[lbo-talk] competence, not ideology ... again

[SA]

shag wrote:
> actually, the sucky thing about this incident is that, typical of dems,
> everyone did their best to distance themselves from being  a socialist
> therefore reinforcing the use of red-baiting and condoning the idea that
> no one in their right mind would want to be or be associated with
> socialists.
>
> in re this being same old same old (discussed on another thread and
> nothing charles responded to). i don't think this is like other years. the
> scary socialist meme may have been embraced by fringies years before, but
> this year, with a supposed moderate republican running, we have the obama
> is a scary socialist meme front and center as the republican candidate's
> primary message.
>
>   
>> CB:
>>
>>
>> Actually, socialists are glad to be identified with spreading the wealth.
>>
>> Wouldn't it be funny if Obama wins, and that means the majority are ok
>> with some "socialism" ?
>>     

Yeah. Haven't followed this thread closely so someone else might already 
have made this point, but the following occurs to me: First the 
conservatives loudly decried the bailout as socialism, but then the 
Republicans voted for it. Then it was loudly declaimed that BHO is a 
socialist and yet the electorate will probably vote for him. Meanwhile, 
capitalism is flailing so egregiously that it has elicited much 
mainstream discussion, reminiscent of the brief flurry of "Was Marx 
Right?" commentary around the 1998-99 crisis - only this time things are 
much worse and will continue to get worse in the medium run. In France, 
the discourse right now is very much about calling into question the 
legitimacy/stability of capitalism "as a system," though still of course 
disconnected from any notion of systemic alternative. (Both in France 
and Germany right now, new, explicitly anticapitalist parties are 
running almost even in the polls with their flagging mainstream 
center-left rivals (as in France) or as the biggest of the non-governing 
parties (Germany)) In ideological terms, it seems as if much preparation 
is being - inadvertently - laid for some sort of rehabilitation of the 
term "socialism," only, for now, more as a sort of free-floating 
signifier without any fixed referent.

Seth