The US Left is in sad-ass shape because we haven't forged an effective class politics (meaning: unions with teeth, a welfare state, etc.). Getting there requires rebuilding the union movement, creating Left parties, and fostering a radical, anti-capitalist culture. Endless re-readings of the Zapruder tapes don't help."
REPLY: Perhaps the above writer should check out C. Wright Mills' book, The Power Elite" or read more about COINTELPRO operations of the U.S. Corporate State?. Also, if the above writer examined the history of the AFL-CIO from a radical left perspective he might discover that one reason the U.S. unions don't have any teeth is that there was a CIA-orchestrated conspiracy to push militant anti-capitalist union activists out of the AFL-CIO. As C. Wright Mills noted in The Power Elite: "There is, however, little doubt that the American power elite--which contains, we are told, some of `the greatest organizers in the world'--has planned and has plotted...`There is a great difference,' Richard Hofstadter has remarked, `between locating conspiracies in history and saying that history is, in effect a conspiracy...'...Many higher events that would reveal the working of the power elite can be withheld from public knowledge under the guise of secrecy. With the wide secrecy covering their operations and decisions, the power elite can mask their intentions, operations, and further consolidation."
bob
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