yogthos

You could do something meaningful like joining PSL and engaging with the community instead of voting and donating to capitalist parties.

lmao maybe he'll merge it with X

Beating people into submission is certainly common for the US, but it's not an option when dealing with other nuclear powers.

precisely

o7

While a lot of people are now gloating how Trump is destroying the economy, it's important to keep in mind that economic crashes can serve as a strategic tool for the oligarchs to consolidate power. They will use the resulting chaos as an opportunity to restructure society in their favor. There is a calculated logic here of using destruction as a tool for entrenching elite dominance.

The key idea is to expand the reserve army of labor by engineering mass unemployment and flooding the labor market with desperate workers. Availability of surplus labor suppresses wages, erodes workplace rights, and dismantles collective bargaining power. This forces workers into accepting worse conditions allowing the rich to maximize their profits. The 2008 financial crisis serves as a recent example where mass layoffs and austerity measures significantly weakened labor power.

Rising cost of living also forces people to let go of their assets such as homes and businesses as workers and small businesses start defaulting on their debt. Oligarchs, insulated by their massive capital reserves, swoop in to acquire these assets at a fraction of the cost. David Harvey referred to this process as accumulation by dispossession. During the 2008 housing crash, private equity firms like Blackstone purchased over 200,000 foreclosed homes, converting them into a rental empire. Similarly, during Covid, billionaire wealth surged by $4 trillion while millions faced eviction and bankruptcy.

Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine provides a solid analysis of how disasters are inevitably weaponized to privatize public goods, slash taxes for the wealthy, and dismantle regulations. As an example, the bailouts in 2008 prioritized banks over homeowners further entrenching "too big to fail" institutions. Similarly, corporate lobbyists pushed for liability shields and austerity during Covid. Such policies consolidate oligarchic control, ensuring future crises disproportionately benefit the elites.

Finally, political volatility during a crisis can be leveraged to promote right-wing populists, and justify increasingly draconian measures such as measures forcing striking workers back to work. Just as fascist politics gained momentum during The Great Depression, modern oligarch funded politicians and media weaponize xenophobia and anti-labor rhetoric to fragment working-class solidarity.

The important part to keep in mind is that the oligarchs are able to easily weather the crisis by moving their vulnerable assets into offshore tax havens, getting to state bailouts, and so on. Their wealth will not suffer during the collapse. Bezos saw his wealth grow by $75 billion during Covid lockdowns, while the working majority was pushed further to the margins. Likewise, quantitative easing after 2008 crash inflated asset prices, enriching shareholders while wages remained stagnant. Each time a crisis happens, the oligarchs only emerge stronger with and with deeper control of the restructured economy. The collapse that's currently being engineered through the trade war is an an opportunity for the rich to reset the system in their favor.

Ah thanks, I was curious and just couldn't find the logo!

Bernie is basically a modern day version of Bernstein. Though a century apart, both peddle reformism as a political pacifier, diverting energy from the radical systemic change required to dismantle capitalism. Their approaches, while superficially progressive, function as ideological traps, diverting energy from serious movements necessary to upend capitalism.

Bernstein was a leading figure in Germany’s SPD, and he famously rejected Marxist revolutionary praxis in favor of evolutionary socialism. He argued capitalism could be gradually reformed into socialism through parliamentary means, dismissing the inevitability of class conflict. He neutralized the SPD’s revolutionary potential, channeling working-class demands into compromises like wage increases or limited welfare programs that left capitalist hierarchies intact. As Rosa Luxemburg warned in Reform or Revolution, Bernstein’s strategy reduced socialism to a "mild appendage" of liberalism, sapping the working class of its transformative agency.

Likewise, the political project that Bernie pursued mirrors Bernstein’s trajectory. While Sanders critiques inequality and corporate power, his platform centers on social democratic reforms, such as Medicare for All, tuition-free college, a $15 minimum wage, that treat symptoms instead of root causes. By framing electoral victory as the primary objective, Sanders diverted a what could have been a millions strong grassroots movement into the Democratic Party, an institution structurally committed to maintaining capitalism. His campaigns absorbed activist energy into phone banking and voter outreach, rather than building durable, extra-parliamentary power such as workplace organizations, tenant unions, and so on.

