Walter Water-Walker
I would say yes. It was incredibly common in his day and just because you weren’t a member of the Communist party didn’t mean you weren’t a socialist. I can’t really see anything about his politics that isn’t socialist so I’d say yes.
McCarthyism. It was basically like the Soviet Union purges but for capitalists (against communists).
My personal view is that the first mass wave of communism and socialism (19th and then 20th century) took the bourgeoisie by surprise. They learned their lesson and now spend a lot of effort on building and maintaining liberal ideology and squashing any real socialist movements quickly. Meanwhile, the proletariat doesn’t even know who they are so there’s no class consciousness building and they’re constantly stuck in the spectacle that is the labor/consume cycle.
I love how, with the Snowden leaks and more, we know definitively that the US government is collecting all our data but people are super scared right now that China might be spying on them.
One thing’s for sure: capitalism seems to be miles ahead of any socialist country when it comes to propagandizing their citizens. Because the best propaganda is the kind that you don’t even know is there.
There is a mismatch between leftists’ understanding of theory and their understanding of the real-world development of socialism. I think, though, the more we get interested in how, exactly, we change he world, the more we’ll be willing to stop clobbering others over the head and calling them “revisionists” and, instead, we willing to actually learn and understand what AES is up to and how they manage the external and internal threats of the bourgeois (petite or not).
I like the quote from Castro when he had his last visit to China:
Xi Jinping is one of the strongest and most capable revolutionary leaders I have met in my life.
Cuba has a lot of land-owning people and is still undergoing economic reforms. They’re still evolving. And so is China. China’s got billionaires. But the existence of these things doesn’t mean they are not building socialism. It just means that this is what socialism looks like in our time.
The USA was a bourgeois revolution but it did not end the slave system. It wasn’t until later that it could. I think too many leftists fail to realize that during periods of transition (which can last hundreds of years), there is going to necessarily be a mix of elements from both systems (old and new). But this is precisely what material dialectics says will be the case.
For the USA? My sad opinion is, for the moment, that we don’t. We are trapped.
But I think I doesn’t matter. Once you scale your vision beyond the borders of any particular country, you realize there’s a lot we can do here and now to fight for socialism. Namely, supporting struggles elsewhere, such as in the Philippines.
Sublation Media (Douglas Lane) just had an interview with Benjamin Studebaker about this. In Studenaker’s book, The Chronic Crisis of American Democracy, he argues that we have unresolvable problems that can really only get worse at this point. That is, the prevailing winds will be austerity and a retraction of democracy and freedom as capitalism fortifies itself against the global changes that challenge it (China, global warming, African liberation, S. American liberation, etc).
It’s probably worth a listen: https://youtu.be/PD3qsR8GrX4
I’m not saying to despair but rather to keep your Marxist chops sharp and recognize how things are changed so you can know what’s possible and what isn’t. Only if we’re honest about the reality of the situation can be seek real options for what to do about it.
as Americans, how can we support struggles that are so far away?
Outside of laundering money to a leftist organization somewhere, I’m not really sure, TBH. Organizations like the International Socialist Alternative (ISA) exist as a kind of way to link up the global struggle across national boundaries. But I have no experience with them and don’t know if that’s a good or bad route.
And how come we are powerless to change things home?
This is all my opinion. I’m sure there’s a way but I think it’s pretty well-hidden. Most of human history is not revolutionary but rather the continuation of a bad system. So it’s less likely you’d be living in a time of revolution than in a time under some class system that seems to be maintaining itself pretty well.
Having said that, we don’t know when the opportunity will present itself either. So in my view, you may as well operate as if a great revolution is just around the corner. Educate workers, organize them, mobilize them, rail against the existing order, etc. The old “education, agitated and organize” addage.
So saying “we’re powerless” isn’t the point, I guess. Because we won’t know whether we are or aren’t until we try and either fail or succeed. Rather, I would say a better viewpoint is simply to acknowledge the fact that we aren’t currently in a moment of historical change. But despite this, our work is pretty much the same either way. And it’s a lot better to understand how political economy works anyway than to remain ignorant and be predisposed to the rat race of electoral politics and the whole spectacle of society.
Like, I can spot the neoliberal propaganda in Marvel movies quite easily. But not too long ago I didn’t see it at all. I think there’s value in that. I’m growing and learning. And I’m able to understand events in terms of class or class struggle.
Like the issue in Niger right now. As a liberal, I would be wanting to pick sides and know if they’re good or bad and probably would have thought the new government was bad and we need to send in the troops. But as a Marxist, I’m like, “Oh, this is like international bourgeoisie against local bourgeoisie and local bourgeoisie has a current interest in decoupling them from neo-colonialism, which is good, but will probably betray that on down the line.” Just being able to frame things by class and class interest is useful.
And, of course, in the context of the USA, your greatest impact is at the local level (county). Your vote actually does count there and it’s at least possible to form a leftist org that forces policy changes on the local level to materially improve lives. Something along the lines of forming a mass line would be the approach here. But on the state and then national level, your vote is effectively useless. Because those processes are anti-democratic and they’re mostly theater to give people the illusion of democracy and make us feel involved when really we’re not actually doing anything that nudges power in the right direction ever.
I have two dogs (a big one and a little one) and some training from a dog trainer. There’s no “getting even” with dogs. If you pee on their bed, they won’t care. They’ll smell it, and because their sense of smell is drastically more evolved than ours, they’ll figure out what you ate a couple of meals ago and what you’re current mood is. They will not interpret your pee as an act of vengeance.
There’s no punishment you can give. Instead, you need to hack dogs’ psychology (which is easy, actually) and train them to pee outdoors only. The way you do this is to by POSITIVE motivation. Each time they pee outdoors, give them a treat. You have about ~2 seconds to give them that treat though, so keep treats in your pocket at all times. Treats you know they like.
What will happen is that they’ll pee exactly where you want them to pee to get the treat. It takes multiple times, but they’ll make the connection. They just want the treat. Only after they’ve made the appropriate connection between peeing where you want and getting a reward can you begin then to not always give them the treat. Instead, affirm with a simple “good boy” and maybe a pet. Slowly (over weeks) retreat the reward until you’re just giving a verbal “good boy”. And maybe not even every time.
What they will do is just pee outside because “that’s the way they always do it”. That’s it. That’s all their brains will tell them. And they might bark or ask to go outside even when they need to go because, in their heads, it’s “weird” to go inside. It’s not what they did the last 20 times so they don’t want to.
Anyway. Take it from a random person on the Internet: punishment won’t be effective. Just hack your dog’s love of food and love of routine. Keep it positive and you’ll, eventually, receive the fruits of your labor.
