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05.04.10 - 9:09 PM
Progressives Vs. Capitalism
Teabaggers and other wingnuts notwithstanding, a new Pew Center poll finds that a big majority of Americans - 68 percent - have a positive view of the word "progressive" while Goldman Sachs et al have brought the popularity of "capitalism" down to a paltry 52 percent, a figure that goes below half for young people, women and lower-income people. Testing reactions to nine political terms, the poll found the biggest draws were "family values" and "civil rights" - both almost 90 percent - though the question inevitably arises, "Whose?"
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34 Comments so far
Show AllIt is no surprise that the corporate shill du jour, Glenn Beck, spends so much time trashing progressives. He has been given the brief of doing the same corporate media smear of "liberals" that Grandpa Caligula (Reagan) & Co. did quite successfully. Thus, progressives need to continuously parry and attack the crud emanating from the likes of Beck.
meaningless
Right to the point!
Polls mean nothing. Last year, polls showed an overwhelming majority of the American people supporting single payer health care but we got nothing of that. Years ago, polls showed a strong majority of the American people wanting out of Iraq but we're still there. Any dunderhead who wants to rely on polling for hoping needs to have his head examined. Half of the country voted for Mccain, Obama is giving "progressive" a bad name, and capitalism has yet to come under fire.
JillSwanson
Congratulations on an excellent post.
I agree, good post. I would just like to add that the poll numbers do have some value. They are a very strong indicator that our "representative" government isn't so representative after all. If the vast majority could connect the dots, perhaps we could wind up with some positve change, or "progress." Unfortunately, we don't have a trustworthy media, and now it appears that the last source of factual information, the internet, is the next to be dismembered by the elite. Gee, I wonder why the FCC doesn't just reclassify broadband rather than giving the whole frigging system to the likes of AT&T, and Comcast?
The biggest problem we have in this country is a media that works against rather than for the public benefit, as they should.
Aussidawg and requiem, thank you. :)
I don't understand what value poll numbers have when most of us don't get to vote on them along with politicians who ignore them at their own will usually due to conflicts of interest. Yeah, the media is sickening to watch and I have to take care of my two children as a widowed mother. I don't get much time to surf either on most days since I have more pressing work to do both at home and work but I would hate to see the internet go the way of television media. We could write letters and emails, phone, and even try meeting our politicians but nothing gets through to them even then. I don't even know if the American people know just what they want anyway. Most Americans know nothing about single payer, think that Europe is too socialist though I doubt it, love to listen to hate talk radio or degenerative television, know nothing about other countries except the crude jokes at the most, and are just plain ignorant. Poll numbers sound like a tease to me but I might be too skeptical.
Dafoe
Most Americans wouldn't know socialism even it bit them in the arse, they have been fed a diet of buzz words and Orwellian definitions spun from the right wing talking heads on radio and TV. For instance 65% say Militia gives them a negative reaction, does that mean only 35% own guns as per the "militia" mentioned in that amendment to the Constitution that is the backbone of the NRA and such ilk?
The Pew Center poll tells me something different, that ignorance is becoming wide spread.
I'm going to create my own powl.
Here I go.
Communism, the theoretical "we're all in this together and we're going to help each other" variety: 100%
Communism, the totalitarian sort that resulted from extreme interference by mendacious capitalists into the first national experiment in communism in Russia at the end of World War 1: 0%
Anarchism, the sort created by the likes of Mikhail Bakunin and Emma Thompson and practiced by the anarcho-syndicalists of Barcelona in the early days of the Spanish Civil War: 100%
Anarchism, the agent provocateur police fraud being perpetrated today: 0%
Socialism, the sort proselytized about and believed in by Eugene V. Debs, leftist labor unions and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) in the U.S. Senate: 100%
Socialism, the sort that morons like Glenn Beck imprecate when Barack Obama gives away trillions of citizens dollars to Wall Street and the big health insurance swindles: 0%
What I see that we have in America is a really debased language. Orwell warned of this "newspeak" that is ruining our public discourse.
I don't know how we are going to take back our language from the vicious right wing thugs who are stealing our mother tongue just as surely as they are swindling the people's well-being for the foreseeable future. But we must make a stab to take back our language before we are lost in a collapsing tower of babel.
I'm a Leftist. I endorse the ideals of Communism, Socialism, Anarcho-Syndicalism and if I must, the ideals of the Social Democrats.
