Senate This thread is publicly owned (marxism, socialism, and left-wing ideologies)

Some jobs also demand access to your social media if you have a privatized account.
A lot of jobs won't tell you a salary, and consider those who ask about it in an interview are "only in it for the money" rather than wanting to hone their craft.
Me, I don't have a credit score.

 

Depends on the industry I would guess.

Here in the UK if you have a crap credit score, county court judgement or significant debt which you're struggling to pay off, you'll fail to get a job in finance as you're perceived as at risk of fraud or similar. I have nothing to do with card payments or cash but I get credit checked every year by my employer

 

It sure can - true story: A co-worker of mine that was hunting for a different job ended up at a few interviews where they DID in fact reveal that they do request a credit score as part of their evaluation. He was quite turned off but their "logic"(from what he heard) is that people with lower credit scores are more likely to potentially be involved with theft or willing to "sell" company secrets or whatever. Thats absurd and stupid. The minute any company asks me for a credit score or anything like truly personal medical questions..... I push away from the table and walk out. Eff that garbage. Job interviews used to be fairly simple but they've made into a freeging marathon of interviews and hoops to jump through.

@anakinfansince1983 - Maybe I used the word foundation wrong but the idea is the same: Capitalism allows me to have the most potential to maximize the fruits of my labor. No, the playing field isnt perfectly level at the start but life isnt fair either. I dont want to get into details here other than to say I'll take Capitalism over anything else.

 

BTW, if you ever wondered about those adverts for companies that claimed to 'fix bad credit', here's how that works - you have the right to 'protest' bad credit with the credit agencies - while something is under review, it no longer counts towards your credit score. Thus, for the window of review (30-45 days), your credit score is 'improved'.
The thing is, this is something you can do yourself - it's a legit scam, in that they are making themselves unnecessary middlemen, and also implying that they are doing something that they are absolutely not doing - namely 'fixing' your credit.

 

Those things which you ‘simply disagree with’ are necessary if you’re going to have a functional capitalist society without excessive corporate power. I know you probably don’t see the connection, but it exists a none the less. You can’t support conservative policies of basically any stripe without contributing to corporate consolidation of power.

 

Sanders & Warren "spew various ideas (which are not for this thread)?" This is literally the thread for discussing left-wing ideologies.

 

Accidentally actually left wing.

 

Has anyone been following the situation in Peru? I know some of you have very interesting takes at times, or like alternative news outlets, so what's the verdict here?

Apparently Al-Jazeera is even more unsparing.

 

I mean, I'll straight up say, this type of coverage in the Western press wouldn't be happening had Fujimori won, despite the fact that the only reason she was running was to gain immunity in order to not be jailed for the crimes she's currently under investigation for and that she's got the exact same views as her father had who had death squads.

But I think that at the end of the day, despite all this press, the West is either largely resigned to or is accepting of the Castillo government. They had the opportunity to do what they with Evo Morales when Fujimori said there was election fraud, but they didn't. And so I think it means that we'll get to see this presidency through.

I'm not particularly impressed with the calls for impeachment. The capitalist class is scared of him and they're scared of losing the power they have, but they had to know that this was coming. Peru, despite being the most economically successful South American country by Western metrics, was absolutely failing its poor (but shocker to everyone reading this, I know) and it was being exacerbated by Covid. The thing is, we haven't actually had a "Marxist" government in charge of an advanced economy before. It's always been in developing countries (which is what the thirdworldists say, that you can only get a communist government in developing countries). So it's actually exciting to see what they can do when they're actually already given the foundations as opposed to having to start from scratch.

 

Alright yes I. . . kind of anticipated you would be unhappy about the media coverage. But that is the very lowest hanging fruit. I was sort of surprised Al-Jazeera took the same line, as their coverage is sometimes divergent, but nonetheless. I think the more interesting questions are:

1. Setting aside the framing, does anyone actually know about the individuals behind this Free Peru party? Do they concern or excite you for any reason?
2. Will the the contemporary problems in the country be a barrier to implementing more of the changes they are interested in, or does the instability open up some opportunity for them to enact a bolder agenda?
3. Does anyone know more about the conditions on the ground in Peru?
Etc

 

Having admittedly not read too deeply into it, he does appear to have created a more unifying government than I would have expected. There are a few unsavoury characters in the Free Peru Party, but it’ll be good if he manages to distance himself from them as much as possible. I’m guessing it’ll be a broadly social democratic government.

