also test the group's future in grassroots organizing.

In Chicago, convention-goers constantly talk about the importance of maintaining allies in labor. Second on the group's list of national priorities: "expanding and deepening labor work." "There is no strong socialist movement absent a militant and powerful labor movement," it reads.

DSA pledges to increase its ties to existing unions and train its members on how to be "effective rank-and-file activists," changing unions from the inside. Expanding connections to labor is also DSA's core strategy for building a more diverse, more working-class movementaddressing the criticism that it's a movement led by white academics who've read Marx.

But unions and socialists have a complicated relationship in Seattle. When Kshama Sawant ran in 2013, most labor endorsements went to her opponent, an incumbent Democrat. This year, both Seattle DSA and Sawant's Socialist Alternative are backing Grant against Teresa Mosqueda, who works for the Washington State Labor Council and helped draft last year's statewide minimum-wage and sick-leave initiative. In other words: Seattle socialists will spend the next three months opposite nearly every labor union in town.

While some Seattle labor unions align with businesstake SEIU Local 775, which has endorsed the same candidate for mayor as the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of CommerceMosqueda did not win the chamber's endorsement and is running to the left of Tim Burgess. She's promising to champion workers' and renters' rights. She supports publicly funded housing, though she'd rather fund projects using bonding than taxes on corporations, as Grant has proposed.

After Socialist Alternative's endorsement, King County Labor Council executive secretary-treasurer Nicole Grant called it "an insult to the same labor movement SA clings to for credibility."

Seattle DSA members argue there's a difference between "labor" and "unions." Just because union leadership is enthusiastic about Mosqueda doesn't mean rank-and-file members facing the city's housing crisis won't support Grant, they say.

"The onus is going be on us to make that case," Scott says. "I do think our policies are going to be better for working people."

For DSA nationally, the question of how to work with Democrats is more difficult to answer in a city like Seattle. It pulses through the weekend's debates. But while some members advocate for a stronger separation from the party, efforts to put that in writing largely fail.

During several debates, members suggest changes to the language around DSA's priorities for the next two years. One proposed amendment says the group should refrain from getting involved in internal struggles within the Democratic Party, like this year's fight over who should chair the Democratic National Committee. ("I don't want to be their junior partner," a speaker in favor of this change tells the room.)

Another amendment outlines the struggles socialists face to not cave to capitalists once in office. "In light of these challenges," the amendment reads, "DSA nationally should support explicitly socialist candidates wherever possible, whether they run independently or on Democratic Party ballot lines." The same amendment proposes that DSA should not endorse candidates who take money from corporations or are backed by any candidates or groups that do.

Neither change would bar DSA from ever backing Democrats, but they would make more explicit the group's oppositional relationship to the party. Both end up failing.

Another proposal would express DSA's support for the "draft Bernie" movement to urge Sanders to run a third-party campaign. The Democrats have become "a toxic brand and a failed party," the resolution reads. "DSA is not tied to the Democratic Party. Why tie our strategy to a sinking ship?"

Delegates vote to table that resolution. To the question of its future alongside the Democratic Party, DSA does not appear ready to completely sever ties.

On Saturday night, hundreds of DSA delegates flood in from a fundraising banquet to a sweaty after-party in the offices of labor magazine In These Times. A DJ plays to the packed dance floor. Partygoers lean on desks littered with beer and LaCroix cans. There are shots of Malrt and free copies of Jacobin, and the Jeremy Corbyn chant echoes again.

Next to the keg, a sign quotes Marx: "'From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.' Please donate to ensure that everyone who needs a drink gets one."

The next morning, delegates clutch coffee cups as they make their way to the meeting rooms. I see a few red-eyed Seattle members, including one who doesn't drink but is still exhausted from "just mainlining socialism" until 5 a.m. Through the fog of a hangover, delegates take their final votes. They finalize the group's priorities and break out into chants: "This is class war, eat the rich and feed the poor!"

