With no significant socialist movement workers are easy prey for a fascist "populist" while liberals can't even seem to get rid of a doddering old relic of the Cold War.
I really think everyone here is missing the point. People in the US DO NOT want to live in a socialist government. While people here use capitalisms as a slur, most people in this county like capitalisms. They want to own businesses, property, and a home. They do not want massive rates of taxation (which will be needed if we had 'free' health care and 'free' college. They recognize, that while government can help up to a point (but as many government programs have shown, like social security and Medicare, government programs are always expensive and wasteful) , ultimately a person is responsible for themselves.
Jim, you are 100% correct. Such is what the capitalist economic-political-military system has created: the illusion that all can become a capitalist if they just try hard enough. However, the basic essence of capitalism is quite the opposite. There must be owners and workers otherwise capitalism cannot exist. That essential fact started when, for unknown reasons, cooperative hunter-gatherer communities evolved into private property ownership-serfdom societies around 12,000 years ago.
This has produced sick societies in which frustrated and or greedy humans kill others for wealth, or other reasons, such as religious fanaticism, or for fear that otherwise one will be killed or imprisoned.
I am sorry, but a capitalist's society is not a sick society. Are there flaws in that society. Sure, which is why I do believe in some government programs to help the poor and other people in society who need help.
The flaws in capitalisms vastly outweigh any benefits it might offer. Especially in an era when the endless drive for ever greater profits and ever greater wealth for the ruling class are taxing the very earth's ability to sustain life, just the waste that results from the capitalist process of "creative destruction" means the end of humanity, either through war or slightly more slowly through the excessive heating of the globe. Just drive around any metropolitan regiona and look at all the closed theaters, stirip malls, supermarkets, parking garages, restaurants, empty store fronts, closed starbucks, Dunkin' Donut and Chuckie Cheese emporiums and then the new ones opening up elsewhere and ask yourself why that makes any sense? I remember visiting Communist Czechoslovakia when i was 15 and marveling at all the beautiful magenta Jawa motorcycles and the Skoda sedans, also all the same color, and thinking, "wow, what a great idea. No need to puzzle over what color bike or car to buy." Just go buy one. The only problem would be finding your own vehicle in a parking area. My wife, when she sas a college student and toured with her college's chorus one summer as the keyboardist. They visited Yugoslavia, and all the girls had to buy bathing suits to go to the beach. She said they went to a state department store and found the only available women's bathing suits were either one piece or two piece, all with the same design on the material. She said they all bought them and that it was the fastest shop for bathing suits any of them had ever experienced! As my wife pointed out, shopping for a bathing suit is one of the most vexing thing most women have to do. She said everyone was so happy to have no choice to make. The point is, capitalism doesn't exist to meet needs, it exists to make profits for the owners, who generally are passive shareholders who really know nothing about the compny other than its earnings and dexpenses. It also invests increasing amounts no in meeting needs but in creating wants which is phenomenally wasteful and leave needs for the many unmet. The more we move to economies of scarcity, the more we will have wars for resources and markets. It's a doom machine. RRon is right, the only hope is for societies that are based on cooperation, not competition. But good luck getting there.
So you want a society where everything, and everyone is the same? There is no creativity just uniformity. Sounds like a nightmare society. You have to do what the state says. Period. Independent and creative thought is banned.
Also, considering the simple fact that humans by nature are selfish and cruel, society based just on cooperation is doomed at the start.
A completely state run government society is just as wasteful as a 100 percent capitalist society. It has been proven time again that a government is even more wasteful that a business.
