Socialism vs Capitalism containment thread

[firestar464]

I had to.

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

[firestar464]

ah ca ira ca ira ca ira

[firestar464]

https://bsky.app/profile/alan2210.bsky. ... zvjeq3tc2d

people who claim that if they are asked to pay a penny more in tax then the economy will collapse, suddenly find billions to finance election campaigns or pander to the vanity of politicians and they expect us to believe they’re just philanthropic gifts with no expectations of something in return.

[firestar464]

[firestar464]

[firestar464]

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

[Yuli Ban]

[Yuli Ban]

[Yuli Ban]

Whoa!!!
The Austrian heiress giving away her entire fortune

Marlene Engelhorn grew up as part of one of the wealthiest families in Europe, but her assessment of the world's class of super-rich is scathing.

"They're disconnected idiots, and I know it because I'm one of them," she tells triple j hack.
At 33, Engelhorn has both possessed and given away more money than the vast majority of people in the world could ever imagine.

And she wants to use her experience as a member of the one per cent to draw attention to the increasing rate of wealth inequality worldwide, and the excesses of the super-rich.

"I have never considered this money to be mine because I understood when I got it that it was unfair and unjust," she says of her multi-million-dollar inheritance.
Engelhorn's inheritance came from her grandmother Traudl Engelhorn-Vechiatto, who was estimated to be worth 3.8 billon euros ($6.8 billion) at the time of her death in September 2022.

An ancestor had co-founded the chemical company BASF — now the world's largest — but the lion's share of the family's extreme wealth had come from its involvement with the pharmaceutical company Boehringer Mannheim, which was sold in 1997 for $US11 billion ($16.8 billion).


The question most have for Engelhorn when they learn she is giving her fortune away is: who did you give it to?

"Having read about citizens' assemblies and being very intrigued by this democratic tool, I thought, 'Well, maybe this is a process I can use,'" she explains.

Last year, Engelhorn tasked a group with sourcing 50 ordinary people, representative of the Austrian population, to decide how best to distribute her inheritance.

Did we just find the real Marie Aurore??

[wjfox]

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[caltrek]

Maybe a General Strike Isn’t So Impossible Now
By Alex Han
December 4, 2025

Introduction:

(Labor Notes) Trump’s attacks on working people—threats to send troops into major U.S. cities, ripping collective bargaining rights from a million federal workers, an immigration enforcement terror campaign that borders on unconstitutional—have been so extreme that many people are talking about a general strike. These calls are coming not just from the usual suspects, but even from my own mayor, former Chicago Teachers Union leader and organizer Brandon Johnson.

We’ve all heard calls for a general strike before—usually not as a serious proposal or strategy, but as a reaction to the attacks that working people face on a regular basis from existing political and economic power. Such calls are easy to dismiss, because they tend to come from well-meaning people without the knowledge of how difficult a strike is to launch and win in a single shop, let alone across a country of 330 million people that hasn’t seen anything approaching a national general strike in almost 150 years.

Those of us who have done the hard work of organizing our co-workers, winning union recognition, and negotiating with recalcitrant employers have frequently dismissed the idea out of hand. But two years ago, in the wake of the “Stand-Up Strike” at the Big 3 U.S. automakers, United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain put the idea on the table when he called on the labor movement to prepare to strike together on May 1, 2028.

At first glance it sounds impossible—but a strategic look back at the coordinated strikes and militancy of the past two decades shows we might be much closer than we think. We’ve laid the groundwork. Now we have to harness the lessons from those fights and “speed-run” to much larger, disruptive actions.

PROVOCATIVE CONDITIONS

The preconditions for large-scale coordinated actions are being laid out in plain view. Draconian, racist attacks on entire communities with the veneer of immigration enforcement. Gigantic tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations—which, along with economic contraction and federal budget cuts, will lead to huge budget challenges in statehouses and city halls across the country.

Read more here: https://www.labornotes.org/2025/12/may ... sible-now

caltrek’s comment: Primary focus should be on winning elections. However, there are various scenarios in which the Republicans seek to set aside election results. In the worst case, the Supreme Court may fail to act to stop such an atrocity. At least in the short term. In that case, the response may very well need to be a general strike. This would also be in conjunction with support to U.S. troops who decide not to obey unlawful orders that might be a part of such a Republican coup attempt.

This may all see may very far-fetched until one remembers the January 6 riot and related attempts to overturn the 2020 election results. MAGA Republicans will not let go of power easily. The Left needs to be prepared for that reactionary resistance.

[firestar464]

Also, eventually something will need to be done to pressure officials to remove the EC, FPTP, and the associate 2-party system. Money in politics and wealth inequality also need to be urgently addressed.