Socialists and the credit crunch. Far left policies are... what?

Is Klein actually anti-capitalist?  Admittedly, I haven't read a lot of her work, but she strikes me as more anti-neoliberal and anti-globalization than anti-capitalist, wanting to go back to a kindler, gentler capitalism that existed before the age of neoliberalism.  And I have heard this sort of criticism from other sources as well.

PS: when is Gary Doer going to scrap capitalism?  I'm waiting

I too wonder about Ms Klein's comments here - the NDP would seem to be in a powerful situation and in a place to make some demands of the Libs to support the coalition, but apparently Jack is doing diddly squat - it should be non-negotiable that PR gets put to the top of the list for the remainder of the life of this parliament, at the very least getting it put on the next election ballot as an option, after which the education could begin. Economically, something else Ms Klein does not even mention, but the NDP at least knows about as they have mentioned it a couple of times, is monetary reform - this does not mean 'nationalizing' or 'socializing' any banks, it means getting control of the Canadian money supply, which is currently created almost entirely by private banks, who expect interest on our money supply each and every year, which has led to ALL of our current financial problems, and these problems will continue as long as we leave the money creation power in private hands. Yet not a freaking WORD about this from any 'progressive' organisations. Which makes me, for one, wonder who is really pulling their strings. And if noone is pulling their strings, but they remain ignorant of this situation, then they have no business calling themselves 'progressive leaders', as this money situation is the basis of power of the capitalists, and the fundamental cause of every other problem we are facing in modern society, and NOTHING is going to get fixed until the money supply is under truly democratic control. More explanation of the money thing at Banketeering  http://www.rudemacedon.ca/banketeering.html 

genstrike wrote:

  You can have other forms of capitalism, such as the postwar consensus capitalism, fascism or classical liberalism

Except that most self-respecting capitalists insist on minimal profit margins. They made wonderful profits post-WWII and didn't mind so much sharing the profits with workers, and especially so with Soviet economies growing at a fair clip since the late 1920's and representing an alternative to capitalism. With some pressure from the CCF and a failed economy across Canada in the 1930's, a new Liberal government nationalised the Bank of Canada. The feds were creating a quarter of money supply at near zero cost to them and the taxpayers. It wasn't GOSBank, but Ottawa was able to pay of the war debt and use the money to pay for important infrastructure and new social programs between 1938 and 1974.

But that all changed in the 1970's with the energy crises. Some capitalists decided that profiteering from war is just too lucrative compared with everyday industrial capitalism. By the late 1980's, neoliberal dogma from a shadowy club of central bankers in Switzerland said that western governments were obligated to bail out their increasingly deregulated private banks by allowing them to create close to all of the money supply as interest owing debt. As you can imagine, things have gone downhill ever since with the relatively new debt-driven capitalism. Our economies just can't keep up with the bank rates, and so just about everyone and their dogs have been enslaved by a global banking cabal. We can't afford to pay for new infrastructure whether its green or rusty, and the old stuff is beginning to crumble after decades of neglect. This is supposed to undermine everyone's faith in democratically elected governments to get the job done that they used to be able to do at one time but cannot anymore due to the new self-imposed impotence in the handful few English-speaking capitalist countries. P3's and AFP's are trotted in the backdoor, and rejected for the most part by municipal plebscites around the world and wherever the new deregulated capitalism is failing in various economic sectors where tried, from electrical power generation and distribution to markets in water and sewage to the old financial capitalism made new again.

Kapitalists decided that should abandon postwar industrial capitalism over 30 years ago because profit margins were falling to 12% and further.  12% is a magic number for kapitalists, and they soon decided on neoliberal financial kapitalism and "putting money to work" for them. Few real kapitalists are caught dead pouring footings for new factories nowadays. Real kapitalists live off compound interest and speculating on everything from currency to near money derivatives in the global casino economy since 1987 or so. This is what los Chicago boys tried to establish in Chile, an economy based on "financial services", investment banking, and positive inflows of kapital from around the world. Chile was the genesis fable for neoliberal kapitalism. The new laissez-faire kapitalism didn't work any better for General Pinochet and his economic hitmen after sixteen years than it did in North America after 30 years by 1929. And it's doing the crazy swan dive today as we babble.

The writing was on the wall for commodities based capitalism quite a few years ago, and now kapitalists want cutting in for a share of global services in public education, healthcare, and child care. These three services are worth over $6 trillion dollars in public spending every year. And our stoogeocrats at federal levels have been working diligently to slash tax revenues and gut transfer payments in undermining these vitally important public services, and even shit-canning them before they are even realized, in order to pave the way for Pee3's and AFPee's. Big box capitalists in the U.S. and other salivating jackals are waiting in the wings for our weak and ineffective politicos to hack off pieces of the common good and toss it to them like so much hamburger. You can read your Marx and Lenin today, and that's fine. But the capitalism that those important socialists knew so well is no more since the 1930's. And the capitalist attempts to return to laissez-faire capitalist economies is at the root cause of what's gone awry today.

Jacob Richter wrote:

[url]http://www.politics.ie/current-affairs/37428-socialists-credit-crunch-fa...

