General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: It tells us nothing at this point that HRC beats Bernie among women and poc. [View all]Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)I specifically made the opposite argument a few posts above. I'm not saying the things you're accusing me of saying.
You act like we are in disagreement, but we're not.
I agree with you that, even if economic justice were achieved, the fight against bigotry and oppression would go on.
What we can't possibly do is defeat bigotry and oppression once and for all while preserving the current economic structure-a structure that is designed to keep bigotry and oppression going.
Capitalism(of the form we have now)and social justice cannot coexist. That's a major part of why the freedom struggle was stopped in the Sixties...the market forces types wanted it stopped(and want the ERA kept off the books so they can keep paing women less, and want abortion criminalized because that makes it easier for them to mistreat female workers, and want homophobia to go on because that makes it easier to take working people's minds off of the fact that they are getting screwed.
I want all the battles you fight to be won...so does everyone else(from what I can see) who backs Bernie's campaign. A lot of his supporters are former Sixties and Seventies activists who have been in all the fights you are still fighting...and stand by your side in those fights today. The only thing we are really adding to your argument is that greed and massive concentration of wealth need to be defeated if we are to make this the oppression-free society you and I both want.
You can't fight oppression as a member of the Stock Exchange, or in a corporate boardroom. You can only fight it from below.
And you need a coalition of all who are oppressed...economically as well as socially...to defeat oppression.
If Bernie's campaign was making the Marxist argument from the 1870's or something that everything would be fine "come the Revolution", you'd have a point. But nobody's being that reductivist nowadays...both struggles need to go on, and people who want change need to be part of both struggles.
There's much more openness to the social agenda than you seem to acknowledge. Please be willing to listen...you have more friends and more allies than you think.
We are all fighting for what the late Guy Carawan called "a right...to the Tree of Life" that means the good things of the world, not "life" in the anti-choice, anti-woman sense).