Jim, you are making some conclusions about what I wrote that are based on incomplete or flat-out rong information. First you say humans are by nature "selfish and cruel." That is simply untrue. I don't know if you have kids, but I've had two and have two grandkids, and from a very young age, even befoe they were talking, I saw them being naturally sharing, and surprisingly gentle when shown tiny creatures to hold. Furthermore, so unnatural is killing for even male humans, that the US military has to train recruits during basic to see the "enemy" as in human and subhuman, and even then, they fail most of the time, which is why so many returning troops who have been in battle end up with PTST and depression and in many cases even end up killig themselves. Humans in capitalist society are conditioned in school, in their homes, and on the job to be cutthroat and competitive. It's not their nature, it's social conditioning. There have been lots of studies debunking the theorey of Loren Eisely, on his point. You xay that socialist societies are as wasteful as capitalisst societies. Having lived in a couple of at least semi-socialist societies I beg to differ. There was nowhere near as much pure wast in China when I was a joournalist liviing and working. there in the 1990a as I see daily here in the US. People were frugal because they couldn't affort to waste things. Corporations actually make things sothey cannot be repaired so tey can keep sellling mor. Those Skoda cars and Jawa motorcycles were good maachines. You just couldn't pick your color choice. Big deal. As for Americans now wanting to live under Socialism, how can anyone say that when Americans, and you by what you are describing, have no idea what socialism it. You are desribing communist states as they turned out. Socialism can be democratic like Chile under Allende, where it had to be crushed by a CIA organized military. coup because it waw about to be returned to power by the voters with even broader majorityi n the legislatures. And private property isn't banned, just exploitive use of private property. People could own homes even in Communist China, Vietnam and Laos. which I also visited.
Good response, Gilgamech. You hit the nail on the head, and with fewer words than what follows.
I think what we on the "left" need to do first is define what does "left" mean?
The Establishment (which includes the capitalist class and all its parties, military-covert intelligence/military, mass media, educational system) seeks to confuse the public by pretending they live in democracies where both right, center and left participate.
My understanding of "left" starts with the vision (theory) supported by strategies and tactics that seek an end to competition as a total way of living, to be replaced by cooperation as a total way of living.
That must start with the economy, which must therefore be based upon cooperation: producing and sharing what is needed for all humans while protecting all of nature. That requires the eliminatation of capitalism as the economy of greed, rich over workers and the poor. That means there would be no wars for profit.
Dave maintains that the "left" won in the UK, with a SIR as its leader. No way.
Keir Starmer did not even support Julian Assange. Starmer was part of the anti-labor Labour faction that conspired with the same fascist zionists now committing genocide against the Palestinians and smeared Jeremy Corbyn as an anti-semite--a total lie. Starmer wants Ukraine in NATO and loves killing Ukrainians ands Russians. Starmer blasts the far right Reform party leader Nigel Farge, who told the truth about NATO provoking Russia since the 2014 neo-fascist Ukrainian coup, instigated by US Democrats with UK Conservarives and Labour party along with the European EU Establishment.
Labour is as much for imperialism, supporting all US's wars, and capitalism, supporting greed and maintainiing poverty for a reserve army in case a real left might take the lead for a true working class struggle, which would aim to build real socialism.
France's New Popular Front is not even in agreement about bringing the proxy war against Russia to an end with, at least, proposing a negotiated settlement that must include Russia's right to a secure soverignty that cannot afford yet another imperialist power's lackey (neo-fascist Ukraine) inside NATO.
Democrats, with whomever in power, demand Ukraine comes into NATO, and then further with Georgia and so on until Russia is totally surrounded, isolated.
Russia is basically alone against 50 countries, as Biden brags. China is too chicken to help militarily. There comes a bit of military aid from Iran (drones that can't penetrate the targets) and North Korea.
Why is it that some far rightest, even Trump and Le Pen, want out of this war, want a negotiated settlement that would satisfy the basic need and legal international right for Russia to live in peace, with its sovereignty intact? President Putin asks no more than that, and his people back him!
Yes, Dave, there are other issues of importance. Some of those can be better addressed by liberal capitalists in power than if the right were in power. But we all die in a world war. While it is impossible to vote for the far right if one is really a leftist, as I have so defined, it is certainly foolish to believe, or even hope for, "liberal-progressive" governments to end capitalism's need for wars. Such foolishness will only maintain the status quo--permanent war, permanent poverty, permanent racism, which sometimes leads to committing genocide. Remember the 100+ treaties with Native Americans and Republican-Democrat governments while they (and the UK, Spain, Portugal, Italian, French++ imperialist-colonialists-slavers) massacred tens of millions of indigenous peoples throughout the Americas. Remember the genocide and enslavement of African-Americans...remember what I can not just now nor is there space herein for all the billions, yes, billions of people that private property based economies and political-military governments have caused since the beginning of "CIVILIZATION", from its begining some 12,000 years ago!