 

Since the admins of the board above have yet to approve my registration, I decide to give some thought to the material in that thread.  A lot of the misperceptions of the far left are, unfortunately, due to the programmatic posturing (or rather lack thereof) by the far-left groups being observed by the "average Joe":

Quote:

What immediate-term policies, if any, are the various Trotskyite and Communist parties offering as practical proposals to handle the aftermath of this problem?

I´m not talking about any notions they may have of total revolutionary change, abolishing private property blah blah blah.

Basically, I´m asking this: has any left-wing party anywhere in Europe (such as Joe Higgins´ type) offered any kind of short-term practical responses to the economic difficulties?

 

  

I'm not saying there's nothing to criticize on "the far left" (there certainly is!) but so often the criticisms seem so uninformed. The premise here (that far left groups are not proposing "intermediate term policies") simply is not true, as anyone would know if they actually read the press or websites of some of the groups named. 

<how do I make a link?>

Quote:

The premise here (that far left groups are not proposing "intermediate term policies") simply is not true

The other premises are that there is defined "far left" and that everyone to the right of that far left are offering tangible policies. I say that is false. Only the neo-liberal right offers any real policy platform and it is the very same policies that precipitated the current crises and the crisis of 1929-1939 to which it is most often compared. Essentially, the policy of the right, to use a metaphor, is to bail more water into the sinking boat.

Beyond, there is no real coherent economic policies being put forward anywhere elese along the spectrum because, for the most part, all economic perspectives are from or in counter to the prevailing model.  Consider even the first post puts forward a number of ideas all dependent on the continuation and success (in the face of failure) of the current model.

I agree. The question is always asked from the perspective of the maintaining and perpetuating the existing economic order no matter its structural failings and the fact that it must eventually collapse totally.

If we look at it from the perspective of the needs of people, as opposed to the needs of corporate and institutional investors, the answers may be very, very different.

The problem is  how to bring up to operational democratic speed,  people who can reject the obvious solution of a coalition, with all the right, Keynesian buttons being pushed, in favour of Steve and Jim.

Even getting the learned left-leaning  to accept the coalition!!!

The rest is a cinch!

"Soviet communism lasted 70 years. It was a much simpler and more robust economic system and collapsed by 1989 after a trillion dollar cold war was waged against about a third of the world"

Does Fidel then give (unduly full) credit to Brzezinski & co. (notice who's behind the new president again)?  Saral Sarkar (ex-pat Bengali, German Green, in 1999 in Eco-Socialism or Eco-Capitalism?: A Critical Analysis of Humanity's Fundamental Choices) contended cogently about collapse for other reasons, and there was the lead-up deliberately depressed price of oil, then as now depended on by them, damaging foreign access. Which leads to generalizing about the things socialists tend to omit or give too low rank to, like reasonable limitation on the reach of livelihood as well as deep consideration of the appropriateness of means, vs things like localization and petroleum replacement.  The fault in too many Green quarters these days is to discount what Fidel is being articulate about or alluding to here, unseen financial manipulation & mistreatment of fellows.  But for the finance to negatively flourish so there must be degradation of the local & more human scale, requiring exploitable means of exchange for access at a distance, with all risk involved; and the mistreatment is in part also a function of oversizing, where harmers are distanced enough to be somewhat hidden from the harmed.  So very "green" questions of scale enter at all points. There was some flourishing of local currencies in the 30s in the US that was suppressed in New Dealism.

genstrike says there are several different forms of capitalism sitting on the shelf ready to be thrown into action at a moment's notice. If that were true, then there would be no need for this massive socialism to prop up capitalism and superrich people today. In fact, there is no backup plan.

Crises and chaos followed by more war is the kapitalist plan as usual. Steve Harper's plan is U.S.-style spending on military buildup, and to pull an R.B. Bennett on the economy. Or at least, that was his plan until the Harpers refused to show up for work recently. Shutting down parliament is not a plan though.

genstrike wrote:

Some aspects and details of capitalism change and evolve over time and we do have different terms for different eras (such as postwar consensus, neoliberalism, etc), but (barring something like a revolution) the basics of capitalism remain constant and early theorists like Marx are just as important today.

The writing was on the wall for commodities based industrial capitalism way back in the 1970's during the first energy crises. As I was saying before, capitalists' profit margins began falling, and they looked to other ways of reproducing post-war era gains. The seeds of neoliberal ideology were born with von Hayek and Mont Pelerin society after the war and planted in fertile conservative minds in the west, like Milton Friedman's, Maggie Thatcher's, Ronald Reagan, Brian Mulroney, and prominent Liberals. 

Quote:

you seem to think that just because some of the details have changed we should write off people like Marx, even though they are as relevant as ever today.

The "details" were changed drastically since the 1980's. Financial capitalism is no small detail and at the root cause of the crisis of our mixed market economies today.  Neither Marx nor Lenin would have recognized capitalism in the western world after 1929-32 with the vast increases in public sector economy. They would look at the Nordic countries today and say, "Holy frijole!" The "new" Liberal capitalism has  sought to cannibalize  non-market subsystems as a result of the new debt-driven monetarist capitalism since the 1980's. Canada has more private sector financing of health care and other basic services, and more foreign ownership and control by multinational corporations than most so-called capitalist countries today. Canada's vast natural resource and energy base is a prime target for failing and failed capitalist ideology because we have so much natural wealth as to make any ideology nearly impossible to fail over the short term. Various Canadian governments have been signing away our sovereign rights to energy and natural resources and labour and environmental rights like few other major G20 capitalist countries since CUSFTA and NAFTA flip-flops. In other threads, you've blamed Gary Doer's NDP for the failures of neoliberal policies emanating from Ottawa like spokes of a broken wagon wheel. And you've misled no one but yourself.

