Socialism 3

Why No Socialism (for now) in the US?

3 years ago Translations, ,

Why there will be no socialism (for now) in the United States

By Dr. Salvador Capote
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Please see the translator’s explanation below. Thanks.

The incoherence within the two major parties of the United States has never been greater than in these times. Roughly speaking, the Republican Party is divided between Trumpists, with their far-right extremism, and conservatives who follow the traditions of the “Grand Old Party” (GOP), while in the Democratic Party a left-wing has been strengthened whose most conspicuous figure is its independent ally, Senator Bernie Sanders. Joe Biden represents the mainstream, while Bernie Sanders represents the left of the political spectrum.

For some decades now, mainly after the collapse of the socialist camp and the end of the Cold War, both conservative and liberal elites no longer felt threatened by a global confrontation and considered that the time had come to eliminate the institutions that supported the working class and to finish the job of destroying the unions. Their tool of choice was the outsourcing, or threat of outsourcing, of factories and jobs to other countries where wages, taxes, restrictions and environmental and other regulations were considerably lower. Without any compassion whatsoever, they brutally closed the door to any demand for wage increases or improvement of working conditions, many sources of employment disappeared as well as the know-how of many technologies and, as a scapegoat, workers were made to believe that immigrants, especially undocumented immigrants, were the cause of all their ills.
 
This was the main cause, although not the only one, that when the coronavirus epidemic broke out in the United States, the country found itself polarized, divided, with a growing institutional, economic and social crisis that the pandemic itself would deepen.
 
The current political landscape is very complex and has the potential to eventually drift towards extreme situations that are difficult to manage. A greater leading role by the organized labor movement would be essential at this time but, unfortunately, this is not its finest hour, since the working class is divided along ethnic, racial, religious, partisan and regional lines of fragmentation, with strong antagonism between the old WASP (“White-Anglo-Saxon-Protestant”) lineage and the more recent waves of immigrants, mostly Spanish-speaking and their descendants.
 
There is also a kind of “labor aristocracy” made up of mid-level corporate executives, professionals and bureaucrats, with interests opposed to those of the labor movement. A subtle and long-established way of neutralizing and confusing workers is to make it easier for them to buy shares in the companies in which they work and thus make them believe that they belong to the business class. 
 
In such a country, anything that has a class dimension necessarily has an adverse impact on the most vulnerable sectors of the population and, in the United States, it necessarily has a racial dimension. The disaster caused by Hurricane Katrina, for example, mainly affected the African-American population of New Orleans, and COVID-19 is currently hitting minorities much harder.
 
While the members of the American oligarchy escape the virus by isolating themselves in their mansions or luxury condominiums and dedicate themselves to golf or playing with their electronic devices or watching television programs or, like the ancient Greek aristocracy, to creative leisure, the workers, especially those in the service sector, almost always minorities, cannot stop working and have no way of escaping infection with the virus. The figures leave no doubt as to the classist and racist dimension of the way in which the government’s response to the pandemic has been structured. In Chicago, for example, African-Americans make up about 30% of the total population but 70% of those who die from coronaviruses.
 
The systemic crisis in the United States is deepening and no one is able to predict when it will hit bottom. The responsibility of trying to reverse this process falls on Biden’s shoulders. In this sense, the election of Biden was the best option from the point of view of prolonging the viability of the system, since with Trump the country would surely have continued on the path towards polarization, confrontation and autocracy. I have only referred to the challenges that Biden will face in terms of domestic policy, but he will face equal or worse challenges in the country’s foreign policy, since the United States is rapidly losing its world hegemony and it has already been announced that the Chinese economy will surpass that of the United States in a few years. 
 
Triumphant in the 2020 presidential elections, the Democratic Party emerges as a hybrid that, on the one hand, continues to be financed (as much or more than the Republican Party) by big millionaires and large corporations, with its strongest social base made up of sectors of the middle class and, on the other hand, offers a discourse and electoral promises that favor minorities, the poor and the marginalized. 
 
It is hard to believe that President Biden, a veteran of the old partisan guard who, as we used to say in the Cuban countryside, is a rooster who has already fought on both fences (in the small village and in the big city), is capable and willing to carry forward a very advanced plan of progressive reforms. Notoriously, many of the left-leaning voters who voted for Biden actually did so with the intention of voting against Trump.
 
An experienced politician, Biden adapts his speech very well to the audience he is addressing, with very different tones and content that take into account the characteristics of his audience. In general, Biden assumes a certain sympathy towards popular causes, as happened on the occasion of the events in Minneapolis, for the murder of George Floyd, or in Kenocha (Wisconsin), for the murder of Jacob Blake, both African Americans, but he keeps the distance imposed by his classist background. With this background, we must ask ourselves what guarantees there are of compliance with the Biden-Sanders agreements published in July 2020 (“Unity Task Force Recommendations”) in which Biden committed himself to include as part of his agenda many of the important demands promoted by the senator from Vermont and by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, which, let us say in passing, are more reformist than revolutionary in nature.
 
