[WS:] Let's see, the ship is taking in water and there is no land on the horizon. So it crucial for those aboard to abandon this ship and jump into the shark infested water because there is no hope. Well, I'd take the Pascal's wager http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal's_Wager and take a tiny chance with the sinking ship than jump into certain death in the shark infested water.
While I think that a chance of a 'left" party in the US is indeed nil, a
*coalition of pressure groups* pushing to adopt more environmentally sustainable and socially responsible policies is within the realm of possibility - both here and overseas. It may take a really serious effort and some time, but it is possible. There is really no question about it - history does not stand still. A far more interesting question is what such a coalition of progressive forces will accomplish.
I do not think that this goal will be socialism as we know it. That is, socialism built on the kibbutz model http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibbutz that is, a collective based on shared values and uniformity of labor input, rewards, and life styles. As the story of the kibbutz movement evolution shows, differentiation and market exchanges are pretty much inevitable, because they are more efficient in a diverse society than allocations of resources and distribution based on a fixed principle. The utopian gemeinschaft community belongs to the realm of Disneyland. A more likely outcome is a planned economy that uses a variety of tools to achieve different policy objectives and maximum common good in a very diverse society. Those tools will involve market pricing mechanisms when appropriate, subsidies when appropriate, regulations and penalties when appropriate, and collaborative networks when appropriate. All those mechanisms are already in place - all that is needed is putting them into a coherent whole and fine tune them. This was, as I understand it, the main message of late socialist thinkers like Oskar Lange: we already have the tools, all we need is to learn how to deploy them to the common good.
What is preventing the effective deployment of these tools at the present moment is power imbalance resulting from accelerated globalization during the past 30 or so years. As with every new technological advancement, there are those who opportunistically take advantage of that advancement and move ahead of everyone else. But in the due course, those left behind catch up with them. If there is only one lesson to be learned from the Soviet period, this is it. So while various speculators, banksters, and psychopathic entrepreneurs enjoy hegemonic power at the moment, it is only the matter of time when this power will be curtailed and a more sensible social order built. History has never stood still, and it is simply irrational to believe that it will stand still in our time. The current system is simply too much out of balance to continue on its present course for very long. Something is going to give and that will be a chance for the progressive coalition of forces to put the policy tools that we already have to a better use. It may not happen in my life time, but is is quite unreasonable to think that it will not happen at all.
On a personal note - the 1970s in Eastern Europe looked quite gloomy to many intellectuals. Popular social movements of the time had been defeated by brute force, and detente policies with the West signaled that the Soviet empire was there to stay. This was indeed the prevailing mood, as I remember it. Yet, those who looked at things from a clear rational perspective, saw cracks in the system and predicted a collapse (cf. Randall Collins, The future decline of the Russian Empire in "Weberian Sociological Theory" Cambridge U Press, 1986. ) If there is any lesson to be learned from it, it is that past performance is not a guarantee of future success so instead of repeating past mantras, one needs to thing outside the box, see the writing on the wall and plan for the future.
-- Wojtek
"An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."