If Obama is a failure, does that mean the end of American social democracy?

[Scam of God]

And, as a pretty obvious corollary: will the Left finally realize that 2010 is not 1932, and new strategies are needed?

[Scam of God]

Did Bush mean an end to American conservatism? Stupid question really.

He almost certainly did spell the end of neoconservatism. I doubt very seriously future right-wing Presidents will be nearly so militant, simply because we cannot afford any more expanded wars and they will be more sensitive to accusations of big spending in the future. The Left would do well to learn from this trend.

I'm not saying the Left needs to abandon its project. I'm saying it needs to learn an entirely new way of approaching it.

[Scam of God]

American social democracy is an oxymoron.

But that's essentially what the New Deal (and the New Frontier, and the Great Society) were. They simply were not particularly successful attempts at implementing social democracy. You people have got to understand that the American State is structured in such a fashion that it has no use whatsoever for progressives. And, therefore, progressives ought to have no use for it.

[Scam of God]

American social democracy can't end, since it never existed.

It did indeed, at one point - I consider Keynesian economics to be little more than social democracy-lite. Their express goal, at any rate, is the same: the indirect redistribution of wealth. And history has shown that merely reappropriating wealth will more often than not get you elected out of office. It offers no lasting legacy that can be built on as the Left gains strength.

You have got to question your pre-conceived notions.  

[Scam of God]

And you've got to stop spouting off your utopianistic nonsense and trying to turn terms upside down and inside out acting as if you have the real truth and none of us truly understand the points you're trying to make when, in reality, you're just the political equivalent of the high school stoner philosopher.

"Utopianistic"? As opposed to what, again? Thinking that everything will be hunky-dory for you if Obama is swept out in 2012? If it cobbles back together the Reagan Revolution? That the Left could spend more decades in the political wilderness because it has yet again squandered an opportunity to reaffirm itself, like it did in 1992, like it did in 1976? And all the while the working class gets the shaft yet again?

That's hardly utopian at all. It's pessimistic pragmatism.

[Scam of God]

Oh despair.  The poor killing will go on, and on, Einzige, regardless of whether you ever have a clue.

And you aren't helping! The Democratic allegiance to a mode of politics that was outdated nearly by the time it was first formulated is one of the reasons the situation is what it is.

[Scam of God]

Oh despair.  The poor killing will go on, and on, Einzige, regardless of whether you ever have a clue.

And you aren't helping! The Democratic allegiance to a mode of politics that was outdated nearly by the time it was first formulated is one of the reasons the situation is what it is.

Um, no, the situation is what is because they have won - they have all the power.  If you think things can ever be changed I'd have to call you naive.

Things certainly can be changed. But it'd require blood, sweat, and tears. And for the Left to get off its ass and start promoting more direct challenges to the system of production, be those challenges technological or structural in nature. The fact that "they won" is an effect; its cause is the failure on the part of the Left to articulate a real response, because that might mean validating some of Their points, and we can't have that, oh no.

[Scam of God]

Oh despair.  The poor killing will go on, and on, Einzige, regardless of whether you ever have a clue.

And you aren't helping! The Democratic allegiance to a mode of politics that was outdated nearly by the time it was first formulated is one of the reasons the situation is what it is.

Um, no, the situation is what is because they have won - they have all the power.  If you think things can ever be changed I'd have to call you naive.

Things certainly can be changed. But it'd require blood, sweat, and tears. And for the Left to get off its ass and start promoting more direct challenges to the system of production, be those challenges technological or structural in nature. The fact that "they won" is an effect; its cause is the failure on the part of the Left to articulate a real response, because that might mean validating some of Their points, and we can't have that, oh no.

What're you talking about?  THey have the guns.

You don't need guns to establish the sort of institutions necessary to create lasting change. Allow collectively owned industries to go tax-free and they'll sprout up overnight. But nobody's willing to think along those lines, because it might be a concession to the Other Side, and doesn't incline well to a triumphalist mentality.

[Scam of God]

American social democracy can't end, since it never existed.

It did indeed, at one point - I consider Keynesian economics to be little more than social democracy-lite. Their express goal, at any rate, is the same: the indirect redistribution of wealth. And history has shown that merely reappropriating wealth will more often than not get you elected out of office. It offers no lasting legacy that can be built on as the Left gains strength.

You have got to question your pre-conceived notions.  

I actually find the term "social democracy-lite" amusing. Social Democracy is essentially, some might say, socialism-lite, which in turn others call "communism in drag." A "lite" version of another "lite" is not social democracy, it's just social liberalism.

An American version of Social Democracy, being generous, has really only existed in a certain fraction of the population, it was never really a movement, nor a political party, like in many other areas of the world, such as Canada or Europe. A certain faction inside the Democratic Party perhaps resembles the Social Democrats abroad, but they are perhaps a fifth of our government, at best.

The United States is so far behind in progress of other nations precisely because social democracy never actually caught on here. It did with few, and was in vogue for a year or two here and there, but it was never actually strong enough to be in control or change things. There is no American Health Service, there is no program that pays an employee's wages when hard times hit, there is no 50% tax brackets. Liberalism is not Social Democracy.

Here is my gist: you may make the distinction between American liberalism and social democracy, if you wish. I find whatever differences that do exist between them to be so minute as to be virtually indistinguishable. And those differences have far more to do with the innate socio-political character of the American State than any genuine ideological grievances.

