On Wed, Jul 17, 2013 at 10:00 PM, Marv Gandall <marvgand2 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2013-07-17, at 3:35 PM, JOANNA A. wrote:
>
> > I think it's racism (under capitalism). A social safety net would hold
> up blacks and whites alike. And for some, that's intolerable.
> >
> > Arthur Maisel:
> > If the recent depression in advanced economies -- especially in Europe --
> > weren't evidence enough of the quasi-irrelevance of left wing thought
> > (given the material circumstances, in a 'rational world', revolutionary
> > situations would be afoot) the fact that the following screed on a
> > libertarian blog will almost certainly impact more people than on a
> leftist
> > one, although the content could be almost verbatim, is sufficient to give
> > serious thought as to why no one pays attention to the left
> >
> > Foodstamps Are Corporate Welfare
> >
> >
> http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-07-17/foodstamps-are-corporate-welfare
> >
> > Is Chomsky right -- did Stalin do such irreparable harm to the prestige
> of
> > socialist thought, that we are still suffering from its consequences ?
>
> Neither "Stalinism" nor "racism" has much to do with the inability of the
> contemporary left to find a mass audience.
>
> Today's workers have a weak or non-existent historical memory of the USSR,
> particularly under Stalin. The old bogey of "Stalinism" doesn't really
> influence their political behaviour one way or another.
>
> The working class has always been divided by religious, racial, regional,
> occupational, and gender differences, perhaps more so in early industrial
> capitalism than today. Yet it was in that earlier period that the working
> class spawned powerful movements for reform and revolution which were
> periodically able to overcome these differences and win democratic rights
> and improved living standards.
>
> In fact, therein lies the primary reason for today's relative lack of
> worker militancy. The social safety net - food stamps but, more generally,
> unemployment insurance, pensions, health care, and other universal benefits
> - HAS held up the system, despite resentment from reactionaries and ongoing
> efforts to trim and constrain the welfare state.
>
> The extension of the vote had contradictory consequences. On the one hand,
> it led to the formation of mass workers' parties which were able to press
> for better living and working conditions, or, as governments, legislate the
> implementation of these reforms. On the other hand, the universal franchise
> - initially resisted by the capitalists, who feared it would fundamentally
> threaten their power and property - had the effect of legitimizing the
> system and stabilizing it by steering workers' discontent into peaceful
> electoral channels where their demands could be partially satisfied and
> their militant energies absorbed. There has never been a social revolution
> in a bourgeois democracy.
>
> The author of the Zero Hedge article is a libertarian who does not like
> government programs and either has the fanciful notion or pretends that if
> food stamps were abolished "there would be massive employee organizing
> (which) doesn’t happen when the taxpayer makes up the difference…" This is
> nonsense; there is no connection between food stamps for the needy, many of
> whose recipients are unemployed or tenuously employed, and the impediments
> to union organizing and political action independent of the two governing
> parties by the mass of the working population in the US.
>
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