Where's the Resistance? - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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As either the transitional stage to communism or legitimate socio-economic ends in its own right.
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#13614135
The following article from the World Socialist WS, I believe, was generally correct: The Obama administration is nothing but a representative of the business class, and wants the working American families to pay for the well being of the success of the super rich.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/jan20 ... -j27.shtml

My only question is this: Where is the American resistance to this continual selling out of the American working class (about 90% of Americans) to corporate and financial interests? Where, except for the petty little Moveon.org emails, is the real organized fight to the continual insulting and obvious anti-working family policies of the government?
By Conscript
#13615190
1. Organization. The revolutionary leftist camp is too divided to channel anger and revolutionary spontaneity into an organized struggle. While the revolutionaries in 1917 were also deeply divided, they had one dominating party (bolsheviks) that was proving very successful at agitation and capitalizing on anger. Divisions in the US, unlike revolutionary Russia, are close to equal. We are all small, which only hinders any change in the fact that revolutionary leftist politics is, also, small.

2. Faith in reform. Alternative politics in general is dominated by liberal progressives that, because of a mix of the issue above and the lack of enough anger, convince people disillusioned with the present state of things that simple reform is enough to satisfy them.

In order to change the present situation, revolutionaries must be more effective or things must get worse. Russia had both, and we had the world's first socialist revolution. So what should we do? Since we have little sway over how much hardship people are enduring, we can only either get a dominating revolutionary tendency (which IMO I think will be the 'libertarian socialist' camp of left communists, anarchists, etc), or get some cooperation instead of sectarianism.
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By Dagoth Ur
#13615456
A big part of the struggle is locked up in the belief of most Americans in that capitalism is the natural order and there are no alternatives available. Leftists and workers alike are in disarray. Split into warring factions without focusing on the enemy they all recognize (at least partially).
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By Red Rebel
#13615595
There is always resistence to capitalism; however, it is rare that the oppurtunity that revolutions occur. You see hundreds of thousands march against the war (during Obama's time), for the first time Israeli shits weren't allowed to unload in the U.S., labour unions are always fighting back, and a recent survey found that people were relatively divided between capitalism and socialism. Hell even my rural conservitive paper was talking about the support the Egyptian people have with protestors in the U.S.

You're already reading wsws, and within 15 seconds of viewing the main page I saw resistence in the U.S.
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By Red Barn
#13616521
A big part of the struggle is locked up in the belief of most Americans in that capitalism is the natural order and there are no alternatives available.

I agree.

And the most extraordinary thing about this is the completeness with which anti-capitalist alternatives have been repressed. As propaganda efforts go, the vilification of anything even vaguely resembling class consciousness in America has been mind-bogglingly successful. More than that, our self-identification with the interests of big business seems virtually unshakable.

WSW wrote:. . . Obama boasted of having “broken the back of the recession.” His proof? “Two years after the worst recession most of us have ever known, the stock market has come roaring back. Corporate profits are up.”

Just yesterday I was talking to a guy in the feed store about the truly miserable plight of local farmers, who are having a terrible time trying to keep up with the rise in grain prices. "Yeah, but the stock market's doing great!" he says. "Things have got to get better soon, right?"

:eh:

Eh. It's heartbreaking.
By Kman
#13616546
Red Barn wrote:And the most extraordinary thing about this is the completeness with which anti-capitalist alternatives have been repressed.


Yes you commies are so oppressed :roll: , that is why the US president is a guy with heavy marxist sympathies and most of the planks of the communist manifesto have more or less been implemented in the western world (central banking including state money, progressive income tax, death tax, public schooling).
By anticlimacus
#13616631
that is why the US president is a guy with heavy marxist sympathies


You may be able to get away with a comment like this in the North America forum, but people here actually know what Marxism and socialism is. Obama is nothing short of a pawn of wall street (his biggest doners) and big business to which all his policies (and cabinet) are sympathetic to. The fact that you even mention his name and Marxism in the same breath shows me that your knowledge of Marxism all comes from FOX news. And this just reaffirms Red Barns' suspicision of the domination of the American working class who cannot even make a distinction between Marxism and socialism and simple welfare state capitalism. Feel free to debate socialism and Marxism and the their critique of Obama etc, but please, don't make such silly comments about Marxism, that do nothing but reveal ignorance, in the socialist forum...
By Conscript
#13616705
Kman wrote:Yes you commies are so oppressed :roll: , that is why the US president is a guy with heavy marxist sympathies and most of the planks of the communist manifesto have more or less been implemented in the western world (central banking including state money, progressive income tax, death tax, public schooling).


