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> On Dec 15, 2019, at 11:42 AM, Louis Proyect via Marxism > <marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote: > > The idea of working class people voting for a party to tax the rich to pay > for redistribution and public services was completely novel, and generally > immediately attractive. It was amazing to see how quickly and instinctively > they grasped a left-wing agenda while saying they had never thought about it > before. There seems like a huge opportunity there for the left to make > inroads with younger non-graduates in towns but how do we reach them? > Organising and social media I guess? Plenty of useful reflections in this thread but the left needs to stop repeating the lie that we need rich people’s money to pay for things. If it isn’t necessary to tax the rich in order to pay for bank bailouts or a bloated military, it isn’t necessary to tax them to pay for social programs, infrastructure, or anything else we need. We should tax them anyway—tax them out of existence, if we can—but in order to eliminate their financial and political power, not because we need their money. There are constraints on the treasury’s ability to advance the common good, but those constraints are political (balance of forces) and material (sufficient supply of inputs, including labour), not financial (availability of liquidity). The capitalist class understands this perfectly well, which is why they don’t hesitate to use the treasury for their own ends, and why they’re so committed to keeping the rest of us attached to this enabling myth of austerity. We should stop making their war against us so easy for them. _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