Although Biden’s economic platform compared to Hillary Clinton’s is much further to the left, largely because of the need to unite the party in view of the elections, and this need for unity is maintained, no spectacular changes are to be expected, although the fulfillment of some commitments such as reversing Trump’s tax cuts for the rich, the push for new and larger stimulus packages while the pandemic lasts are to be expected, reactivation and expansion of the “Affordable Care Act” (Obamacare), and the implementation of new social assistance programs, but nothing so substantial as to make people believe that the country is already heading towards socialism, let alone communism, a thesis supported, in their ignorance, by fanatical Trumpists, capable of considering the current president, the paradigm of the capitalist establishment, as a left-wing radical.
 
The strong pressures that undoubtedly exist within the party towards structural changes, are counteracted not only by the ideological formation of the new president, but also by those coming from the “generous” Wall Street donors to his electoral campaign, to whom Biden guaranteed that there would be no deep transformations in the banking system. Wall Street donations to Biden exceeded $74 million, more than the sum of what Obama received in his two presidential campaigns.
 
No, there will be no socialism (for now) in the United States. No, not until there is a party in power that is the authentic representative of the workers, and this, in turn, will not be possible until there is an extensive and solid unity of the working class; which, of course, does not prevent us from fighting to obtain, and obtaining, favored by a bicameral majority, the approval of laws such as, among others, the one that would force the inclusion of genuine worker representation on the boards of directors and supervisory boards of corporations.

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Translator’s comment: The author is someone I’ve never met. He is a Cuban-American living in Bentonville, Arkansas, according to his Facebook profile. He posts short and pithy interpretive essays on Facebook and Radio Miami TV. He has lived in the United States for a very long time (but just how long I cannot say because I do not know), but he always has something sensible and thought-provoking to say. Those who are wondering, after all the years of social support cutbacks and racist repression, why there is STILL no broad-based left-wing political opposition here in the United States, will, I think, find a lot here in Dr. Capote’s explanation to reflect upon. 

United States, Ready for Socialism

5 years ago Manuel E. Yepe, Translations,

United States, Ready for Socialism

Yepe

By Manuel E. Yepe

http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico. 

Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann. for CubaNews. 

The emergence of more leftist agendas among some Democratic Party politicians and a certain radicalization of awareness in the “ordinary” U.S. citizenry about social and economic equality in the United States led to an interesting interview with Colin S. Cavell, professor of political science at the helm of Finian Cunningham, conducted and disseminated by the Strategic Culture Foundation.

President Trump has frequently condemned “evil socialism” in his speeches, reflecting the U.S. ruling class’s fear of a shift to socialism in the country. Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Tulsi Gabbard are calling for increased taxes on wealthy Americans and powerful corporations, reversing decades of neoliberal tax policies.

Voters join in calls for more radical redistribution of wealth and support policies against growing inequality in the United States, where a handful of billionaires now own more wealth than half the total population.

Professor Cavell views the current evolution of U.S. politics from a historical perspective of socialist movements in U.S. society, although he warns that the pro-capitalist political class and media work assiduously to thwart any movement toward a more just and democratic society.

Asked if Bernie Sanders, who seems to receive much support from the working class for his policies of Medicare for All and the progressive taxes on the rich if this augurs an American awakening to a socialist government, Cavell responds that most Americans have little understanding of the perspective they delineate since the media only talks about fear of socialism.

“After a century of anti-communist and anti-socialist propaganda by the capitalist state and its supporters, socialism, in the minds of most U.S. citizens, is a totalitarian hell with fire and brimstone in which an evil satanic dictator orders everyone to enslave themselves to the detriment of the body politic, coupled with the erosion of individual liberties and personal happiness,” denotes Cavell.

“After the unceasing repetition of such concepts for ten decades, people have begun to glimpse, since the 1970s, and given the stagnation of their wages and living standards (in most cases and setbacks in others) have come to the conclusion that the benefits of capitalism only reach a small part of that class and not the great majorities.

Therefore, they are open to hear the voices of those who, like Sanders and other more leftist Democrats, are calling for the implementation of universal health care for all. It’s an idea that has been so belittled by former U.S. presidents and politicians as “socialized medicine”, a term that most citizens conceive of as the reduction or elimination of health care costs.

