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What's Left of the American Left?
There's no denying its historic decline, but the left does not lack for issues. It needs only organization.
"In contradiction" best describes the American left today. On the one hand, it is fragmented and dispirited, feeling itself distant from the tumble of daily US politics and acutely disgusted by its many-layered corruptions. It hardly knows itself as a part of society, so deep runs its alienation. After all, leftists, too, are affected by the mass media's wishful pretense that the American left has simply disappeared and the extreme right's paranoid caricatures that recycle 1950s McCarthyism.
An estimated 100,000 people gathered at the state capitol in Madison, Wisconsin on Saturday 26 February 2011 to protest Governor Scott Walker's budget bill that would remove collective bargaining rights from public employees. (Photograph: AP Photo/Wisconsin State Journal, John Hart)
And yet, the US left is actually quite strong and getting stronger by the minute. Very many young people find far more meaning in the left social criticisms of Jon Stewart, Bill Maher and Stephen Colbert than they do in the stale Republican or Democratic activities that those popular comedians mock. The devotees of much current popular music want and respond to lyrics rich with social criticism. The assaults of the right in the US on access to abortion, on civil rights and civil liberties, on the separation of church and state, and on immigrants, are less and less suffered in silent resentment and increasingly opposed by a revived left criticism and activism. From the mass mobilizations of immigrants to the outpouring of support for the embattled public employees in Wisconsin to the gatherings of support for Planned Parenthood, the US left's size, depth and diversity are evident.
The proportion of respondents polled about their religious affiliation who answer "none" is growing faster than any other group of respondents. As one famous philosopher wrote, "the criticism of society begins with the critique of religion." The million who marched in 2003 against the invasion of Iraq quietly persuaded a majority to make recent national polls repeated referenda against all three US wars (Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan).
The young are perhaps outraged most by the vulnerability and erosion of many social conditions they had taken for granted as permanent. Anger and activism are rising against the incapacity or unwillingness of the political establishment to restore those conditions. The radical generation of the 1960s, after middle years devoted to careers and families, is now returning to political engagement likewise to restore those conditions. That combination of rising youthful passion and political experience with mass radical action represents a potent mass base for a new US left political formation to emerge.
Organization is what the US left lacks. Not issues, not members, not a wide public audience: the US left now has all of them in abundance. Indeed, the economic crisis that exploded in 2008 – now becoming a social crisis because the "recovery" bypassed the majority that needed it most – has only enhanced that abundance. Yet, a deeply rooted and continuously nurtured aversion to unified organization undermines the US left's social influence and collective action at every turn. The decline of past left organizations – the socialist and communist parties, student groups such as SDS, SNCC, major segments of organized labor – has fostered a sense of the futility of organization. The demonization of those and other left organizations, by liberal as well as conservative voices, renders individual left thought and action sometimes acceptable but collective criticism and activity always deeply suspect.
The US left will become a political force with immense potential if it can generate and ally unified organizations able to mobilize and express their constituents' views and aspirations. Such allied organizations can enable the US left to reach and enlist the mass of the citizenry in left responses to the current economic/social crisis rather than the right responses of further social subservience to private business interests, further cutbacks of state services and employment, union-busting, etc. Only organization can yield the financial resources needed to defeat the current program of corporations and the rich that aims to return the US to the unequal income and wealth distributions of the late nineteenth century (with its concomitant politics and culture).
Solidarity – the theme of the 2011 Left Forum – was well chosen to suggest and inspire the US left's attention to this new imperative of organization.
Richard Wolff is appearing on several panels at the Left Forum 2011 conference, 18-20 March, at Pace University, New York. This week on the Guardian/UK, follow the series of articles on the theme of 'The new solidarity'
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209 Comments so far
Show AllShow your work, then.
What postulates and axioms lead to the conclusion that there is a "highest truth", other than that there is no highest truth. If that is your highest truth, you've gone nowhere.
Is that truly your argument? There is no way to know what the highest truth is, but it exists. It seems your highest truth is superceded by the truth of its own unknowability.
Nice try, though.
And it was not my point to confuse your issue. You can call a duck a lizard all you want but it doesn't make it cold-blooded. Unless we agree what terms mean, there is no basis for discussion. That is my highest truth.
You're just full of it. And so is everyone who confuses my message.
There is a simple choice here. (Simple if you have any intellectual integrity on this issue):
1. Liberalism is the same as Neo-liberalism, as Socialism is the same as Communism
-or-
2. Liberalism is NOT the same as Neo-liberalism, as Socialism is NOT the same as Communism.
The are equivalent arguments. I am convinced of #2.
See you in a different thread, I've apparently been 'hogging' this one. At this point, I really don't care if we disagree. I really am not interested in combat with other members of the Left, who I only wish to be able to work with. But some sacred-calves will not die.
Honestly, I don't think I know what you think any of these terms mean. That is not to say you don't think you know what any of these terms mean. It is to say, you don't seem consistent in what you mean when you use a certain term.
I'll grant it is my own inadequacy. This will, at the least, save you from an embolism, assuaging any guilt I may have at your potential sudden demise. Quite liberal of me, don't you think?
