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> On Jul 21, 2017, at 1:05 PM, Louis Proyect via Marxism > <marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote: > > Odd to see this in Fortune. Nothing odd about this at all; the purpose of this piece is to distance Sanders from the term socialism and malign the latter—currently at record popularity among younger people—as “inextricably intertwined with the history of totalitarianism.” The stuff on banks reinforces this: they believe (or they want everyone else to believe) that socialism is necessarily centralized, top-down, monolithic, bureaucratic. The editors of Fortune magazine probably genuinely believe that capitalism can accommodate a fairly generous social democratic deal, if not now then in the fairly near future when the robots "really come into their own” (and if they don’t genuinely believe it, they believe it’s better if they pretend they do). Fortune also published a sympathetic piece on “universal basic income” a few weeks ago, and it helps make sense of this current one on Sanders and Obamacare: Why Free Money for Everyone Is Silicon Valley’s Next Big Idea http://fortune.com/2017/06/29/universal-basic-income-free-money-silicon-valley/ <http://fortune.com/2017/06/29/universal-basic-income-free-money-silicon-valley/> The editors of Fortune are happy to embrace welfare-stateism within the spectrum of possible capitalist dispensations. Of course, it's important to be “realistic” about what forms that can take—and they’re more than willing to be the judge of what’s “realistic," whenever that becomes necessary—but whatever you do, for heaven’s sake, don’t think sympathetically about “socialism.” All hell could break loose. _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
