Bourgeois politics can be confusing, for sure. So here’s a handy Marxist working dictionary of what you need to know when everything crashes.
“Modern Monetary Theory” is unlimited money for the rich, dressed up in post-modernist gobble-de-gook. In short, it’s monopoly capitalism. Capitalism is how a billionaire class can develop, by extracting all the wealth of labor from the workers, and congealing it into money. Marxism is a scientific approach to political economy, with the intent of educating & uniting the global working class in revolution, to overthrow capitalism & establish socialism. Socialism is defined as social equality for all– globally & permanently.
When philistine haters attempt to slander socialism, they usually equate it with Stalinism, which is bureaucratic rule over a state-planned economy. Russian workers & peasants in the army, led by the Bolsheviks of Lenin & Trotsky, overthrew the Tsar & reformists in 1917, and state planning was then implemented. When Lenin eventually died from ill health, due to gunshot wounds he received in an assassination attempt by a liberal party loyalist, there was an ideological struggle for power between Trotsky & Stalin.
Stalin was an unexceptional old Bolshevik bureaucrat, who was kept in the background during the October Revolution because of his centrist tendencies which were correctly considered counter-revolutionary by Lenin & Trotsky. After Lenin’s debilitating strokes, and then final death in January 1924, Stalin stepped forward and defined his theory of “socialism in one country” to attack Trotsky and usurp power for himself, which he eventually did as Trotsky was exiled by 1929.
Stalin played the political game well, and laid many traps for his friends & enemies, eventually liquidating them all. Trotsky himself was one of the last old Bolsheviks to be murdered by Stalin’s agents, in August, 1940 in Mexico City, just as World War II broke out. Trotsky fought mostly with his pen, which is why he remains so powerful a figure in modern politics. Trotskyism is the only genuine expression of revolutionary socialism in the world today, represented by the ICFI and their publishing organ, the World Socialist Web Site.
Stalinism and all of its crimes are directly comparable to Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist party, better known as the Nazis. Nationalism & socialism are diametric opposites in politics. That’s because genuine socialism (Trotskyism) is international in perspective. Nationalism is about racism, religious chauvinism & patriotism, which define they worst instincts of humanity in their ignorance, selfishness & lack of democratic input.
Diametric & dialectic are similar words. The latter is the philosophy of Marxism, which replaces religion and all other forms of mysticism, with the science of opposites & revolution known as dialectics. When water freezes or turns to steam, there are qualitative shifts in the properties of water. What happens to water at 0 & 100 Celsius, is unlike anything in-between or beyond those temperatures. That’s a clear metaphor for dialectics, in that you have to stop thinking linearly and more dialectically, in times of revolutionary flux in order to understand what is happening.
When an army of millions of peasants led by a political opportunist, overthrows an ancient regime after a Second World War, and takes state power into it’s hands, that is called Maoism. When a band of peasants & guerrillas take state power into their hands in a banana republic, because it falls to them, that is called Castroism. When an anarchist leader proclaims, “Power comes from a gun barrel,” and then dies isolated in a third-world jungle, that is called Guevaraism.
The collapse of the Soviet Union from 1989-91 profoundly influenced US militarists, who saw it as an opportunity to reconquer the world. These are the bureaucrats, profiteers & warheads who planned 9/11, and engineered the bank bailouts after the financial crash of 2007-08. This is what is known as the deep state.
Our biggest political problem is the deep state, which is not acknowledged. “Thank God for the deep state” said ex-CIA Director John McLaughlin, to resounding audience approval on October 31, 2019. Up until then, “deep state” was another nutty conspiracy theory, pushed by kooks online such as yours truly. Now it’s vindicated, but still not discussed, except in the most general & glowingly patriotic terms.
The deep state is defined as any powerful institution which no one elects and holds power over US political economy. Every nation has a deep state these days. This institution acts independently of public oversight & democratic input. The Federal Reserve banking system is part of the deep state. So is the CIA, and the rest of the military-police apparatus. They will always lie & slander to hide their own guilt, and will never give up power peacefully. The deep state is the root of all evil under capitalism, and it must be dealt with decisively.
“Quantitative easing,” negative interest rates for big banks, and now the “repo market” intervention by the Fed & Treasury, are injections of newly printed money which has no backing, but is desperately needed to keep this “zombie economy” going. Zombie companies are defined as publicly traded corporations that can’t even pay the interest on their debt– which is massive & unpayable. At least 20% of DJIA & NASDAQ listings are zombies. This endless supply of free money keeps the stock market going up & up to new all-time highs, from which it will eventually crash.
Government is defined as a committee of the ruling class, so if you want social justice, then don’t look towards the two-party system bureaucrats for solutions. They put us in this mess in the first place. The solution in politics is so far beyond reform, that it makes Bernie Sanders look so much like the old windbag he actually is. Liberalism is dead, as it died with Barack Obama and all his vague promises of hope & change back in 2008. Then Hillary Clinton came out stillborn 2016, and the working masses got Russiagate & the #MeToo campaign in retribution for Donald Trump winning the Electoral College.
Journalists are defined as people who report the events of the world. The best ones do it honestly & with deep insight. Julian Assange is a journalist. People who persecute journalists for revealing the truth are fascists. Fascism comes in many forms, through the thuggish brutality personified by Donald Trump, or from the deep state, hidden spook, censorship version– agreed to by all the rest in the US two-party set-up. These are the “adults in the room” we are told by authoritative fake news sources.
Fake news is defined as CNN, MSNBC, Fox, Breitbart, ABC, CBS, NBC, et al. They are all owned by multi-national corporations, who push a pro-capitalist agenda in their interest. Social media including Facebook, Twitter, Google & YouTube is revolutionary in that everyone can now participate, but realize that it has also been tied into the deep state, which manipulates what you see, while selling your content to others without your knowledge. That’s called stealing, creeping, and abusing power. These entities will all become public utilities under socialism, with democratic control by users, which allows for maximum participation & innovation.
“Two-party strait-jacket” means Democrats & Republicans are two sides of the same coin– domestically & in foreign policy. They can’t exist without the other, and therefore are all in it together. Their mission in Washington is to enslave the working class, and rule the world through intimidation & military supremacy. This is pathological madness personified in capitalist politics.
Madness is defined as repeating the same mistakes over & over again, and expecting better results. This is the conundrum which no Ivory Tower, ideological apologist can solve or hide, no matter how eloquent they are in post-modernist sophistry. Capitalism is bankrupt, and must be overthrow dialectically, through the international working masses uniting under the banner of socialist revolution in permanence.
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