Re: [Marxism] Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, superstar -- and what Engels would have said about her

[Michael Meeropol via Marxism]

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Here are some thoughts on this discussion ---

I think the Liberal media (NY Times, Washington Post) is so desperate to
stop Trumpism they will celebrate anything and everyone who seems to be
bringing new energy to the struggle against "Trumpism" (which is MUCH MORE
dangerous than Trump himself).

The "left" of the left-liberal media -- (I include the Nation and ITT-- not
really sure where the Huff Post stands) -- is more than willing to form a
left-liberal alliance because they also see Trumpism as a terrible danger
--- They also appear to think that the growth of DSA and the increased
support for "socialism" in the US polity -- especially among the young --
creates important SPACE for truly radical ideas (and even formations and
organizations, etc.).

What I think is problematic today (and I see it in many of us who lived
through the 1960s as adults) is that "corporate liberalism" was always the
MAIN ENEMY because it dominated the warfare-welfare state of the 1950-1970
period in the person of the "national consensus" around theCold War,
militarism, anti-communism --- which brought us Vietnam and (at least until
1964) successfully RESISTED the black freedom struggle.

This is why so many people (close friends, comrades and family members)
supported Bernie but WOULD NOT even VOTE for Hillary, let alone work to
prevent Trump from winning.

(and I am guilty -- I didnt think it would make a BIT of difference if GORE
had beaten Bush -- but with 20-20 hindsight we know that is CERTAINLY not
true --- just think of Citizens United for instance --- let alone the Iraq
War and refusing to engage internationally in efforts to slow global waming)

I am in the group that thinks EVEN THE TINIEST of differences between
"liberals" and "Trumpism" needs to be exploited in order to do SOMETHING to
slow down (and ultimately reverse) planetary destruction -- (long run) --
and AMerican fascism (short run).

Mike

LOU WROTE:
:I am actually for the DSA and am happy that it is growing. I am just
reacting to the hype that is being churned out by the NY Times, the
Washington Post, The Nation, Huffington Post, In These Times and all the
other liberal and leftist publications, print and electronic. I feel like I
am being force-fed. I had the same reaction to SDS, Jerry Rubin, Abby
Hoffman and the Yippies 50 years
ago._Full p


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Re: [Marxism] Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, superstar -- and what Engels would have said about her

[John Obrien via Marxism]

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"Most everybody goes to college".   Just not true and out of touch with the 
working poor.


As one who never finished high school and as just one of many in my poor Harlem 
New Yook City working class community, in the 1960's -

today the high school drop out rate in the poor Los Angeles working class 
communities that I reside in - is fifty percent.


And for those not aware, that not all high schoold graduates go to college and 
even fewer graduate from.


"Most people who want a profession" - really nice to state - shows how one 
identifies with those who physically labor

for economic Class reasons and often racism, are consigned to those  
"non-professional' positions to be super expoited and discarded broken

in body and spirit.  And I am not speaking of reigious superstition and usage 
of mythical gods - in the meaning of "spirit", for those whose

language on this site mentions "god" in their writings and observations.



"Education has been cheapened", so states the same person - the reality is 
education, was always limited or unavailable to laborers, to limit
their knowledge and being more resistant to rulers and exploitation.  Those who 
were provided any awareness were most often due to huge
struggles by working people seeking better for their children.  Women and 
People of Color and poor ethnic caucasians viewed as lower on the
pecking order of who was "cultured and worthy" , were often denied any 
education, or the most limited to spend their lives in service to
"their masters".   WASP males of  land and wealth sons received "education" for 
their future "position". In my high school of only working poor's
children, there were only outdated "trades" to learn and no offer for any 
"professional" white collar job.  We were all expendable and designated
by the working class communities we resided in - to manual labor.

It was a Class thing that you might have heard about?  Today only those numbers 
required for operating any technical skills are given
a education limited only to operate but not encouraged to think critically or 
learn history.  And many are needed for those laboring
physical jobs that all on this list rely on and benefit from - and should 
recognize that Class issue - and are not "lesser people" because
they use physical labor to survive, in this capitalist system of eploitation 
and injustice.  Dividing of wage laborers - as who is "better
and more educated", is the bosses benefit and game.  The wealthy only relented 
to provide any education to have those who labor for
them be able to carry out their tasks with that limited knowledge and skill.  
Never to advance the working class - but to benefit the rulers.




