>Alexandre Fenelon wrote:
>
>>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.
Well, I've never shied away from making a fool of myself, so I'll throw out some thoughts.
>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.
For a long time I've tried to see a positive side to this mass apathy. It can't last, I told myself; people (in the US) will grow tired of being pushed around and eventually they will fight back. This time of depoliticization will reveal to people clearly and decisively how destructive the current set-up is. Yes, it's unfortunate that people don't trust political parties anymore, but on the plus side this also means they are working toward not trusting the D and R parties. It seems Americans have a mistrust of government, but that's at least partially because they are disillusioned by this *particular* government. USers may not have faith in unions, but if you look at, say, Hoffa Sr.'s Teamsters, how can you blame them? So my hope was that the current apathy would render a final disgust, that people would want to completely trash what we have now and start over with something totally new (which would also be conceived, at least partially, during this time).
Of course what's actually happened is much closer to what you say, Doug: huge fragmentation, the supremacy of individualism, deep and unwavering distrust of collective action, chronic apathy. But I still think there is something healthy in the pervasive cynicism--healthy in that it should be able to be harnessed and used for socialist purposes. Orwell said somewhere that socialism is the only system that is remotely logical. I think this is true, and I think most people would see this to if they knew what socialism is.
To this end--to answer What Is to Be Done?--a good start would be campaign-finance reform. I know many lefties will call me hopelessly naive/pragmatic/liberal/reformist (go ahead, pick your Marxist slur), but this is an effective way I see of renewing people's faith in government, making government actually accountable to people, and, if it's done genuinely, giving people a voice in government. (The left's silence on this issue, methinks, has been decisive in it's not going anywhere. The McCain-Feingold bill--sure, it's inadequate, but it would make a lot of positive changes--is just this close to being law.) One of the most expressed feelings of apathy is, It doesn't matter if I ______ because X doesn't really listen to me. Well guess what? It's true. And as long as people feel alienated from power, socialism or anything like it will be equally as alienated.
Reading this, it seems that I've gone against what I usually believe; that is, trying to reform the government instead of encouraging mass action. But if the situation is really as grim as Doug has described (and I'm not convinced it is), then, in this situation, doing the latter would be a waste of time.
Eric