Thank you, Dr. Street for putting all this together in one concise essay.
What would it take for me to become a revolutionary? A sign of solidarity among the American working class. I simply don't see it. The capitalist establishment has successfully "divided and conquered" the American working class for over 75 years now. Each of us, instead of manifesting unity and solidarity against the common enemy, the capitalist 1% class, are fighting against each other every day. Even in only small ways we are all divided and :"looking out for number one" as the saying goes.
Most Americans don't even know what a Marxist "working class" is. They think they're just one lottery ticket away from "easy street."
The American indoctrination system to keep the working class ignorant of their class condition, thinking they have something in common with the financiers and capitalists and divided against each other without the slightest awareness of class consciousness or class solidarity is so thorough and deep that I don't see American working class consciousness every happening. At least not in my lifetime.
But thank you for trying to raise awareness with great essays like this.
Thanks...well, you know, I'd say say working class a bit less and say humanity a lot more. A lot of folks I know who identify as Marxists think all Marxism is is class struggle...and they tend to say "workng class" abourt every 10 to 20 words or so to the point where it gets pretty goofy. It's a helluva lot more than that. It's scientific socialism and historical materialism and we don't sit around waiting for "the" working class to fulfill some sort of teleological mission that turns out to have been a religious and unscientific idea flipped over from Hegel. We aren't waiting for some kind of mythical historical "class truth" law to deliver us a revolutionary proletariat. And really, Avkian and the RCP are very good on how to think about communism and revolution beyond that whole (I think) fetish (a fetish I know quite well as a former labor historian and former industrial worker!). Check em out.
Well put. Astra Taylor just gave the Massey Lectures on Canadian national radio...an honor reserved for the likes of Martin Luther King and Chomsky. 5 Days 1 hr lectures. Insecurity over solidarity is what we have.
She did a beautiful job describing how capitalism manufactures Insecurity. We are vulnerable insecure by nature but capitalism goes out of its way to manufacture completely unnecessary insecurity....but necessary for exploitation.
Our right wing Conservative Party wants to defund Canada's national public radio CBC....what is happening in AMERICA is happening here too just in lessor extremes
I'm a DSA member but looks like I will now also become an RCP member. I feel like this is the real duty of Left media commentators - usher people towards a party organization.
well, you know, I for the helluva it canvassed for the Bern even while pretty much disdaining him in Iowa in 2020. Biden hatred was some part of me doing that...and wanting to stir up contradictions within the horrifici dismal dem party. I also just wanted to see the process up close again as in 2007-08, Many good convos with regular folks well beyond candidate-obsessed idiocies/fetishes in late 2019 and Janiuary 2020. Very instructive and journalsitically useful. Bernie was a big backer of the bombing of Serbia in 1999 BTW. I've never trusted him. I remember when he called Hugo Chavez "a dead communist dictator." LOL, what a jerrk.
Great essay ! Your description of things is accurate and poignant Comrade Paul. Most Americans- North Americans are semi-conscious mostly comatose complacent consumers that want to consume more and more.
Marketing is everything.
We will have to sell communism as anti-communism...Get a charismatic Jack Kennedy type with the best lines that Madison Avenue can come up with to say the opposite of what he means... Seriously I think things have to get worse before they get better...climate change... fascism... mad max....and then possibly out of the ashes...we might start civilization over...if the possibility remains... I'm not sure humankind deserves much of a future...And I am being positive 😬
Serious and politic. If you were the fill in talking head newsreader for twodays we all would see the elephants in the room. Have an assistant drop a brown bag lunch on newsdesk and bury a celeb story in the crunchytwisting of plstc packaging.
What you omit about the Americans, to go with "semi-conscious" and "comatose", and perhaps the more insidious, is "indifference"; they're much too busy chasing 'dollars' and caressing their 'phones'.
Yes and that chase keeps them unconscious insentive. They are not caring that their taxes paid for the Israeli" s weapon that just murderd a child while I typed this
Thomas, I listened to one of Berman Lectures-Thank you so Much! Yes, he sees things the way I do. Americans don’t so much have the wool pulled over their eyes by corporations, but the wool is their eyes! The average American citizen is just a consumer wanting a Mercedes Benz like Janice Joplin says....just consumers grateful for corporations supplying them goods. Americans are not as bright CONSCIOUS as Chomsky assumes. My childhood Hero Ralph Nader kept on lecturing about civics-activism to get people to activate the democratic opportunities they actually had-when most are not interested in that. A people, who are basically as Berman says are stupid. Not so much ignorant but stupefied staring at their screens.
