> On Jul 12, 2011, at 10:55 PM, 123hop at comcast.net wrote:
> >
> > Not just soviet advertisement of equality, but the socialist parties
> played key roles in organizing struggles for civil rights. You look at all
> the key books of black writers: Wright, Ellison, etc., and they talk about
> how they get their political education from the communist party. Even, say,
> the free speech movement in Berkeley gets a lot of organizing power from the
> CP or from former CPers.
> >
>
> Which, to me, argues all the more for the idea that the pressures,
> movements, etc, were indigenous (albeit, in the case of some, under an
> international framework of socialism/communism). To put my thoughts in
> order:
>
> Two [types of] analyses have been suggested: (a) the presence of the Soviet
> Union acted provided an example of an alternate world order and thus held
> capitalist exploitation of workers in check. With the Soviet Union gone, no
> alternative threatens the status quo, and the welfare state is being rolled
> back. (b) times of crises are bad for the Left as the public turns more
> defensive, reactionary, insecure. The idea that crises could be
> opportunities for the Left to organise/channel public sentiment/reaction is
> naive at best.
>
> My feeling is that both of these theses are unhelpful (in that they are
> oversimplifying). That’s just a feeling, I admit… I am neither an economist
> nor a historian, but rather, at best, an amateur anthropo-paleontologist.
> :-) I study the available historic record and fossils of public sentiment
> today and make guesses on what occurred in active minds and societies 20,
> 50, 80 years ago.
>
> With regard to (a), perhaps from the 40s on, I see the Soviet Union
> offering not an alternative but evidence that augmented capitalist
> libertarian propaganda in the USA (of Europe I am not sure, but with the
> [perceived] threat from the SU separated merely by a border, I would guess
> there were similar reactions). This is no different, tactically, than
> Israel’s early promotion of Hamas. While some of you might see a worker
> state with full rights, my sense is that most Americans agreed with terms
> such as “the Red Menace”, “the Evil Empire”, etc.
>
> Re: (b), I agree with the chap who argued against simplistic, agent-free
> (his term was “mechanistic” I think) generalisations on the basis of one or
> three data points. I fail to see single or a very small set of large
> underlying conditions that predict historical socio-economic events (other
> than perhaps the launching of wars to distract and/or re-indoctrinate the
> population).
>
> The turn of the 20th century, perhaps the peak of the ravages of
> industrialisation [?], witnessed local and international struggle, in
> response, against worker exploitation, imperialist exploitation, etc. In
> different cases this led to independence from foreign occupation, takeover
> of government by the working class, the basics of a welfare state, so on -
> all arising from common roots of social unrest and demand for rights,
> equalities; rather than one paving the way for the others.
>
> Two decades later, the reaction - to the crisis of the Great Depression -
> of the general populace, the meritocracy system [?], and a populist and
> combative president led to some significant gains in the establishment of a
> welfare state.
>
> So on.
>
> The evidence, it seems to me, points to not one or two determining factors:
> people rose up with demands both at bad times (crises) and good (the years
> at the end of the Golden Age). These desires were suppressed and gains
> rolled back both in boom years (the 1920s) and in bust ones (early 1980s,
> 2000s). The presence or absence of the Soviet Union does not seem to have
> influenced these events. Rather, IMHO, the causes seem to have been more
> mundane ones of ground circumstances, prevalent public ideologies and
> attitudes, so on.
>
> All idle speculation, I confess.
>
> —ravi
>
>
>
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>
> You might also take into account the significant numbers of 1st and 2nd
generation Americans in the labour force. Many, particularly those of
Italian, Jewish, and Eastern European ancestry, internalized and preserved
the social radicalism of their parent's working class traditions from the
"Old Country". Interesting too was the decidedly Un-American
*doctrinaire*anti-radicalism of middle-class immigrants and their
offspring from those
very same countries.
Regarding the role of CPUSA in the formation of strong unions (almost entirely CIO) in the 1940s and 50's the results were mixed. On the one hand the militancy and party discipline of the CPUSA injected into many of the industrial unions an aggressive, articulate and reliable cadre, on the other hand "Orders from Above" often cut the ground from under the capable organizers and leaders from the party. An Example of the latter was the pacifist party line from 1939 to 1941
-- Victor Friedlander