As for co-option, I had that impression yesterday afternoon before I ever became involved, when the discussion became whether Wolf knew what a leftist is. I've heard some of his speeches, and he's most certainly a leftist.
RE: I essentially agree with main thrust of Marx's analysis of the class struggle...
I hope that you will be willing to engage Marx more by reading him directly. You might find Engels' "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific" interesting too.
"Noam Chomsky, embrace[s] lesser-evilism and tells people to vote for the pro-corporate Democrats."
Chomsky has never told people how to vote. He believes that neither party is there to serve the interests of We the People and he doesn't think any political party will save us, we must do that ourselves. However, his analysis has shown that, over time, Democrats have at least served the people better than Republicans. Therefore, voting for Ds is better for that small difference. (says he)
What he misses is the power of our collective voice in the voting booth. During the 2000 elections, Ralph Nader brought over 10,000 people to a public hall in Portland, Oregon to listen to him talk about taking back our country from the oligarchs. The crowds were ecstatic at the prospect. Nader got close to 10% of the vote in California. He didn't intend to win. He used his candidacy to educate Americans. It was the best he could do and I will always be grateful.
According to Chomsky, this kind of incipient movement frightens the hell out of the elite. It is unpredictable and can grow exponentially at any time! They had to go to work to destroy it. I gotta hand it to 'em - mission accomplished. Again, these people are good at what they do. Even Norm Solomon was taken under and became a delegate for Obama. ("Invasion of the Body Snatchers" springs to mind.)
I continue to wonder, what if the oligarchs had not been able to frighten us back into the holding pens, had not been able to convince so called "leaders of the left" to get behind the Democrats. What if we had been able to dig in our heels and say, we will tolerate NO MORE BS. We must remember, all the D candidates were pro-WAR corporatists.
So why were so many progressives enthralled by Obama?
Answer: Psyops!
(they are really, really good. they know us far better than we know ourselves)
Thanks very much, Mike. You said it better than I could have.
The co-option you describe continued into 2008, when Obama made a point of sounding like a progressive, in defiance of his actual positions, record, and funding, and sucked all the oxygen out of the election.
Since the Green Party is what's left of the Left, I need to address our role in 2004. Frankly, it was a blunder, and one I supported at the time. We were so frightened by Bush, with reason, that we essentially sat out the election (and wasted a brilliant campaigner on a bad strategy) in the hope that the Dems could at least take him out. That failed on every level; personally, I think Kerry deliberately threw the election, as did Gore in 2000. I've never seen professional pols run such a bad campaign.
That's a lesson learned. McKinney didn't make much headway against Obama, but she was not a token candidate. At least in Oregon, our registrations are rising and new people are coming in. Our job is to represent a renewed Left in elections and support peoples' movements. We take it seriously. That doesn't mean we have enough good activists or enough money. We're still competing with those who hope to contest the Democratic primaries (how they're going to do that without a candidate is beyond me) and "take back" the Democratic Party. Some of us are old enough to know that we never had it.
Much more than an electoral strategy is needed, of course, and we stand ready to join any non-violent resistance to a growing tyranny.
www.gp.org.
When socialists learn how and where to fit-in and woo left-leaning liberals into their equation, something real and powerful will be able to begin in America.
The old socialist rhetoric that all Liberals are betrayers to the cause is wrong, and just a shot in the foot here in America where Liberalism has always been the central driving philosophy. Has Liberalism gone down the wrong path with neo-liberalism? Absolutely. Do classic and social liberals want to oppose the neo-liberal madness? Absolutely.
Do real liberals want themselves, and the reputation of Liberalism to be retrieved, cleaned off and free of the horrible and false relationship and influence of neo-liberalism that props up wealth and capital growth at the cost of all other considerations? As a principled liberal, I myself say, no I scream, YES. The whole world *must embrace* permaculture, real sustainability, real protections for labor, and the underprivileged, real universal healthcare, real balancing of markets, and public watchdogs with real teeth!
Liberals, when shaken out of their media-driven hypnotized complacency and sense of false superiority, want to do what is right, and fight for social reform and for social equity and justice; A reinvigorated middle and working class, a government driven by the people, for the people. That is what America was originally *intended* to be by its liberal architects, whether it ever was this or not from the beginning. But this is what the founders intended, not a corporate oligarchy for the rich and powerful that exploits workers at home and abroad, and relies on war, intimidation and lies to prop up its ill-begotten obesity.
Members of the reasonable Left , time to come together and embrace the good among the young, among the liberal masses waiting your open arms of solidarity.
Re-Evolution, or Revolution!
3rd Party all the way in 2012!!!
Where, then, is a real possibility for liberation in [America]?
Answer: In the formation of a class with radical chains, a class of civil society that is not a class of civil society, a class that is the dissolution of all classes; a sector of society that has a general character because its sufferings are general, a sector that does not claim any particular right because the wrong it suffers is not any particular wrong but a general wrong; a sector that no longer claims a historical status, but only a human one; that is not narrowly opposed to particular consequences, but is fundamentally opposed to the very foundations of the [American] political system;
I disagree. Although many of the features of the modern market had not expressed themselves at the founding of our country, the political framework was laid for a society that cares for, and serves all its people. The dangers we confront now were well known threats that the founders warned against.
We just didn't listen well enough.