Last bit of depressing news, the left victories you cite are illusory. Left vote is declining in France and the UK. In the UK the left didn't win, the right lost. It lost because its vote split even as the left vote declined. The right vote split because the public identified that the establishment right was ignoring them and playing them for fools (much like the US establishment "left" is doing). In France the situation is even more unstable. The right is the largest faction. They have more of a vote share than Labour won with in the UK. The alliance against Le Pen consists of factions who hate each other and will be unable to form a government. France is entering a period of chaos because (like the US) it's engaged in a failing attempt to suppress the popular will. Many of these movements that are labelled far right by the establishment are economically left wing. Maybe a socialist would be better to join these populist movements and push them left rather than trying to fight the entrenched power of the billionaire class over the existing mainstream "left".
Also, and this is probably worse news for you, the populist opposition is on the right. The left does not have a monopoly on being the party of the ordinary people. In the US, Sanders tried to restart this but was crushed by the billionaire oligarch controlled Democratic party. The same has happened across the West (Corbyn in the UK). The only outlet for ordinary people is the right. The Hilary style autocrats openly despise ordinary people. They don't want their votes because they want them disempowered. Suppress left populism and you get right populism. It's that simple.
You are bogth missing my point here. There is something fundamentally different in what happened in both the UK and France these past few weeks, and what is happening in the US. .
Inthe UK, polls show that the ousting of Conser atives from Parliament, which was profound and historically unprecedented, was not because condervative and right-wing voters voted for Labour candidates, but becausse they did no vote for Tory candidates. In some cases they voted for the Liberal party, in some for the Brexit party. It was a resurgence of labour voters that made it happen, and many of those voters are voting that way because they are pissed at how 15 years of Conservative rule, AND of sell-out "Third Way" neoliberal Labour governments by the likes of Milibrand or especially Tony Blair have gutted Brtain's social services, education system and especially the National Health.
In France too, the biggest single winner of the second round voting was France Unbowedf, th most left party in France.. We should be so lucky to have such a left party and that kind of response to it from voters here in sth US. -- something we haven't had here since Eugene Debs' iteration of the Socialist Party.
My point in writing this piece was to explain how futile the sectarian left is in the US, where no body hears Boo! from the small left parties until the next election cycle, and freally until the next presidential election, when most of them put up presidential and vice presidential candidates, who then if they're lucky get 1% of the vote in the handful of states where they run candiidates, and then they vanish again. Those of us who go to a local meeting of dsuch groups usually leave in disgust as they get mired in sectarian disputes unrelated to the major issues facing the US society and the world. I'm suggesting that we need to build a movement around the big left issues like ending US global militarism and imperal aspirations, moving, as you say Ron to a non-capitalist model of cooperation instead of competition and exploitation, guaranteeing equal access to free health care for all, ending the bi-partisan immiseration of the elderly and disabled, seriously combating climate disaster, etc. Such a project. -- admittedly a long-shot, should be seen as independent and separate from winning elections, though competing in elections is important too. it just cannot be the primary activity of the left.
One of the reasons, if not the reason leftists in places like the UK and France can have some success both in changing their societies and even in winning elections is that they (usually) manag to avoid sectarian strife by focusing on large shared goals. Here on the left, demands for ideological purity and efforts to root out those who may differ on one or two issues, sabatoge any effort to build a united front movement. Just as a hypothetical: Could a life-long anti-war, anti-racism, socialist Catholic who believes that there should be a four-month gestation limit on abortions.(except for in cases of rape, incest or threat to the life of the mother) find a place in such a movement? Of course there are efforts in the UK Labour party to oust people over single issues, such as the outragous and duplicitous campaign to falsely accuse long-time socialist MP Jeremy Corbyn of anti-semitism promoted by Israel and British zionists, who tossed him from the party, (only to see him as an independent soundly defeat the willing stooge candidate put up by the Labour leadership to keep him out of Parliament. His Islington constituents came out massively to re-elect him where he will serve as a unifying figure among real lefftist Labour Party back-benchers in the next Parfliament to pressure the quite unsocialist, US lackey Starmer.