But one thing I refuse to endorse is the debasement of our culture by the right wing thugs who control our airways and the minds of far too many persuadable fools. And I refuse to endorse totally twinkie polls like this folly presented as some sort of culturally persuasive bandwagon tool by the likes of the mendacious Pew Reseach Group. Who appointed them gods, anyway?
***
Late Edit:
Let me add a last thought to this post: "To be rich is glorious. This is the Fragrant and Hot Marxism of today."
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2010/05/03/world/asia/20100503_CHINGLISH-4.html
Good comment.
I should add that the word "Progressive" can mean anything to anyone. The Clinton-people used it to mean the neolibral capitalist program of privatizations and so-called "free trade". His dismantling of welfare, called "reform" (another useless word) was also considered "progressive".
I also agree with the earlier commenter who can't see how Abbby thinks these poll results are positive. I interpret it as indicating a rather reactionary society as well.
Maybe it means something else to naiive younger poeple. But everyone over 40 knows exactly what "States Rights" and "Family Values" is code language for.
________________
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master - that's all."
which is to be master...
the question of our time...
Except that words are a means of sharing thoughts, however imperfect the thought or the means of conveying it. The master is not the word, the master is the need to communicate.
And yet, the need to communicate requires the need to name things, to categorize. Therein lies one of the great paradoxes of the human condition.
"But everyone over 40 knows exactly what "States Rights" and "Family Values" is code language for."
I'll take a wild guess (although I've cheated, I'm over 40): GUNS and GOD
Okay, I'll admit from the start that I'm over forty, and agree with Old Peculiar...except on "States Rights" which means the freedom to succeed if someone who isn't a white "Christian", even if they are one of their own in every sense except skin color, lives in the "White" house (in other words a real "American"). I still concur with the issue of guns though. Just wanted to make an addition.
I haven't done a poll, but I think it's a good thing that capitalism is now frequently called by its name "capitalism," rather than by its euphemism "free enterprise system." One less obfuscation. And maybe I'm an eternal optimist, but criticism of capitalism is getting a lot more open and vocal.
I am in agreement with Joel Kovel's objection to "progressive" in his Enemy of Nature. I suspect the label's current use is as a big-tent term to include both liberals and radicals, those who want to fix the system and those for whom "another world is possible" --and necessary. Well, the tent has collapsed and we're all trying to find our way even though we are not going to the same place. There are points of alliance, but none of us will move forward if we don't clearly differentiate ourselves.
Did everyone notice the question? It's not asking how people feel about various political systems, entities, etc, it's asking for people's +/- reaction to specific *words*.
I.e., it's not about socialism or capitalism, it's about "socialism" and "capitalism". Quite a difference, but one that I suspect will be lost even on highly intelligent readers unless they're in the trade.
Mairead
Just another "push poll" It will "prove" that everyone approves of the health Care Bill, worry more about environmental problems than jobs, want to increase government employment, approve of the job Congress is doing and that Obama remains popular and respected around the world and really favor illegal immigration.
This is the kind of worthless poll that undermines everyones efforts.
Yes - I wondered why reaction to a WORD is in any way significant. I'd react negatively to "root canal" or "colonoscopy", but that doesn't mean I think they're a bad thing, or that I'd avoid either if I thought they'd benefit me.
I don't see the point of this poll. I'd rather read of an experiment where a sample of 50 people were asked what they understand by these words/phrases.
I'd react negatively to "root canal" or "colonoscopy", but that doesn't mean I think they're a bad thing, or that I'd avoid either if I thought they'd benefit me.
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Exactly. My examples would have been "spider" and "snake", but yours are better.
Pew don't explain why they chose that form of survey. Semantic-loading surveys like that are legitimate, but their yield is more useful to psycholinguists than politically. Maybe it was commissioned from someone who hadn't got very high marks in their Methodology classes.
I agree too with your idea of a more fruitful survey.
I think it is because you really know exactly what a root canal is. It is defined. What the heck is "family values" or "socialism". Everyone has a different definition, so the survey is almost meaningless except to extract a thoughtless surface reaction. But those are useful to demagogues.
Joe
excellent point
especially concerning when the words, themselves, are euphem-isms...jargon...
if the word supplants the idea, and the idea was already 'groomed' before supplanting, how difficult to get to the pre-existing core...where somebody actually does something for or to somebody or something else...
when life is never natural, is anything un-natural? whence looking and thinking, and acting accordingly?
