[lbo-talk] Dog sucks the big Chuck

[Carl Remick]

>From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
>
>... Bracketing the point that the ruling class often uses  religion to 
>promote its own agenda, capitalism is a system based on  structurally 
>opposed class interests. The notion of the common good  is a delusion. And 
>even half-decent reforms of the present system are  going to require a lot 
>of conflict and militance - the kind of thing  that makes the religious 
>left nervous. To any book on why there is no  socialism in America, 
>religion would have to contribute at least a  longish chapter.

[Amen, so to speak.  A review of two biographies of Upton Sinclair in the NY 
Times Book Review this week ends on this interesting note:]

... Can such an author [Upton Sinclair] be revived as someone to be read 
today? Haven't times changed out of sight? Does anyone eat beef today and 
think of the stockyards? Well, yes, I think beef is still under suspicion, 
along with just about everyone who feeds the enormous public. Eric Schlosser 
and others are still questioning the food culture. But the real thing about 
"The Jungle" is the way Sinclair saw the vicious link between "them" and 
"us," a dramatic paranoia straight from Dickens. If Sinclair were here 
today, I'd send him to the San Joaquin Valley, where vegetables fit for 
Hockney and every farmers' market are produced through dire exploitation. 
I'd urge him to go to Salinas, John Steinbeck's hometown, where the public 
libraries nearly closed recently for lack of funding and where the prospects 
for Hispanics who work the valley are expatriation, gang warfare, a broken 
back in the sun and the chemicals or . . . the American dream.

There was a period in this country, from the 30's through the 70's, in which 
government caring seemed to ease away some of the muck. We think of it as 
the Great Society, and we recall people and politicians who voiced hope for 
it without irony. It's clearer now that the middle class — the great force 
that made Dickens's England more benevolent — is in retreat. We are getting 
back to them and us, in a country that has earned little but shame in its 
foreign affairs. We are not liked, we are not trusted, we are not respected 
— and all those shortcomings are eroding our domestic souls. Katrina, that 
gust of nature, was the rehearsal for the revelation that "they" now have 
neither the means nor the intent of looking after us. We are on our own, and 
we may need to find our own Sinclairs.

<http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/02/books/review/02thomson.html?_r=1&oref=slogin>

Carl