- cross-posted to:
- academia@mander.xyz
- cross-posted to:
- academia@mander.xyz
After that, progressives should extirpate the entire Ivy League.
Should Claudine Gay have resigned as president of Harvard? Are conservatives right that a rabidly pro-Hamas left has captured Harvard? Are liberals correct that the fascistic right has launched an all-out assault on academic freedom, at Harvard? The New York Times has explored these questions (about Harvard) over the course of almost 17,000 articles.
These are indeed fascinating topics. However, they ignore a key issue: That for anyone with a progressive perspective, Harvard should neither be reformed (to eliminate its wokeness) nor protected (from the forces of reaction). Rather, it should be razed to the ground.
Then, after Harvard has been razed, we must salt the earth, Carthage-style, so a new Harvard does not grow in its place. Next we have to destroy the rest of the Ivy League. Finally, anyone with enough energy left over should sail an emissions-free ship through the Panama Canal to California and obliterate Stanford.
Let’s start with a story that explains why I’m so personally committed to this cause. Then we can move on to a more rational explanation of why you should be too.
read more: https://theintercept.com/2024/01/06/claudine-gay-harvard-university-ivy-league/
You’ve correctly identified the tone of the article as hyperbole, but the solutions you’re proposing are somehow more unrealistic than the actions suggested by the article. If you could merely vote away the problem, countries that have implemented FPTP voting would have already solved it.
Building an alternative power base implacable to capital is the only way out of this crisis. Your votes have no effect on policy.
The periods when countries had “good” government were also the periods where capitalists felt threatened. We’ve had bad government for so long, the only realistic solutions left are radical ones.
Eliminating FPTP is necessary, but not sufficient. Ending the Ivy Leagues is neither necessary nor sufficient.
Also, can you provide a few examples of when “good” governments existed? AFAIK, governments have pretty much always sucked because they attract power-hungry people, and each sucks in a unique way. But I am interested in discussing some examples to see if we can find a path forward.
I disagree. The solutions we need merely need collective action, and that can work without radical (read: violent) solutions. Regional solutions leave a power vacuum that will be filled, and probably will be filled by something you don’t want.
The thing that needs to happen is public mobilization toward a non-partisan goal, such as ending FPTP. It’s then important to follow that up with another non-partisan goal to further strip the two party system of power, making room for a third party to take enough seats to force the major parties to reform. During that period, the third party will have way more power despite not having anywhere near a majority, and it can use that to guide public policy by forming coalitions and whatnot. I don’t think that power will last more than a couple election cycles, but it’s feasible.
The current situation is fine, not great, but workable. A radical solution will destabilize things and likely result in a worse situation over the short and medium terms (i.e. decades, not years). So instead of that, a less radical, but concentrated effort should be what the public opts for.
I don’t dispute this; government is bad. I don’t believe all regimes are equally bad, but this is not due to the virtues of the politicians but the organization of the people with whom rulers had to compete and negotiate with for power.
The period when the Soviet Union was believed to be both communist and a threat to capitalism coincided with the growth of the middle class, the rise of the capitalist welfare state, and the kind of policy that older people still think they can vote back into existence. It was also a period famous for labor strikes, protests, riots, and assassination. Direct action had a greater influence on the policy set by the political class than the preferences of their constituents. Politicians don’t adjust to voters’ politics, it’s the other way around.
To be clear, I don’t advocate for “good” government as a goal, it is a positive side effect of building credible alternatives to capitalism. This also happens to be the only way “good” government can be achieved.
That’s just coincidence.
The middle class in the US was created by the GI bill, which resulted in millions of former service-members going to school and buying houses. Add to that the economic boom from tons of reconstruction efforts, dominance in trade (everything else was destroyed), and access to lots of low cost labor in regions recovering from the war. That means higher demand for professionals and other middle-class positions vs labor, hence the rise of the middle class.
None of it had anything to do with the Cold War or the USSR.
Likewise, at least in the US, the rise of the welfare state was a reaction to the Great Depression, not anything the USSR was doing. In the UK, it was a reaction to wartime austerity, and while I haven’t checked the rest of Europe, I imagine it’s generally pretty similar.
Those strikes and whatnot are likely also a reaction to post-war expectations. There were stirrings of communist (and fascist) ideology in the west prior to WW2, but after the war it pretty quickly fell off, likely due to a mix of Cold War propaganda and general prosperity. Most of the unrest that followed was due to Civil Rights movements and opposition to war, not demands for drastic economic reforms.
My understanding is that capitalism has had a better track record for “good” government than any other economic system. Look at all the liberal democracies in the west and rights and lifestyles enjoyed by people there vs communist areas.
Yeah, the income gap is probably higher, but so is average standard of living even among the poor. Outside the Great Depression period (where the USSR did far better), the average US citizen was way better off than the average Soviet citizen economically, though the USSR did a fantastic job at literacy and life expectancy. We won’t ever know how Russia would fare had they gone for a liberal democracy instead of communism, but I do sometimes wonder if Russia would’ve followed the US’s path.
I don’t think I can have a coherent conversation with someone who has such a opportunistic relationship with causality. If you can hand-wave away the enormous political forces that dominated the minds of the capitalists as a historical coincidence with no bearing on their policy or legislation, we don’t share the same reality; I don’t know where to begin to bridge the divide.
I apologize as it seems you started this in good faith, but I don’t think this conversation has any legs.