Before anything else, where’s this “want to use the N Word” business coming from?
It’s an accurate analogy for how someone like Bernie Sanders views the ills of capitalism. If you think that is an invalid comparison, then maybe Sanders isn’t really the candidate for you and you should look for someone who embraces capitalism more.
I’m not a full-blown democratic socialist like Sanders, but I have a lot of sympathy for his position…and I think he probably still believes what he said 40 years ago even if he might not phrase it quite the same way.
So, let’s break this down.
I think what Sanders said is an accurate description of how he felt then and how he feels now. Does anyone disagree with that claim? Ignore any superficial concerns about phrasing, is Sanders still in agreement with the core meaning of those words? If you think he no longer agrees, can you cite anything he has said that would lead you to believe so?
Does anyone disagree with my claim that comparing capitalism to slavery is not a rare thing for a socialist to say?
Anyways, here’s New York state senator Julia Salazar on the differences between democratic socialists and progressives:
A democratic socialist recognizes the capitalist system as being inherently oppressive, and is actively working to dismantle it and to empower the working class and the marginalized in our society. Socialists recognize that under capitalism, rich people are able — through private control of industry and of what should be public goods — to accumulate wealth by exploiting the working class and the underclass. Functionally, this perpetuates and exacerbates inequality.
A progressive will stop short at proposing reforms that help people but don’t necessarily transform the system. For example a progressive might advocate for forcing landlords to do necessary repairs on buildings. But unless you advocate for universal rent control and frankly, eventually, the abolition of private property — though that’s not my campaign platform because it’s not very realistic — what you’re actually doing is just kicking the can down the road.
It really comes down to a core interest in empowering the working class. And that’s going to mean so much more than favorable reforms. There’s no question that we have to expand and comprehensively fund the social safety net, but if we do that without altering the more basic structures that disempower people and keep them in wage slavery, we’re never going to see long-term social change.
I’m not quite there yet in terms of completely abandoning capitalism, which is why I prefer Elizabeth Warren to Bernie Sanders, but I am not completely hostile to Sanders’ POV. I just don’t think some people really understand what it means to be a democratic socialist on an ideological level.
Yeah, look, all this will make sense when you understand that these people do this shit as a replacement for any structural socioeconomic change.
And I don’t mean people on this forum but old habits die hard.
In other news primary news
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Maybe we can stop doing exactly what the assholes want, again? Who gives a fuck, it was like 40 years ago and there is zero credible doubt of Bernie on race.
Grandpa Joe was babbling about how black kids are “just as smart as white kids” like 90 f’n days ago.
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“I never say the n-word, ever!”
“Ok sport, that’s great. Now we’re gonna do some of the socialism that pretty much all the black leaders wanted throughout history. Not even all the socialism, just some.”
“Um… How about instead we just never ever say the n-word even more?”
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Republican assholes are openly rooting for bernie to get the nomination
guess they didn’t learn from dems in 16, careful what you wish for
I’m having a hard time determining who is being sarcastic or sincere here.
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It is a slight problem to me that Bernie is celebrating this endorsement
You don’t have to do this
The vote bernie or joe rogan listeners will be forced to vote for trump argument is gonna be annoying.
Hopefully some people are being insincere (or just being total jerks). It has been explained in numerous posts that the “wage slavery” rhetoric goes back more than 150 years in the democratic-socialist movement in the United States. Anybody who has studied labor economics or democratic-socialism is very familiar with the “analogy”. Attacking people in this thread for explaining Sanders’ use of language is quite off-putting.
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Bernie may or may not still be an actual socialist, but in any case his agenda is not socialist. He’s not calling for the nationalization of industries. His agenda is social democracy. And the point is not what Bernie believes in any case, the point is societal norms and one of those norms is that you don’t lightly make comparisons to slavery.
There’s a world of difference between using the phrase “wage slavery”, or you know, “slaving over a hot stove” or whatever, and saying “If a worker at Vermont Marble has no say about who owns the company he works for and that major changes can take place without his knowledge and consent, how far have we really advanced from the days of slavery, when black people were sold to different owners without their consent?” which is not merely appealing to slavery as an abstract idea, but directly comparing things to American black slavery in particular.
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Do what? My girl Liz got the 
treatment for a far less serious thing than celebrating the endorsement of an alt right vector moron like Joe Rogan.
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The comparison to American Slavery is not very good, but suggesting that it’s glib either means misunderstanding what the left is or ever was or not knowing what the word glib means.
Rogan is fine. It’s a good endorsement for Bernie and he should celebrate it. Thinking otherwise is trying to commit collective suicide as a political movement.
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I don’t know what you are referring to.
Rogan is far from fine. There is not one deplorable thought in circulation in our society that is not expressed and nodded along with on his atrocious program for credulous “free thinking” intellectual dark web dorks.
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He also had Bernie on and let him talk for hours to an audience of persuadable people. Two sides of the same coin.