[lbo-talk] Crises and left opportunity

123hop at comcast.net 123hop at comcast.net
Tue Feb 15 19:35:32 PST 2011


----- Original Message ----- From: "Somebody Somebody" <philos_case at yahoo.com>

"Somebody: I agree about the political prospects, but I wonder if sometimes the left doesn't exaggerate the stakes at all. After everything's said and done, the gap between the U.S. and Sweden isn't that great. American life expectancy and mortality rates are a bit worse than they should be (say life expectancy could be 80 instead of 78), economic inequality is a little higher than the industrialized world's average, but these aren't world-historical differences."

Where do you live? What do you do for a living? What are you smoking?

One out of seven adults in the U.S. is on food stamps. 40% use prayer as a form of health care. Vacation is now reserved for a smaller and smaller percentage of the working class. The real cuts have not yet begun.

This is like Sweden?

"If a revolution promised to make up the gap between the U.S. and say France today, we'd say it was a modest affair indeed. I'm dismissing the possibility of thorough-going socialist revolution here, frankly, because no socialist country has ever attained living standards higher than the imperialist West."

What the fuck does that mean? First of all most socialist countries were emerging from the middle ages pretty much. Second, whose living standards in the imperialist West? (and note imperialist is not quite the same as capitalist). If you compare Cuba with Haiti you get different results than comparing Cuba w U.S.

"Actually, what strikes me about American politics is that *despite* the overwhelming weakness of organized labor, the lack of social democratic, let alone socialist, values in the working class, indeed the absence of working class identity period, the bourgeoisie has not utterly crushed the mass of the population underfoot. Even with cuts looming, there is still social insurance of a sort, there is still public education however under threat, and most of all, there is still the continued improvement in living conditions inherent in the development of the productive forces."

Just keep watching. And what continued improvement could you be talking about?

I gotta say, this post was a doozie.

Joanna

___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list