Social safety nets were stronger and income inequality was lower, largely thanks to the post-war economy retaining a lot of its state planning towards full employment, and largely due to the expansion in safety nets under FDR as a response to the Soviet Union’s massive improvement in safety nets. Time was good, if you were a hetero white man. The US was also emerging as the clear imperial hegemon.

Reactionary rhetoric tries to turn the clock backwards, to when the contradictions of society weren’t as sharpened. It’s usually a petite bourgeois conception, but can also be a part of other classes. It’s the opposite of progressive movement, trying to move the clock forward into the next mode of production, socialism in the case of the US.

Socialism has a better track record than capitalism, but either way, my point is that necessary systemic changes need socialism for them to happen. Socialism isn’t a promise, it’s a mode of production. Further, countries like the PRC are rapdily electrifying, at the top of solar panel production and infrastructure initiatives, and combatting desertification, that’s the power of a publicly driven economy.

Why does political content need to be “new” or “fresh?” A lot of the latest events in the world are new developments on very old struggles that have been discussed for a very long time, something fundamentally changing that calculus is rare.

Yes? I don’t really follow what you mean, here.

What do you mean?

I really don’t think we are. You propose we push for change within the system, as it’s better to have a tweaked current system than a non-tweaked current system. My point is that the reason the current system lacks those popular and necessary tweaks is because its built to resist anything that risks lowering profits, so our strategy should focus on changing to a system that allows us to make those tweaks in the first place.

You may not agree with me, but I don’t think we are having different discussions.

I’m focusing on capitalism because we can’t let the progress we can imagine be the enemy of the progress we can actually achieve in the real world. Just like going up to Elon Musk and asking him nicely to not be a Nazi isn’t a viable solution to systemic issues, so too is trying to use regulations against the system they are meant to solidify and protect. Socialism is necessary because without it, we can’t get these well thought-through taxes and regulations to begin with, we are utterly at the mercy of profits.

It’s more that under capitalism, regulations and taxes only serve the bourgeoisie. It isn’t that the concept is being undermined, it’s that those are sold to the working class as a viable solution to avoid actually solving the problem.

Yep, but for systemic changes socialism is necessary. We should do what we can right now, but we can’t cause systemic change without socialism.

DSA is the Democratic Socialists of America, it’s a reformist socialist party. PSL is a Marxist-Leninist (technically Marcyist but the vast majority of members are ML) party with roots as a split from the IWW, and is thus more based on party building, revolution, and practices democratic centralism. The DSA gets a lot less done per member due to its lack of democratic centralism and its big-tent methodology, but it isn’t the worst org in existence if there’s no other options.

Check the party programs to see what the difference looks like in aim.

Sure, I can see that hypothetical, but we can’t get to that hypothetical in capitalism. Profit drives and steers the system, not humans.

Well-regulated markets, under capitalism, just means comfortable monopoly. You can’t work against the system of voracious demand for profit within said system. You can’t just pray for taxes abd regulations, the only ones that get passed are ones in the interests of the largest capitalists.

Sure, it wouldn’t be easy, but it’s nearly impossible under capitalism. What would realistically happen is the state would heavily subsidize plant based food and develop economies of scale, and increase requirements on animal products for more “humane” treatment, until gradually animal products are phased out culturally. A top-down command for animal liberation would be commandist if the masses don’t want it, so raising political consiousness would be a key part of that struggle.

Socialism will not automatically create vegan world, it hasn’t done so anywhere socialism exists. However, it does swap from profits as the end-all, be-all of how society is organized, to one where humanity can better plan production and meet people’s needs. If capital is in the driver’s seat, then the meat industry will continue to perpetuate said brutality and environmental destruction unimpeded. If humanity is in the driver’s seat, then we can actually work against what would be assured in a profit driven model.

The swap to veganism will never be instant, but it will be largely impossible without human supremacy over capital.

The DSA is okay if there’s nothing else around you, but PSL has a much better party platform and is growing rapidly.

Veganism is good, necessary even, but more than voting we need to actually overthrow capitalism and replace it with socialism. Profit will destroy the planet unless we take control of the reigns from capital.

Democracy, in the hands of the proletariat, not the bourgeoisie. The government should oppress the capitalist class and uplift the proletariat, political power should be stripped from capitalists and lay with the proletariat instead. This is the “dictatorship of the proletariat” over the bourgeoisie.

To be fair, anti-communism is the opposite of progressive, though I get what you mean, lol. Companies will always take advantage of social issues to get profit.

What you’re getting at is more accurately identified as class struggle. There, over time, becomes a sharpening conflict between the revolutionary classes and reactionary classes, and this pushes towards revolution. Marketing pretending to support broader social change is a pressure valve for the system, one of many.

Nah