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American leftists find themselves at a tactical crossroad. Will the 39% of Americans (and more than half of those under 30) who steadily oppose capitalism stand up for themselves? Will socialists, progressives, communists, leftist anarchists and leftist libertarians boldly fight to build a movement, thus inspiring other allies of the working class to join the struggle to abolish the vicious and vacuous capitalist system?
Or will leftists continue to tolerate and support a corporate Democratic Party that exploits them for their votes, financial contributions and labor while it contemptuously promotes everything they deplore?
Two out of 5 voters is a plurality. If the other 3 out of 5 split their votes between the Democrats and the Republicans, the left wins . But those big numbers cannot win if they remain scattered. Tragically for workers and the environment, the left has no organization, no party, no media, no voice inside the establishment.
Progressives and other leftists are powerless. The only “major” left party in the U.S., the Greens, received 0.2% of the vote in 2020. Celebrity-oriented internet formations like the fake-progressive Movement for a People’s Party suck energy away from those who want to build a real grassroots party.
There isn’t a single newspaper, television network, commentator on a television network or even an op-ed columnist that/who is a leftist.
The streets, churning with Black Lives Matter protests last summer, emptied after the defeat of Donald Trump.
Biden marks a new low for the post-1960s left. Two months in, the new president has already abandoned the few progressive promises he made in order to con supporters of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren into supporting his regressive policies. The promised $15-an-hour minimum wage quickly plunged by a third to $9.50, scaling up to $15 over four years, and now appears to be a dead letter. Student loan forgiveness went from $50,000 to maybe $10,000. The administration has announced no plans to add a public option to the Affordable Care Act. The number of progressives in the Cabinet is zero.
Yet, even now, at this darkest of bleak times, there is hope. Hope lies in the left itself.
“The general sentiment of mankind,” Frederick Douglass observed, “is that a man who will not fight for himself, when he has the means of doing so, is not worth being fought for by others, and this sentiment is just.”
The political gains of American women over the last century offer a lesson for down-and-out leftists. Women convinced men to support equal rights. But first, women had to convince themselves that they deserved equality and that their cause was viable — that they could win after sustained struggle. As Douglass (who also supported suffrage) observed about the requirement that oppressed people fight first for themselves, women’s self-assuredness attracted male allies to their movement.
It is time for the 39% of American voters who hate capitalism to step up, speak up for themselves openly and repeatedly, and refuse to be shouted down.
I collect political buttons. I have one with a red dot in the middle surrounded by the words “against woman suffrage.” Think about it: Just over 100 years ago, not that long, men walked the streets of American cities wearing a pin that said they didn’t think women should be allowed to vote — yet they weren’t worried about being physically assaulted. Try doing that now! Now a woman is vice president of the United States to the oldest president ever to be inaugurated, making it likely that she will become president.
Although a quick glance at a joint session of Congress reminds us that this country still has a long way to go when it comes to equal opportunity, that’s a lot of progress.
Most historians who analyze this cultural shift look at how and why the dominant white male power structure evolved during the 20th and early 21st centuries toward support for suffrage; women’s mass entry into the workplace; sexual liberation; the role of liberalized divorce in personal and financial emancipation; reducing discrimination by institutions like the military and corporate boardrooms; and, after decades of resistance, women becoming viable candidates for the nation’s highest political office.
At least as important, however, is the change over the last century in the way that women view themselves . A 1903 article in The Atlantic documents the remarkable scale of opposition to American women’s own enfranchisement: “In 1895 the women of Massachusetts were asked by the state whether they wished the suffrage,” the magazine noted. “Of the 575,000 voting women in the state, only 22,204 cared for it enough to deposit in a ballot box an affirmative answer to this question. That is, in round numbers, less than 4% wished to vote; about 96% were opposed to woman suffrage or indifferent to it.” If a woman had wound up on the presidential ballot, most women would have voted against her because she was female.
In the early 1970s, just 40% of women told pollsters that they “favor most of the efforts to strengthen and change women’s status in society today.” Seventy-six percent of women and 70% of men now support the Equal Rights Amendment.
Why were there so many, to reference the comedy troupe, Ladies Against Women? Some women were worried that the feminist movement would burden them with obligations traditionally saddled upon men, like becoming subject to the military draft and paying child support. Others thought equal rights would destroy the traditional family. Over time, however, the advantages of equal pay for equal work and the desire for respect swept those worries aside. Women know they can do anything that a man can do. Most men, all those who are not stupid, see it, too.
American leftists are in the same diminished psychological state as the women of the 19th century. We are marginalized from “mainstream” political debate in corporate media, whitewashed out of official histories; we have few victories to celebrate and heroes whose lives are unknown to us. We have no self-confidence. How can we overthrow capitalism without believing in ourselves, our ideas and our potential? When I tell people, including leftists, that 39% of Americans are leftists, that there are more leftists than Democrats and Republicans, they think I must be lying or mistaken.
