>How to define socialism nowadays and how to put in practice politics
>that could be considered socialist?
I would love to see some discussion of that question. It's related to my pissy question of yesterday - how to deal with the fact that the (US) masses basically don't give a fuck about politics. The post-WW II depoliticization of the US population is one of the great accomplishments of our ruling class - through a combination of coercion, constitutional mechanisms, and propaganda they managed to turn a very politicized mass into a largely depoliticized one. Most USers have no faith in the power of parties, government, or unions - collective action of any sort - to improve their lives at all. We could say that this passivity and resignation is the result of political discourse being completely irrelevant to popular concerns, but the problem is deeper than that - as Nina Eliasoph's book, which I cite all too often, shows, it's expressed and reproduced in daily discourse. Socialism hasn't had much appeal here in a long time, if it ever did, but, away from the fringes, any kind of bold politics is deeply out of fashion (except, I suppose, for the nutcase fundamentalists). Outside the US, where socialist and other kinds of radical politics have had popular appeal, I sense a similar disengagement and timidity. So what is to be done?
Doug