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this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2025
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Late Stage Capitalism
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In 1934, a nationwide strike wave brought the us economy to its knees. Cities all along the trans continental railroad went on strike. Minneapolis had been basically completely taken over by a Trotskyist vanguard party, whose non-violent political tactics subverted police and big business interests at every turn. After the police shooting of two union dock workers in San Francisco on bloody Thursday, 160 unions initiated a 4 day general strike. In 1935, we got our new deal.
Workers, fed up with their conditions and inspired by socialist organizing, won a New Deal for ourselves. Giving credit to FDR for it, is ahistorical. It is exactly the sort of ruling class mythologies held and perpetuated by liberal elites. FDR was trying to rescue capitalism from the workers who had organized into a force capable of bringing it down, and seizing the means of production for the workers.
Despite the rational reforms FDR and Keynesian economics brought to the US economy, all of those reforms have been rolled back. That is because only the workers are able to win a rational economic system through struggle, it will never be given to us by some president who is beholden to the class that holds all the power and money.
There were many factors that contributed to disabling the American radical militant workers movement. Some was liberal meddling, and right wing regressive collaboration with regressive big business. But one thing that gets overlooked is how our movements were dismantled by Stalin's Comintern, who caused splits and purges in our movements along the lines of loyalty to the Stalinist bureaucracy.
So completely blaming liberalism isn't totally accurate either, unless you consider Stalin to be a liberal or a comprador (which honestly I think is kind of true.)
I try to be easy on liberals, I think progressive liberals are basically allies, at least when their illusions doesn't get in the way of principled struggle. But don't be confused by the mythology of FDR. Great man theory is a myth, only great movements of workers are capable of positive change under capitalism.
FDR was the leader at the time of the new deal. He gave into the will of the workers. This makes him left wing.
Left-wing and born into the aristocracy.
Sure buddy, keep dreaming.
Maybe when you pick up a history book and read a little you will understand that presidents of the US have never been "left wing".
Left-wing means you want workers to control the means of production. When has FDR ever advocated for that? I'll wait for your response and I will need receipts.
Sure. Left wing for a president, even the left wing of the ruling capitalist class. Not the left wing of the working class.
But you're absolutely right. He was the guy who did the thing at the time that was needed to do the thing. History isn't made by great men. It is made by workers. My point is he sided with the winners.
But he hadn't adopted the sensibilities and interests of the working class. It just so happened that a large enough section of the ruling class agreed with him at the time, not completely without his presidential influence, but that's the whole problem right? FDR was hardly the first member of the the ruling class who had won over to the side of workers, many great socialists, including Marx, Lenin, were themselves members of the bourgeoisie. But there is a canyon of difference between the guy who led a revolution in Russia, and the guy who stopped one in america.
As far as presidents go, he's not a slave owning mass murder, pedophile, complete nepo-baby, etc., the man wasn't evil as far as presidents go, but he was only evef momentarily and conditionally on the side of workers. Populism isnt necessarily leftism
There is no left wing in the ruling class just proletarian appeasers.
Why would you advocate for losing control over the means of production when you control the means of production?
Your statement is a contradiction.
I don't understand your second sentence.
I don't have any problem with the term "left wing of the ruling class". What it refers to, is the section that does give in to working class demands. So you say there is no left wing of the ruling class there is only I think you're being pedantic. Please correct me, but however you define things my argument is the same.
You're coming off as some kind of leftist, so wrt my statement being a contradiction: material conditions under class rule are inherently contradictory. Class rule is contradictory, the belief that any part of nature supercedes another is contradictory, that one man is better than another or more deserving of the fruits of labor, is contradictory. Socialized production but privatized profits is the fundamental contradiction of capitalism, but the co tradition drives it, not destroys it. How capitalism functions vs how it appears to function, is a contradiction.
Pointing out contradictions in others arguments in an attempt to invalidate them is literally bourgeois rationalism. It is a form of idealism, and I have zero time for it. Social contradiction exists. If you wanna argue that this society is rational, then if you consider yourself a leftist, that is a contradiction that alienates you from the real movement.