If [American] development as a whole remained at the level of [American] political development, an [American] could play no more significant role in the problems of the present than a Russian can. But if the separate individual is not bound by the limitations of his nation, still less is the nation as a whole liberated by the liberation of one individual.
A major difficulty, however, seems to stand in the way of a radical [American] revolution. For revolutions require a passive element, a material basis. Theory can be fulfilled in a people only insofar as it fulfills of the needs of that people. But will the enormous gap between the demands of [American] thought and the responses of [American] reality be matched by a corresponding gap between civil society and the state, and between civil society and itself? Will the theoretical needs become immediate practical needs? It is not enough for theory to seek its realization in practice; practice must also seek its theory.
This is simply not true. You are parroting the mythology about the "American dream."
The political framework was laid for a society that permitted the rise of a new aristocracy, and that defended and protected that new aristocracy, an aristocracy based on wealth rather than on heredity. The threat to that was seen by the founding fathers as the "rabble" or the "mob" - and they were referring directly and knowingly to the very people who fought and won the Revolution. A few crumbs were thrown to the working class people, because otherwise they could not have been cowed and forced to go along with the program. But even those were quickly negated. The "founding fathers" did not even want the Declaration of Independence read in public, lest the "rabble get ideas" in their words.
A political framework was laid that permitted - defended - slavery, A political framework was laid that elevated property over people. A political framework was laid that denied the vote to most people. A political framework was laid that excluded the working class people from power.
Your view of the Revolution is nothing but the ruling class narrative. If you are going to use the founding fathers to support your views, you need to learn the history.
re: "you need to learn the history."
History is an interpretation. We don't agree on the interpretation.
I don't care about "interpretations" and have offered none. I am suggesting that we need to agree on the facts.
I say that we judge the framework the founding fathers set up by what they actually set up, not by the "ideals" they expressed. I am not opposed to the ideals (and you say they are the basis for your politics.) Quite to the contrary, anyone supporting those ideals would be intensely interested in the fact that they were used as cover for actions that were diametrically opposed to those beliefs.
You want to talk strictly about theses ideals, and claim them as your own and use them to defend your political stance. I say let's look at the history. You aren't giving an interpretation of history, you are ignoring it altogether.
For one very simple and obvious example, did or did not the man who wrote "all men are created equal" own slaves? Do you want to talk about the reality, or the ideals? Or do you have a different interpretation of history that says that he did not own slaves? When throughout the history of the country, the "ideals" expressed by the ruling class are the opposite of what they actually do, at some point I think it is a logical "interpretation" to say that there is a pattern - that mouthing flowery ideals is used again and again as cover for the most heinous things being done in the name of those ideals.
Did the founding fathers, or did they not quickly exclude those without property, the working class people who had fought and won the Revolution, from political meetings? Did or did not the founding fathers discourage public reading of the Declaration of Independence lest it "give the rabble ideas?" Did they or did they not exclude native people here, women, those without property, slaves, and former slaves from their lofty ideals? Were the founding fathers, or were they not siting on the fence up until the last minute, seeking accommodation with the crown, until they saw which way the wind was blowing and where their best bet was? Franklin trying to finagle a royal land grant for himself comes to mid as an example of that.
You can have all of the "interpretations" of history you like, but no one can take seriously an interpretation that ignores 99% of what actually happened, and only includes the few things that make the ruling class look good and disappears the working class, the poor, the native people, the slaves and former slaves, and those without property. Are we to believe that it is an accident that those who made these rules happened to be white males, with property including property in human beings (Franklin's servants that accompanied him the England come to mid, and the slaves that his wife used to keep house), happened to prosper in land deals as a result of the Revolution, land deals that displaced native people - they set rules up that allowed them to prosper and consolidate power, while most of the people were locked out and left in misery or worse. Are we to believe that is all a coincidence? Are we to look at what they said and not at what they did?
Incidentally, there has been almost continual resistance from the working class, native people, slaves and former slaves to the "founding fathers" and their "ideals." I have not touched on the history of those struggles, a history that is completely ignored and invisible to most people who praise the "founding fathers."
None of what I just wrote is an "interpretation." I can give you an interpretation if you like, Perhaps you would care to dispute some of those things, or explain to us how you can weave those into your "founding fathers" narrative.
"...the political framework was laid for a society that cares for, and serves all its people"
Well, for all the people recognized as citizens and therefore counted among 'it's people'. As Madison wrote in the Federalist Papers: "With equal pleasure I have as often notice, that Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country, to one united people, a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint councils, arms and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established their general Liberty and Independence."
Of course he wasn't counting millions of slaves or indians or other non-persons.
There are no shortages of examples to prove that the founders were products of their time and culture. Did they get everything right? No. Did they perpetuate some of the long-standing injustices handled down to them as status quo culture? Yes. DId they have the right idea, and move forcibly and decisively in that direction, setting a course for a noble future? In my opinion, yes. They laid out the foundation, as they were the founders... but the rest, and many of the mistakes that have happened since, have been our, not their mistakes.
Yes, they were products of their time, and beneficiaries of that which they established.