 

An article that relies on the "fears of his true intentions" would seem like an article about the Biden administration talking about the danger of him implementing communist policies. There's absolutely a fear that Biden would do that, but it's not connected to Biden's words or actions. There's things of actual actions in there, but a lot of this is "the opposition fears x" without substantiating it.

 

Unlike Biden he’s formally a member of an actual Marxist party, so the fears are probably justified in this case. It’s doubtful that he would actually govern like a Marxist however, given his margins and several of his appointments.

 

I'm not saying something could be written about concerns in his statements and the actions taken, but rather the "fears of his true intentions" stuff is shoddy coverage. It doesn't preclude legitimate criticism also being possible.

 

Sure, they should probably get quotes. The statement is obviously true though, for a good amount of people in Peru.

 

What I do know about Peru is that the main disagreement here is the implementation of neoliberal policies. Now I'm not using neoliberal as a buzzword here, that's the actual political science term for the specific set of policies emphasizing deregulation. Peru has overall been a "successful" economy by the metrics used by the West, however things are bad on the ground in terms of Covid and the poor. I didn't really know about the Free Peru party before this, but I was more than aware of Fujimori and her father.

This seems to be a case of people not understanding what Marxism is. Marxism isn't political policy. It's a tool in social studies and history. But you're right that he's not going to be governing as a communist. There's just no evidence that he's turning Peru into a one party unitary social state. They're just trying to redistrubute the wealth, and the rich and powerful in Peru are terrified of that.

 

His government forcibly sterilized, many without proper anesthesia, hundreds of thousands of indigenous Peruvians. Her father straight up committed genocide and she was running on his legacy. I'm sure she would have been Peru's best president ever!

 

Sure. But this isn't the Media Criticism/Improving Journalism thread.

I think we've all covered the problems here. But does anyone have a better glimpse of the underlying substance, or failing that some opinion on it? A major difference in this case is that while Biden is quite clear about the policies he is and is not pursuing, this President apparently offered no public schedule and has minimal press contact. The easiest parallel may in fact be the Trump Administration's cessation of regular press briefings across several departments.

I think that parallel is also instructive in other ways. For instance, I don't think this is necessarily a sign of something on sinister on the part of Free Peru. I am concerned it might be a signal of inexperience, though? If they're having trouble navigating these aspects of the job, does that imply something about their ability to execute more complex policies? Other thoughts on what could be behind this dynamic?

 

It might be. A lot of people are inexperienced when it comes to running a government, but a problem is that a lot leftists simply don't have experience because we're in countries where only centrists and conservatives get elected. The dude was a union organizer and a teacher. His team does have people with experience on it, however.

As for drawing parallels, I'd caution you on that because leftists in the global south have to be careful about signalling what they want to accomplish. I stated earlier that due to lack of action taken by the imperial core when Fujimori made her election fraud claim that it meant the West was okay with Castillo winning, we still have to remember that whenever Latin American countries with leftist leaders tried to take actions that were deemed bad for America's interests, those leaders got couped.

 

Yes, but Marxist analysis implies certain political policy decision making, which was my point. Now, I don’t think he’s going to govern as a communist or socialist, but it’s understandable, even from those in the middle classes of Peru, to be fearful that he may take a more radical route.

 

And you'd think that being a doctor would imply certain political policy decision making, yet here we have Rand Paul....

 

It generally does. Obviously there are going to be outliers, but a Marxist outlook generally does imply certain policy goals, which it’s not unreasonable for some people to worry about (even those who aren’t the upper class of Peru).

 

Then let them worry about it. I don't see why these people worrying about losing their political power is a bad thing. In fact, I want what they're worrying about to come true, even though you and I agree it won't.

 

Uh, all I said is that their fears were justified. Not sure where you’re taking this?