Thomas, I listened to one of Berman Lectures-Thank you so Much! Yes, he sees things the way I do. Americans don’t so much have the wool pulled over their eyes by corporations, but the wool is their eyes! The average American citizen is just a consumer wanting a Mercedes Benz like Janice Joplin’s song....just consumers grateful for corporations supplying them goods. Americans are not as bright CONSCIOUS as Chomsky assumes. My childhood Hero Ralph Nader kept on lecturing about civics-activism to get people to activate the democratic opportunities they actually had-when most are not interested in that. A people, who are basically as Berman says are stupid. Not so much ignorant but stupefied staring at their screens.
I see you've gone the full route into BA's minor orbit, comrade Street. As you know BA has been around for some time now, and if he's as smart as you suggest, a proper question is why hasn't he been able to do more? I posted a piece on my substack titled 'the natural vanguard,' which you may want to look over. To BA's credit, it is true that he's pointed out the growth of the fascist sector in our polity for some time. Back in the 1990s, I even worked on a small event with the RCP where Jerry Harris and I presented our analysis of theocratic fascism, but the event didn't lead to more. If BA had the tactical wisdom to point out the necessity, among many other things, to vote for the Dem over Trump, and to expand the 'Squad' rather than dismiss its importance, I might take him and the RCP more seriously. But thus far, he hasn't. So I do my work building up the common effort against Trump's fascist bloc uniting a far wider left, and winning over what we can of the center as well. Even Liz Cheney, of all people, is making a worthy contribution today. --CarlD
Note that I promised a future commentary on the (I think) wild atacks on Avakian and RCPers. You are aware I hope that Avakian broke form and recommended voting "for" Biden in 2020...can't see him doing that in 2024 but we shall see. I was in DC and witnessed the leading and brilliant revcom and RU4AR (a viciously red-baited group) activist Sunsara Taylor hand her bullhorn to Squad leader AOC to denounce the Dobbs decision outside the Christian Fascist Supreme Court. It was pretty cool. The question "why not able to do more" seems appropriately directed at pretty much the entire left in the fall and winter of 2023, no?! It is now much more common to hear Trump and Trumpism properly identified as fascist but there's often a lot missing in the new acknowledgements on what exactly F is and how to best fight it. Tomorrow on CounterPunch I hope to have a critical reflection on NYT columnist Frank Bruni's recnet high-profile use of the F-word. Quite right on Avakian getting the menace as far back as the 1990s.
Expanding AOC' Squad would be strong beginning towards something more substantial. There is more depth to the progressives than the corporate Democrats , corporate media and the corporate culture of America can handle. They are boxed in now but aware and wanting to do substantially more.
Well Mr. Street I would like to thank you for that erudite summation. I left the YCL back in the fifties over the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' phrase. Recently I've been looking into the world of Anarchism, under the aegis of Judith Suissa's Anarchism and Education. I harbour a strong sense of the need for an educational arrangement that caters to early childhood. The anachronistic system in place steals and numbs the minds of the young, witness the mindless cultish citizenry today. I'm reminded of William Godwin who warned us of the dangers of a government / educational system, this back in the late seventeen hundreds, which is still in place, and we know how much capitalist governments like change. I harbour the notion that each child born has critical thinking carried in its DNA until this educational system lays its hands on them. Don't know how much time is left to me since I have reached the age of ninety four, but nothing daunted, once more unto the breach. Thanks again. Hasta luego.
I'm there mentally and psychologically but very handicapped, couldn't get to or stand to protest or type on my computer, all all too slowly to be effective sending msgs to congress, and thinking kind of slowly also, plus I have no more disposable income to join anymore groups. All I do is forward your posts and some of Avakian's to my friends. So I'm not ending up effectively doing anything! :-(
Thank you, Dr. Street for putting all this together in one concise essay.
What would it take for me to become a revolutionary? A sign of solidarity among the American working class. I simply don't see it. The capitalist establishment has successfully "divided and conquered" the American working class for over 75 years now. Each of us, instead of manifesting unity and solidarity against the common enemy, the capitalist 1% class, are fighting against each other every day. Even in only small ways we are all divided and :"looking out for number one" as the saying goes.
Most Americans don't even know what a Marxist "working class" is. They think they're just one lottery ticket away from "easy street."