Fidel wrote:

The "details" were changed drastically since the 1980's. Financial capitalism is no small detail and at the root cause of the crisis of our mixed market economies today.  Neither Marx nor Lenin would have recognized capitalism in the western world after 1929-32 with the vast increases in public sector economy.

The fundamentals of capitalism in 2008 are essentially the same as they were in 1958, 1908, and 1858.  Social relations to production are the same, accumulation is the same, class relations are the same, etc.  The means of production are still owned by the few, and the rest of us still do all the work.  Yes, there has been a massive increase in financialization and speculation and yes, these trends have contributed massively to the current crisis, but these new sectors still follow the same old rules of capitalism.

Also, I find it ironic that a guy who names himself after a declared Marxist-Leninist (unless it is a different Fidel) is telling us to throw Marx and Lenin out the window.  One of my pet peeves is people who pretend to be radicals just because they like the imagery and romanticism of class struggle and the revolutionary left, but are really just social democrats and rather centrist ones at that.  Don't name youself after a revolutionary hero if you don't believe in revolution.  It's the same as those fucks who wear Che Guevara T-shirts when they have no idea what he stood for.  If you believe everything the NDP says and don't oppose capitalism, call yourself Tommy or Ed or Gary, not Fidel or Che or Hugo.

Fidel wrote:

In other threads, you've blamed Gary Doer's NDP for the failures of neoliberal policies emanating from Ottawa like spokes of a broken wagon wheel. And you've misled no one but yourself.

I have only been blaming Gary Doer's NDP for things that are provincial responsibilities, and I have not been misleading or attempting to mislead everyone.  You simply can not comprehend the NDP not being perfect due to your blind loyalty to The Party, so you constantly make excuses for their failures.  And it's not just me as a lone crank, there are a lot of people who are loyal members of the NDP who agree with me.  Heck, I know for a fact there are people in caucus (some of whom have been MLAs for decades) who agree with me, but can't really say anything due to "caucus solidarity".  The youth wing and a campus club have publicly criticized Doer's policies.  I've even seen a guy who founded an NDP campus club in Ontario heckle a Manitoba cabinet minister at a rally.  If these loyal NDPers (and non-NDP leftists) are able to criticize The Party when they fuck up, why is it that you seem to be unable to agree with even one criticism of the NDP or its policies, even when their policies are the same as that of the Conservatives (such as Doer's position on card-check certification for unions being the same as Filmon's), when their policies change between elections and implementation (such as Doer's tuition policy) or inconsistent and contradictory (Layton promising to increase corporate taxes while Doer cuts them).

For example, do you support Doer's tuition policy during the 2007 election, or Doer's current tuition policy?  Do you support increasing corporate taxes Layton style, or lowering them Doer style?  Do you support Filmon and Doer's card-check policies, or oppose them?

I think the big difference here is that I judge politicians by what they do.  You judge them by what colour tie they wear, and thus you are the one who is constantly misleading yourself, trying to justify fanatical support for the NDP.  I think deep down you know that the NDP isn't perfect and disagree with some of their policies, but sadly you feel that you can't show it and need to fanatically support the NDP and tear down anyone who criticizes the NDP, even if you agree with those criticisms.

Fidel wrote:

This is patently false for a number of reasons. The relationships between workers and capitalists have changed dramatically since the communist manifesto was written. Yes we still have capitalists and means of production are still owned by capitalists. What is different since the collapse of laissez-faire capitalism in 1930's western world is the proliferation of visible hand interventionist policies by governments. There have been significant changes to western economies since Keynes, and since the addition public sector economy since Marx and Lenin lived. We've grown up in a time after the creation of public pensions, unemployment insurance, a broad range of social welfare programs public health care and trade unionism. These are things that my father and his brothers never knew growing up in pre-WWII depression era Canada.

The fundamental relationship between workers and capitalists has not changed since the Communist Manifesto or Das Kap was written.  You even admit that the means of production are still owned by capitalists.  A lot of the things you mention are essentially bits of socialist window dressing to keep capitalism somewhat bearable so the workers don't revolt, or state intervention simply to preserve the capitalist system.

Fidel wrote:

And I think you're a confused young man who needs time to figure out where your own political allegiance lies. But right now you're confused.  As far as I can tell, you have a feeble understanding of Canadian politics and economy. If I were you, I would try to understand our own history in Canada, and then try a fit and contrast with the rest of the world and current political events. That might be a better approach for you. I'll give you an "E" for effort though, genstrike.

And I give you an "A" for ageism.  You think you can just call me stupid and dismiss anything I say because of my age and that makes any of my arguments disappear.

