> What do you or anybody else think about Chomsky's frequent citation of
> polling data which purports to show that a significant majority of
> Americans
> have views significantly to the left of the Democratic Party? Chomsky is
> always citing these polls particularly during election time. These polls
> show
> that significant majorities support socialized medicine, think higher
> taxes
> to protect their environment are all-right, think the UN should handle
> Iraqi and Afghan reconstruction and that we should get militarily get out
> of
> countries where populations don't want us, 46 percent of Bush voters
> supported the Kyoto protocol and think Bush did too, etc.
I've always thought that Chomsky is right about this and my experience with the current zetigeist has me even more convinced.
Living in the Midwest, I've long gotten used to soft-selling my anarchist views. But lately, when I talk to non-anarchists about politics, I get the feeling that I've gotten to cautious and conservative. People are mad as hell at the system. They are mad at capitalism and the corporations. They are worried about how products are poisoning them and the safety of the food supply. People are looking for radical change and they have given up on the system.
I really expect that we will see some kind of situation where average working people do something while the leftists and radicals sit around debating if this is the proper time.
Chuck
??????
I agree with both you and Chomsky on the left-leaning assessment of the masses.
Obviously, Reagan's medium rightist devolution has taught them an entrenched lesson that capitalism is less than desirable and to realize the American dream of making more money than one has is simply and only a dream. The economic Great Stagnation has reinforced, at least, their perceptual knowledge about the cruel reality of making a living under the belly of the beast. By reading comments on political and economic issues published in the New York Times, I found that a subtle trend towards criminalization of the system. Complaints have been more system-orientated than before the huge unemployment tide had taken hold. Jeers towards socialism and traces of anti-socialism streaks are rare and faltering and, in most cases, they disappeared.
What the average working people do not, but must, have is the rational knowledge about distinguishing their true interests, both the immediate and long-term as well as the temporary and fundamental from fallacy. Since the heavy-handed anti-socialism ideology of the bourgeoisie starts to lose its persuasion power for obvious reasons, working people will make breakthroughs themselves by cut and try. Of course, with the intellectual help, their speed of and easiness in making spiritual and material progresses will definitely be better off. Then they have to cultivate their own revolutionary intellectuals as a core and leading force to which the petit bourgeois, and other, intellectuals will be attracted.
The era of dispirited working people seems to be fleeting.
Mark
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