Few women who lived at the time that my anti-suffrage political button was made imagined how radically things would change in their favor over the next 100 years. Patriarchy was a seemingly impregnable colossus until it wasn’t.
Capitalism is weak. The system is in a classic crisis of overproduction. Unemployment and underemployment are out of control. For-profit health care continues despite a pandemic. And consumerism-caused environmental collapse is in full swing. Socialists, communists, progressives and other leftists should emulate the example of American women, take confidence in their numbers and the viability of their cause, and get organized.
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THE JUDAISTS AND THE DEMOGANGSTER PARTY ARE PURE EVIL, AND PUBLIC ENEMY NUMBER 1.
As a socialist, who cares about worker rights and the environment, we should ban immigration, as it destroys the environment (more garbage dumps, forests being razed to build homes for aliens) and destroys worker rights, as aliens take jobs away from Americans.
But as a true socialist, I know the enemy—it is the Judaists and the Demogangster party. These annie mulls are so evil, they are going to bring millions more aliens to steal our jobs.
immigration-is-cancer.blogspot.com
This is the 3rd most populous nation on earth, and China and India have NEGATIVE immigration.
Only the USA govt. is so corrupt and evil as to flood our overcrowded nation with more aliens.
This is a crime against humanity by the Judaists and their puppets, the Demogangsters.
These alienists are like pigs who pander to 3rd world dump, and remind me of these pigs:
Photo of a pig toilet: https://www.flickr.com/photos/nigelbraddock/8043883405
“Celebrity-oriented internet formations like the fake-progressive Movement for a People’s Party…” It’s this type of leftist cannibalism that creates the lack of progress Rall bemoans in this article. I haven’t seen any celebrities associated with the People’s Party, unless Jimmy Dore counts.
As much as it is true that the great majority of people are ‘leftist-socialist’ – in the sense of govt-led economic re-balancing to benefit working classes –
It is just as much true that the great majority of people absolutely hate the disgusting pro-censorship cancel culture, the oppression of traditional social values, the pushing of migration and white-society destruction, by what is now called the ‘Left’ … which leads people to vomit over ‘leftists’, the ‘Left’ badge is poison now for many
To put it another way, people are POPULIST … which according to the ‘Left’ is right-wing, Nazi etc … nationalistic socialist perhaps indeed … opposed to how the oligarch-run fake ‘Left’ prioritises migrants, minorities of colour, LGBTIQ … but ignores most of what real workers prefer
People are mostly Left on economics, ‘Right’ on social values … they want freedom of speech, the ability to speak freely on racial & culture issues, the right to maintain trad culture; they want guns for protection, action against crime; they want brakes and limits on LGBT-tranny dominance suppressing traditional family & gender roles in society; they want fairness, not white denigration & humiliation … Dems and Repubs screw the plebs both ways, doing lip service for one side or other, but both serving oligarch agendas
Instead of Ted Rall pushing the nausea-inducing ‘leftist’ label … why not join the ‘real’ socialists on the Social Right? After all, publishing on Unz Review, he’s already smeared as a ‘right-wing fellow traveller’ … Ted Rall should tune into the blog of Unz author Brad Griffin (real name), who blogs as ‘Hunter Wallace’ … he talks about this stuff all the time, about where the political centre really is
http://www.occidentaldissent.com/
The writer John Steinbeck famously commented that socialism never caught on in America because the people consider themselves temporarily embarrassed millionaires rather than an oppressed proletariat. For a very long time, there was so much wealth here that Marx’s parasite class could skim off the lion’s share and there was still plenty left for working people to fight one another over. But that time is now all but passed. There is nothing like feudalism to build class awareness and solidarity, and that is what’s next in the hollowed out, strip mined US if today’s elite remain in power.
Try attacking them for being socialist. You’ll be labled another Joe McCarthy , and ((( the left ))) will unleash an avalanche of hysteria and propaganda, screaming “It’s The Return of McCarthyism!!!!”
Leftism ultimately fails, because it’s based on immaturity and posing. Leftists claim to want to help the poor and want everyone equal. But, do they really believe this? No, because statistically, they actually give far less money and volunteer less than people on the right. They just want to impress. They are posers. They support communism and anarchy, because our pop culture and our intelligentsia considers that trendy and “cool” to do so. They want others to look at them as different, cool, civil-rights heroes. They love lording over others about their superior morals. They are like the college students who loves to show off their sanctimonious liberal-arts sophistication. Usually, people grow out of this immaturity. But, immaturity dominates our culture.
And yet, if you ask the rightists on here, you would think that it’s the rightists who are under attack and have no voice, who “are marginalized from ‘mainstream’ political debate in corporate media, whitewashed out of official histories; have few victories to celebrate and heroes whose lives are unknown to them, who have no self-confidence.” Etc etc etc. And that the “leftists” are in the driver’s seat, turning the great, humanitarian capitalist system, at one time a Pleasure Island playground for the common man, into a communist cesspool as we speak.