The working class people - laborers, mechanics, tradespeople, seaman - are the ones who moved forcibly and decisively and who won the Revolution. That was hijacked and replaced by a foundation that immediately excluded those without property - who had been participating in the local political meetings before independence - and a system that allowed the elite to begin exploiting the resources and labor at a rate that made the crown corporations look like amateurs. They created a framework that allowed slavery to continue, and that supported and encouraged land speculation and genocide being waged against the indigenous peoples. They established a system of corruption, and blocked democracy wherever they could They strictly limited the franchise, and betrayed the men and women who had fought against the crown corporations and won the Revolution.
This is the historical record, not some feeling or opinion. Fancy pleasant-sounding "ideals" and "principles" do not replace that ugly reality, although the ruling class and its apologists - right until this day - wish us to look at intangibles - the supposed "ideals - and not at the objective reality. This drummed into people's heads from a young age, especially those slated for white collar management positions in the empire, and this central and core lie about the society and the political system distorts the perceptions and thinking of people about everything and leads to all of the rancor and confusion we see around these issues.
Did the founding fathers get everything right? Yes. For themselves and the new aristocracy - including the slave owners, the wealthy land owners and merchants - they most certainly did. They did a heckuva job you might say.
If you believe the that "at the founding of our country, the political framework was laid for a society that cares for, and serves all its people", you are, at best, ill-informed. The political framework was laid to insure nothing interfered with the aristocracy doing whatever it wanted to "all the people."
The whole US Constitution is a framework for mastabutory government that was impotent by design, in order to prevent its interference with the hegemony of the moneyed and propertied private class. The Bill Of Rights was nothing but a bone to get the "huddled masses" - the 90+% with no property and massive debts to the gentried landlords - to go along
Or do you think Geo. Washington was a populist?. He was, in real dollars, wealthier than Bill Gates, he held great umbrage toward the Crown for its insistence on "coddling" the "redman" and treating the Native Americans as a legitimate political entity. He refused to pay his soldiers and he lived off his slaves, both of whom he treated mercilessly.
The whole machinations of the Continental Congress was to wrest political power away from the Monarchy so they could persue empire unencumbered by the liberalism of King George, who wished to treat the natives as rightful owners of the land and who, perhaps rightly, thought the colonies should pay for the cost of the military used to defend their interests.
In short, the exalted American Revolution was nothng but a tax revolt instigated by the 18th century equivalent of the Koch brothers.
Very nice piece of revisionism... though bearing a good number of notable truths that should not be dismissed entirely.
There should be more of this perspective argued, and taught in schools. We should learn and know that the founders were not perfect men.
They were all men after all. And all white, and all pretty rich, or at least of 'nobility' or at the very least, men of letters.
But if you think this tells the whole story, and if you think this is the only part that should be taught, I don't want my children anywhere close to your schools. Considering the times, the revolution, the Declaration of Independence and the founding of the United States were among the most radical, courageous, noble, and idealistic acts in recent human history, in very many ways setting a path for the betterment of humanity. But life is complicated, and our foundation was without doubt dualistic... with prosperity and advancement, there was exploitation, colonization, slavery, genocide, conspiracy, conmen, and every manner of betrayal, lie, trick and treachery.
That's the nature of the beast, not the fault of liberals, or religion either. It happens everywhere, throughout history. But that is not what America stood for: What it stood for was a valid and inspiring vision for millions upon millions of humans all over, until it took its truly virulent turn towards the end of the 20th Century with the downfall of the New Deal.
I know the terrible history, but I also know the other side of the story too. And 'the exalted American Revolution [being] nothing but a tax revolt instigated by the 18th century equivalent of the Koch brothers,' isn't telling the whole story.
And all designed and manufactured to insure that the 18th century "bourgeois" could keep their money and their land, which was deeded by the Crown, who had no legitimate right to it in the first place.
We are only talking about 10% of the population, and a significant proportion of them will never be leftists. There are no "liberal masses."
With the same time and effort it takes to convert one liberal, thousands of everyday people are moved to join the Left. Why must we worry about liberalism?
If you are, as you claim, already on our side in all ways, then why let the word be a barrier? If you are fighting for the same goals, as you claim, then why confuse methods with goals and argue for an approach and demand that other people change their approach?
Why must we talk about liberalism the way it is supposed to be, the way you think it should be, rather than talking about the reality? Is it the fault of the critics of liberalism that the promise and the reality are so at odds with one another? Why spend any time or effort wooing liberals, when there is so little possibility of success, rather than on the other 90% of the working class where there are not so many obstacles and obfuscations thrown in the path?
Take 100 self-described liberals at random, and ask them if NPR closely reflects their views. 90% will say "yes." Try it and see for yourself. Now, is there anyone here who believes that NPR is even vaguely or remotely to the Left? are we to believe that NPR is in any way a platform for left wing voices, or a champion of the working class?
I know I may sound combative, but I am asking serious questions here. What would be the consequences for you if you stopped calling yourself a liberal? What would happen? What would happen if you stopped objecting to the criticisms here of liberalism? It seems that you agree with them, so long as people do not use the word "liberal." Since that word is primarily associated in recent times with those who have sold out the Left and the working class, and since historically the word meant the new aristocracy, the fre market individualists that rose to power and replaced the feudal aristocracy, what good is it to cling to the word? Why not just take all of your beliefs, all of your ideas and political stances - just as they are without changing them - and call that "Left" rather than "liberal?" Or, if it would require you to change your positions in order to be a leftist rather than a liberal, why do you insist we are all on the same team? Both cannot be true. If there is a substantive reason for you to identify with liberalism, then there is also a substantive basis for us to disagree with you.