Kman, as a libertarian with only the understanding mises.org can offer, you have nothing of value to contribute to any discussion on what marxism is and isn't. For example, your stated criteria have also been the historical policies of some old monarchies and empires, so we can conclude they are socialist as well. It also seems, according to libertarian logic, that saving capitalism can also somehow be a marxist endeavour, if we are talking about the same Obama. Libertarian method has no place here, I think we can all agree.

We have capitalism, period. It might not be your ideal capitalism, but it is nonetheless what we have. Indeed, anti-capitalist alternatives are oppressed, how often do you hear one of the two parties calling for abolition of capital, wage, and private property? Compare that to how much slander is spouted in opposition, yours included.

State capitalism is not socialism, no matter how convenient it may be to say otherwise.
Last edited by Conscript on 01 Feb 2011 20:22, edited 1 time in total.
By anticlimacus
#13616998
AC, Kman is Danish, so suggesting that his entire understanding of Marxism comes from Fox, or that he is a member of the American working class, is aiming in the wrong direction.


And yet Kman's avatar (Mark Steyn) is of a syndicated American/Canadian conservative commonly featured on Rush Limbaugh and FOX news :hmm: ...But yes, I know he is not American and your point is taken, at any rate.
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By Red Barn
#13617141
. . . how often do you hear one of the two parties calling for abolition of capital, wage, and private property?

Oi vey. How often do you hear anybody even use the words, "capital," "wage" or "private property?"

Three years into the recession, and I've yet to hear anybody talk about how maybe - just maybe - 30 years of flat wages have had something to do with our insane levels of personal debt. Or how a pathetic 9 percent of the workforce is unionized. Or how employers are using the crisis to obliterate everything accomplished by the New Deal. Nobody talks about this stuff - not newscasters, not politicians, not regular people on the street.

It's like the American labor movement never even happened.

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By stneotser
#13619825
I'd agree that the complete lack of American class consciousness has a lot to do with it.

Additionally, American individualism is much to blame for the attitude of American workers. The pursuit of the American dream and how it is still believed that if one just works hard enough they too can be rich.

Right to work states, the lack of organization, the threat of losing ones job if one even whispers unions.

The incessant assault on the working class and how the working class is blamed for everything in the media. The economic meltdown was blamed on people borrowing more than they could afford. Hmm. It's all a stitch up.
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By Red Barn
#13620938
Greetings, new Comrade (unpronounceable) Stneotser. :)

. . . The pursuit of the American dream and how it is still believed that if one just works hard enough they too can be rich.

I don't know how it is in Denver, but here in Maine people are still in denial about this, and that causes an incredible amount of psychological stress on everybody. Some people are just bowled over by guilt and self-blame, and others are lashing out at the oddest things. (Mexicans are to blame for mill closures? Maine is the whitest state in the union! I don't suppose there's one single Mexican in my entire county.) My formerly level-headed neighbors are turning into ugly, snarling Tea Party zealots all over the place, and it's very sad to see.

I think maybe it's just too painful for ordinary, honest people to admit that the American Dream of perpetual upward mobility is history, and that we've got to come up with something better. They just do not want to let go and move on, and in a way that's understandable. With no viable options for change on the table, and a history of labor activism that has been all but erased from memory, it's hard to imagine where productive resistance could possibly come from.
By anticlimacus
#13621862
I don't know how it is in Denver, but here in Maine people are still in denial about this, and that causes an incredible amount of psychological stress on everybody. Some people are just bowled over by guilt and self-blame, and others are lashing out at the oddest things. (Mexicans are to blame for mill closures? Maine is the whitest state in the union! I don't suppose there's one single Mexican in my entire county.) My formerly level-headed neighbors are turning into ugly, snarling Tea Party zealots all over the place, and it's very sad to see.

I think maybe it's just too painful for ordinary, honest people to admit that the American Dream of perpetual upward mobility is history, and that we've got to come up with something better. They just do not want to let go and move on, and in a way that's understandable. With no viable options for change on the table, and a history of labor activism that has been all but erased from memory, it's hard to imagine where productive resistance could possibly come from.


