Bhaskar Sunkara wrote:
>
> Why would mainstream liberals be the enemy?
My post used sloppy diction, clarified in a later post which you probably hadn't seen when you wrote this. The main enemy is Capitalism, but that is too abstract for present purposes. The core _defense_ of capitalism in the United States is Libralism, i.e. the INSTITUTION of the Democratic Party, which for well over the century has been the graveyard of mass social movements. The flocking of anti-war activists to the McGovern campaign of 1972 actually marked the death of that movement, though (a) fortunately it had accomplished its central task (in retrospect) of preventing a nuclear attack on China and (b) contributing to the growth of courage in the army to refuse to fight. (Actually by then the anti-war movement was an active coprse still believing itself to be alive.) And while the cropse of the CPUSA continued to do useful things up inti the '60s anyhow, as a threat to capitalism it died when it linked itself to the DP in 1936.
> I always saw a combination of
> the small leftist cadre we have floating around, those
> currently identifying as "liberals" and the unpoliticized as the possible
> base for a left-wing movement in this country.
Possibly you are right, but before any such potential could be realized they would have to break their ties to the DP. I myself try not to make empirical projections of this sort into the future.
Especially those with
> operative social democracy sentiments, is it too far fetched to think that
> someone for the welfare state and could one day be a part of a
> movement demanding more fundamental structural change? (social democracy to
> democratic socialism?)
Perhaps. But any anti-capitalist mass movement that emerges, regardless from where, will have to confront the core capitalist ideology, which is liberalism (in _any_ of its dozen or so varieties).
Carrol
>
> On Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 4:15 PM, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
>
> > I agree with those who say there is no fascist danger at this time or in
> > the "forseeable" future. And the conclusion I draw from this is taht
> > leftists should just begin to ignore the right extremist and focus onour
> > serius enemy, the liberals and 'responsible' conservatives, etc. These
> > rigtists _would_ be important in the event of a fascist movement
> > actually materializing, for they would constitute its main base. But for
> > the present they are trivial.
> >
> > Carrol
> >
> > Dennis Claxton wrote:
> > >
> > > At 12:22 PM 2/18/2010, B. wrote:
> > >
> > > >Of course, I am interested to see the right-wing commentariat's take
> > > >on this. If the pilot will become a "leftist terrorist" somehow in their
> > logic.
> > > >
> > > >-B.
> > >
> > > Here are two initial takes from the freepers:
> > >
> > > http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2454275/posts#comment
> > >
> > > He's going to get labeled a "tea bagger" and used to smear the
> > > conservative movement. Mark it.
> > >
> > > What, he has not already? I am surprised, MSNBC is slowing down. Then
> > > it will come out that he is a communist and they will just drop the
> > > matter entirely.
> > >
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> >
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