Since there is a long history of liberalism co-opting and then sabotaging and betraying the Left, always starting with the insistence that those nasty leftists see liberals as allies and stop arguing with them, there is a sound and rational basis for leftists to be suspicious of liberalism. Aligning with liberals has resulted in people being imprisoned, killed, and black balled.
"A reinvigorated middle and working class, a government driven by the people, for the people" is not at all what as intended by the "founding fathers." Quite to the contrary - and this is not controversial or open to opinion - they sought to rein in the "rabble" as they called it and establish a government for the new aristocracy.
I will go to my grave proud as hell to call myself a Liberal. Bottom line.
I know what it means, and I'm not giving in to *anyone* or *anything* that tries to take it away from me.
I will not give up my history, nor my heroes for *your* cause, which apparently, as YOU HAVE STATED, we do not share. You have made it clear there is no capability for solidarity or understanding between us, not I.
With you, I WILL NOT STAND.
Its starting to become much more clear, after posting here on CD for some time, why the Liberals 'abandoned' the hard-left, and left them out in the cold so often in the past. Because the 'hard-left' are incorrigible misfits who only want a revolution that benefits ONE segment of society. The uneducated, disempowered worker. They have no taste, interested, understanding, sympathy, concern, awareness, nor appreciation of ANYTHING outside their socialist equation. They are an inherent DANGER to all the rest of society, and even themselves if given full control. Without the tempering of Liberal appreciation for concerns outside the scope of labor, socialism is nothing other than a new, and artificially imposed despotism of society's new masters: the proletariat.
There we go.
The Left is "a danger to society," you say. "Incorrigible misfits" you say,
Can't get any more clear than that. Yet you were insisting that you were on our side and that we needed to see you as an ally. Can't have it both ways.
How can you possibly have read any of the posts by leftists here and say that "they have no taste, interested, understanding, sympathy, concern, awareness, nor appreciation of ANYTHING outside their socialist equation?"
You say that liberalism is needed to temper things so that the concerns of those who are not Labor are taken into consideration. That would be the concerns of management, and yes, that is what liberalism is about - to "temper" the concerns of the working class so that management can stay in power. That is going to be a problem for the Left. You say that the Left "only wants a revolution that benefits ONE segment of society" - Labor. That is true. The Left wants a system that benefits the 90% of the population that is working class. And you say you "will not stand" with that. It could not be made more clear.
Liberals didn't "abandon" the left. They betrayed them like Judas and fed them to the right. Then they cried with shock when the right turned their sights on the liberals. It would be funny if it wasn't so stupid and wasteful of human life. Liberals always do this though, when there is a choice to defend people or to defend capitalism, liberals heave a big sigh and throw the left to the wolves.
RE:Liberals always do this though...
Engels' talking about the criticism of french Utopian Socialist Fourier had of bourgeois society is a pretty good description of liberalism:
"[B]ourgeois, society of today" [read liberal capitalism] ...proves “that the civilized stage raises every vice practiced by barbarism in a simple fashion into a form of existence, complex, ambiguous, equivocal, hypocritical” – that civilization moves “in a vicious circle”, in contradictions which it constantly reproduces without being able to solve them; hence it constantly arrives at the very opposite to that which it wants to attain, or pretends to want to attain, so that, e.g., “under civilization poverty is born of superabundance itself”. (1843)
Frederick Engels, "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific"
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch01.htm
Nice to know I'm not the only one who disagrees with some, though not all, of what Two Americas says. To quote: "this is not controversial or open to opinion."
Everything is open to opinion, at least to Free Speech Purists like me. Even Horace has a right to say what he does here.
After the right wing's very successful effort to turn the word "liberal" into a pejorative insult, causing all the politicians to tapdance around to assure their constituencies that the word couldn't possibly be applied to them, anyone willing to stand and say, Hell yes, I'm a liberal is OK in my book.
Everything is open to opinion?
Recently there as a big hoopla in northern Ohio, with lots of media coverage, about a UFO people were seeing. Many opinions were offered - was it alien invaders, was it a secret government program? It was Venus they were seeing.
Objective reality exists. It is not dependent upon which sales and marketing campaign is the most successful.
Any time liberalism is being discussed (as well as neo-liberalism, conservatism etc) it should be split into at least two parts: liberal rhetoric and liberal reality. Because in the the world of empirical reality, there is an ocean between the two.
Chris Hedges was raised in the world of liberal rhetoric, but as a person confronted with a liberal reality so starkly different from the liberal rhetoric (as a younger man was proud to embrace), he was unable to live with the cognitive dissonance necessary to maintain the self-delusion. To have integrity is to be whole. Hedges has integrity, Liberals cannot afford integrity and maintain their liberalism. So yes, for Liberals, "everything is open to opinion." Honesty, has always been a radical stance.
I think you start out with a very good point, but then continue to uphold the manifestation as more valid than the ideal.