Furthermore, Niki Ashton is only a few years older than me, would you go tell her that she is a confused little girl who needs to figure out where her own political allegiance lies?  My NDP candidate in the last federal election was the same age as me, would you go tell him that he is a confused young man?  I'm older than a lot of young NDPers and people in NDP campus clubs, would you go tell them that they are just confused young men?

I know where my political allegiance lies, and it is not with the NDP.

And this isn't the first time you've made ageist comments towards me on this forum.  Seriously, why is Fidel's ageist crap tolerated on babble?

If attitudes like Fidel's are prevalent within the NDP, it is no wonder the Manitoba NDP is out of touch with youth issues.

genstrike wrote:

Fidel wrote:

This is patently false for a number of reasons. The relationships between workers and capitalists have changed dramatically since the communist manifesto was written. Yes we still have capitalists and means of production are still owned by capitalists. What is different since the collapse of laissez-faire capitalism in 1930's western world is the proliferation of visible hand interventionist policies by governments. There have been significant changes to western economies since Keynes, and since the addition public sector economy since Marx and Lenin lived. We've grown up in a time after the creation of public pensions, unemployment insurance, a broad range of social welfare programs public health care and trade unionism. These are things that my father and his brothers never knew growing up in pre-WWII depression era Canada.

The fundamental relationship between workers and capitalists has not changed since the Communist Manifesto or Das Kap was written.  You even admit that the means of production are still owned by capitalists.  A lot of the things you mention are essentially bits of socialist window dressing to keep capitalism somewhat bearable so the workers don't revolt, or state intervention simply to preserve the capitalist system.

That window dressing, as you refer so loosely to it, changed the relationships between workers and capitalism to a great extent. Workers are not nearly as reliant on selling their labour for their well being as they once were. People began living longer and quality of lives improved immensely since 1849. And capitalism bears little resemblance to dollar a day laissez-faire of even the 1930's. You couldnt be more wrong, and it's a sign of maturity to admit that you're wrong. 

And you talk about revolution like it's so easy a decision. Canadians are not at the point that Cuban campesinos were in the 1950's, believe me. If you really believe in bloody revolution, then there are a number of Central American countries that are pregnant with revolution for some time now. But you should know that those countries just a few day's drive from George Bush's Texas are also very dangerous places to even be helping the desperately poor much less talking tough about revolution. The poor and politically repressed in those countries can not afford big talk like yours without anything to back it up. Here we at least have the NDP. In Central America and Haiti, etc, politicos and union leaders who speak along the line of an NDP political point of view are often disappeared and even murdered for daring to challenge the status quo.

genstrike wrote:

Fidel wrote:

That window dressing, as you refer so loosely to it, changed the relationships between workers and capitalism to a great extent. Workers are not nearly as reliant on selling their labour for their well being as they once were.

How so?  The relationship between capitalist and worker is still the same as before.  The worker is still reliant on selling his or her labour.

If you'll notice, not all Canadians sell their labour to capitalists today. Ontario, for example, has produced more public sector jobs than private for the last few years running. Imagine a time when there were very few public sector jobs, and people really were reliant on industrialists to earn a living, or were entirely reliant on scratching a living from the earth without any subsidies from the government. Imagine having no Canada Pension Plan at 65(Canada) or 60(U.K.) Social Security is the most successful socialist program in U.S. history and keeping tens of millions of retired Americans from absolute poverty. You should read James Galbraith's piece on The Real American model. It should open your eyes to the glaring differences between the way it is today and capitalist economies of yesteryear. 

Fidel wrote:

You couldnt be more wrong, and it's a sign of maturity to admit that you're wrong.

genstrike wrote:

More ageism?  Why do I need to "show maturity"?  Why don't you or the OP or any other babbler need to "show maturity"?

Also, why do I need to "show maturity" by admiting that I am wrong when I am not, when I have never seen you admit that you are wrong on this forum.  Heck, I've seen you try to alter the definition of words to avoid admitting you are wrong.

Maybe people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.  Unless, of course, that was just another ageist shot at me, which it clearly was.

If I thought you knew what you are talking about, I would acknowledge it. You seem to think Gary Doer is a Canadian equivalent of Fulgencio Batista and standing in the way of an outbreak of socialism in Canada. And this is what I find so humourous about your revolutionary notes posted to babblers. If I was looking for 80 people to help me overthrow a truly oppressive U.S.-backed mafia regime somewhere in the Carribe, I'd prolly consider leaving you behind at the marina.

genstrike wrote:

]First, I don't want a bloody revolution.  No one wants any unnecessary violence.  . .  but unfortunately, any revolution against capitalism is going to wind up being as bloody as the capitalists make it.

You havent been pushed to the point of bloody revolt, believe me. Yes, I will agree that things have become more repressive in Canada since the beginning of neoliberalism of the 1980's, but not all Canadians are at the point where most Cubans were by the late 1950's. If you want to see people who are beaten by an oppressive all-capitalist system, go visit Mexico, Honduras, Belize and Guatemala. You will travel backwards in time and see people without hope. Even nearer, visit any of the U.S. right to work states where workers live in one industry towns and are afraid to be sick or injured on the job. And even then, those U.S. states are quite a lot more livable and worker friendly that they were in the 1920's and 30's. You need to develop a feel for what it's like living in an all capitalist setup. Many Americans think Canada is a bastion of socialism compared to where they work and live. And I can certainly understand where my fellow workers in the U.S. are coming from when they've said such things to me.

