The lack of a good socialist movement is hurting America

[LuckyTheDog]

It was never likely that Eugene Debs -- whose party advocating things as radical as the abolition of the U.S. Senate -- would ever be elected president. But he did a lot of good.

Debs built support for things that later were adopted by the somewhat-more-Mainstream Progressive (Bull Moose) Party and Democrats. Debs moved the political center of U.S. politics to the left in a way Norman Thomas -- and later, Michael Harrington -- could not.

Debs was powerful because he was a man of the people. He was smart, but while he never glorified ignorance the way the right wing of today does, he never a "public intellectual" either. He was a man connected to the working class by having been part of it. And his utter sincerity and good intentions gained him respect.

People complain a lot about Obama. But here is what I think: Obama has legitimately progressive leanings and populist goals, but he is just barely treading water. The current is pushing him to the right and he cannot make as much headway against it as any of us would like.

Obama (and the rest of the Democratic Party) needs a Eugene Debs -- somebody out there organizing the most alienated people (many of whom would never vote for Democrats because they don't vote at all at this point) and speaking up for "crazy, impossible" ideas that the Democrats can't or won't even attempt to advocate for fear of a backlash. That "somebody" also should be practical enough to work with the Democrats when that advances his/her movement's agenda and know when to stand pat when the Democrats want to be timid.

Is anybody interested in or capable of being such a person -- or financing the movement in which such a person might emerge?

I don't know the answer. But that's the kind of person we need.

[asjr]

1. What I would like to see is hundreds

of thousands, maybe millions, voters descend on D.C. and the Senate and House and block the doors and tell them they can't go home until they do something for the country. Do something right for a change. They have not earned a penny that they have been paid. We complain constantly and, just like this, do nothing. And we also might go to the major newspapers and T.V. stations and right-wing radio and bar the doors there. We might think Obama will be reelected--but we do not know. Saying that will not make it happen. If the Republicans take the presidency and the Senate it will mean either we have messed up or the vote is already fixed. I think it is the latter. I do believe the fix is in. Somehow, some way they will fix the votes.

[Donnachaidh]

3. it's happening

http://october2011.org/blogs/margaret-flowers/we-can-no-longer-wait-change-come-protest-october-6th

[Shagbark Hickory]

10. I think it would be more effective to blockade their country clubs and golf courses.

Like when your mother wouldn't let you go out to play until you finished your homework.

[OHdem10]

2. What about a Liberal Movement., let alone socialist??

[white_wolf]

4. A liberal reform oriented movement can't arise without a radical movement arising first.

All of the New Deal reforms were gained by the socialist left pressuing FDR and the other democrats into reform. The social-democracies of Europe were created by socialist parties fighting to overthrow the capitalist system. To quote Fredrick Douglas "power concedes nothing with a demand. It never has and it never will."

[TBF]

9. Liberals are not a threat. Too status quo. nt

[patrice]

5. I know I would trust more of what "the Left" has to say if there were such a thing. Obama's problems

in addition to the Derivative Crash of '08, Citizens' United, Congress, and the bullshit that happened in the 2010 vote, include the fact that there really isn't anything organized and effective enough to be a functional force to contend with from the authentic Left.

And what calls itself the Left is too busy counting political coup by trying to make him a one-termer to make it possible for them to have a seat at the table. By promising to destroy him with their votes, they weaken their own positions, so no one HAS TO take them seriously and no seat at the table.

I have come up with what seems to be a pretty good hypothetical explanation for what Obama is going. It is based on something we heard a lot in 2008, "We ARE the ones we have been waiting for." Obama know he CAN'T do it for us and even if he tried, how much of it would be what we need/want since we aren't the ones making it happen? Hmmmm? And what happens to whatever he does for us once his administration is over?

And isn't the essential problem, one of the most important things that IS, in significant part, responsible for getting us into this mess in the first place, the fact that the People have been too reactionary, too dis-engaged, too passive, too alienated? What is the best way to get people up off their butts and doing stuff? Preaching at them? Begging them? Cheerleading? Flattery? How about THREATENING them by allowing the very real ugliness and unprincipled avarice of their enemy to expose itself? How about THREATENING them with the LOSS of some stuff that they REALLY need?

I don't want to downplay all of the negative factors in our situation, nor ANY mistakes, but given the basic assumption that there is only just so much that any one entity, or government, can do for EVERYONE, is it not possible to see much of what has happened over the last 3 years as framing the question, "What are Y-O-U willing to DO?"

"We ARE the ones that we have been waiting for" is more than a pretty, nice, buzzzzzzzy slogan. It's a blueprint. President Obama has been posing situations, some in response to how negative things in fact ARE, and some in order to assess the situation with questions such as: WHO will DO something? WHAT will they do? How EFFECTIVE can they be?

It is the answers to those question that as much, or maybe even MORE, will determine what happens.

I read somewhere, during the Reverend Wright frenzy which occurred appx when we were also talking about Hillary's thesis on Saul Alinsky, that while working around Chicago's Catholics back when, Barack Obama encountered Liberation Theology and I don't want to present myself as an expert, nor to oversimplify LT, but I believe one of it's basic tenets, and one of the reasons that LT has caused trouble in the RC for its tragically dangerous effects in Central America, is that one of the most important things LT says the Oppressed NEED to do to BEGIN to achieve spiritual development is to DECIDE FOR THEMSELVES WHAT THEY WILL DO and then stake their own identities and honor on that work in the face of the powers that be NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS.

....................................

It's an ironic footnote that though the Pope chastised the Jesuits (I believe it was) who were doing that kind of work in one or more Central American countries (sorry, I can't remember which ones, but there were quite a few people killed for not taking a side in the drug wars down there and trying, instead, to do their own thing - honest to God modern-day martyrs!) anyway . . . even though the Pope chastised some Liberation Theologist types for their activities, South and Central America have since become huge expansion territories for American Evangelism in the last 10 years, which I'd bet a dollar-to-a-donut is of the Dominionist type because that accounts for the rapid expansion in countries that are already mostly Christian . . . the difference being that in Liberation Theology work is supposed to be a personal expression of one's and one's community's deepest self, kind of like Socialism, whereas in Dominionism it's probably pretty much anything for a buck, with a different more capitalistic economic model, which you may have noticed this last week or two produced at least one very BIG religious crook who embezzled millions from his evangelical religious ponzy scheme.

...................................................

Sorry about rambling!! There's just been so much that has puzzled me about this President and I just recently think I finally see something through all of the noise.

:hi:

[white_wolf]

6. Per Liberation Theology. Pope John Paul II, who is a hero to conservative Catholics

purged a lot of priests who refused to recant liberation theology. He said it wasn't theology, but Marxism.

[patrice]

7. Yep. I remember him slapping some guys in public during one of his visits down there.

I know a Catholic brother and one Fair-trade guy who have been down there quite a bit and both of them say just exactly that: people are murdered NOT for the side that they are on in their cartel wars, but for not being on any side at all. It threatens their established "order".

[patrice]

8. Stupid pope! Jesus was killed BECAUSE he was too Free.

[TBF]

11. The most heroic word in all languages is revolution. - Eugene V Debs

K&R for the OP.