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In most platforms where I argue for socialism, I always get the brisk question; Where has socialism worked? My sincere belief is that the question that needs to be asked is; Where has capitalism worked?

The latter question carries much more weight compared to the former question as the system of capital accumulation has been in existence for more than 500 years.

The socialist system, in contrast, was only experimented in the 20th century. Following the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, socialism was exported in various nations in the world. Even during the existence of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), capitalism continued to be a powerful economic system in the world. The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 almost gave a blank cheque for imperialism the highest stage of capitalism to thrive.

While some nations, amongst them Cuba, China and North Korea, still pursue Marxist-Leninist policy positions, most nations of the world, South Africa included, are still predominantly capitalistic in policy outlook. So if we all agree that capitalism is the oldest system, and that it remains in existence in the majority of nations of the world, must we then not answer the question; Where has capitalism worked?

The failures of capitalism

Any attempt to search for the failures of capitalism, anywhere in the world, is equal to searching for the horse you are riding. In fact, those who claim not to see the failures and challenges of this centuries-old system display the highest form of political and economic absentmindedness. By its very nature, capitalism is a challenged system. It thrives on the exploitation of the sellers of labour power (workers), by those who are not really working, but who actually steal from workers by virtue of them being owners of the means of production.

Because the primary mandate of private firms is profit maximization, bigger and more powerful owners of firms are always looking for ways to grow their capitalist interests and have greater market shares. Smaller, emerging entrepreneurs are either forcefully removed from the market, or are simply swallowed by these economic sharks. Bourgeois economists tell us that this is normal. We are told that this shows that market fundamentals are at play.

Below are some of the grave failures of capitalism:

- Financial inequality continues to rise unabated and more wealth is being concentrated in the hands of the few. According to Forbes, the worlds 10 richest billionaires own $505 billion in combined wealth. This sum is greater than the total value of goods and services produced by most nations on an annual basis. Bourgeois economists tell us that these people are entrepreneurs and, by virtue of them being risk-takers, they deserve this amount of wealth, at the expense of the world population.

- The crisis of poverty is deepening. Almost 50% of the world population (3 billion people) live on less than $2.50 dollars a day, while more than 1.3 billion live on extreme poverty (less than $1.25 a day). The United States, which is host to 46% of the worlds population of millionaires, has more than 550 000 homeless people. These poor, desperate people, who sleep on the streets of major cities like New York (home to the New York Stock Exchange), California, Los Angeles etc., often build structures that clearly expose the contradiction between greedy wealth accumulation and exploitation of the poor by the capitalist class. The above picture is a reality in most capitalist nations, South Africa included.

- Nation states are captured by private capital. The challenge of corporate state capture, unlike many believe, is not a South African problem. It is an inherent characteristic of capitalism. In the current context of global imperialism, powerful multinational corporations act like global economic cartels to influence the policy and legislative decisions of nation states. It is because of this arrangement that the wealthy Rothchilds family, amongst others, has stakes in almost all central banks in the world. These are real examples of state capture, brought to us by capitalism, and not incidences of alleged nepotism, fraud or corruption which are sometimes elevated to state capture.

- Commodification of essential services. Capitalism is very ruthless. A dying patient, whose chronic ailment has been caused by the gas emissions by a firm mining in his locality, is chased away from a private hospital because he does not have money to pay for healthcare. Because of economic crimes of collusions and price-fixings, the state, whose resources are limited, depletes her budget by paying exorbitant amounts on medication from pharmaceutical companies. The state is then unable to employ more nurses and staff. By the time the ailing patient mentioned above gets through a long queue at the public hospital, his body may have given up on the fight against disease. In short, capitalism literally kills people through commodification of health, education, etc. as well as evil collusions and other methods.

What needs to be done?

In the short term, progressive nations must collectively introduce wealth taxes in their countries. In the context of South Africa, there is a need for the nationalization of, amongst others, minerals and banking sectors. The South African Reserve Bank must be owned by the state. There must be a creation of a state pharmaceutical company. Collusions and price-fixing must be criminalized. But all these need a decisive and capable state, with a strong and effective party giving direction and providing oversight. And, lastly, workers of the world must unite to destroy capitalism, and bring about a socialist world order!

Disclaimer: All articles and letters published on MyNews24 have been independently written by members of News24's community. The views of users published on News24 are therefore their own and do not necessarily represent the views of News24. News24 editors also reserve the right to edit or delete any and all comments received.