Quote:

These little bits of socialism are there to appease workers who rose up and opposed capitalism.  Our entire 1940s era labour relations system and the legal protections it entails are the result of militant actions by the working class, and the response of the capitalist state which has been to give up some legal protections to workers in exchange for "labour peace".  But I guess I'm too young to know anything about that, even though I took a whole class on it and wrote a fucking paper on it, and I only got an A+ on that paper.  Clearly, that shows that I don't know what I'm talking about because I'm young and stupid, right Fidel?

Well now you're contradicting what you said earlier about relationships between workers and the capitalism system being the same today as they were in the 1850's. But don't suggest to me again that trade unionists, civil society groups, and the CCF-NDP have achieved nothing by the long good fight since turn of the last century or that nothing has changed since 1849.

genstrike wrote:

Fidel wrote:

If you really believe in bloody revolution, then there are a number of Central American countries that are pregnant with revolution for some time now.

So it's Canada, love it or leave it now?  Anyone who opposes capitalism should be sent to Chiapas?

Yes, you're living in Canada where right-wing death squads and secret police are not running roughshod over the peasantry and making leftists disappear according to an army hit list. You're ahead of the game already. You should count your lucky stars.

Well, it seems as though ecopinko addressed everything else, but:

Fidel wrote:

Well now you're contradicting what you said earlier about relationships between workers and the capitalism system being the same today as they were in the 1850's. But don't suggest to me again that trade unionists, civil society groups, and the CCF-NDP have achieved nothing by the long good fight since turn of the last century or that nothing has changed since 1849.

No, I am not contradicting myself or suggesting that nothing has been accomplished.  Some of the details of these relationships have changed, but the fundamentals of the relationships have stayed the same, particularly so for the vast multitudes of non-unionized workers.

To use an analogy, cars have changed a lot since the Model T.  They've gotten a lot more features.  They got a lot more chrome in the 1950s and lost a lot of chrome in the 1970s.  And maybe more people take the bus these days, but that is still essentially a type of car, just a big public one.  But cars are still fundamentally the same now as they were in 1908.  A gas engine, four wheels and a steering wheel.  And if you get a time machine and bring Henry Ford forward in time to 2008, he's still be able to recognize a new car rolling of the assembly line as a car and he'll still be able to point out four wheels, a gas engine and a steering wheel.  Similarly, you bring Marx forward in time to 2008 and he'll still be able to point out surplus value, capitalist ownership of the means of production and capitalist accumulation.

I'm not suggesting that these groups have accomplished nothing, but I'm also not suggesting that they've accomplished eliminating capitalism and creating a new system not based on exploitation of labour.

[b]The case for a socialist alternative[/b]

Todd Chretien wrote:

The current economic crisis has debunked the fiction that there is some sort of iron wall between politics and economics.

For decades, the partisans of the free market fought to liberate their system from the "meddling" of governments and bureaucrats. But when the blue chips were down, Wall Street and its friends in Washington dropped their anti-government ideal like a hot potato. Treasury Secretary and ex-Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson led the charge by demanding the power to disburse $700 billion in taxpayers' money to try to manage the disaster.

This about-face destroyed the last vestiges of the consensus in favor of an unfettered free market among large sections of the business and political elite. No less than ex-Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan--once called "the maestro" by his adoring fans for his supposed genius in orchestrating the economy--admitted in October that he had found a "flaw" in his ultra-libertarian, free-market faith that had led to the housing bubble and subsequent crash.

To top it all off, the Big Three American auto companies are now in a downward spiral, and are warning that they may have to file bankruptcy if the government doesn't bail them out, like it did the banks.

Barack Obama is, according to the New York Times, "looking to the New Deal" for inspiration to guide his plan to stimulate the economy and create 2.5 million jobs during his first term.

This has led to the recognition that the "economy" is just as "political" as gay marriage. That is, there is no "invisible hand" that manages the economy, while voters and politicians decide "social issues" like abortion, environmental protection, health care and education.

Nor is there any sort of abstract "national interest" that governs American military interventions in isolation from domestic politics. All of it is political, and it is all related.

Fortunately, Obama's election represents a renewed interest in politics at an important time. The question is: What political ideas and strategies are available, and which ones should you adopt?

I think there are four basic varieties to choose from: 1) The Right; 2) Liberalism from Above; 3) Liberalism from Below; and 4) Revolutionary Change and Socialism. Of course, this is a simplified description, but the point is to insist on the need to think through the ideas that guide your political actions….

Chretien then goes on to discuss each of the four varieties in turn, culminating in:

Quote:

[b]Revolutionary Change and Socialism[/b]

Alongside Liberalism from Below, a more radical vision for society has struggled for influence throughout U.S. history.

From the Revolutionary War and the fight for independence, to the Civil War and the struggle to abolish slavery, there were revolutionaries like Thomas Paine and Sojourner Truth who understood that Liberalism from Above would only begrudgingly pursue reform.

From the beginning of the 20th century, that revolutionary tradition has been embodied in the socialist movement, which included the IWW, the Socialist Party, the Communist Party, the Black Panther Party and other socialist groups in the 1960s.

