me:
> yes, we live in the midst of a moral plague (to use Wilhelm Reich's > apt phrase).
Yoshie:
Neoliberal capitalism, by diminishing the state' and unions' roles, creating more harder-to-unionize service jobs than manufacturing jobs (in both developed and developing nations), and expanding the informal sector (mainly in developing nations), creates more room for religion, for people turn to religious institutions to satisfy unmet needs. Secular leftists in most nations have yet to come up with a viable approach to this neoliberal reality.
right Yoshie had said:
> > Whether in the USA or Iran, waging the main battle on social/cultural > > things rather than economics and foreign policy is a sure loser for > > the working class.
me:
> Maybe. Why not try to unite these? the old communist and > social-democratic parties (RIP) used to try to fight on all three > fronts.
Yoshie, now:
There is much more consensus -- which is closer to the standard leftist view -- on economics like the minimum wage and foreign policy like the withdrawal from Iraq among American workers than on abortion, gay marriage, and other issues like them.
really? maybe we hang out in different circles.
In my view, the way to go, whether in the USA or Iran, is to create a solid faction on the Left first on economics and foreign policy and then try to pull workers within that faction to the Left on more controversial issues like abortion.
this sounds like what I used to say when I was a social democrat (back when dinosaurs roamed the earth). Except I said stuff like "the way to go is to create a solid faction on the Left first on economics and then try to pull workers within that faction to the Left on more controversial issues like foreign policy and abortion." -- Jim Devine / "Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are." -- Bertolt Brecht