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Capitalism has failed the world: Socialism is the viable alternative - News24

It is little wonder that people like the Obamas, the Clintons, Justin Trudeau, Theresa May, Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron and the growing, elite group of emerging, 'socialist' kings and queens are all real tight buddies

What made America the greatest economic and social powerhouse in the world was the ability to work for what you want and to enjoy the fruit of that labor. It is called incentive.

Karl Marx loved to sit in coffee shops and whirl out plans for a government that he had no intention of living under. In his spare time he constructed a long, drawn out manifesto that was destined to become one of the choicest tools for a modern-day, bloodthirsty and pressed-for-time devil.

Among other things, Marx was a reporter for an American newspaper. And because he couldnt make it in the real world of capitalism as a journalist, he dreamed of a government by which he could pull the real world down to his mediocrity.

Satan dearly loves Marxs manifesto in that it provides false, Godless hope for the ignorant flailing masses. It envisions a world where no one has an advantage except the elite. No matter how hard the proletariat works, or whether it works at all, there will be one standard of living for everyone. It gives an entertaining sense of purpose and power for the hyper-caffeinated college student, upper echelon community organizers and any other useful idiots who rally them.

The sharpest of the idiots become especially passionate socialists when they finally open their eyes and see that there is a LOT of power and profit waiting for those at the top, who can rein all the lesser insightful in under a single banner.

Where socialism is not established, socialists of course villainize the countrys current antithetical leadership. They do that mostly because vilifying that leader is a perfect means of unifying the rabble that will help the most politically cunning socialists, to take power.

Socialism cares NOTHING about the welfare of the people, beyond providing whatever it will take to pacify them when the leadership is nested. Nevertheless, socialisms success depends solely upon the groundlings because they are the crowbar that will get the jobs done in achieving their getting into that nest - and then staying there.

Ask the citizens of Great Britain how they like socialized medicine. Ask the people of Venezuela how well socialism is working in their country.

Now that I am watching our 44th EX-president flying around the world, on our nickel, desperately promoting global socialism with the rest of his oligarch pals, I have to reflect upon how he got to where he is. The following narrative is at least a bit of how the trend he saddled and rode to the top got started ...

When I was in college, Richard Nixon was the perfect target in aiding 20th-century American socialists to really get a foothold. From the standpoint of criminality, Nixon was a girl scout compared to the Clintons or Obamas. But he was not a pretty man, and as a businessman he was a genius - both of which counted as big strikes against him among socialist intelligentsia. I then, being the king of cool that I was, had to vote for George McGovern (mostly just to spite my parents).

I was one of the gullible, hyper-caffeinated college students who had been convinced we could undo the harm our parents had done in two world wars and wasteful stuff like putting a man on the moon. I was not a socialist, per se. I was just one of the many millions of long-haired, lightheaded, well-meaning kids who believed that free love and the right combination of street pharmaceuticals could set the world aright.

Winston Churchill had it perfectly correct when he said, If you are not a liberal at 20, you have no heart. (But) if you are not a conservative by 40, you have no brain. Former conservative writer extraordinaire, George Will, also nailed it when he said that todays emerging, voting generations simply dont bother to read the minutes of what transpired before they showed up.

It was my pampered Woodstock generation that was the tipping point at which many Americans began to leave their brains at the door and be lulled to sleep by a droning tv and some really good music that put all sorts of messages into our heads. They were messages that were completely foreign to what had made our nation at least the most amazing and safest on earth.

Indeed it was the music of the 60s and 70s that was the hypnotizing lifeblood of an emerging Frankenstein - disguised as humanitarian social reform. That monster has since risen up, through us and our children, and is now tearing our nation (and world, really) to pieces.

For instance, the song, Get Together, written by Chet Powers, really captured my heart and the hearts of my wide-eyed, aspiring pacifist, hippie friends. I mean, I defy anyone to find anything wrong in the following words ...

Come on people now Smile on your brother Everybody get together Try to love one another RIGHT NOW

Right on! But among the gullible hippies were darkly genius marketers, wolves dressed as fellow longhaired sheep, who silently watched and listened to the very same music. And when they saw its mind numbing effects on the sheep who carried placards and wove flowers into their hair, they thought to themselves, I can use all this.

And, RIGHT NOW, because of those silent marketers - socialists posing as hippies - we in the new peace-loving and politically correct America are losing our freedom of speech. We have come unbelievably close to having our firearms taken from us. We have a Middle Eastern, murderous, dictatorial political power - disguised as a religion - metastasizing from coast to coast (whose advance socialists are absolutely helping in order to tear us down). And, at this moment, authentic Christian conservatism is dangerously close to going all dark on a very young internet.