Why socialism? Two reasons.

The United Nations estimates that more than 2 billion people around the world live on less than $2 a day, while 6 million children starve to death or die from easily preventable diseases each year. That's another Holocaust, each and every year.

We have the absurd situation of lacking funds to develop sustainable energy technology, while the U.S. spends more than $100 billion a year to kill Iraqis for oil. We have the most advanced medical technology in the world, but 45 million people go without health care insurance.

Those absurdities--in short, the contradiction between the capacity to create and capitalism's inability to distribute to everyone--helped create the movement for socialism, with the aim of taking the power out of the hands of the private mega-rich who use their wealth for personal gain and putting it into the hands of the people who actually do the work.

Socialists believe that, not only do workers have the right to take over the economy and run it democratically, but that if they do not, the capitalists will continue down the path of war and ruin until they destroy the planet.

The other source of the socialist movement came from the experience of the limitations of Liberalism from Below and the question that has emerged time and again: Do you accept the limits imposed on the struggle, or do you go beyond them and question the whole system?

For instance, it was in the struggle to force FDR to keep to his promises that unionists finally decided they needed to organize a series of citywide general strikes in 1934 that set the stage for the founding of the Congress of Industrial Organizations union federation in 1935 and the mass sit-down strikes that followed.

The liberal union leaderships were afraid to launch these strikes because it would mean confronting the police and embarrassing FDR. It took socialists and communists to say, "If the choice is between FDR's friendship and winning a strike, we say strike."

Martin Luther King Jr. followed a similar path. He helped win the end of legalized Jim Crow, but he recognized that poverty and institutionalized discrimination remained, which led him to say, "You have to ask how people can go thirsty in a world that is two-thirds covered with water."

When you ask that question, it leads you in the direction of the socialist critique of capitalism.

And King had a decision to make about Vietnam. Liberalism from Above insisted that the cause of civil rights would be damaged by taking an antiwar position. In essence, LBJ offered civil rights in exchange for King's support for killing Vietnamese people. King could either accept that offer or move beyond it--which he courageously did in 1967 when he declared that "my government is the primary purveyor of violence" in the world.

[b]What Kind of Organization?[/b]

Socialists believe the first step is to gather together the people who share their point of view in a political organization or party. But because the capitalists control the media, and because workers are taught to submit to the boss and "those who know better," at most times, socialist ideas remain on the margins of society. So to be a socialist, you have to be prepared to be in a minority.

In and of itself, that shouldn't scare any serious person looking to change the world. Every powerful movement that ever changed anything began as a minority opinion.

However, there is the danger that the minority can become contented to "know better"--and just be happy to be "right." This is a recipe for arrogance and sectarianism. Like Marx said, "The philosophers have interpreted the world; the point, however, is to change it."

This means that once you've decided you agree with socialist ideas, you have to do something about it. No matter how small, socialist organizations must always seek to put their ideas into practice in whatever real movements are fighting back against the system, be they large or small.

And because Liberalism from Above helps to legitimate Liberalism from Below, that means participating in movements and organizations that are not socialist in outlook. Instead, they seek to win reforms within the system, like stronger unions, abortion rights, an end to the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, immigrant rights, gay marriage and so on.

We do this for two reasons. First, getting rid of capitalism will be a long, tough fight, and the only people with enough power to do it are the huge majority of the working class. And the only way they'll learn to take on the whole system is by starting out taking on some more limited aspect of it.

In other words, you can't learn to swim by reading a book. You learn to swim by going in the water--although it's best if you start off in the shallow end.

Second, once people are in motion, they become more receptive to new ideas and strategies. In the Civil War, white Northern soldiers went to war to preserve the Union, but a number ended up fighting for the rights of slaves.

Eugene V. Debs got into politics as a Democrat and ended up running for president as a socialist while in prison for opposing the First World War, on orders of a Democratic administration. Malcolm X started out as an apolitical, small-time criminal; he emerged as one of the world's foremost revolutionaries. Real political action changes people.

Socialists don't stand aside from that struggle, but seek to participate alongside people who hold different ideas.

In that common struggle, there is a battle for ideas. Liberalism from Above constantly seeks to put limits and conditions on the fight. Movement leaders who represent Liberalism from Below argue for their point of view. Often, that point of view is so pervasive that it is seen as "common sense," but it is, in fact, a highly developed ideology. Socialists try to pull in the other direction, towards mass participation, more radical reforms and questioning the whole system.

The coming political period will be very exciting, but also complex. Barack Obama will sometimes push in the right direction, but he has also made it obvious that he intends to defend the pillars of American capitalism and imperialism.

Socialists will join every fight we can to push things in favor of the working class, for gay marriage, abortion rights, legalization for immigrants and an end to the wars. However, we will also argue against accepting the limits placed on the struggle, or rotten political compromises that would, for example, pit African Americans against gays and lesbians, native born against immigrant workers, unemployed against union members. And in the process, we will try to recruit more and more people to a socialist point of view.

You aren't obliged to agree with the socialists. But you do have the responsibility to participate in the effort to change the world, and to study history and politics in order to clarify what you believe to be the best way forward.

