DENNIS CLAXTON:
>How many Americans think socialism means no cool cars and bad movies?
>
The fallacy reflected here also infects most of the posts on humor, white males, religion, abortion, etc, the fallacy that women and men are recruited to socialism the way they are moved to vote democrtic or republican or are converted to catholicism, but the abstract ideal of smartly packaged slogans.
But people (except perhaps for a smattering of intellectuals who read Marx in an Ivy League classes) are not recruited to socialism (neither were Marx or Engels for that matter), they are recruited to the *socialist movement*, which is a program of activity and struggle. Then *within* that movement, and especially with the help of those in the movement who are already marxists, they are brought (or bring themselves to see) that the struggles they are engaged in are tremendously worthwhile and must if possible be won that even when won they will still be within the trap of that ever stretching out series of concentric circles called capitalism. And they are won to the fight against capital (still not necessarily socialist).
Actually, for the most part, it is only months or in some cases years after people have become in practice socialists that they generalize their activity into some abstract approval of socialism.
This is essentially the story of how I, a cold-war liberal, found myself a marxist one day. I dare say it is the story, in some sense, of almost everyone on this list. This refusal to learn from one's own experience in becoming a marxist or socialist is among the roots of left self-hate, of the myth of the "middle class left," of the contempt for intellectuals (i.e., for thinking), and ultimately of contempt for the working class (including that disguised contempt that sees white male workers as so fucking delicate that if anyone even mentions their racism they will be scared into the hands of George Will).
Carrol