And that internet is owned and run by the wolves who can see the true genius of Marx in his designing a government that none of them have any intention of ever living under - but a government that can deliver up to them all the power and every decadent luxury they ever dreamed of.

Just a couple centuries earlier our forefathers gifted our nation with liberties and a vision of an opportunity for a quality life for anyone who wanted to work for it. The clockwork-precision mechanism of our Constitution was unprecedented in world history. And, after only 200 years of working at that slowly materializing dream, the self-satisfied generations that sprang from todays silver ponytails have been trained to take all of our richness for granted - with a strange refinement of spiteful arrogance.

While we were smiling on our brothers, smoking pot and stuffing flowers into the barrels of our militarys rifles, we just werent into maintaining the eternal vigilance that we were warned was required in order to keep our freedoms.

Now, as a result of our lazy negligence, when a tyrant government or its leader wants to silence the voice of their opposition, all they have to do is to declare it to be hate speech, and the argument is ended at peril of prosecution.

Our first and worst black, socialist president - who spent approaching 90 millions of our tax dollars on his vacations alone - cubbyholed nine billion dollars for a free cell phone scam (rife with fraud and graft) as part of his bread-and-circuses program securing his dependent constituencys affection. He bundled up $400 million on some skids, and quietly airlift that to turbaned maniacs who have sworn to atomize us and our allies. And the men who brought that to our attention are now popularly considered enemies of the state.

But Donald Trump can spend his time keeping the America-reviving promises he made to the voters who elected him for just that. And the socialists invent groundless lies of collusion with Russians in order to villainize him and threaten his impeachment.

And all that I am saying here now evokes automatic laughter from the people who make up a shadow government and sycophants that cant fast enough help drag that big wooden horse of empty promises - socialism - into our limping nation.

It is little wonder that people like the Obamas, the Clintons, Justin Trudeau, Theresa May, Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron and the growing, elite group of emerging, socialist kings and queens are all real tight buddies. And they all hate everything that Donald Trump is about because they are busy riding the backs of the ignorant flailing masses, the gullible, hyper-caffeinated college students and the upper echelon community organizers and other useful idiots into Marxs fantasy.

Those above-mentioned, sharpest idiots became especially passionate socialists when they finally opened their eyes and saw that there is a LOT of power and profit waiting for those who can rein all the under-socialists in beneath a single banner. And its real easy to see that the deal they are making for all this has NOTHING to do with the lie Karl Marx promoted about helping the people.

The dreams they are pursuing happen to perfectly coincide with the modern-day, bloodthirsty and pressed-for-time devil who is using this evil machine to take down millions of deceived souls who are expecting help from selfish men posing as socialists. So he will gladly accommodate those poseurs for their unwitting assistance.

But in exchange for the empires they are now building for themselves, there will be hell to pay.

Dave Merrick, Davemerrick.us is an internationally known and published artist whose works reach into the greatest diversity of audiences. Known primarily for his astoundingly lifelike portraiture, Merricks drawings and paintings grace the walls of an impressive array of well-known corporate and private clientele. Many of his published wildlife pieces have become some of Americas most popular animal imagery.

He has more original work in the Pro-Rodeo Hall of Fame than any other artist. His wildlife and Southwestern-theme work is distributed internationally through Joan Cawley Galleries of Scottsdale AZ.

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The New Royal Family Of Socialism - Canada Free Press

CHICAGO After Democratic Socialists of America became the largest Marxist organization since World War II, its members broke into song. As Marcus Bennett, an organizer for Britains left-wing Labour Party, stood up to address the DSAs biggest-ever convention Saturday, scores of the nearly 700 delegates stood up and belted out the name of the partys unapologetic leftist leader.

Oh, Jeremy Corbyn! Oh, Jeremy Corbyn! they sang, to the melody of the White Stripes Seven Nation Army. Bennett raised his fist in the air and sang along, dazzled that a British soccer chant had traveled all the way to Chicago.

We got our Bernie, he said, referring to Corbyn and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Dont give up hope. Your time is coming now.

DSA, founded in 1982 to create a political foothold for Marxists, has transformed into an ambitious left-wing force. Membership grew during Sanderss presidential campaign, and then started surging the day after Donald Trump was elected president in what some DSA members jokingly call the socialist baby boom.

The DSA went from 8,000 members in 2015, the year its delegates endorsed Sanders for president, to about 25,000 in 2017, with chapters or branches in 49 states. Its platform calls for a worker-owned economy and the end of traditional capitalism.