If you have faith in Liberalism from Above, then study so that you can explain your ideas and try to win more people over to them. This leads logically to trying to reform or strengthen the Democratic Party as your main task.

If you believe that Liberalism from Below is a more realistic strategy for change, then you'd better learn what really happened in the 1930s, and during civil rights and antiwar movements of the 1960s, in order to avoid a repetition of McCarthyism and Reaganism.

If you're interested in the socialist, revolutionary point of view, then find a way to meet up and discuss ideas with the socialists in person or online, and join alongside us while we organize around the many pressing issues of the day.

Politics is not a spectator sport. Get in the game.

[url=http://socialistworker.org/2008/12/19/the-case-for-socialism][u]Socialist Worker[/u][/url]

[/quote] [IMG]http://i38.tinypic.com/1r9lpy.gif[/IMG]

Fidel wrote:

Well now you've nearly given up as much ground as Napoleon did at Waterloo wrt public versus private sector employment in Canada.

No, I haven't.  Do you actually read what I write before you go off and unilaterally declare some sort of "victory" like this is some sort of war?

Fidel wrote:

So, you're saying that capitalists do not employ all Canadians, and that worker desperation in Canada is not what it was at turn of the last century.

Yes, we have a public sector.  So what?  Selling your labour to the state is practically identical to selling it to a capitalist.  While there are some slight differences, you still have the same problems of alienation.  The only difference is that the state or a crown corporation takes your surplus vale and not a capitalist.  And I speak from experience working in both the public and the private sector.

Also, you seem to think that just because we have a public sector that it is an alternative for everyone.  If someone doesn't feel like selling their labour to a capitalist, it is just as easy as working in the public sector instead.  Sorry, that's not true.  There are people out there stuck in dead end service sector jobs, do you go around telling them that instead of hating their job it's as easy as just working in the public sector?

I haven't done detailed studies on the exact level of desperation, but people are still forced to sell their labour under alienating conditions and are still forced to give up their surplus vale.  Sounds like capitalism to me.

If you think that capitalism is a thing of the past, you're crazy.

Fidel wrote:

And you're still not sure whether we need a bloody revolution in Canada or to fight with the NDP instead of against
them.

No, I said that we need to get rid of capitalism.  I don't fetishize revolutionary violence or anything, but I am a realist.  If we are to get rid of capitalism, we will almost surely need to confront capitalists and the capitalist state because they aren't going to give up the whole pie willingly.

As to whether to fight with the NDP or against them, that all depends on what side they take.  I don't have any sort of blind loyalties to political parties like you do.  I simply judge politicians and the parties they represent by what they do.  For example, the Manitoba NDP is currently taking a side against working class students, so I, as a working class student, am fighting them.  And I am working with other students, including some rank and file members of the NDP to do it.  I've worked on this issue with people from at least four different political parties, including the NDP.

Fidel wrote:

All kidding aside, what role do you believe our federal government in
Ottawa could play in reducing poverty across Canada and making
post-secondary more affordable for Canadian students?

Under our current system, all levels of government can have a role in reducing poverty.  Regarding post-secondary education, according to the Constitution Act of 1867, it is a provincial responsibility.  And the provincial government has the most effect on the affordability of PSE.  It is only the provincial government which can regulate tuition.  So, your arguments that the provincial government has nothing to do with the affordability of PSE are, quite frankly, laughably stupid bullshit.  Gary Doer giveth the freeze, and Gary Doer taketh away.  Unless you want to credit Jean Chretien for the tuition freeze...

See, Fidel, answering questions isn't so hard.  You don't have to avoid them whenever I ask you one.

Fidel wrote:

He read my thoughts. And that number varies from year to year and sometimes twice as many. Capitalism is a monumental failure.

And yet, you viciously attack anyone who criticizes a certain capitalist party and its capitalist policies.  And you tell people who are anti-capitalist to leave the country.  And you say that young people who are anti-capitalist are just young and confused so you can dismiss their political views in an ageist manner.  Somehow, I doubt either your convictions or your understanding of capitalism.

Fidel wrote:

1. You're full of baloney and wouldnt know Marxism from the Marx brothers

Clearly, I know more about Marxism than you if you think everything Marx said is irrelevent and should be replaced by the gospel of Gary Doer.

Fidel wrote:

2. Le Liberals slashed and hacked away at billions of dollars in federal transfers ever since that infamous 1995 budget.

Repeat after me,  the LIEBERALS, "WHIGS" and predecessors to the LIBRANOS, removed $SEVERAL BILLION DOLLARS$ from post-secondary transfers in the 1990's not GARY DOER and NOT THE NDP.

Doesn't change the fact that it is a provincial responsibility according to the constitution, or that Doer eliminated enough money from the budget through tax cuts for the rich and corporations to eliminate tuition fees probably 2-4 times over.  Or that only the provincial government has the power to regulate tuition.  And we have been targeting the federal government in our campaign as well, you just seem to think we should ignore the level of the government that has the most control over our issue.  You say my aim is terrible when you clearly can't hit the broad side of a legislative building!

Fidel wrote:

I'm sorry to have to point this out to you for the 99th time, and
perhaps you have some soft spot for the neoliberal setup in Canada
since Brian Baloney and Jean Chretien.

These idiotic accusations again?