Gilgamech, you cannot compare the US political situation to the situation in Britain an France (and the forces at work in those two countries are different too). Sanders failed beccause he keeps trying to work through the Democratic Party, a capiatlist through-and-through organization which is the place genuinely left ideas or movements go to die. We need a left movement and a left party here to make real change and we won't get that from the little left mini-partties that we have.
OK I see your point. You wish there was a even vaguely or nominally left party in the US that could poll in double digits. I understand. I don't think you're right about Bernie. Outsider Bernie working through the Democrat party was the smart move, just like Trump working through the Republican party was a smart move. How else do you break up the two party oligarchy? Trump beat the Republican establishment and now controls the party. Bernie didn't but that doesn't mean it wasn't worth trying. RFK Jr is going outside the two party system but that's only because he tried to run with the Democrats and they shut him out. And let's face it, he's going to lose, even against two very problematic candidates and at a time of widespread disillusionment with the two party oligarchy. But yes it would be nice to have a viable 3rd force. Just because so many have tried and failed doesn't mean it's impossible.
Agreed. The thing I am addressing, is that this Third Party socialist alternative always comes up the year of an important election c-- especially presidential years. There is a flurry of interest among some dissatisfied voters with a leftist bent who aren't afraid y. of the word socialism or who are looking to cast a protest vote, but then it all goes away for the next three years. That's one reason there's never any progress. PA third party has to start at the grass roots both as a movement, working to organizae workers, protesting against the war economy, and other key issues like climate, and then as a party at local and state level to make it easier to get on national ballots later. Socialists in fact should run for local voter registrar positions! We sshould run for the state offices that control ballot access too, like Sec. of State. The vote totals for those kinds of offices are usually so low it would not be hard to slip into office that way.
The trouble is we have so many urgent crisies like the threat of nuclear war erupting over US support for Ukraine that is increasingly threating Russia itself, galloping climate crisis, a looming 30% cut in Social Security benefits unless Republican obstructionism can be overcome, stealth privatiazation of Medicare and Medicaid through Medicare 'Disadvantage' plans in the case of the former and contracting to private insurance plans in the case of Medicaid, and soon maybe mass deportations if Tump wins. It makes your head spin.
I really think everyone here is missing the point. People in the US DO NOT want to live in a socialist government. While people here use capitalisms as a slur, most people in this county like capitalisms. They want to own businesses, property, and a home. They do not want massive rates of taxation (which will be needed if we had 'free' health care and 'free' college. They recognize, that while government can help up to a point (but as many government programs have shown, like social security and Medicare, government programs are always expensive and wasteful) , ultimately a person is responsible for themselves.
Jim, you are 100% correct. Such is what the capitalist economic-political-military system has created: the illusion that all can become a capitalist if they just try hard enough. However, the basic essence of capitalism is quite the opposite. There must be owners and workers otherwise capitalism cannot exist. That essential fact started when, for unknown reasons, cooperative hunter-gatherer communities evolved into private property ownership-serfdom societies around 12,000 years ago.
This has produced sick societies in which frustrated and or greedy humans kill others for wealth, or other reasons, such as religious fanaticism, or for fear that otherwise one will be killed or imprisoned.
I am sorry, but a capitalist's society is not a sick society. Are there flaws in that society. Sure, which is why I do believe in some government programs to help the poor and other people in society who need help.
The flaws in capitalisms vastly outweigh any benefits it might offer. Especially in an era when the endless drive for ever greater profits and ever greater wealth for the ruling class are taxing the very earth's ability to sustain life, just the waste that results from the capitalist process of "creative destruction" means the end of humanity, either through war or slightly more slowly through the excessive heating of the globe. Just drive around any metropolitan regiona and look at all the closed theaters, stirip malls, supermarkets, parking garages, restaurants, empty store fronts, closed starbucks, Dunkin' Donut and Chuckie Cheese emporiums and then the new ones opening up elsewhere and ask yourself why that makes any sense? I remember visiting Communist Czechoslovakia when i was 15 and marveling at all the beautiful magenta Jawa motorcycles and the Skoda sedans, also all the same color, and thinking, "wow, what a great idea. No need to puzzle over what color bike or car to buy." Just go buy one. The only problem would be finding your own vehicle in a parking area. My wife, when she sas a college student and toured with her college's chorus one summer as the keyboardist. They visited Yugoslavia, and all the girls had to buy bathing suits to go to the beach. She said they went to a state department store and found the only available women's bathing suits were either one piece or two piece, all with the same design on the material. She said they all bought them and that it was the fastest shop for bathing suits any of them had ever experienced! As my wife pointed out, shopping for a bathing suit is one of the most vexing thing most women have to do. She said everyone was so happy to have no choice to make. The point is, capitalism doesn't exist to meet needs, it exists to make profits for the owners, who generally are passive shareholders who really know nothing about the compny other than its earnings and dexpenses. It also invests increasing amounts no in meeting needs but in creating wants which is phenomenally wasteful and leave needs for the many unmet. The more we move to economies of scarcity, the more we will have wars for resources and markets. It's a doom machine. RRon is right, the only hope is for societies that are based on cooperation, not competition. But good luck getting there.