You are the antidote to total isolation of living under capitalism, said Maria Svart, the national director of DSA, as the convention began. Its the job of organizers to build institutions that will be capable of absorbing masses of people and keeping them in motion.

Although the group endorsed him, Sanders, whose campaign and lasting popularity changed public perceptions of socialism, has not been closely involved with the newly booming DSA. In a recent interview with The Post, Sanders suggested that the organizations growth was one of many examples of how younger voters were rejecting the post-Reagan political consensus.

Many young people understand that health care for all, making public colleges free, decent wages and affordable housing are all part of a democratic socialist program, Sanders said.

The average age of DSA members has since 2015 dropped from 64 to about 30, according to an organizer. A May 2016 Gallup poll, conducted after most of the Democratic primaries, found just that 35percent of Americans viewed socialism favorably. Among voters under 30, that number rose to 55percent.

The youth of the DSAs new membership has infused it with humor, irony and a dizzy confidence much of it inspired by left-wing parties in Europe and South America. But on Saturday, after a short debate, DSA delegates voted to end their 35-year relationship with the Socialist International, the global network of left-wing parties.

Instead of seeking out stars, DSA members have focused on ultra-local campaigning. They joined sit-ins and protests against the Republican effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but they used them to advance arguments for single-payer health care similar to Canadas. In California, DSA members have phone-banked and knocked on doors to back a state single-payer bill that the legislatures Democratic supermajority has tabled; the campaign, however, is designed to continue even if the bill were to pass.

You pick campaigns to engage in that will help people and build power for working people, but also set us up for more transformative work down the road, explained Jared Abbott, an outgoing member of DSAs national political committee. Theres agreement about flexing independent, socialist electoral power in some kind of way, but people are being flexible about how to do it.

In Chicago, DSA energy had been channeled through Carlos Rosa, a Democratic alderman who joined DSA after endorsing the Sanders campaign and helping it win heavily Latino wards. In Atlanta, Seattle and New York, there were more socialist candidates seeking office as Democrats or as third-party candidates in safe seats.

It would take years, Rosa said, to elect a critical mass of socialists; in 2019, he hoped to see at least five of them on Chicagos 50-member city council. In the meantime, constant organizing and doorstep conversations would break the taboos voters still had about socialism.

You explain what you stand for, and then you explain that this is democratic socialism, Rosa said. Thats how you overcome years and years of red-baiting.

But a lack of red-baiting has been among the biggest surprises of DSAs growth. In 2009, the tea party movement and conservative media, in tandem, condemned the Obama administrations agenda as socialism at best and fascism government intermingling itself with corporations at worst. Frances Fox Piven, a former DSA board member, found herself at the center of Glenn Becks chalkboards as the radio and TV host explained how Obamas stimulus and health-care policies would fulfill a long-term socialist plot to overthrow capitalism.

The DSA itself played a role in the panic. In his book Radical-in-Chief, National Reviews Stanley Kurtz pored over Obamas memoirs and the records of DSA in New York to prove that the future president had attended at least one socialist conference.

Largely out of the spotlight, DSA members were instead building their own ironic media universe. Editors and writers for Jacobin, a socialist magazine whose growth also surged with the rise of Sanders, flitted around the convention as celebrities; so did co-hosts of the Chapo Trap House podcast, whose success had inspired a smaller podcast called the Discourse Collective.

The tone of the new socialist media can often be relentlessly ironic, surrealist and rude. Rather than policing it, DSA has embraced it. Bowe, who tweets under the handle Larry Website, celebrated the 25,000th DSA membership by asking socialists to come up with terrible, garish memes. They obliged, with images of Shrek, Sonic the Hedgehog and legally embattled former Subway spokesman Jared Fogle commemorating the lefts new milestone.

[Italian Communist Antonio] Gramsci proposed creating our own working-class culture which address our needs and vision, he explained. Memes are a snapshot of that; podcasts and publications like Jacobin and Current Affairs are extensions of it.

All of it, after all, had led to a three-day conference during which nearly 1,000 delegates, observers and other DSA members approved a platform and elected leaders. On Saturday night, hundreds of them celebrated at the offices of the left-wing magazine In These Times, where free copies of Jacobin were distributed at the door.

A DJ dropped Seven Nation Army into the middle of a pop and hip-hop playlist, and the Oh, Jeremy Corbyn chant echoed through the hallways, which were marked by signs that quoted Karl Marx to make an important party announcement.