The American indoctrination system to keep the working class ignorant of their class condition, thinking they have something in common with the financiers and capitalists and divided against each other without the slightest awareness of class consciousness or class solidarity is so thorough and deep that I don't see American working class consciousness every happening. At least not in my lifetime.
But thank you for trying to raise awareness with great essays like this.
Thanks...well, you know, I'd say say working class a bit less and say humanity a lot more. A lot of folks I know who identify as Marxists think all Marxism is is class struggle...and they tend to say "workng class" abourt every 10 to 20 words or so to the point where it gets pretty goofy. It's a helluva lot more than that. It's scientific socialism and historical materialism and we don't sit around waiting for "the" working class to fulfill some sort of teleological mission that turns out to have been a religious and unscientific idea flipped over from Hegel. We aren't waiting for some kind of mythical historical "class truth" law to deliver us a revolutionary proletariat. And really, Avkian and the RCP are very good on how to think about communism and revolution beyond that whole (I think) fetish (a fetish I know quite well as a former labor historian and former industrial worker!). Check em out.
That para by me is a response to Mr. Herzog's thoughtful reflection.
Thank you, Dr. Street. I will look into "Avkian" whom I know nothing about.
You are definitely circulating in higher intellectual circles than I am, unfortunately for me.
Nobody and I mean NOBODY around me has the slightest awareness of class consciousness.
You show a most keen insight into the problems affecting American society, which is complimented by your clear and concise way of presenting them.
concise...I had to go four drafts to get this thing half way readable! LOL. Thank you.
Well put. Astra Taylor just gave the Massey Lectures on Canadian national radio...an honor reserved for the likes of Martin Luther King and Chomsky. 5 Days 1 hr lectures. Insecurity over solidarity is what we have.
She did a beautiful job describing how capitalism manufactures Insecurity. We are vulnerable insecure by nature but capitalism goes out of its way to manufacture completely unnecessary insecurity....but necessary for exploitation.
Our right wing Conservative Party wants to defund Canada's national public radio CBC....what is happening in AMERICA is happening here too just in lessor extremes
I'm a DSA member but looks like I will now also become an RCP member. I feel like this is the real duty of Left media commentators - usher people towards a party organization.
My last respect for Bernie (who most DSAers I know are into) went buh bye when he came out against a ceasefire in Gaza for God's sake. JFC.
Agreed. Poor Bernie lost all his spirit. I supported him twice in both 16 and 20, he seemed like the best option. But wow, what a let down.
well, you know, I for the helluva it canvassed for the Bern even while pretty much disdaining him in Iowa in 2020. Biden hatred was some part of me doing that...and wanting to stir up contradictions within the horrifici dismal dem party. I also just wanted to see the process up close again as in 2007-08, Many good convos with regular folks well beyond candidate-obsessed idiocies/fetishes in late 2019 and Janiuary 2020. Very instructive and journalsitically useful. Bernie was a big backer of the bombing of Serbia in 1999 BTW. I've never trusted him. I remember when he called Hugo Chavez "a dead communist dictator." LOL, what a jerrk.
Great essay ! Your description of things is accurate and poignant Comrade Paul. Most Americans- North Americans are semi-conscious mostly comatose complacent consumers that want to consume more and more.
Marketing is everything.
We will have to sell communism as anti-communism...Get a charismatic Jack Kennedy type with the best lines that Madison Avenue can come up with to say the opposite of what he means... Seriously I think things have to get worse before they get better...climate change... fascism... mad max....and then possibly out of the ashes...we might start civilization over...if the possibility remains... I'm not sure humankind deserves much of a future...And I am being positive 😬
Serious and politic. If you were the fill in talking head newsreader for twodays we all would see the elephants in the room. Have an assistant drop a brown bag lunch on newsdesk and bury a celeb story in the crunchytwisting of plstc packaging.
What you omit about the Americans, to go with "semi-conscious" and "comatose", and perhaps the more insidious, is "indifference"; they're much too busy chasing 'dollars' and caressing their 'phones'.
Yes and that chase keeps them unconscious insentive. They are not caring that their taxes paid for the Israeli" s weapon that just murderd a child while I typed this
You might find the writings of Dr. Morris Berman to be of interest. I believe his blog is "Dark Ages America." He has great insight into U.S. culture.