Fidel wrote:

And if your aim is this terrible, you'd better stay home in Manitoba
and forget about chasing fascists through the bush somewhere in Latin
America. 

I wasn't planning on it.  You were the one who told me to!  Well, actually first, you told me to move to Sweden, then you told me to go to Latin America, and now you're telling me to stay in Manitoba?  Here's an idea:  how about you forget about telling me to leave the country.

Fortunately, I don't move around just because crazed yahoos on the internet tell me to.

Fidel wrote:

And, nobody feels students in NDP Manitoba are hard done by Doer's NDP

Were those hundreds of students at the legislative building in November just a figment of my imagination?  What about those 80%ish of Manitobans who support the freeze?  How about all those folks who signed a petition for Doer against ancillary fee increases?  What about the NDPers who passed resolutions in support of the tuition freeze at their last convention?

Fidel wrote:

Uh! We have a live one. What does the Federation of Canadian Students say about the NDP's PSE platform? 

A live what?

Do you mean the Canadian Federation of Students?  Because in Manitoba, they say "Stop NDP Lies!"

Fidel wrote:

Oh and, uh, WHIGS SUCK! 

That is something we are in agreement on.  You don't have to constantly bring it up to change the subject when you're losing an argument.

Actually, I'm reminded of a song:

Quote:

"Well ya ain't done nothing
if ya ain't been called a Red.
If you marched or agitated,
then you're bound to hear it said.
So you might as well ignore it
or love the word instead.
Cuz ya ain't been doing nothing
if ya ain't been called a Red."

 

Fidel wrote:

Let's see, you dont appreciate it that I "constantly" criticize the Liberals so much, and you disagree with the fact that the Paul Martin Liberals rolled back social gains across Canada by several decades with the infamous Liberal federal budget of 1995, which included he rollback of several billion dollars in post-secondary transfers to the provinces.

No, it's not criticism of the Liberals that I don't appreciate, what I don't appreciate is when you are losing an argument on here and then all of the sudden change gears and drop some barely coherent post that goes something like "Liberanos... Paulie Pockets... STOOGEOCRATS... 22-percenters... Brian Baloney!" and think that is some sort of comeback.  It isn't, it is just a feeble attempt to derail a thread because you are getting your ass handed to you in any actual debate.

Fidel wrote:

What are we to think of this, genstrike?

Oh, these insinuations that I am a Liberal or Liberal sympathizer again?

I think we need a corollary to Godwin's Law on babble.  I propose a Fidel's Law:  Whoever accuses or insinuates that an opponent is a Liberal or Liberal sympathizer, particularly when the first person has no evidence and the accusations are untrue automatically loses an argument.

Fidel wrote:

But you constantly, CONSTANTLY I say, attempt to download their bad policy issues of the recent past squarely onto the shoulders of one Gary Doer and Man-o-Man NDP

Their bad policies?  So Steven Harper is removing the tuition freeze which was implemented in the Chretien era?  The problem here is that I blame the Doer-led NDP for bad policies coming from the Doer-led NDP, and you seem to have a problem with anyone criticizing the NDP even when they're wrong.

Fidel wrote:

This thread is about socialists and far left policies on the "credit
crunch"(sounds like a tasty afterschool snack) that is now a major
meltdown of kapital and neoliberal policies around the globe.

I don't know how we got off on this tangent either.  I remember you said something about neoliberalism and capitalism being synonymous (which was absurd), I challenged it, you flung a few ageist shots as me, we were discussing capitalism for a while, then in post 34 out of the blue you asked me a direct question about the Manitoba NDP and post-secondary education, so I answered it, and now you say that I'm going off topic.

ooooohkay.

Now that this thread has had the requisite foray into Manitoba PSE, can we back on track please?

As for the OP's question: I would consider there are definitely left-socialist responses to the economc crisis that aren't simply "we need a revolution tomorrow". Although I would argue that while we need socialism and that can only come realistically through revolution, that socialists need to be able to organize and operate in the real world, not some future radicalized utopia. 

Okay, so here we go:

1. Nationalize the automakers, and stop waiting for them to implement a 'green jobs' strategy of vehicle retrofitting and altnerative production. North America has a shit load of highly-skilled workers who could put their skills towards something more productive than more shitty GM cars.

2. A massive public works program, instituted by whatever levels of government we can get to do so: civic, provincial, or federal . Geared towards green infrastructure (wind/solar energy generation, transit ways and other public transpo,  building retrofitting for energy conservation, etc).

3. Annullment of any and all corporate tax cuts and the implementation of a Tobin tax on speculative investment. The proceeds of which go to:

4. City-wide coops that are tasked with investing in it the abovementioned public works stuff.

5. Key nationalizations of several industries, including banking, telecommunications, and energy.

6. Low-interest loans to help people get out of debt, and other programs geared to reducing the mindset of debt-driven consumers.

7. The establishment of local, non-sectarian organizing committees geared to organizing the commmunity out of the shithole this crisis will put us into. These would be not be organized by the gov't, of course, but by people.

There's more, but that's what came from the top of my head. A lot of that is based, admittedly, on government doing something directly and not about creating anything long term to build community organizing and solidarity (except pt 7, of course). And that's something I think I'll be thinking about.