Delegates are urged to go home and build campaigns on local issues, to back socialist candidates in their hometowns, and to strengthen their ties with labor unions. They're optimistic and frenetic, and they aren't thinking about how to spoil the election for Democrats. There's too much work to do.

Originally posted here:
Are the Socialists Here to Ruin Everything? - Features - The Stranger - TheStranger.com

Nation magazine is as far left as Fox News is far right. So I wasn't surprised to see this article in the Nation's online edition on Aug. 7: "America Has a Long and Storied Socialist Tradition. DSA Is Reviving It."

It's supposed to impress us with the argument that socialism has been an integral part of American politics and has had some storied successes. Chief among them, according to the article byJohn Nichols, is Milwaukee.

From 1910 to 1960, the hotbed of socialism in America was Milwaukee, Wisconsin. At the time it was one of the largest and most prosperous cities in Americaand it was run by Socialists.

And so forth. But what Nichols fails to mention in this long homage

Milwaukee's Sewer Socialist mayors: Emil Seidel, Dan Hoan and Frank Zeidler.(Milwaukee Public Library)

to Milwaukee "socialism" is that it was widely known as "sewer socialism." It wasa variety of municipal reforms that would not be considered socialist or progressive by the likes of Bernie Sanders or his far left supporters.

The Wisconsin Historical Society described it as " a program of political action that, while operating under the name of Socialism, was really a variety of moderate reform."

In other words, municipal ownership of the street cars and utilities and the kind of "good government" today advancedby civic and business groups. The term "sewer socialism" was...

coined by Morris Hillquit at the 1932 Milwaukee convention of the Socialist Party of America, as a commentary on the Milwaukee socialists and their perpetual boasting about the excellent public sewer system in the city. [From Wikipedia.]

Nichols' omission might not have been intentional, considering the way history is taught these days in schools. But it does, by omission, overstate the extent of socialism's "storied history."

dennis@dennisbyrne.net

http://www.dennisbyrne.net

Go here to read the rest:
Nation magazine's deceptive article about socialism in America - ChicagoNow (blog)

Traditionally, the game industry leveraged its appeal and playful aura to exploit its workers. Young passionate developers were hired, worked until they burned out, regularly laid off, and replaced with younger, less-demanding ones.

But in the early 2000s, these unfortunate working conditions, along with the lack of individual agency for developers on increasingly large teams, collided with the wider availability of game-making tools. This gave rise to a lively independent games movement.

Like their counterparts in other culture industries, indie developers pursued more experimental and personal projects, rejecting dull and hierarchical corporate structures. They strived to build more inclusive communities of players and developers. (I talked about this in a 2012 lecture at Indiecade called Toward Independence.)

Alas, it turns out that the crucial component of informational capitalism is distribution. Conglomerates like Apple, Sony, and Microsoft quickly adapted to this peaceful seizure of the means of production. They opened their markets to indies and even supported some of them, while consolidating control over the vectors along which content previously known as culture spreads in order to get a cut at every transaction. The result is a saturated market in which small producers take all the financial risk and rarely succeed financially, while platform capitalists make handsome profits while producing basically nothing.

McKenzie Wark detected this trend more than a decade ago in A Hacker Manifesto. In it, he describes what he calls a vectoralist class, which doesnt control the means of production but instead mediates connections and access to information.

This model, which was generalized by Google and is now increasingly applied by non-informational services like Uber and Airbnb, presents daunting new challenges for socialists. Traditional responses like unionization may become less effective given the interchangeability of the productive units. Workers may see this new, precarious autonomy as a satisfying alternative to underpaid nine-to-five jobs.

And if not the factory or the office, where exactly is the primary site of class conflict? Can these platforms constitute the first primitive infrastructure for a democratic, non-centralized socialist economy in which I can be a driver one day and a game designer the next?

Continued here:
Socialism at Play - Jacobin magazine