And here is my other point - social democracy, or liberalism, is, quite simply, incoherent. If you pay for a public works project, and you invest in cement and steel girders and copper wire for it, then it's true, as Keynes says, that those companies invested in the producing of them will receive an incremental boon -- incremental, and temporary. And little of this redistribution-by-proxy actually finds its way into the hands of the workers, though they'll certainly be the ones bearing the brunt of its cost. And afterwards, once countercyclical policies are no longer needed, you have inadvertently boosted industry out of its problems and given them the excuse they need to end whatever benefits the workers managed to scrape out of it. And that excuse is recovery.

Liberalism quite clearly cannot achieve its desired policy goals on a greater than momentary basis, for the simple fact that it is an ad hoc solution to a more deeply pressing problem. You are establishing no lasting institutions for the workers; you are giving them no benefits that they can carry with them into the recovery period; but you are taking money out of their pockets to pay for it. Industry gets the tax money and the future dividends, the workers get the shaft. Is it therefore any wonder the workers of the nation have turned in their desperation to reactionary politics?

I believe that, so long as the Left relies on the State, this cycle will only continue to deepen: Keynesian solutions will become less effective, and popular resistance to them will only increase. I therefore believe it essential that the American Left wean itself off of them and attempt to establish itself on a more firm footing, one which has nothing to do with the State - and is, indeed, frequently opposed to it - and which instead roots itself in more systematic questions of production.

I am not demanding that all production be collectivized into a Soviet. Far from it. What I am insisting on is that we give workers the tools to lift themselves up out of poverty on their own. The Internet is the lock, and newly emerging technologies are the pick we need to open it with. And this indeed must be a revolution; more than this, it must be a fundamental restructuring of our entire system of production.

If we are to pay down the national debt, we must expand the taxable base. If we are to expand the taxable base, we must make it easier for entrepreneurs to enter into business. If we are to make it easier for entrepreneurs to enter into business, we must ensure that the State is giving no co-operation to companies with monopolies or near monopolies over their respective business. That means radically revising our copyright laws; that means cutting spending - and cutting it massively. That means committing ourselves to a real and lasting change. Which is, of course, hard to ask from those who are so deeply committed to ideologies rooted in the last Great Depression.

Let us consider the case of a "Green economy". We cannot have it both ways - we cannot subsidize our automobile industry through bailouts and, by extension, their unions, and continue to attempt to press forward on this front. We must either accept the inevitable or perish of it. How much easier would it be for you to open this newly emerging market up, instead of trying to force it into place by application of State power!

[Scam of God]

American social democracy is an oxymoron.

Agreed, but you only have find the Affirmative Action thread to illustrate it.

It's not as if you pissant Reaganists offer any hope, either. Simply because Reaganism was the wave of the past doesn't mean it will be the wave of the future; in fact, almost precisely because it was the wave of the past means it will be abandoned in the future. The old Republican standby of selective corporatism (for established interests, of course) was a failure almost from before it began. You're just as done and you don't even know it.

[Scam of God]

American social democracy can't end, since it never existed.

It did indeed, at one point - I consider Keynesian economics to be little more than social democracy-lite. Their express goal, at any rate, is the same: the indirect redistribution of wealth. And history has shown that merely reappropriating wealth will more often than not get you elected out of office. It offers no lasting legacy that can be built on as the Left gains strength.

You have got to question your pre-conceived notions.  

I actually find the term "social democracy-lite" amusing. Social Democracy is essentially, some might say, socialism-lite, which in turn others call "communism in drag." A "lite" version of another "lite" is not social democracy, it's just social liberalism.

An American version of Social Democracy, being generous, has really only existed in a certain fraction of the population, it was never really a movement, nor a political party, like in many other areas of the world, such as Canada or Europe. A certain faction inside the Democratic Party perhaps resembles the Social Democrats abroad, but they are perhaps a fifth of our government, at best.

The United States is so far behind in progress of other nations precisely because social democracy never actually caught on here. It did with few, and was in vogue for a year or two here and there, but it was never actually strong enough to be in control or change things. There is no American Health Service, there is no program that pays an employee's wages when hard times hit, there is no 50% tax brackets. Liberalism is not Social Democracy.

[ungodly amount of off topic nonsense]

See, that had nothing to do with what we were talking about, and is why your posts sometimes get on my nerves. We're not talking about what you think about Social Democracy or Liberalism nor how you think they should evolve, again, we're talking about what Social Democracy is in contrast to American-style liberalism. This wasn't supposed to be just another avenue for you to philosophically masturbate all over the Atlas forum. There's a topic here.

Until you can stay on topic, get out of it. You're the one who hijacked it in an effort to whine about how misunderstood American liberals are, and I was trying to right it. Come back when you can actually offer something more than look-at-how-clever-I-am-senior-members fellatio.

[Scam of God]

Your question was the topic title "If Obama is a failure, does that mean the end of American social democracy?" I responded, as well as others, by saying there never has been such a thing in an organized political force outside of being a faction of the Dems. It wasn't about how you think social democracy should evolve, or how effective social democracy is, or any other of your topics you like to endlessly philosophize on, it is the question of what social democracy "is" in relation to American liberalism and if it ever existed in the first place.

My point was, in relation to something you said, that it's silly to call Keynesian economics "social democracy-lite" when social democracy is a moderate form of another thing to begin with. There can't be a diet-diet-soda. Keynesian economics is Keynesian economics, Social Democracy is Social Democracy, American Liberalism is American Liberalism. If you want to play these incredible game of stretching definitions to loosely connect the dots between random ideologies, fine, but it basically makes the whole process of even applying terms to something meaningless, and thus this discussion becomes, meaningless.

Your ability to obfuscate semantics to avoid actually posting anything of substance will never cease to amaze me, Marokai. But as long as it keeps you from thinking too deeply from the real questions of the day, why, for the sake of humaneness I shan't keep you from continuing to do so.