So you want a society where everything, and everyone is the same? There is no creativity just uniformity. Sounds like a nightmare society. You have to do what the state says. Period. Independent and creative thought is banned.
Also, considering the simple fact that humans by nature are selfish and cruel, society based just on cooperation is doomed at the start.
A completely state run government society is just as wasteful as a 100 percent capitalist society. It has been proven time again that a government is even more wasteful that a business.
Jim, you are making some conclusions about what I wrote that are based on incomplete or flat-out rong information. First you say humans are by nature "selfish and cruel." That is simply untrue. I don't know if you have kids, but I've had two and have two grandkids, and from a very young age, even befoe they were talking, I saw them being naturally sharing, and surprisingly gentle when shown tiny creatures to hold. Furthermore, so unnatural is killing for even male humans, that the US military has to train recruits during basic to see the "enemy" as in human and subhuman, and even then, they fail most of the time, which is why so many returning troops who have been in battle end up with PTST and depression and in many cases even end up killig themselves. Humans in capitalist society are conditioned in school, in their homes, and on the job to be cutthroat and competitive. It's not their nature, it's social conditioning. There have been lots of studies debunking the theorey of Loren Eisely, on his point. You xay that socialist societies are as wasteful as capitalisst societies. Having lived in a couple of at least semi-socialist societies I beg to differ. There was nowhere near as much pure wast in China when I was a joournalist liviing and working. there in the 1990a as I see daily here in the US. People were frugal because they couldn't affort to waste things. Corporations actually make things sothey cannot be repaired so tey can keep sellling mor. Those Skoda cars and Jawa motorcycles were good maachines. You just couldn't pick your color choice. Big deal. As for Americans now wanting to live under Socialism, how can anyone say that when Americans, and you by what you are describing, have no idea what socialism it. You are desribing communist states as they turned out. Socialism can be democratic like Chile under Allende, where it had to be crushed by a CIA organized military. coup because it waw about to be returned to power by the voters with even broader majorityi n the legislatures. And private property isn't banned, just exploitive use of private property. People could own homes even in Communist China, Vietnam and Laos. which I also visited.
Jim,
If you are right then join the growing number of rational thought known as misanthropy. Homo Sapiens is a mistake nature made not to last long.
Good response, Gilgamech. You hit the nail on the head, and with fewer words than what follows.
I think what we on the "left" need to do first is define what does "left" mean?
The Establishment (which includes the capitalist class and all its parties, military-covert intelligence/military, mass media, educational system) seeks to confuse the public by pretending they live in democracies where both right, center and left participate.
My understanding of "left" starts with the vision (theory) supported by strategies and tactics that seek an end to competition as a total way of living, to be replaced by cooperation as a total way of living.
That must start with the economy, which must therefore be based upon cooperation: producing and sharing what is needed for all humans while protecting all of nature. That requires the eliminatation of capitalism as the economy of greed, rich over workers and the poor. That means there would be no wars for profit.
Dave maintains that the "left" won in the UK, with a SIR as its leader. No way.
Keir Starmer did not even support Julian Assange. Starmer was part of the anti-labor Labour faction that conspired with the same fascist zionists now committing genocide against the Palestinians and smeared Jeremy Corbyn as an anti-semite--a total lie. Starmer wants Ukraine in NATO and loves killing Ukrainians ands Russians. Starmer blasts the far right Reform party leader Nigel Farge, who told the truth about NATO provoking Russia since the 2014 neo-fascist Ukrainian coup, instigated by US Democrats with UK Conservarives and Labour party along with the European EU Establishment.