____
From: Marxism  on behalf of David McDonald 
via Marxism 
Sent: Sunday, August 26, 2018 1:26 PM
To: causecollec...@msn.com
Subject: Re: [Marxism] Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, superstar -- and what Engels 
would have said about her

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Most millemials go to college. Most everybody goes to college. There are
about 30,000,000 people between 18 & 24 and around 20,000,000 will go to
college at any one time. Most people who want a profession are forced to
have at least a master's degree through competition if not outright
requirements. Education has been supersized while simultaneously cheapened
intellectually, in a gigantic new tithe. God help the kid who gets to 18
without a sure sense of what she wants to do and what education she needs
to buy to do it with. And who the fuck has that? Nobody tells kids the
truth.
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Re: [Marxism] Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, superstar -- and what Engels would have said about her

[Fred Murphy via Marxism]

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Lou, with all due respect you would get a better sense of DSA’s composition
if you attended some branch or working group meetings and talked with your
comrades.

On Sun, Aug 26, 2018 at 1:58 PM Louis Proyect via Marxism <
> marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:
>
> >
> ...
> >
> > Millennials with a college degree. I'm sure that's exactly who is
> > joining the DSA. Back in 1971 I was at the SWP conference at Oberlin
> > (the New Radicalization one)...
> >
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Re: [Marxism] Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, superstar -- and what Engels would have said about her

[Dayne Goodwin via Marxism]

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My impression is that the 250 who have joined DSA in the Salt Lake City
area over the last two years are almost entirely 18 to just-over-30 years
old.  They seem to be a fairly representative proportional sample of
some-college workers, college graduate workers, those doing some college
and working, undergraduate and graduate students, graduate degree workers
and teachers.  Proportional representation hold ups well on gender, less
well for 'people-of-color' and  no-college workers.

btw, i think it was the SWP's first conference held at Oberlin College in
summer 1970 that should be called "the New Radicalization one" (i was
there).  I've often called the 1971 convention of the SWP 'the FAPO
convention' (FAPO = "For a Proletarian Orientation").


On Sun, Aug 26, 2018 at 1:58 PM Louis Proyect via Marxism <
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:

>
> On 8/26/18 2:46 PM, Joaquin Bustelo via Marxism wrote:
> > And my observation in Atlanta is that people joining DSA (here, almost
> > 200 so far this year) are millennials with a college degree and a
> > low-level clerical or service industry job.
>
> Millennials with a college degree. I'm sure that's exactly who is
> joining the DSA. Back in 1971 I was at the SWP conference at Oberlin
> (the New Radicalization one)...
>
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Re: [Marxism] Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, superstar -- and what Engels would have said about her

[David McDonald via Marxism]

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Most millemials go to college. Most everybody goes to college. There are
about 30,000,000 people between 18 & 24 and around 20,000,000 will go to
college at any one time. Most people who want a profession are forced to
have at least a master's degree through competition if not outright
requirements. Education has been supersized while simultaneously cheapened
intellectually, in a gigantic new tithe. God help the kid who gets to 18
without a sure sense of what she wants to do and what education she needs
to buy to do it with. And who the fuck has that? Nobody tells kids the
truth.
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Re: [Marxism] Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, superstar -- and what Engels would have said about her

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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On 8/26/18 2:46 PM, Joaquin Bustelo via Marxism wrote:
And my observation in Atlanta is that people joining DSA (here, almost 
200 so far this year) are millennials with a college degree and a 
low-level clerical or service industry job.


Millennials with a college degree. I'm sure that's exactly who is 
joining the DSA. Back in 1971 I was at the SWP conference at Oberlin 
(the New Radicalization one) when I spotted a guy who had joined 
recently in Boston sitting in the lobby of the student union with a 
thick book in one hand and another on his knee. He was a longshoreman 
named John McCarthy with blonde hair down to his shoulders. I remember 
him vividly. What are you reading, I asked him. He told me the book in 
his hands was V. 1 of Capital and the book on his knee was a dictionary 
to help him with the words. Nobody ever talked to him except me. Most 
people in the Boston branch were just like Bhaskar Sunkara. Student 
government types like Don Gurewitz.