Thanks Thomas I will check him out
Thomas, I listened to one of Berman Lectures-Thank you so Much! Yes, he sees things the way I do. Americans don’t so much have the wool pulled over their eyes by corporations, but the wool is their eyes! The average American citizen is just a consumer wanting a Mercedes Benz like Janice Joplin says....just consumers grateful for corporations supplying them goods. Americans are not as bright CONSCIOUS as Chomsky assumes. My childhood Hero Ralph Nader kept on lecturing about civics-activism to get people to activate the democratic opportunities they actually had-when most are not interested in that. A people, who are basically as Berman says are stupid. Not so much ignorant but stupefied staring at their screens.
Thomas, I listened to one of Berman Lectures-Thank you so Much! Yes, he sees things the way I do. Americans don’t so much have the wool pulled over their eyes by corporations, but the wool is their eyes! The average American citizen is just a consumer wanting a Mercedes Benz like Janice Joplin’s song....just consumers grateful for corporations supplying them goods. Americans are not as bright CONSCIOUS as Chomsky assumes. My childhood Hero Ralph Nader kept on lecturing about civics-activism to get people to activate the democratic opportunities they actually had-when most are not interested in that. A people, who are basically as Berman says are stupid. Not so much ignorant but stupefied staring at their screens.
I see you've gone the full route into BA's minor orbit, comrade Street. As you know BA has been around for some time now, and if he's as smart as you suggest, a proper question is why hasn't he been able to do more? I posted a piece on my substack titled 'the natural vanguard,' which you may want to look over. To BA's credit, it is true that he's pointed out the growth of the fascist sector in our polity for some time. Back in the 1990s, I even worked on a small event with the RCP where Jerry Harris and I presented our analysis of theocratic fascism, but the event didn't lead to more. If BA had the tactical wisdom to point out the necessity, among many other things, to vote for the Dem over Trump, and to expand the 'Squad' rather than dismiss its importance, I might take him and the RCP more seriously. But thus far, he hasn't. So I do my work building up the common effort against Trump's fascist bloc uniting a far wider left, and winning over what we can of the center as well. Even Liz Cheney, of all people, is making a worthy contribution today. --CarlD
Note that I promised a future commentary on the (I think) wild atacks on Avakian and RCPers. You are aware I hope that Avakian broke form and recommended voting "for" Biden in 2020...can't see him doing that in 2024 but we shall see. I was in DC and witnessed the leading and brilliant revcom and RU4AR (a viciously red-baited group) activist Sunsara Taylor hand her bullhorn to Squad leader AOC to denounce the Dobbs decision outside the Christian Fascist Supreme Court. It was pretty cool. The question "why not able to do more" seems appropriately directed at pretty much the entire left in the fall and winter of 2023, no?! It is now much more common to hear Trump and Trumpism properly identified as fascist but there's often a lot missing in the new acknowledgements on what exactly F is and how to best fight it. Tomorrow on CounterPunch I hope to have a critical reflection on NYT columnist Frank Bruni's recnet high-profile use of the F-word. Quite right on Avakian getting the menace as far back as the 1990s.
Expanding AOC' Squad would be strong beginning towards something more substantial. There is more depth to the progressives than the corporate Democrats , corporate media and the corporate culture of America can handle. They are boxed in now but aware and wanting to do substantially more.
Well Mr. Street I would like to thank you for that erudite summation. I left the YCL back in the fifties over the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' phrase. Recently I've been looking into the world of Anarchism, under the aegis of Judith Suissa's Anarchism and Education. I harbour a strong sense of the need for an educational arrangement that caters to early childhood. The anachronistic system in place steals and numbs the minds of the young, witness the mindless cultish citizenry today. I'm reminded of William Godwin who warned us of the dangers of a government / educational system, this back in the late seventeen hundreds, which is still in place, and we know how much capitalist governments like change. I harbour the notion that each child born has critical thinking carried in its DNA until this educational system lays its hands on them. Don't know how much time is left to me since I have reached the age of ninety four, but nothing daunted, once more unto the breach. Thanks again. Hasta luego.
I'm there mentally and psychologically but very handicapped, couldn't get to or stand to protest or type on my computer, all all too slowly to be effective sending msgs to congress, and thinking kind of slowly also, plus I have no more disposable income to join anymore groups. All I do is forward your posts and some of Avakian's to my friends. So I'm not ending up effectively doing anything! :-(
If you’re forwarding high quality posts like Avakian and Street, you’re doing a whole lot more than the vast majority of “ activists”