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The socialist movement is getting younger, thanks to one 75-year-old - Washington Post

STARVING families scavenge like rats through the bin bags in the heart of what has become the most dangerous city on Earth.

Feral packs of street robbers casually kill for a mobile phone or cheap jewellery and will bite wedding rings from the fingers of terrified women.

AFP - Getty

Shoppers queue for hours for dwindling food stocks and hold carrier bags of cash as inflation rockets towards 2,500 per cent.

Hospitals are in chaos, with no cash left to care for the sick including victims of the rampant Zika virus, malaria and dengue fever.

Thousands of skilled workers are fleeing the country in a brain drain sparked by fears of all-out civil war.

And the brutal dictator presiding over this tragedy brutally crushes all opposition as he steers this once prosperous nation into the abyss.

Welcome to Venezuela the neo-Marxist nightmare created by hard-left policies that Jeremy Corbyn and and his ilk want to bring to Britain.

Corbyn who polls predict would enter No10 if an election were held tomorrow has for years held up this South American state as a shining example of socialism in action.

EPA

London News Pictures

AFP - Getty

AFP or licensors

The Labour leader and Britains star-struck Left still idolise ex-president Hugo Chavez, architect of Venezuelas disastrous social experiment.

Last week Corbyn went on holiday to Croatia, ignoring a chorus of calls to condemn the tyranny of Chavezs sinister successor Nicolas Maduro.

Just two years ago, saluting Maduro, Corbyn said: We celebrate the achievements of Venezuela, in jobs, in housing, in health, in education, but above all its role in the whole world as a completely different place.

Reuters

EPA

And after Chavezs cancer death in 2013, Corbyn praised the huge contribution he made to conquering poverty in his country.

He added: Chavez showed us that there is a different and a better way of doing things.

Its called socialism, its called social justice and its something Venezuela has made a big step towards.

Reuters

AFP or licensors

But there was very little social justice to be seen on the increasingly desperate and dangerous streets of Caracas yesterday.

In the citys rainy Sabana Grande district, sad families joined vagrants waiting expectantly in doorways.

Our interpreter explained: Theyre not sheltering, theyre waiting for the restaurants to put the trash out.

Minutes later we saw a family, including a pregnant woman, wolfing down scraps of rotting food taken from bin bags on a street corner.

Others stay home and face starvation rather than endure the indignity or the crime on streets which suffer the highest murder rate on earth a startling 79 a day last year.

Reuters

Reuters

Our interpreter, a 28-year-old father-of-two, added: If criminals see you with US dollars, an iPhone or a watch or any kind of jewellery they wont just rob you, theyll kill you to get what youve got.

My mother and grandma have stopped going out since they were robbed two months ago.

"The robber put a gun to my grandmas head and demanded my mothers wedding ring but it wouldnt come off because shed worn it for so long.

He grabbed her hand and tried to bite off her finger to get it before she managed to pull it free.

A stolen iPhone is worth ten times the monthly minimum wage on the black market and people are being shot dead for them on sight. Anyone with US dollars is a target because the local currency is worthless.

AFP or licensors

AFP or licensors

Yet just 20 years ago, Venezuela which has the worlds largest crude oil reserves was one of the richest countries on Earth.

Revolutionary Chavez swept to power in 1998, promising to share out the nations wealth.

Slum dwellers were housed in new tower block apartments, deliberately sited in well-to-do areas, and Chavez and his Saddam Hussein lookalike sidekick Maduro a former bus driver and trade union boss went on to create a mammoth dependency culture by giving away 640billion in welfare handouts, increasing the national debt five-fold.

But they neglected to invest in anything but their own popularity, and the collapse of oil prices has now triggered a total economic meltdown.

The Sun / Ian Whittaker

EPA

Maduros governments answer to the crisis, which has escalated since his mentors death, has been simply to print more money.

Venezuela now prints four times more cash than it collects from sales and all taxes, including VAT and income tax. As a result, inflation which in Britain sparked hand-wringing from Labour and the TUC when it touched 2.9 per cent earlier this year is expected to hit 2,500 per cent next year in Venezuela.

Nationalised farms have seen yields fall every year, sparking catastrophic food shortages.

Reuters

AFP or licensors

Due to huge state subsidies, a full tank of petrol is around 5p 20 times less than a bottle of water but production is now so inefficient that the country is importing oil.

A worker on the 25-a-month minimum wage must now work for two weeks to afford a bag of rice.