Funny how the self-delusion of rightists knows no bounds.
The left is not a cooalition of races and genders. THE LEFT IS THE WORKING CLASS.
The whole working class. Including the white working class. The working class has one and only one advantage. Numbers. Numbers become power in the presence of SOLIDARITY. Working class issues are economic issues. We must be united in our quest for what? For peace and prosperity. We can have our differences on our own time. Our day job is to stand as one regarding our relationship with the government which is proxy for the ruling class.
Real economies are mixed economies. Public financing for pubic needs (Socialism) and private financing for private needs (Capitalism). How you do the mixing will lean left or right. Bernie Bros and Deplorables have more in common with each other than either has with Democrats or Republicans. Our betters want race war. Let’s you and him fight. This because they fear a united working class. Class war is the reality today and the working class divided is a one legged man in an ass kicking contest.
I see that Ted Rall, with whom I share a deep disgust at American imperialism, retains a blind spot in this post about the good example the movement for Women’ Suffrage provides for Left-leaning politics in the United States at the present time.
Namely women in 1920 did not have in the recent past the collapse of an effort to allow women equal political access, while Leftists have the collapse of Communism 30 years ago, with which to cope.
Lenin’s version of socialism brought us the Gulag; Mao’s version brought us the Cultural Revolution, during which there occurred forced cannibalism and following which we have a million Uighurs in concentration camps.
I don’t know about you, but those events certainly temper my enthusiasm for any movement urging us to promote socialism.
Do you really think there can be a mass anti-capitalist movement in a country where what people choose to believe is decided by their prospects for future profit and social advancement? Even when presented with an open opportunity to defend itself from the so-called “1 percent”, your “socialist majority” balks, for instance, voting down a measure in California which would have required labels on genetically modified food.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_California_Proposition_37
I could go on.
Dear Ted, the only places socialism truly worked were in Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy. Are you finally coming around to reality? LOL.
“THE LEFT IS THE WORKING CLASS”
As a working man I totally and utterly reject such stupidity. I’m a capitalist and a libertarian.
“Think about it: Just over 100 years ago, not that long, men walked the streets of American cities wearing a pin that said they didn’t think women should be allowed to vote ”
————-
I think we should not allow woman to vote or drive! Damn, they are mostly awful drivers.
Right. Socialism is good.
Rall is obviously a moron.
Your problem is, you’re stuck in yet another government-issue bullshit fake dichotomy. Freedom vs. Dictators. God vs. Godless Commies. Americans v. Unamericans. Meaningless abstractions that lead nowhere.
Capitalism v. Socialism. Nobody in the wider world dicks around with that nonsense.
The real opposition is Bretton Woods vs. Dumbarton Oaks. And that’s long since been settled. The Comintern had a measly fifty-odd fringe national parties at its peak. ECOSOC’s international has the governments of 171 nations. Contain that. You can’t. The dominoes all fell down. Dumbarton Oaks took over the world. Except in your US backwater, where you still count capitalist and socialist angels on the heads of pins.
You know Bretton Woods. It’s central planning by banking kleptocrats, development as a vicious circle of growth and debt. You exist for the economy. If it doesn’t need you, you live under a bridge and starve.
Dumbarton Oaks is in the US statist cone of silence, so you never heard of it.
Dumbarton Oaks is simple. You don’t exist for the economy, the economy exists for you. Development is fulfillment of all human rights.
In practice, you ratify the ICESCR. That commits your state to allocate all available resources to human rights: political, economic, social, and cultural. You want a space force? You want tanks for cops? Come back when these guys here have their right to housing all fulfilled. And education. Oh, and leisure, and health, and a livelihood, and freely chosen work… go back and read what you signed there.
https://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CESCR.aspx
A perpetual cycle of legal and peer pressure like your nightmare performance eval from your worst dick boss, Why not? When? More, more, more! It’s the state on the treadmill, not you.
Lots of competent NGOs are pushing for this. They don’t need Boy’s State speeches, just get with them.
Normally I agree with you, Working Class. But this time not so much.
The USA, as constructed, will NEVER come together in Solidarity. We on the Dissident Right who oppose Leviathan will not reach working class Solidarity until Secession from the Washington cesspool is achieved. Leftist Bernie Bros, who hate Heritage America, and Hillary’s Deplorables really have little in common. Karl Marx’s dreams of a “united working class” are not possible in a far too-big multi-cultural dystopia, made much worse by the open borders Harris/Biden Democrat ruling class..
Cartoonist Ted Rall seems to think that all who oppose US capitalism are unorganized leftists, and will only achieve their goals if they organize. That’s hilarious. It took great organization for them to steal the 2020 election. Ted’s problem with BLM is that they didn’t riot long enough. Just wait – summer is approaching.