Good points. Words matter. Psychologists study reactions like this so that politicians and other PR people can formulate messages that trigger a known response. The psychologists hire themselves out to whomever can pay. We have to help the public to be more sensitive to the words of manipulation and to look more into their meanings.
I think the era of buzzwords may have peaked. People seem a little wiser and more thoughtful.
Joe
The ancient Egyptian believed that if you named something, you had power over it.That doesn't seem to have changed in 4,000 years.
Without a doubt those big rightwing think tanks that have denigrated all the names or titles having to do with the liberal party, will eventually find a negative spin for "progressive" as well.
Perhaps the cure will be when liberals get a spine and do to the conservative names and titles as the right has done to theirs, and when both parties have been so thoroughly denigrated that no voter will vote for either, the Independents - using such positive words as "progressive" that can't be so easily manipulated, can move in and get the country going in the best direction for all the people, not just for those on the left or on the right.
Ya man! How about those family values, what? It would be just as instructive to imagine the results of this same survey in 30's Spain during the civil war. There was a huge PR campaign by the fascists claiming that only under them would family values be continued. Sound familiar?
This is the big disappointment about both progressives and conservatives. Hot button topics like family values are used to keep more radical opinions and directions from arising. Unfortunately we have made a choice between family and society, and most Westerners believe that family is far more significant than being part of a community. While it is more of a chicken-or-the-egg matter historically, we are always led to believe that the family is the backbone of society. Actually, families have been subtly integrated into a culture for much longer than they've been the tailored, exclusive unit we have experienced since the Industrial era.
Even though I personally had a very positive family background with no big chips on my shoulder about it, I say: FUCK the FAMILY! This idea of families first is actually causing a lot of grief and is stalling our socio-political momentum to the extent that nothing constructive can be done... not until we understand anew how we belong to something bigger and stronger than just 'mommy-daddy-you-and-I'.
Gotta love those Spanish fascists: They were so prescient, so ahead of the curve.My favorite is the "Radio General", Queipo de LLano, who when he first went on the air after seizing Sevilla, threatened to kill all the leftists, and then dig them up an kill them again. He made good on the first part.He was a family values man.
Sorry, but I am going to offer an interpretation here on "Family Values." Family values are nothing more than a "do you go to church on Sunday" question and do you raise your children to be Good, as all "Christians" are because they go to church. None of this drinking, lieing, smoking drugs, stealing, sex before marriage (or after with another woman/man other than one's spouse), etc....you know the drill. It's a false value system that nobody follows but is supposed to make people feel good because, well, they are "good", even if they aren't.
A recent poll found that a huge majority of Americans, 73.4%, when asked if polls were meaningless or significant, said meaningless.
What does this one show? That those polled don't like militias or socialism (whatever that is) much.That those polled are very conservative-they are very positive about states rights,civil liberties,civil rights & family values.Ask any Tea Bagger, and he/she will tell you that he supports civil liberties.Family values is a catch-all conservative mantra.Even civil rights can be construed as part of a right wing agenda,if you're talking about your civil right to oppress other people, or your right to walk into Starbucks with a gun strapped to your beer belly.The response to 'libertarian' is interesting: split right down the middle.Does this mean that those polled had no idea what a libertarian is? As for the negative response on 'capitalism'-I suspect that if you asked the same people if they felt warm and fuzzy about free enterprise,they'd say yes.That leaves the surprisingly positive feeling about 'progressive'.But since even the folks on CD can't agree on what that means, I don't think it means much.
: )
Joe
Interesting that "conservative" is not on the list. This word is severely abused in US political discourse. I expect it has a positive connotation for most people, yet its use is twisted almost beyond recognition.
The dictionary defines conservative as "tending to oppose change" and supporting a gradual approach.
Yet today's rightwing "conservatives" are very much for radical change.
It's the "conservatives" who favor the introduction of genetically engineered organisms into the environment and who sneer at the precautionary principle. It's the "conservatives" who want to drill and use all the planet's oil -- where's the conservation in that? It's the "conservatives" on the Supreme Court who are overturning precedent, like claiming that the founding fathers meant free speech to apply to corporations, or that the 2nd amendment means anyone can own and carry a gun, or that US law doesn't include the right to habeas corpus.
I expect many CommonDreamers are conservative in several important respects, like preserving civil liberties and the environment, yet it's the right wing who has cornered the appellation.
It would be interesting and informative if Pew polled the positive/negative perception of Americans on the words 'democracy' and 'empire' --- since that is our real choice to fight for.
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, maine