My dream now is to move to China and create propaganda for the sake of furthering communism. America is so systematically fucked that without literally killing every politician in the country we will never recover. Maybe maoist third worldists are right. We in real doomer hours now.
Interesting you say that, I guess my perspective is shifted because Lula actually held office, honestly makes me even more disappointed that Bernie lost now given the shear magnitude of the quality of life improvements Lula helped bring to Brazil working class and poor.
Bernie has really done a ton to reignite the labor movement in this country, it really is his lasting change. He’s been arguably the most important activist our country has had in decades, but he is still only really an activist.
lula’s most important contributions were raising the minimum wage and expanding a sort of “food stamps” program (quotes because it was more like a $50/month UBI focused on erradicating hunger), despite being pretty simple these policies actually yielded massive results
but unlike other pink tide leaders such as chávez and evo, he brought 0 structural change so most of that is gone by now
the only reform he ever did was a pension reform - not to increase pensions mind you, but to cut them (fulfilling promises he made to capital/finance in the infamous 2003 letter, “carta ao povo brasileiro”)
plus when chávez wanted to bring telesur to brazil - in an attempt to help create an actual media alternative to our mostly neoliberal-dominated press - lula refused, so as to not displease globo (our largest network)
whenever he was presented with the opportunity to help workers in the class struggle, he backed down and picked the more conciliatory approach - that’s the hallmark of liberal politics and it wasted our greatest opportunity in decades
as for bernie, i don’t think he would’ve been able to enact any of his policies (we’re not in the post-war period, the conditions for social democracy just aren’t here), but people being incentivized by the federal government to become more organized could’ve been pretty amazing in the long run, so it is pretty disappointing that he failed :(
I think Bernie wouldn’t have made any structural changes to our society either. His top issue is clearly universal healthcare and free education, these are ultimately liberal policies that strengthen capitalism over the long term.
Bernie was not going to do things like purge the state department of pro regime change folks in the foreign service. He would’ve likely chosen a treasury secremovedy that would calm down the markets which would not be performing well due to fears of sweeping change, and he wouldn’t want to burn his political capital on this. Scandinavian style social democracy does provide some of the highest standards of living among ordinary folks of anywhere in the world though, but it still isn’t socialism.
His top issue is clearly universal healthcare and free education, these are ultimately liberal policies that strengthen capitalism over the long term.
i know and agree, but that’s not my point
my point is that he wanted to organize people to enact these policies, whereas lula wanted to negotiate with politicians in congress; it’s similar to a warren vs bernie thing (though lula is a bit more moderate than warren)
these are fundamentally different approaches, the former acknowledges the existence of class warfare and acts on it; which can actually create a structural change in the long term as the experience of organizing has a transformative effect on individuals
this is very well expressed in bernie wanting to double union membership while, during lula’s terms, unionization rates actually went down (which is a pretty incredible feat for a former union leader)
