‘Socialism’ seen as positive by young Americans
- This topic has 2 replies, 2 voices, and was last updated 10 years ago by
.
-
Posts
-
This also might make interesting reading.http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/29/why-are-there-suddenly-millions-of-socialists-in-america
Quote:Bernie Sanders didn’t push the young toward socialism. They were already there…What’s the substance of the new American socialism? I know of no surveys asking this newly hatched brood to define what they mean when they call themselves socialists, but we can make some educated guesses. First, they don’t counterpose socialism to a militant liberalism. …The United States may suddenly be home to millions of socialists, but it still lacks a socialist movement. …A recent poll showed that more than nine in 10 Americans said they would vote for a qualified presidential candidate who is Catholic, a woman, Black, Hispanic or Jewish, but less than half said they would vote for a candidate who is a socialist. Why is socialism still a taboo in this country (although one must admit that socialism seems to be dead virtually everywhere else today in the Western world)?Noam Chomsky A difficult question to discuss, because the word "socialism" (like most terms of political discourse) has been so vulgarized and politicized that it is not very useful. The essence of traditional socialism was workers' control over production, along with popular democratic control of other components of social, economic and political life. There was hardly a society in the world more remote from socialism than Russia, which is presented as the leading "socialist" society. If that's what "socialism" is, then we ought to oppose it. In other uses, the post office, national health programs and others are called "socialist," but they are not opposed by the public — including national health, supported, often by large majorities, for many years in the US, and still today. The term "socialist" became taboo for reasons of Cold War ideology, which divorced the term from any useful meaning.There are significant elements of something like authentic socialism in the Western world, notably worker-owned (and sometimes managed) enterprises, cooperatives with real participation, and much else. I think they can be thought of in Bakunin's terms, as creating the institutions of a more free and just society within the present one.http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/35402-noam-chomsky-the-republican-base-is-out-of-control
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.