This begs to bring up the examples liberals often cite, of the manifestation of socialism in Maoism and Stalinism.
Isn't there even a little bit of cognitive dissonance among socialists when they preach that theirs is *the only truly viable* solution (almost like a religion actually), and yet, when confronted by many of the atrocious realities manifest *under the name of socialism*, they are the first to grumble and hedge, saying that the fault was always because of liberalism. Well it wasn't, and these are all the same arguments.
If socialists want to call what happening in America today the ultimate expression, and logical extension of the 'liberal ideal' then they need to stand up to the plate, be real men and women and accept that Maoism and Stalinism, and all the other isms under the name 'socialism', are equally representative of it. I'm only asking for some consistency and intellectual integrity on the issue.
Please. Supply us with just one objective example of the "atrocities committed in the name of socialism". And please don't bring up Stalin, he was not a socialist. Nor was Mao. nor was Ho Chi Minh, nor the Khmer Rouge.
Also, what is that "one true viable" solution, I'm supposed to agree and understand exists before I can be considered capable of commenting upon your point of view.
I've read you for months and I've come to one unerring conclusion concerning you, based on what you write: you're a pseudo-intellectual who defines terms to mean whatever you need them to mean, facts to be whatever you need them to be, and all opinions to be equal, as long as they agree with yours, while you state your case as if there can be no oppostion, lest that opposer be considered naive` and ill-informed, since they don't understand your terms, don't know your facts and don't agree, a priori, to your superior position.
And I thought I was having a decent interaction with you. You seemed pretty amicable, and I was enjoying the exchange.
re: "Supply us with just one objective example of the "atrocities committed in the name of socialism". And please don't bring up Stalin, he was not a socialist. Nor was Mao. nor was Ho Chi Minh, nor the Khmer Rouge. "
I don't need to supply this. You're making my argument for me. My argument is that Pelosi, Reid, Obama, Gore, Cinton et al ARE NOT LIBERALS EITHER. So don't bring it up, like you an Hedges constantly do. You people are being straight up hypocrites here, and you call me a psuedo intellectual! LOFL.
re: "I've read you for months and I've come to one unerring conclusion concerning you, based on what you write: you're a pseudo ...
opposer be considered naive` and ill-informed, since they don't understand your terms, don't know your facts and don't agree, a priori, to your superior position."
What a bunch of flaming hypocrisy!
You're making my point for me.
"I don't need to supply this. You're making my argument for me. My argument is that Pelosi, Reid, Obama, Gore, Cinton et al ARE NOT LIBERALS EITHER."
I'll agree with you there. I never argued they were. The noveau riche are never liberal, they just come form the class that liberalism is expected to liberate, but not through the granting of riches and influence. They serve themselves and those they wish to be, not the class that gives them power.
Why do you think Bill Clinton loves GHW Bush? Because Clinton is a poor dirt farmer hick from a backwater state who made good and wants to identify with the aristocracy, not hoi polloi. Any true liberal would spit on GHW Bush, but Clinton embraces him as a mentor hoping that silver spoon will rub a little glitter off on him.
As for anything else I said, I grant it is not flattering, but it was not meant as an argument. It is an observation. I cannot tell where you stand, because, perhaps you do not notice it, but your definitions are fluid, your arguments are mostly circular and you state opinions as tautologies in such a way as to imply that to not agree with your circular arguments and fluid definitions is to not understand the basics of the subject.
Again, it is an observation, you may not be aware of in yourself. I hope you'll take it seriously and try to identify these instances and remedy them. Then, perhaps, you'll better be able to influence your audience. As it is, I find myself spinning my head wondering where you actually stand, whenever I read you, since the ground seems to be moving under your feet.
I find, constantly, I think I agree with you, then suddenly, you're changing definitions or stating inconsistencies in mid-stream and I find no congruence in your ideas. I find myself unsure if I want to read you or simply ignore you as a matter of course, yet you sometimes have something profound to say. I find myself assuming it is mere chance, which I can't accept does you justice. I can only conclude your an agent provacateur, a contrarian, who has no stand on anything, but comes only to muddy the waters. I wish sincerely, that that is not the case. I feel you deserve better, but I can't seem to feel confortable providing it.
Everything is open to question, even the law of gravity. Physicists can't explain what mass, the cause of gravity, is and the speed-limit speed of light, well, now they're saying that in the first few seconds of the big bang things had to be going faster than the speed of light for everything to be like it is now.
Objective reality exists but we are all interpreters of it and your version of what is a certitude of objective reality may be different than mine.
Open to question, yes.
No, one opinion is not just as good as another. No, events happen. If everything is subject to interpretation and nothing can ever be agreed upon as being real, then there is no basis for thinking or discussing anything.
Is the object the people saw in the sky Venus, or is it an alien spacecraft? There simply is no room for "opinions" and "interpretations." Does allele frequency change over time, or not? Sure, some say no, that evolution is just one theory and that creationism is an equally valid theory. Is one opinion just as good as another?
We know what liberalism was based on, what the results were, what the people who founded the country did. Opinions could vary, I suppose, as to why they did what they did, how important it is, etc. But opinions don't vary on what happened. We have to start with hat happened as our foundation if we are going to have any intelligent discussion.