I agree with these sentiments. I also think it is important to realize that the whole "American dream" meme has the consequence of pitting workers against each other. Rather than understanding the past 30 plus years as a systematic economic domination of labor by the top 1% and the corporate class, labor gets angry at other laborers, especially those who seem to be doing well despite the corporate domination. The Tea Party is an excellent example of this. It is a highly funded movement by corporate America, and the sole aim is to create in-fighting among labor, rather than have labor organize against the real enemy--corporate capitalism. This capacity for wealthy capitalists to divide-and-conquer is truly spectaculor in the US. It has been the goal of corporate and financial entities to undo any of the successes of labor during the thirties--and over the past 30 plus years they have been extremely successful. "The American Dream" has served as a key justification for creating this distrustful sentiment of labor with itself. Unions, it is said, deprives individuals of initiative; public workers get hand-outs from the government; and social economic programs are demonized as "nanny-state" capitalism, preventing the "men" from being real "men" (there is an appeal to aassumed gender roles in the whole "nanny-state" argument). Rather than taking higher paid labor as a standard for labor (and a success of labor!), labor, as a result of astro-turf tea party like movements, blames higher paid labor for its problems and views their successes as parasitic. Thus the remote possibility that the decline of quality of life for the majority of working Americans over the past 30 years coupled with the extreme concentration of wealth and prosperity among the top 1% has to do with class warfare between the corporate capitalist class and labor is completely ignored.
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By Julian
#13622248
I don't agree with the WSM at all

Its not clear to me that the main issues facing America is the gap between rich americans and the american working class. The reality is that most working americans are well off by comparison both with earlier generations of americans and the world's poor. America isn't middle europe and certainly its not Russia in 1917. If theres is a Class war in America it isn't suddenly going to become the big issue for most Americans.

There is of course a very real issue with rising levels of unemployment in America. However, its not just the WSM which is concerned about unemployment. Obama and rather less plausible the Tea party both claim concern. I have little doubt that Obama is sincere when he says he wants to bring to an end the recession. However, the issue is whether he has the practical policies to achieve that. Its possible that he could listen to the left and learn. The left may be able to build support for fiscal stimulus and structural changes. However, simply building a worker's party is clearly not in itself a practical solution. That's mere symbolism. The Republicans may not be the sharpest intellects but they will certainly shred empty sloganeering.

More generally the progressive movement in America still has a role to play. American writers, actors, and NGOs have much to say about global justice, human rights, participatory planning, climate change, feminism and third world poverty reduction. The leadership of the country may be hopeless but progressives in America still have a contribution to make.
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By Red Barn
#13622309
If theres is a Class war in America it isn't suddenly going to become the big issue for most Americans.

Well, yes. :) From the Socialist point of view, that's exactly the problem. Everyday American workers are ready to blame anything other than capitalism itself for their troubles. The question is, how does one overcome this?

More generally the progressive movement in America still has a role to play. American writers, actors, and NGOs have much to say about global justice, human rights, participatory planning, climate change, feminism and third world poverty reduction.

Apparently you're suggesting that we just sit around till we're skinny enough for Bono to throw us a benefit concert? :lol: Frankly, Julian, I hope it doesn't come to that!
By stneotser
#13622373
Hi Red Barn.

Colorado is a right to work state so we can be fired or "let go" at any time for any reason. Here we blame Mexicans too for taking American jobs just as you do in Maine. We blame ourselves for losing our own jobs. We blame anyone and everything so long as it wasn't the CEO who made a huge bonus on workforce reduction. As I mentioned in my introduction message, I am a transplant to the USA.

I do not understand the American psyche, despite having read books such as "What's the Matter with Kansas" by Thomas Frank and other texts.

In 2007/2008 ordinary Americans were really angry. When we were all getting shafted and the bank and industry bailouts came I thought, here it comes, here comes the workers movement. Imagine how crestfallen I was to see the rise of the Tea Party.

The unpronounceable name is Saint Knee-otser. ;)
By CounterChaos
#13666267
What gets me is how everyone seems to conveniently forget that Obama is working within a system that he can't simply change overnight...It's like everyone expects him to pull some rabbit out of his hat that is clutching a "new" set of rules on how to play the capitalist game. I admit, I am very upset in the "noticeable" change in the man I supported...It is almost like he was exposed to some long PowerPoint presentation and he suddenly had a eureka moment. I'm not a fly on the wall there so conjecture is all mine..I'm still keeping these rose colored glasses on though, I feel it's still early in the game.
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By Wellsy
#15122054
It seems to me the attempt to explain its lacking is based in ideas of hegemony in everyday living. Where is the space carved out for the ideas of workers in the interest of workers?

I saw teachers disband their own local union representation voluntarily over a political allegiance to a superintendent who ruled through nepotism.

It is apparent to me that a crisis in itself does not create a working class movement, rather it must be establish in some form and agitating prior to the onset of a crisis.

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