It is not the Left but the dissident Right that has “no organization, no party, no media, no voice inside the establishment.” Stop complaining Ted. Your side controls the federal government and has won the cultural war. Why not do yourselves a favor and fight for peaceful secession from us hated deplorables?
The USA, as constructed, will NEVER come together in Solidarity.
Agreed. I’m calling for unity among the working classes. Not to take over DC. To separate from it. It’s Bernie’s and Trump’s people who have been screwed by crooked elections. I, for one, am not interested in any more contests between Democrats and Republicans. Both are useless against the Oligarchy and the Deep State. I want out of their jurisdictions. I should have made myself clear.
I usually sign off with:
Stop the hate.
Separate.
The 39% of American voters who hate capitalism should pack their bags and move to either North Korea, Cuba, China, Venezuela or any other number of socialist countries across the globe. Stop trying to shove your ideological agenda down the throats of those with no inclination toward that type of utopia.
And, maybe it hasn’t dawned on Ted that the US is one of the biggest socialist countries on the planet. With over two thirds of it’s federal budget dedicated to social security, medicare/medicaid and welfare benefits I would say we meet the definition of socialism. And, if you care to throw in the military budget with payoffs to defense contractors you could almost say the federal budget is nearly 85% pure socialism.
From a strictly Constitutional point of view. All government spending is by default socialism. Especially since government at the federal level is supposed to be limited. With a federal budget of well over 3 trillion please point out where the Capitalism exists. Where is there Capitalism when the Federal Reserve can print up fiat out of thin air and then use that to buy Treasury bills/bonds to fuel government spending. If anything that’s fascism at it’s finest.
And, the only reason Commie “Heels Up” Harris can become POTUS is because she is riding the coattails of the demented fool currently suffering from elder abuse in the White House.
Does the idiot Ted Rall really think she could be elected on her own merit. Look how poorly she did in the 2020 primaries. She sucked so bad she had to drop out after the Iowa caucuses. The only way she’ll get elected in 2024 is if they pull the same shenanigans they pulled in 2020 against Trump. That along with importing millions of third world illiterate diseased migrants to vote Democrat.
The US is so far up socialism’s ass they can literally tickle socialism’s uvula. The only capitalism left in the country is the Wall Street/Corporatist Crony Capitalism where the gains are passed onto the 1% while the losses are passed onto the taxpayers.
Wake up Ted and stop kissing the socialist manifesto every chance you get.
Why Yanks are so completely confident in the claims of Sunni Crusaders about Uighurs is a mystery. Don’t you ever wonder why Moslem Governments don’t support those hysterical claims?
Moslem Governments are well enough organised to send investigators to Xinjiang. No Yank in Government can figure out how to get into an airplane and nobody that works in the US infotainment industry has the faintest idea of how to investigate wild claims or any desire to do so. For Yanks, it’s all open mouth and closed brains.
As an individual, you should accept that the people who run the 6 companies that own 90% of the US media have no interest in what’s true, only what’s convenient for them. Remember that a company is often dominated by one man; the whole opinion of 90% of the US media may be the preferred “reality” of as few as 6 men. Who knows, I may be completely wrong and it may be an enormous number of fifty men or even more.
Even if you accept that all Republicans are racist liars, you should beware of accepting all US media claims. donthomson1@hotmail.com
I agree, there should be, at least one. But the median voter model can explain why there isn’t: the right and left can both gain more votes by moving closer to the center, so the political parties end up in the center. MSM, ruled by the profit motive, is even more vulnerable than the political parties to this movement to the center.
But things are changing. The fact that Tucker Carlson and Rachel Maddow even exist shows the extent of polarization. Very soon, we will have uncompromising leftists spouting opinions on the networks and in the national newspapers. We might even have the far-right speaking openly… in certain designated locales, by appointment only.
Back in the 1970s the early green movement inspired by Edward Abbey’s the Monkey Wrench gang was split because people like Abbey quite rightly saw that increased immigration, and open door immigration in particular as a very bad thing for the environment. The open door internationalists won, and theire descendents are now on Twitter calling every one who doesn’t agree with them a Nazi.
Michael Meo,
Socialism leads to the “Gulag” or cannibalism? That is some heavy duty finger pointing!
I see different results – like socialism leads to very decent countries like Denmark or Sweden wherein most of their citizens lead peaceful, happy lives.
And, please look at China – a socialistic behemoth that has taken a billion people from a hungry peasant-like existence to middle class living.
From my viewpoint – coming from 79 years living in America, things are not so good as they used to be – in 1950 – America was a democratic, economic “powerhouse” – now 70 years later, I work at a big box store to pay my everyday bills. Perhaps, one’s view of socialism depends upon where one is seated on the Gravy Train.