I've been a paid-up member of the cult of kvetching for many years, and I don't think I'll resign anytime soon, but I agree that kvetching is no strategic option.
[WS:] Same here, but I do not expect to pursue a political career of any kind. The role of a politician in a democracy is in many ways similar to that of a rabbi, a minister or a priest - to motivate, inspire, and mobilize others. Chronic complainers (including myself) do not qualify.
I've been trying to convince comrades for the past couple of years, with little success, that the strategic arena now is health care, because of:
(1) Massive market failure
(2) Readily available non-market alternatives - even close to home (Medicare & VA)
(3) Potential expansion of a militant union model (CNA)
(4) Contradictions within the capitalist class (very roughly, industry vs. FIRE)
(5) Size of the target - about 1/6 of the economy
(6) Lack of plausible capitalist solutions
Not that this will necessarily work - it just looks to me like our best shot at the moment.
[WS:] I think it is a very good start, but it is only a beginning. To win, the left needs a vision, a faith, a big picture - not just a laundry list of items to be accomplished. In the past, such big picture vision was socialism - everything was done in the name of it - from fixing potholes in the road, to harvesting crop, to building a school in an obscure village to launching a spacecraft. Today, the purchasing power of socialism decreased rather substantially (unfortunately), so another big picture is needed.
IMHO, one potential candidate is the concept of social economy that is gaining popularity in EU http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/entrepreneurship/coop/. In a way, it is "socialism" by another name - a concept that joins together the ideal (democratic governance, common good, public accountability) and the material (production of material goods) - and it carries very specific and very practical implications for the organization of economy and society. I understand that anything with the word 'social' in its name would be quickly equated with 'socialism" and 'communism' in the troglodyte US political discourse, but the label can be modified to the local tastes, e.g. public benefit economy. That concept would encompass not only social services (including health care or social safety net) but any economic activity whose main goal is the maximization of public benefit and democratic values rather than private profits. Another advantage is that this concept involves everyone's benefit, not the benefit of some distant and abstract entity, such as the "organization", the "country" or, for that matter, the "less fortunate" here or abroad.
For example, promoting cooperative housing can provide tangible benefits to individuals (affordable housing) as well as embody the idea of "social" or "public benefit" economy. The economic success of a coop (e.g. cost savings to the residents, taking advantage of the economies of scale to create appealing architectural and environmental designs, minimizing some of the common home ownership problems such as maintenance, high repair cost, etc.) would automatically validate the abstract notion of "social/public benefit economy" in the same way as the quick improvements in the standards of living validated the concept of socialism in Russia and Eastern Europe - at least initially.
Wojtek
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