Labour is as much for imperialism, supporting all US's wars, and capitalism, supporting greed and maintainiing poverty for a reserve army in case a real left might take the lead for a true working class struggle, which would aim to build real socialism.
France's New Popular Front is not even in agreement about bringing the proxy war against Russia to an end with, at least, proposing a negotiated settlement that must include Russia's right to a secure soverignty that cannot afford yet another imperialist power's lackey (neo-fascist Ukraine) inside NATO.
Democrats, with whomever in power, demand Ukraine comes into NATO, and then further with Georgia and so on until Russia is totally surrounded, isolated.
Russia is basically alone against 50 countries, as Biden brags. China is too chicken to help militarily. There comes a bit of military aid from Iran (drones that can't penetrate the targets) and North Korea.
Why is it that some far rightest, even Trump and Le Pen, want out of this war, want a negotiated settlement that would satisfy the basic need and legal international right for Russia to live in peace, with its sovereignty intact? President Putin asks no more than that, and his people back him!
Yes, Dave, there are other issues of importance. Some of those can be better addressed by liberal capitalists in power than if the right were in power. But we all die in a world war. While it is impossible to vote for the far right if one is really a leftist, as I have so defined, it is certainly foolish to believe, or even hope for, "liberal-progressive" governments to end capitalism's need for wars. Such foolishness will only maintain the status quo--permanent war, permanent poverty, permanent racism, which sometimes leads to committing genocide. Remember the 100+ treaties with Native Americans and Republican-Democrat governments while they (and the UK, Spain, Portugal, Italian, French++ imperialist-colonialists-slavers) massacred tens of millions of indigenous peoples throughout the Americas. Remember the genocide and enslavement of African-Americans...remember what I can not just now nor is there space herein for all the billions, yes, billions of people that private property based economies and political-military governments have caused since the beginning of "CIVILIZATION", from its begining some 12,000 years ago!
Vive Che!
Last bit of depressing news, the left victories you cite are illusory. Left vote is declining in France and the UK. In the UK the left didn't win, the right lost. It lost because its vote split even as the left vote declined. The right vote split because the public identified that the establishment right was ignoring them and playing them for fools (much like the US establishment "left" is doing). In France the situation is even more unstable. The right is the largest faction. They have more of a vote share than Labour won with in the UK. The alliance against Le Pen consists of factions who hate each other and will be unable to form a government. France is entering a period of chaos because (like the US) it's engaged in a failing attempt to suppress the popular will. Many of these movements that are labelled far right by the establishment are economically left wing. Maybe a socialist would be better to join these populist movements and push them left rather than trying to fight the entrenched power of the billionaire class over the existing mainstream "left".
Also, and this is probably worse news for you, the populist opposition is on the right. The left does not have a monopoly on being the party of the ordinary people. In the US, Sanders tried to restart this but was crushed by the billionaire oligarch controlled Democratic party. The same has happened across the West (Corbyn in the UK). The only outlet for ordinary people is the right. The Hilary style autocrats openly despise ordinary people. They don't want their votes because they want them disempowered. Suppress left populism and you get right populism. It's that simple.
While I sympathise, it's surely rhetorical to ask why there is no opposition in the US locked tight two party oligarchy?
You are bogth missing my point here. There is something fundamentally different in what happened in both the UK and France these past few weeks, and what is happening in the US. .
Inthe UK, polls show that the ousting of Conser atives from Parliament, which was profound and historically unprecedented, was not because condervative and right-wing voters voted for Labour candidates, but becausse they did no vote for Tory candidates. In some cases they voted for the Liberal party, in some for the Brexit party. It was a resurgence of labour voters that made it happen, and many of those voters are voting that way because they are pissed at how 15 years of Conservative rule, AND of sell-out "Third Way" neoliberal Labour governments by the likes of Milibrand or especially Tony Blair have gutted Brtain's social services, education system and especially the National Health.
In France too, the biggest single winner of the second round voting was France Unbowedf, th most left party in France.. We should be so lucky to have such a left party and that kind of response to it from voters here in sth US. -- something we haven't had here since Eugene Debs' iteration of the Socialist Party.
