@timhollo @emmadavidson

You'll have to change your name to Zemma 🙂

Interesting read, I hope break throughs overseas will help here as well

@emmadavidson @timhollo the problem with the "devolve power to the community" approach is what happens to those of us who are queer, trans, and/or disabled when the empowered community decides they don't want queer, trans, or disabled in it? Or the community decides that everyone has to be a member of one particular church/mosque in order be treated as a neighbor?

The anarchists response to this one is, "just move to a different community," but that handwaves so many things.

I think we need a state as a guarantor of rights and as a defense against concentration of wealth.

@timhollo @emmadavidson Thought-provoking article from Tim as usual, thanks for sharing.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the mainstream left in the US and the Commonwealth countries has been really reluctant to talk about class.

And I think that's a huge mistake.

If most of your living is earned by working for a wage, you are inherently disadvantaged when compared with someone who lives off the return on their investments.

I think we need to talk more about the working class.

I think we need to be better at articulate that our big issue isn't with people saying bad things. That's a symptom, not the disease.

Our big issue is that the game is rigged.

It's rigged in favour of the few that control a disproportionate share of the world's wealth.

I think also that we need to be clearer that divide and rule is the favourite game of the billionaires and their pet politicians.

Call it solidarity. Call it intersectionality.

If you're only an environmentalist, or only a feminist, or only whatever, then the bosses will pit you against other working people.

We need solidarity.

A lot of the above is very old school.

And it worked.

One point I disagree with Tim on is this:

"But I think there's another key difference between left and right populism - one that presents a huge problem to the left and goes to the core of my question. Right wing populism is internally consistent, while left wing has a contradiction at its heart.

"The right needs the chaos. They want to prove the failure of the system and build (willing or cynical) acceptance of authoritarian rule.

"Left wing populism, on the other hand, needs to deliver on its promises. While saying the system is broken, it needs the system to be made to work for us."

Left-wing reformism does.

Left-wing radicalism doesn't.

So let's be radical. Let's talk about alternatives. Let's build new institutions and movements.

Let's stop trying to repair the bosses' rigged game.

Let's build cooperatives and member-owned organisations and trade unions and collectives.

You want to reform the system?

A militant, organised, unionised working class on the verge of seizing the means of production will bring the bosses to the bargaining table.

You want to stop the 1% from causing chaos and disrupting the status quo to implement radical right wing changes?

Create the risk that the left will use the confusion and chaos to seize power and radically change the status quo in ways they won't like.

If a potential outcome of chaos is that the big four banks become the big four member-owned credit unions, we'll see how much they still like disruption.

If a potential outcome of chaos is that workers seize control of mines, let's see if Gina and Clive still like chaos.

For this all to work, we need to build and strengthen alternative power structures.

The right has done it very successfully. We need to do it too.

#auspol