Fast forward (as they say) to 2001 when I was coming back on the Amtrak 
from visiting my wife-to-be who was a graduate student in Albany. 
Sitting in the row adjacent to me were a couple of UPS guys. During the 
entire trip, all they were talking about was the Nader campaign.


The "Leninists" were assholes back when I was young but they had one 
thing right. We had to reach dock workers and UPS workers to build the 
party we need to transform American society. No matter how old I get, I 
still have my eyes on that prize.

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Re: [Marxism] Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, superstar -- and what Engels would have said about her

[Joaquin Bustelo via Marxism]

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On 8/24/2018 3:04 PM, Louis Proyect via Marxism wrote:

Can't figure out why Corey Robin and Bhaskar Sunkara keep promoting 
socialism, at least as they see it, in the Washington Post and the NY 
Times. You'd assume that the Daily News, read by subway workers et al 
(at least those that still read newspapers), would be a more suitable 
location. I guess they are trying to reach other academics, or in 
Bhaskar's case, businessmen.
No one outside New York reads the Daily News. And my observation in 
Atlanta is that people joining DSA (here, almost 200 so far this year) 
are millennials with a college degree and a low-level clerical or 
service industry job. The more serious ones with a few bucks to spare 
subscribe to the New York Times digital edition, just as many 
politically serious boomers read the NYT when we were their age (if we 
could get our hands on it outside New York).


So for example the chair of our chapter led a Jacobin reading group and 
was driving Uber to try to survive (I think he recently got a more 
regular job). And if I remember right, he follows the NYT.

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Re: [Marxism] Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, superstar -- and what Engels would have said about her

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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On 8/24/18 6:54 PM, Fred Murphy wrote:
I'd of course have no problem with promoting socialism in the Daily News 
or even the Post if it reaches working people, but I would not be 
surprised to find that thousands of teachers, health-care workers, 
tech-industry workers, and all sorts of precariously employed 
millennials with huge student debts read the Times.


This would be more convincing if DSA/Jacobin was no so exclusively 
oriented to the Post and the Times. The Daily News is actually to the 
left of the NY Times and is pretty much untouched by the academic left.


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Re: [Marxism] Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, superstar -- and what Engels would have said about her

[Fred Murphy via Marxism]

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I'd of course have no problem with promoting socialism in the Daily News or
even the Post if it reaches working people, but I would not be surprised to
find that thousands of teachers, health-care workers, tech-industry
workers, and all sorts of precariously employed millennials with huge
student debts read the Times.

On Fri, Aug 24, 2018 at 3:04 PM Louis Proyect via Marxism <
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:

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>
> On 8/24/18 2:50 PM, Fred Murphy via Marxism wrote:
> >   POSTING RULES & NOTES  
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> > *
> >
> >
> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/24/opinion/sunday/what-socialism-looks-like-in-2018.html
> >
>
> Can't figure out why Corey Robin and Bhaskar Sunkara keep promoting
> socialism, at least as they see it, in the Washington Post and the NY
> Times. You'd assume that the Daily News, read by subway workers et al
> (at least those that still read newspapers), would be a more suitable
> location. I guess they are trying to reach other academics, or in
> Bhaskar's case, businessmen.
>
>
>
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Re: [Marxism] Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, superstar -- and what Engels would have said about her

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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On 8/24/18 2:50 PM, Fred Murphy via Marxism wrote:

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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/24/opinion/sunday/what-socialism-looks-like-in-2018.html



Can't figure out why Corey Robin and Bhaskar Sunkara keep promoting 
socialism, at least as they see it, in the Washington Post and the NY 
Times. You'd assume that the Daily News, read by subway workers et al 
(at least those that still read newspapers), would be a more suitable 
location. I guess they are trying to reach other academics, or in 
Bhaskar's case, businessmen.