I don't want to get drawn into a whole nother (Siouxrose will probably tell there's no such word) back and forth with you. You've expressed your ideas and I've learned from them, I've expressed mine and you have not.
If you want out of a discussion, don't leave with a parting shot over your shoulder as you walk away. Just a suggestion.
Actually, the speed of light is very easy to explain. In every medium that transmits waves there is are two physical properties, best described as constants of proportionalities, of the oscillating variables. The ratio of the square roots of these constants is the speed of a wave in that medium.
For example, for sound, the ratio of the square roots of the viscosity and density constants is the speed of sound in that medium. Similarly, for EM waves (light) the two oscillating properties are the electric and magnetic field values and the constants are called the permeability and permitivity - which determine the respective field strenghs per unit charge and magnetic flux.
At the time of the Big Bang, these constants, for a vacuum, were of different values, giving a higher speed of light than we observe today. In fact, for any wave, the medium determines the speed of the wave, and the two constants are descriptive of the medium.
In terms of pure quantum theory, there is no objective physical reality - it all depends on how we look at it.
As for mass, it is the constant of propotionality between force and acceleration
So endeth the physics lesson.
Poll after poll shows the great mass of the American people are, GASP!, Leftists. Unfortunately, they've been told the great mass of people want what the oligarchy wants, and they beleive it.
I want something other than a workers paradise, that's for sure.
It's long past time for socialists to offer up a vision of the future that doesn't persecute people who want some of the finer things the elite has taken solely for their own amusement and enjoyment (and often for their health).
I say, within reason, and in a sustainable way, these things should be available to all. My fear, is that some prefer that none enjoy theses things, as this implies that some are better than others. As far as rights go, I will always stand up for equal rights, but I will likewise never give over to the fallacy that all people are or must be equal, or especially that we all deserve an equal allotment of the allowed portion of this or that. That's just illogical, and counter-productive.
You can want what you want. No problem. So long as we are all clear as to what that is.
Why would it be "illogical" or "counter-productive" for all to have equal access to housing, food, transportation, education, an income, medicine...? why does this need to be "within reason" and what does "within reason" mean?
"Socialists are trying to force everyone to be equal" and "socialists want nobody to have anything" and "socialists are persecuting those who want some of the finer things" is just right wing propaganda with no basis in fact.
"Offering up a vision of the future" is Utopian and anti-democratic. People can decide their own future, democratically. Socialism is a recognition of how power works now, and a determination to win for people the power to decide their own futures, not fit into the Utopian vision of some elite. Socialism rejects both the Utopian vision of the conservatives and the Utopian vision of the liberals. Those visions are used to deceive people about the objective reality. "Don't look at how you are getting screwed, look at our beautiful vision and trust us to arrange things for you." No thanks.
Then you are simply arguing for a new elite. For if we all can't have it all, that leaves none of us having anything or all of us having what is available, equally. To ask for more than your fair share is asking to be special. We are long past the point where one of us can go take what he wants without taking from someone else. That is the understanding The Left should be fostering.
You claim that the socialists "offer up a version of the .future that persecutes people", and yet you yourself openly endorse a system that has persecuted far more people than you can even imagine.
You say that "these things should be available to all", yet under capitalism, the vast majority of people around the world is actively denied BASIC NEEDS on a daily basis.
You are using a strawman when you talk about "equality." There is plenty to go around, and if a person works longer hours than another person on the same job, that person does deserve more.
The problem, the injustice, is that under capitalism, the many are exploited at the hands of the few, and there has to be a vast supply of low-wage labor to maximize profits for the capitalists. You want much higher wages for everybody? Attack capitalism.
You are arguing about losing "wants" when billions of people aren't even getting NEEDS met under the system you endorse, and it's always been that way under that system-it can't be "reformed" or "regulated." Do you not see the dissonance there?
re: "and yet you yourself openly endorse a system"
What system is that? The system of 'liberalism'? Scientific method? Education? History and culture? Social egalitarianism? That system?
Oh, that's right, I've been a supporter of the corporatist agenda I though I was fighting against, agitating against, and publicly protesting against for the last 25 years. Yeah, thanks for clearing that up, rs.
re: "You say that "these things should be available to all", yet under capitalism, the vast majority of people around the world is actively denied BASIC NEEDS on a daily basis."
I don't support laissez faire capitalism. Thanks for being unnecessarily prejudiced against me though. Helps me understand the school you must be a student of.
re: "You want much higher wages for everybody? Attack capitalism."
Is that right? I thought that meant 'lose your job', not get better pay. How about I don't attack capitalism (since I don't know how to do that) and instead I just begin to live more sustainably: Spending less on frivolities, gardening for myself and my community, rejecting advertising and giving in to false demand? How about I live and spend more responsibly?
Yeah, I already do all that, and its what I promote. You should give up the 'attack' language, and actually figure out what that means. It also means to agitate against oppression, which is what i spend much of my life doing,
Just to get insulted by holier than thou atheist from the far left.
re: "You are arguing about losing "wants" when billions of people aren't even getting NEEDS met under the system you endorse, and it's always been that way under that system-it can't be "reformed" or "regulated." Do you not see the dissonance there?"