At the time of the new deal, a large enough section of the ruling class actually believed in a kind, humanitarian capitalism. This is because it was in their best interests to believe in it, and for a while it actually produced many rational reforms. But the contradictions of capitalist class rule, rolled back those reforms as the threat of immanent destruction disappeared and the endless search for profit continued. A good example of these beliefs is the interview [https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1934/07/23.htm](Marxism vs. Liberalism.) I don't like Stalin one bit but it is a funny interview and demonstrates what I'm talking about. This belief led to the social movements that embodied it. Of course it is a contradiction, Stalin becoming the avatar of the Communist International, is a contradiction. Its contradictions everywhere, all the way down. Where there is contradiction, there is struggle, and where there is struggle, we begin our analysis and center our practical work.
Reformism is when the right and moderates of the workers movement join with the "left" of the bourgeoisie. Both the moderates of the workers movement and the left of the bourgeoisie are wrongheaded and idealist, but that doesn't mean those movements don't exist. Those movements appear over and over throughout history, and develop because of actual conditions and class interests.
I think you define things statically and by their "essential traits" rather than by the relationships that they have with their local conditions. I am vehemently opposed to this way of thinking, this essentialist, categorical objectivity. I will not give ground here.
So, if you'd like to continue to debate me, you will have to demonstrate more understanding than you have here. Debate like this isnt practical, but i would like clarification on the second sentence which I legit don't understand.
You're doing literally everything in your power to not recognise this guy as left wing to the point of absurdity. It doesn't have to be any more complicated than: sides with workers, left wing. Sides against workers, right wing. Being left wing isn't some special club that only you and all the people you like can join. It's a broad political stance largely defined by the politics of the time. There are plenty of terrible leftists.
You keep calling elephants oranges and people are telling you that you are wrong and you keep saying you are right.
Read up on the Dunning-Kruger scale.
Why I know I'm an idiot, y'all are the ones arguing with me
Part of the New Deal was the NLRB, which neutered unions by requiring they distance themselves from communism and socialism if they want to be recognized and protected. Essentially killing off the groups of people that fought for the labor rights won under the New Deal. Democrats, like they always do, co-opted the message of unions and neutralized their threat.
I couldn't put it better myself.
A class analysis is not absurd, it is based on actual conditions, not idealized ones. I said he was the left wing of the ruling class, but he was objectively even for his time, not in the left wing of the working class.
The interests of the capitalist class are in direct conflict with what is in the interests of the workers. Capitalists want to pay workers less to make more profit, workers want to be paid more.
Don't mischaracterize me as saying the left is a club and I'm the gatekeeper. FDR was a gatekeeper. He let some white people through, but as I believe was stated elsewhere in these comments, he locked up a million Japanese farmers in concentration camps so that american farmers could buy up their farms for a song because they couldn't compete with Japanese agricultural practices. He aided the forces that dismantled the american workers movement during ww2, he turned all common lands into federal property, to be given out to railroad tycoons and mineral interests. Blacks and immigrants were mostly excluded from the new deal. Social democracy for one group over all others isn't left wing, it's fascism. Just because you refuse to weigh facts on their actual merit, rather than idealism, treating history as a buffet where you can pick and choose the dishes you prefer, leaving the rest, doesn't make me a left gatekeeper.
He made conciliation with the workers with his left hand but with his right he worked against us, for the benefit of his class. The left isnt a club you join by saying certain things. It isnt a set of beliefs we never act on. It is a practical program for taking power from the rich and delivering to the workers, forever.
What is absurd here is why you're so committed to lionizing any president. I even said he wasn't that bad, but I don't have to be a fan, or believe he was a part of our movements. If you deny that we live in a class society, then that is absurd. There is practically no framework to determine what is real in our society and politics without a class analysis. Without it you believe that it was good and leftist that FDR gave us incomplete rights for few, instead of the workers winning full rights for all