As for other aspects of the socialization of the economy, most are not clear about this, although there is strong support for extending access to free education in higher education institutions, called “colleges” and universities. Student loan arrears in that sector currently exceed $1.5 billion and affect at least one-sixth of the U.S. population, about 43 million adults. And, given that the “best job” is the one that pays the most and has the most benefits, there is a tendency to advance through the acquisition of an education with a formalized degree.

Cavell believes that class consciousness is present in most citizens, but rarely articulated. Instead, the notion remains that the United States is a class-free nation in which merit guarantees the best retribution to those who are able to “get up by their own means. Most citizens believe they are members of the middle class even though the vast majority live “from paycheck to paycheck” and have little or no savings for emergencies.

So, what is present there is a working class conscious of its existence, functionality, strength and power, but which does not recognize its historical role called to overthrow capitalism by force if it wants to enjoy a true sense of freedom.

Cavell believes that if presidential elections were held today in the United States, without interference or obstruction from the Democratic and Republican parties, Bernie Sanders would easily be the winner.

This, however, will never happen, as the capitalist class through all its mechanisms will ensure that Bernie will never make it to the Democratic Party nomination and therefore will not be a candidate in the 2020 Elections.

October 19, 2019

(http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com)

(*) This article may be reproduced by quoting the newspaper POR ESTO! as the source.

White House Terrified by Socialism’s Growth

5 years ago Manuel E. Yepe, Translations,

White House Terrified by Socialism’s Growth

Yepe

By Manuel E. Yepe

http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico. 

Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann. 

Trump and Bolton’s regime has added a new front of war to its theater of operations against the Third World. They’ve targeted the “troika” of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, charging them with nothing less than the crime of being “socialist,”. The White House Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) has released a study titled The Opportunity Costs of Socialism that warns of the “return” of socialism to U.S. political discourse.

The U.S. government feels threatened by a new rise in socialist ideas in the United States on the eve of the November 6 legislative elections, the report notes.

“Coinciding with the bicentennial of Karl Marx’s birth, socialism is experiencing a return to the country’s political discourse. Self-styled socialist political proposals are gaining support in Congress and a good part of the electorate,” says the White House in the report.

Some think the CEA has reacted like this after recent polls showed Republicans overwhelmingly support the Medicare for All program that the White House has worked so hard to discredit.

The 72-page report used texts from “white papers” by the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute.

The authors of the report argue that socialism is reappearing in American political discourse. And that seriously concerns at least a subset of the Executive Branch, to the point of devoting entire pages to such “pressing” issues as the socialist debates of a century ago and such significant quotations as “to each according to their ability.

The Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) also compares vaguely social democratic policies -such as the exclusion of private interests from health care- with Mao Tse Tung’s Great Leap Forward. “There are journalists and analysts who openly assert that single-payer programs are more efficient and their objectives are similar in spirit to those of Lenin and Mao,” according to the CEA.

Among the proposals analyzed is universal public health care. Although it’s  far from being part of the public opinion debate has begun to gain followers after the momentum given to this by progressive Democrats such as Senator Bernie Sanders, the former Democratic presidential candidate in the 2016 elections.

“Initiatives such as universal public healthcare are very much in line with socialist approaches,” CEA Director Kevin Hassett said at a news conference.

If public health were to be funded by higher taxes, Hassett said, it would lead to “a 9% drop in GDP.”

The document is unusual because the CEA’s job is to offer opinions from an academic and non-partisan point of view.

Hasset links politicians from the most progressive wing of the Democratic Party, such as Sanders and Senator Elizabeth Warren, who defend a social-democratic model within a market economy, with icons of socialist historical thought such as Karl Marx and Vladimir I. Lenin.

In several campaign events prior to the mid-term elections of November 6, U.S. President Donald Trump has rampaged against Venezuela and its Bolivarian revolution, warning that “if Democratic candidates like Florida’s gubernatorial hopeful Andrew Gillum and Texas Senator Beto O’Rourke were elected, the United States would run the risk of becoming another Venezuela.”

“Democrats want to raise taxes massively and impose socialism in our country. We will be another Venezuela,” Trump said recently at a rally in Nevada.

The conclusions reached by the CEA report are what one would expect: Venezuela is doing badly and free markets are doing well.

But what the report really shows is that the White House feels threatened by a rise in socialist ideas when its witch-hunt is most intense.

The CEA’s attitude toward Medicare for All shows that what worries them is the idea of a specifically American democratic socialism emerging.

“Coinciding with the 200th anniversary of Karl Marx, socialism is reborn in political discourse. The political proposals of socialists gain support in Congress and in a good part of the electorate,” the White House laments in its report.

November 5, 2018.

This article may be reproduced by citing the newspaper POR ESTO as the source.

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