He was dismissed by the DNC proper before he even declared his candidacy. The fact that they allowed him to A) Run as a Democrat, and B) Stand on the debate stage, means that something big is happening and they saw that if they didn’t, they would have an internal revolt on their hands.

I read it more as Bernie never standing a risk to the system, he’s a Social Democrat at most.

They are the future of the party. It’s no longer the Clinton/Blue Dog/Third Way that are the future of the party. It’s The Squad and SocDems and eventually full-throated Socialists. Because the culture is changing in America. Step by step

The establishment Dems have the squad in a chokehold, they have treated Rashida Tlaib like garbage, and this is just for SocDems! It will never become a party for Socialism.

I’ve always contended that Capitalism isn’t exactly in decay, but rather just reverting back to the Feudalism from which it stemmed, which was the plan all along. When Feudalism was “in decay” in the early 1800’s, both Socialism and Capitalism rose in popularity. Capitalism won out because of a number of factors, but it is my contention that a few of the major factors included:

This isn’t accurate. Socialism never took a foothold until the 1900s, pre-Marx there were minor Utopian projects but that’s it. Capitalism isn’t reverting to feudalism, it’s advancing towards Socialism as monopolist syndicates are intricately related with one another, making themselves ripe for central planning once the proletariat siezes them. Meanwhile, competition is going away and disparity is rising. Read Marx, it’ll do you good.

The concept of true democracy was completely foreign to those generations. Humanity hadn’t had actual democracy since the Greeks (and even then, only marginally). We’d lived under Feudalism for centuries until the revolutions of the 1700’s/1800’s. People weren’t used to not having a hierarchy. It was a foreign concept to be able to have an equal say in how the world was organized and run. Unthinkable, for those generations.

Democracy wasn’t “discovered,” it was a natural evolution upon technological advancement. Read Why do Marxists Fail to Bring the “Worker’s Paradise?” Organizational structures aren’t random ideas but come into existence to support the Mode of Production.

The socialists and anarchists used terrorism and violence to try to influence the masses, which always has the opposite of the desired effect. Nobody likes a bully (unless it’s “their” bully). Rule by fear does not work, long-term.

This is just generally wrong. Read Blackshirts and Reds.

The Capitalists, on the other hand, offered the illusion of self-determination, the illusion of freedom of choice. Capitalists didn’t have to bomb people to get them to join their cause. They just had to pay them. They did have the challenge, however, to organize the new system so that the serfs (workers) could only survive by working for the lords (the capitalists), just as they did under feudalism. Give the serfs the illusion of freedom by allowing them the “freedom” to choose a different master who may afford them some marginally better conditions, or the “opportunity” to become a master themselves by going into debt to the king (the rich capitalists/banking institutions), and feed them the hope that eventually they could pay off that debt if they were “successful” at exploiting other serfs and earning a profit off their “cheap” labor.

This is a very “ideas focused” view of history, rather than a materialist focus. The aforementioned text on Marxism and the mythical “worker’s paradise” is a perfect into to Historical Materialism.

Obviously, the Feudal Aristocracy saw that the Capitalists were “their kind of people” and therefore the money and the power won out for Capitalism. Socialists could have used that same playbook, but we were blinded by our own passion and compassion for our fellow human beings

The Capitalists overpowered the Feudal Aristocracy with their vastly superior productive mechanisms. It wasn’t about ideas but literal structures.

I firmly believe that had humanity not been so resigned to hierarchy in the first place, more and longer lasting revolutions and democracies would have sprung up even in the face of that power.

Hierarchy is fine, organization almost requires it, certainly at scale.

The failure of the AES experiments, in my opinion, is that they have emulated the tactics of the feudalists, using violence and establishing their own authoritarian hierarchy, in order to give the people, who weren’t used to democracy in the first place, something familiar. The contradiction between our socialist ideals and the establishment of a hierarchy used to force those ideals down the throats of people who aren’t culturally prepared for the changes (and therefore who are antagonistic to the changes, as all humans are to all changes), irreparably cracks and weakens the system, necessitating more and more force to maintain itself. Add to that the outside influences working at every moment to thwart the socialist efforts, and the internal mismanagement and cults-of-personality that lead to policies that created famines, and you can see why it all failed. Violence is never a long-term solution.

You are analyzing AES as an idealist, not a materialist. Socialism isn’t good because it’s morally superior, but because production requires it if we are to continue to advance technologically.

Now that we have had a century or so of cultural changes such that democracy is the expected “norm” I believe that a move further to the left is not only inevitable, but achievable through nonviolent means. Through further cultural shifts, we could change the system over time. This generation is ready. The boomers were not. Gen-X was open to the idea. Millennials are socialists, by and large. Gen-Z are fucking communists and ready to fucking go.

Reform cannot work, this is a solved problem. The State and Revolution is a good text going over why.

My opinion is that violent revolutions are short-lived and generally have resulted in much worse outcomes than the conditions they were initially revolting from. For instance, look at the French Revolutions, or the American Revolution. The Russian revolutions are another example. The Korean, Vietnamese, and Cuban revolutions were all thwarted by the forces that arose from the previously mentioned violent revolutions.

This is absurd. The Russian, Cuban, Korean, Vietnamese, French, and American revolutions drastically improved on previous conditions, they were not “thwarted.” Look up metrics like life expectancy and democratization, life expectancy doubled in the USSR and multiplied by 1.5 in Cuba post-revolution. This is a whitewashing of just how monstrous previous regimes before revolution was.

If we truly believe in the general purposes of our cause (to make life better for everyone), then we have to look for a solution that will last millennia. That will only come from cultural change, and lasting cultural change is one in which the majority of the people are culturally inclined to not be fucking dicks to each other, and that comes from a lack of scarcity. Capitalism has given us that lack of scarcity. And now it’s time to use it to our social advantage.

Not entirely wrong in analysis of material conditions, but putting the emphasis on culture and not the Mode of Production is misguided.

The left needs to stop living in the past. Yes, learn some lessons from those dead men, but take a look at the current generations and plan for the future. We’re not going back to the glory days of socialist uprisings and guillotines. We just aren’t. Face that reality. Embrace the hope for the future

Your problem is that you are ignoring the lessons of the past. Reform cannot work. AES is by no means perfect, but you are throwing out all of the advancements in theory and practice over time and embracing Utopianism and Idealism, which were dominant pre-Marx and subsequently disproven.

Please read the article on the “Worker’s Paradise,” it’s 20 minutes, if nothing else. Blackshirts and Reds will also be eye-opening for you, as should State and Revolution, but those are full books.