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Re: [Marxism] Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, superstar -- and what Engels would have said about her

[Fred Murphy via Marxism]

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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/24/opinion/sunday/what-socialism-looks-like-in-2018.html

On Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 1:35 AM Joaquin Bustelo via Marxism <
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:

>
>
> * *
> *  *  *
>
> I was saying that even if they were as bad as some comrades claim or as
> what Engels said about the Henry George movement, I would still insist
> that this is the right approach. But in reality I do not believe any of
> those terms and phrases apply.
>
> Joaquín
>
>
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[Marxism] Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, superstar -- and what Engels would have said about her

[Joaquin Bustelo via Marxism]

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http://hatueysashes.blogspot.com/2018/08/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-superstar.html

That's from my blog. And before you go apeshit, read it closely enough 
to understand that my point is that it is not about her, it is about us.


Honestly, I don't write this stuff to be provocative but I know many 
comrades profoundly disagree.


So what follows is an attempt to explain the main elements of my 
thinking about the course I have chosen, with special emphasis on how I 
believe it is fully in keeping with the way Marx and Engels approached 
these sorts of questions.


The core of my analysis is that Bernie's campaign, the DSA's growth, 
Ocasio's victory, etc., are all expressions of a movement in the working 
class, not a movement in the sense of a protest campaign but in the 
sense of a change or development in mass consciousness. This started 
with Occupy and was evidenced by its slogan we are the 99%, which tens 
of millions of people immediatelly identified with.


Both the Sanders and Ocasio campaigns were extremely aggressive and loud 
in identifying with the working class and emphasizing it through things 
like the contributions policy.


I know some comrades think that all this is a fake and a fraud, there is 
just an illusion of class identity. From my point of view that is really 
irrelevant in addressing the question of tactics. I think the clearest 
explanation of the right tactics is Engels's famous letter to Sorge 
about the Henry George candidacy for mayor of New York. 
[https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1886/letters/86_11_29.htm]


But you might object, what good is Engels's advise if we're dealing with 
a complete counterfeit? Well, here is how his letter starts: "The Henry 
George boom has of course brought to light a colossal mass of fraud and 
I am glad I was not there."  He says it was not just a fraud but a 
colossal one so revolting that he was glad to be thousands of miles away.


So did he proclaim it a catastrophic setback for the class? Actually, 
quite the opposite. The next sentence after the one I just quoted says 
"But despite it all it has been an epoch-making day."


Not just a relative advance considering the nefarious circumstances but 
"epoch making." A "colossal mass of fraud" that was a world historic 
advance for the working class.


The next couple of sentences are the famous ones about how "the Germans" 
in the United States treat Marxism as a dogma instead of a guide to 
action. And then he presents the following approach to tactics. At the 
heart of it is how to deal with the *contradiction* between workers 
realizing they need to come together as a political force but beginning 
to do so around "a colossal mass of fraud."


* * *

   The first great step of importance for every country newly entering
   into the movement is always the organisation of the workers as an
   independent political party, no matter how, so long as it is a
   distinct workers' party. And this step has been taken, far more
   rapidly than we had a right to hope, and that is the main thing.
   That the first programme of this party is still confused and highly
   deficient, that it has set up the banner of Henry George, these are
   inevitable evils but also only transitory ones. The masses must have
   time and opportunity to develop and they can only have the
   opportunity when they have /their own movement--no matter in what
   form so long as it is only their own movement/--in which they are
   driven further by their own mistakes and learn wisdom by hurting
   themselves.

* * *

Comrades will object that in no way can the Sanders campaign or Ocasio's 
be equated with Henry George's, there are no ongoing institutions, no 
mechanisms for discussion and decision making etc. But I think here it 
is very important to not project  our understanding of "party" to what 
Marx and Engels were talking about in the 1840s when they first laid out 
their views.


If you re-read the Communist Manifesto which is where the whole concept 
of the centrality of the party in the worker's movement is first 
thoroughly dealt with, you will see there are references to concrete, 
existing parties in the last chapter. They mention two parties as 
worker's parties: the Chartists and the U.S. Agrarian Reformers. That 
last one is a somewhat mystifying reference because it is not exactly 
clear who they're referring to or what information they had that led 
them to call it a working class party.


But the Chartists Marx and Engels did know very well, and that was not a 
"party" as we would use the word today but a movement around a petition 
called the "People's Charter." There were