Yes, I sure do, in -every response- that's tried to hammer into my head that we should throw away the advancements of the enlightenment for the interests of the almighty proletariat. That to me is the essence of cognitive dissonance.
No one is talking about throwing away any of the things you mention.
You have consistently been against the essence of the enlightenment, which by definition is the essence of Liberalism.
You don't prefer a return to pre-17th feudalism presumably, yet you denigrate the engine that improved the conditions facing humanity, through years and years of human struggle.
ps. one of the main difficulties that confronts the entire concept of socialism, is that the model itself undermines the concept of incentive. Without the tension between the dynamic of ambition, and obligation, the core of the mystery of life is dissolved.
If you also think there is no 'mystery' to life, you also reveal another of the great shortcomings of socialism.
"one of the main difficulties that confronts the entire concept of socialism, is that the model itself undermines the concept of incentive. Without the tension between the dynamic of ambition, and obligation, the core of the mystery of life is dissolved."
And you call yourself a liberal. Your an objectivist and that is as far from liberal as you can get.
So we're all just lazy sods who wouldn't wipe our butts without the whip of starvation to get us out of bed in the morning. You surely don't believe in uplifting the human race if you think it takes profit to force someone to do anything.
Perhaps the best incentive is the desire to help and to contribute within a social milieu that provides for such selflessness, and your own personal betterment as a being, instead of the animalistic fear you'll starve in your own shit if you don't proivide a profit to your masters? Or that someone will think less than you think you deserve if you don't have more than most.
Do you really think that someone who carries the yoke further deserves a pillow makes you a liberal?
I have never said I was against the Enlightenment, I said I was against it being used as a justification for promoting the agenda of the ruling class.
Yo claim that Socialism would eliminate motivation. You don't support that with anything and make no case for it, In fact, a relatively small percentage of the population is primarily motivated by this "incentive" system you are praising. Yet the entire society is oriented around promoting that few who are, and who go about it ruthlessly controlling and dominating everyone around them.You demand that we see everything through the lens of the "market" where human beings are forced to sell their work or die, where we are all forced to rent ourselves out to the bosses if we are to eat. How is that consistent in your mind with the Enlightenment?
Mothers are not primarily motivated by profit when they care for their infants. Teachers are not. rescue workers and fire fighters are not. Nurses are not, farmers are not. Artists and writers are not. Researchers and scientists are not. Elder care workers are not. The list goes on and on and includes all of the most important and vital work done to keep the community going.
viz a viz my observations above: This is an example of what I was trying to get across to you:
"re: "You say that "these things should be available to all", yet under capitalism, the vast majority of people around the world is actively denied BASIC NEEDS on a daily basis.
I don't support laissez faire capitalism. Thanks for being unnecessarily prejudiced against me though. Helps me understand the school you must be a student of."
Who said anything, specifically, about laissez faire, capitalism? That is one aspect of capitalism. But it is not this capitalism that is the problem, or that capitalism, it is CAPITALISM, itself. The basic system of private ownership of the means of production - especially of basic necessary resources of the planet, that is the problem. So what if you are against one type of capitalism - or don't support it, at least. That leaves you open to other forms of capitalism, which will always concentrate power, wealth and resources into fewer and fewer hands - so what if some do it faster than others.
So you are a liberal, who will die defending his liberalism, who understands Marx's class struggles, but who, seems to not agree with them when it takes resources, materials, wealth, means of production from yourself. You denounce socialism as being capable of repressive otracities while ignoring the daily otracity of hording resources that is the foundation of capitalism, which you defend, just not all brands and the gathering of wealth by the selling back of the resources capitalism obsconded. A system that sees no difference between using finite water to quench thirst or to scrub nuclear waste, except in which is more profitable.
Yet you demand to be taken seriously, calling someone who points out these hypocrisies, a hypocrite.
Simply take a deep look in the mirror, decide if you are willing to give up what you want so that others may have what they need, or not. And if the latter, accept that it certainly doesn't make you a leftist and it hardly makes you even a classic liberal in the economic sense, for in a finite world you can't better your neighbor without giving up something. You can't maximize profit and quality of life for all.
I posit that in the modern world of diminishing resources and degraded environment, you can't defend capitalism and still be a liberal. Because capitalism is the yoke that is dragging the world toward the cliff.
Until you decide what you are, and are consistent in that assesment, then we have no reason to care what you think you are.
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I'm not the only one in the world that espouses Democratic Socialism, which allows for free 'as-possible' markets (i.e. well regulated).
I have been perfectly consistent prescribing a government solution that emulates as much as possible the socio/political systems employed within Scandinavia/Denmark/Belgium/Netherlands/France/Germany/Spain. That being said, America is huge, and requires its own expression of this. I also support a very radical view of de-federalizing, or at least breaking up the USA into 5 separate, but connected economic regions (maintaining one shared security aparatus)... the opposite more or less of NAFTA. That's neither socialist, conservative or liberal. Its just more reasonable that trying to administer one giant, complex country with one central authority.
Salusa, I take it you're a left-leaning libertarian and I think that's good too. But if you aren't, then please accept my apologies. I wished I could trust the Libertarian party but it seems to be more right-leaning these days. You still have lots of great ideas and you'd make a great president.