“Re-imagining socialism”

Chris Cutrone

Letter in The Nation April 20, 2009 ģ„øģøģø  ė”œģš° 4 ģŗė¦­ķ„°. [PDF]

Barbara Ehrenreich and Bill Fletcher Jr.ā€™s article, and the forum in reply, exhibit a glaring disparity between the breadth and depth of the crisis and the timidity of response, in particular Robert Pollinā€™s reversal of the 1960s-era slogan ā€œBe realistic, demand the impossible!ā€ to ā€œBe utopian, demand the realisticā€ to push Obamaā€™s reforms further ģ—°ķ•˜ģž„ ė¬“ė£Œ.

There was an earlier formulation of reality and utopia by C. Wright Mills in his 1960 ā€œLetter to the New Left,ā€ the injunction that any purported left ā€œbe realistic in our utopianism.ā€ After the 1950s declaration of the ā€œend of ideology,ā€ Mills recognized that the only realistic possibility of political responsibility was in the ā€œutopianā€ and frankly ā€œideologicalā€ program of socialism, which Ehrenreich and Fletcher treat as the dirty S-word ź³¤ģ§€ģ•” ģ˜ķ™” ė‹¤ģš“ė”œė“œ.

Mills warned that socialism needed to be reinvented, on the basis of the best of the Marxist tradition. He enjoined his readers to ā€œforget Victorian Marxismā€ and ā€œre-read Lenin and Luxemburgā€ and recall what socialism once meant ģ˜ķ™” ė°±ķŠøėž™. But we now have a rehash of the worst of socialism. The global problems of capitalism will not find solutions derived from Lulaā€™s Brazil or ChĆ”vezā€™s Venezuela, 1970s-ā€™80s Swedish policies, takeovers of closed factories in Argentina or community gardens in Detroitā€™s emptied lots Download twilight novels. Mills called such perspectives the politically irresponsible combination of ā€œliberal rhetoric and conservative defaultā€ in the ongoing absence of a true left zebra designer ė‹¤ģš“ė”œė“œ.

While there are much worse things than living under the Swedish welfare state or eating homegrown vegetables, this is not a realistic prospect for saving the majority of the worldā€™s people, or even the majority of Americans, from the ravages of capitalism vsftp rpm ė‹¤ģš“ė”œė“œ.

When Christian Parentiā€“-who, with Liza Featherstone and Doug Henwood, wrote a fine critique of ā€œLeft anti-intellectualismā€ in Action Will Be Taken, invoking Adornoā€™s critique of unthinking ā€œactionismā€ā€“-notes the virtue of Marxism so even a semiliterate Indian public could grasp the dynamics of international capitalism better than their US counterparts, we have arrived at the reversal of Marxā€™s 11th Thesis on Feuerbach, that hitherto we have tried only to understand the world, while the point is to change it Download keyshot 8 material.

Only what the present ā€œleftā€ deems ā€œutopian,ā€ ā€œfull-throttle socialismā€ā€“-starting and pursued to conclusion in the United States, the core of global capital, where the crisis and its potential solution find their nexusā€“-has any hope of making a true diagnosis of our problems and a prognosis for overcoming them Download pdf from a certified broker. While the revolution envisioned by Marx has never occurred, it still might and, indeed, must if we are to begin to address the manifest problems of capitalism recognized clearly so long ago Download Reba's Adventures 2.9 Bugpan. | Ā§

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