When Sanders conceded to Hillary Clinton and later Joe Biden, his base dissolved into disillusionment or shifted focus to lesser-evilism. Without autonomous structures to sustain pressure, the movement’s momentum evaporated much like the SPD’s integration into Weimar Germany’s capitalist state. However, if his agenda were enacted, it would exist within a neoliberal framework. Much like FDR’s New Deal coexisted with Jim Crow, imperial plunder, and union busting. Reforms within the system are always contingent on their utility to capital, and their purpose is demobilize the workers.

A meaningful challenge to capitalism requires a long-term strategy that combines direct action, mass education, and dual power structures. Imagine if Sanders had urged supporters to unionize workplaces, organize rent strikes, and create community mutual aid networks alongside electoral engagement. Movements like MAS in Bolivia, show how grassroots power can pressure institutions while cultivating revolutionary consciousness. Instead, Sanders’ campaign became a referendum on his candidacy, leaving his followers adrift after his defeat.

Bernstein and Sanders, despite their intentions, exemplify the dead end of reformism. Their projects mistake tactical concessions for strategic victory, ignoring capitalism’s relentless drive to commodify and co-opt. In the end, the reformist approach ends up midwifing full blown fascism. By channeling energy into parliamentary politics, the SPD deprioritized mass mobilization. Unions and workers were encouraged to seek concessions rather than challenge capitalist power structures. This eroded class consciousness and left the working class unprepared to confront the nazi threat.

When the Nazis gained momentum, the SPD clung to legalistic strategies, refusing to support strikes or armed resistance against Hitler. Their faith in bourgeois democracy blinded them to the existential threat of fascism, which exploited economic despair and nationalist resentment. In the end, SPD famously allied with the nazis against the communists.

The "progressive" wing of the Democratic Party is following in the footsteps of the SPD’s reformist trajectory. While advocating for policies like Medicare for All or climate action, it operates within capitalist constraints, undermining radical change and inadvertently fueling right-wing extremism. The Democrats absorb grassroots energy into electoral campaigns. Their reliance on corporate donors ensures watered-down policies that fuel disillusionment.

The SPD’s reformism actively enabled fascism by disorganizing the working class and legitimizing capitalist violence. Similarly, the Democratic Party’s commitment to pragmatic incrementalism sustains a system that breeds reactionary backlash. Trump is a direct product of these policies. We're just watching history on repeat here.

The US competes the only way it knows how.

lol yup

You're exactly right. Cutting off the global open source development can only result in diminished innovation, and long-term strategic vulnerability. Doing so imposes severe costs on domestic technological progress. This is a similar problem to the one faced by closed-source companies, but at a far greater scale. Open source amortizes the financial burden of research, development, and maintenance across a worldwide community. For example, technologies like Linux are maintained by thousands of developers and organizations globally, reducing costs for all participants. A nation that opts for closed, proprietary systems must shoulder these expenses alone, diverting resources from other sectors such as education and infrastructure. This problem is particularly acute in fast-evolving fields like AI or cybersecurity, where reinventing the wheel is prohibitively expensive. Developers worldwide find bugs, implement features, and adapt tools to new use cases, accelerating progress exponentially.

Countries that engage with open source will have easier time attracting skilled developers and researchers. By contrast, isolationist policies are likely to result in brain drain, as experts migrate to environments where they can collaborate globally. Startups and enterprises also depend on open source to reduce costs and scale rapidly. Restricting access to technology stifles domestic tech ecosystem, putting the country at a disadvantage with its peers.

Another big aspect here is who gets to shape emerging technologies and standards. Nations that participate in these networks gain early access to breakthroughs and will influence the direction of these critical technologies. Projects like RISC-V are already defining the future of their industries. Countries that isolate themselves forfeit this influence, ceding control to foreign entities. Locking industries out of global supply chains will inevitably lead to incompatibilities and make it difficult for these homegrown technologies to compete on the global market.

Ultimately, isolation is a recipe for technological stagnation. Closed systems will always be at a disadvantage compared to open ones. Over time, this will lead to dependence on legacy technologies that will be surpassed by the rest of the world. Meanwhile, open source adopters will continuously evolve, integrating global advancements. In a world where technological leadership determines economic and geopolitical power, cutting oneself off from the global community is suicidal. Open source provides a strategic advantage, enabling countries to pool resources for common prosperity. Those that cut themselves off will face higher costs, slower progress, and irreversible decline in the global race for technological supremacy.

I think the answer there is clear ;)