this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2026
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The US has a two-party system. The way I understand it, if you want that to make sense, you have to take into account the fact that the two parties have different wings. Among others, the Republican party has both an old neocon wing, and a newer MAGA one, the Democrats have a centrist neoliberal wing, and a more new-deal-style classical progressive one.
If you want to change which wing is dominant, you need to get into the party and start showing up at meetings, and/or work indirectly through your union.
Electorialism is not the solution, party politics won't bring about change. The underlying issue of capitalism will not be dealt with via reform that get rolled back every few decades.
electoral politics are certainly not the whole solution, I'd say they're probably part of the solution. I imagine we disagree on that, but either way, they can strangle the solution, so you can't just ignore it.
I find it interesting that you seem to recognize that welfare liberalism existed, was dismantled, and that the most "solution" oriented liberals in the Democratic Party just subscribe to that reform-based social welfare policy. Except, the consequences of that movement in the US is nearly a century of continued, increasingly destructive imperialism, the erosion of the labour - organizing that necessitated those concessions to the working masses, and the domination of neoliberal and fascist politics in the US (which is by no means new, but is made new in the narrative you seem to construct here).
Exactly how do you reconcile that with party politics' ability to deliver a "solution?" I understand saying that no tool can be discarded, but that's a different argument from saying they are in any way conducive to longterm, positive change. Liberal institutions are as much of a benefit to us as any threat is, they're part of the "solution" in that a solution is predicated on a problem.
The initial consequence was a drastic reduction in inequality, with decades of economic growth happening alongside inequality lowering even further. You can try to convince me otherwise, but I'm pretty sure that this, alongside the rest of the post-war consensus, saved the western world from fascism at the time. Anarchist praxis did not.
At the end of the day, you need a state to fight this, and where there's a state there needs to be certain liberal institutions to limit the actors in it. Call it welfare liberalism or democratic socialism, but it worked.
It eventually failed as well, though, I agree with this
I think it is an incredible feat of ignorance to declare that the "west" was saved by fascism by the USA, easily the most brutal and destructive empire in human history which just so happens to be a white supremacist state. Very typical white liberal interpretation of history here, it's only fascism when it gets too mean for your taste.
Welfare liberalism isn't a term I use as an opinion, it is a term that describes the specific policymaking you referred to when you brought up the New Deal. Democratic socialists support similar policies at times, but have a different intent with their own specificities in how those policies are implemented and what they entail. It's a joke among more serious socialist thinkers to call them liberals, but its another sign of ignorance to think the difference is semantic.
I don't doubt that you recognize there's a problem, but I think you should start being more critical about how you think. I can tell that you aren't trained to talk about these things formally, which is by no means a failure on your part, but you seem to think that you know enough to speak on these topics with some kind of authority when it's clear your knowledge is mostly passive. It isn't a weakness to conclude that you need to learn more about a topic, but it is dangerous to assume that you know better than others by merit of having an opinion.
No, there have been plenty of horrific regimes throughout history that were not fascist. Fascism is a vague concept, but not as vague as to just mean "bad".
Sure, and my phrasing might have been a bit unclear - I was talking about the whole post-war consensus, which involved more than welfare liberals.
For all the flaws of the policies of the post-war decades, I don't think there's any denying that the power of big capital was weakened. That's pretty important, whatever kind of socialist you are.
Yeah, sorry about that. I'm a middle aged man who's spent too much time on the internet, but in stead of hammering on about how white and ignorant I am, I wish you'd be more specific about what exactly I'm wrong about and what's right.
how?