JM - Really, now. Is that why so many people don't vote? Is that why when people do vote they often say they are voting against a candidate instead of for a candidate? Is that why "politics" in the U.S., and increasingly elsewhere, has been taken over by marketing organizations? Is that why most of the "political" institutions left in this country, outside of the money-supported ruling class institutions, are non-secular religious organizations?
[WS:] there is no elite conspiracy
> to suppress radical left because there is no need for
> one - the radical left has nearly zero popular support
> in this country.
JM - As usual you say this without reference to history. What you say might be true in a larger sense. There is zero-support for a "radical left" in this country. But the fact is there was a "conspiracy" to suppress the left in this country and now there is a "conspiracy" to suppress any "business independent" self-organization in this country outside of organized religion. Only I would hardly call it a "conspiracy." It was never a secret and it is not a secret now but rather it was explicit policy, sometimes of government regimes and always of the owners of businesses. J. Edgar Hoover and his organization was explicitly set up to destroy left organizations. That was the writ of what would become the FBI at the time of the Palmer Raids. And later they explicitly set out to destroy civil rights organizations, peace groups, radical parties, and left unions. And businesses today explicitly set out to destroy economic and political orgainizations that are beyond their control. Realistically, why would you think it otherwise? That is what ruling groups always do. They try to disorganize those who oppose them. The fact is that historically, your explicit statement is simply wrong.
In order to believe what you say you have to argue for the uselessness of the billions of dollars businesses spend on repression of various kinds. The millions of dollars spent on anti-union lawyers, hiring of spies and private cops, to stop people from organizing, blacklisting of union organizers, withdrawing advertising money from newspapers that support labor organizations or neighborhood organizations of all kinds, etc.
You also have to make an argument that the massive amount of spying, disruption, provocation of organizations such as the FBI and the Red Squads in every big city and state had no effect at all. Or the massive repression during and after the World Wars had no effect, and that the current privatization of repression of any independent labor organization has no effect. But if all of this has no effect why do the owners of business spend so much money and time on it.
In every corporate job I have ever had I have had to sit through long and interminable classes about the "disruption" of unions, where 500 dollar consultants showed us how to "root out" unionization. I suppose you will say that a "union" is not "radical" and this is true. But the owners of our society have long taken care of rooting-out radicals, for now they are vigilant in rooting out any kind of business independent organization.
I realize that you look at yourself as speaking for "hardheaded realism" of some sort or another but it wouldn't hurt you to take a few glimpses at reality so that your hardheaded realism conforms to something that is actually happening.
> [WS:] The US system delivers, for the most part, and it
> delivers a bit more to people with income under $250k
> when Democrats are in power. Therefore, the majority
> of the population has no reason not to support
> Democrats or reject the system altogether, even if
> they do not get much as they think they should, or
> even as much as the system could deliver under a
> different leadership.
JM - And of course here I do think that you are partially correct. The system has a certain stability and "delivers" just enough for the few who, are not rich, but who can organize. For another group of people the system delivers very little and as long as "the system" can keep them disorganize there is not much reason to provide them with anything but jails, cops, threats, and lectures on "responsibility".
And that's the function of the "good" intellectuals, like you and me. To provide the wording for the lectures, that makes sure that the people who are not the rulers and owners to realize that their situation is immutable and all their fault anyway. Good work, Woj!
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