Lou says:
>Yoshie:
>>American workers -- even in the midst of neoliberal capitalism's best
>>boom times ever -- were not as comfortable as many PEN-l posters
>>imagine them to be (and now the boom is practically over -- we only
>>wonder how bad & how long the coming recession will be). Therefore,
>>I conclude that it is *the absence of a clear political program &
>>energetic political organizing* -- not economic booms, much less
>>"comfortable" American workers -- that is responsible for a poor
>>showing of the American Left.
>
>Is that what we need? A clear political program and energetic political
>organizing? That's odd. During my time in the Trotskyist movement, I was
>around people who went into factories and mines who never were able to
>recruit a single person to socialism, let alone bring them to a forum. Not
>that I am an expert on what the rest of the left was doing, but nobody else
>had any success either.
That's no reason to give up, unless you agree with Brad, Nathan,
etc., which you don't.
>In reality, no significant section of the US working class is open to
>socialism. It is not so much that they are comfortable, it is more that
>they do not see any particular urgency to be revolutionaries.
Again, that's no reason to give up, unless you agree with Brad,
Nathan, etc., which you don't. What exists can & will change, though
change for better is by no means guaranteed.
It seems to me that both you & Brad believe in the iron cage, though
with different political reasons & conclusions. If you believe in
the iron cage, though, what's the point of being a socialist in
America?
Yoshie