My point in writing this piece was to explain how futile the sectarian left is in the US, where no body hears Boo! from the small left parties until the next election cycle, and freally until the next presidential election, when most of them put up presidential and vice presidential candidates, who then if they're lucky get 1% of the vote in the handful of states where they run candiidates, and then they vanish again. Those of us who go to a local meeting of dsuch groups usually leave in disgust as they get mired in sectarian disputes unrelated to the major issues facing the US society and the world. I'm suggesting that we need to build a movement around the big left issues like ending US global militarism and imperal aspirations, moving, as you say Ron to a non-capitalist model of cooperation instead of competition and exploitation, guaranteeing equal access to free health care for all, ending the bi-partisan immiseration of the elderly and disabled, seriously combating climate disaster, etc. Such a project. -- admittedly a long-shot, should be seen as independent and separate from winning elections, though competing in elections is important too. it just cannot be the primary activity of the left.
One of the reasons, if not the reason leftists in places like the UK and France can have some success both in changing their societies and even in winning elections is that they (usually) manag to avoid sectarian strife by focusing on large shared goals. Here on the left, demands for ideological purity and efforts to root out those who may differ on one or two issues, sabatoge any effort to build a united front movement. Just as a hypothetical: Could a life-long anti-war, anti-racism, socialist Catholic who believes that there should be a four-month gestation limit on abortions.(except for in cases of rape, incest or threat to the life of the mother) find a place in such a movement? Of course there are efforts in the UK Labour party to oust people over single issues, such as the outragous and duplicitous campaign to falsely accuse long-time socialist MP Jeremy Corbyn of anti-semitism promoted by Israel and British zionists, who tossed him from the party, (only to see him as an independent soundly defeat the willing stooge candidate put up by the Labour leadership to keep him out of Parliament. His Islington constituents came out massively to re-elect him where he will serve as a unifying figure among real lefftist Labour Party back-benchers in the next Parfliament to pressure the quite unsocialist, US lackey Starmer.
Gilgamech, you cannot compare the US political situation to the situation in Britain an France (and the forces at work in those two countries are different too). Sanders failed beccause he keeps trying to work through the Democratic Party, a capiatlist through-and-through organization which is the place genuinely left ideas or movements go to die. We need a left movement and a left party here to make real change and we won't get that from the little left mini-partties that we have.
OK I see your point. You wish there was a even vaguely or nominally left party in the US that could poll in double digits. I understand. I don't think you're right about Bernie. Outsider Bernie working through the Democrat party was the smart move, just like Trump working through the Republican party was a smart move. How else do you break up the two party oligarchy? Trump beat the Republican establishment and now controls the party. Bernie didn't but that doesn't mean it wasn't worth trying. RFK Jr is going outside the two party system but that's only because he tried to run with the Democrats and they shut him out. And let's face it, he's going to lose, even against two very problematic candidates and at a time of widespread disillusionment with the two party oligarchy. But yes it would be nice to have a viable 3rd force. Just because so many have tried and failed doesn't mean it's impossible.
Agreed. The thing I am addressing, is that this Third Party socialist alternative always comes up the year of an important election c-- especially presidential years. There is a flurry of interest among some dissatisfied voters with a leftist bent who aren't afraid y. of the word socialism or who are looking to cast a protest vote, but then it all goes away for the next three years. That's one reason there's never any progress. PA third party has to start at the grass roots both as a movement, working to organizae workers, protesting against the war economy, and other key issues like climate, and then as a party at local and state level to make it easier to get on national ballots later. Socialists in fact should run for local voter registrar positions! We sshould run for the state offices that control ballot access too, like Sec. of State. The vote totals for those kinds of offices are usually so low it would not be hard to slip into office that way.
The trouble is we have so many urgent crisies like the threat of nuclear war erupting over US support for Ukraine that is increasingly threating Russia itself, galloping climate crisis, a looming 30% cut in Social Security benefits unless Republican obstructionism can be overcome, stealth privatiazation of Medicare and Medicaid through Medicare 'Disadvantage' plans in the case of the former and contracting to private insurance plans in the case of Medicaid, and soon maybe mass deportations if Tump wins. It makes your head spin.
Dave