Office worker Lionel Marin, 53, queued for three hours yesterday for state-subsidised pasta to feed his family at the Livebras supermarket in downtown Caracas.

To play down the food crisis, the Government has banned queues forming outside stores, but we found the father-of-one in a 300-yard line of people nearby.

AFP or licensors

AFP

Lionel said: I have to work and dont have time for this but I cant afford to buy food any other way any more. Its humiliating.

Chavez, Maduro and the Socialists promised fairness and dignity for working people. Look what we have become.

Six years ago mum-of-three Elena Ibara had a well-paid job as a restaurant waitress but was laid off as rising food prices and falling trade began to bite.

She lost the city apartment she was buying with her husband and has been rehoused in an appalling, one-room shack in the citys desperate Barrio Antimano slum.

Reuters

AFP or licensors

Elena, 41, said: I was in my own home with a good job when I voted for the socialists and never dreamed I could end up here. My husband left me and sends what he can and I work as a cleaner.

But the money I earn buys less each day and my children and I go hungry. It breaks my heart to put them to bed when theyre crying for food but theres nothing I can do. The politicians have failed us.

Poor people such as Elena once the backbone of Chavezs revolution are now joining the open revolt against his successor Maduro.

His answer has been to shut opposition parties out of government, though his crackdown on protests has failed to stop daily unrest on the streets of Caracas for the past four months, resulting in 120 deaths.

Reuters

We joined demonstrators fleeing tear gas, rubber bullets and shotgun salt pellets fired by security forces and Maduros feared Collectivo paramilitaries on motorbikes.

Opposition congressman Richard Cabrera, who spent a year in jail under Chavez, told The Sun at the protest: Like a lot of politicians here, Ive heard of Jeremy Corbyn and have heard what he stands for.

But the people of Britain should be wary of empty promises of people like him. Look where it got us.

Getty Images - Getty

EPA

Accountant Hector Meza decided to flee the country the day after Maduro seized control of the National Assembly in allegedly rigged elections last week.

The number of Venezuelans seeking asylum has doubled to 50,000 in 2017, but hundreds of thousands more have fled without registering elsewhere.

Hector, 27, said: Soon, the poor will be so hungry they will come down from the slums and start ransacking the shops for food, and order will completely break down.

Im young enough to get away before it happens and earn US dollars to feed my family Ive got a one-way ticket to Argentina.

He added: I had a friend from Wales who came here and told me all about Corbyn and what a great guy he was and how he supported Chavez and Maduro.

Having seen what dreamers like them did to my country, I hope hes no longer a fan.

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Jeremy Corbyn claimed Venezuela had 'made a big step towards Socialism', but the once oil-rich nation now burns at ... - The Scottish Sun

Here at Flavorwire, we pride ourselves on not only publishing excellent writing, but also keeping an eye on other great work from around the web. This week, were looking at a piece on democratic socialism in NYC politics; an article and a critical response to it on the identity of L.A. icon Angelyne; tributes to playwright Sam Shepard; and more.

If youve lived in L.A. for any amount of time, you may have seen a pink Corvette driving by you, and it may have registered that it belonged to Angelyne, the long-term Hollywood celebrity, celebrated for being a celebrity (and known for once running for governor of the state, the same year as Schwarzenegger), a precursor to the fast contemporary model of Internet and reality TV show fame. The buxom platinum blonde who for decades has loomed over the city on billboards, posing with overwrought sensualism in hot shades of pink has indeed called herself a Rorschach test in pink, a sort of cartoonish manifestation of Hollywood fantasy and performative, constructed femininity. A Hollywood Reporter article by Gary Baum, shared widely around the web this week, seemingly revealed the never-before-known identity of the enigmatic self-created figure; such a revelation could sound like cruel tabloid journalism, and her resistance to the revelation does make it an ethically uncomfortable read. The writing, and the subject itself reconstruction after trauma, but also Jewish self-erasure in old Hollywood create a nuanced and singular portrait:

Jews had assimilated in the postwar period. Surnames Anglicized, religious observance ebbed, kosher compliance curtailed both to better conform to their American homeland and, often, as a conscious or unconscious departure from the trauma of their European pasts. Theyd arrived and imagined themselves anew. Yet Goldberg becoming Angelyne: That would be a feat far more radical, a leap far more extreme, out of a grim and drab past into a realm of complete fantasy. How fitting it would be for such an act to take place amid the New World shtetl of Hollywood, defined by metamorphosis and make-believe.

To complicate that reading, heres Matthew Rosza writing for Salon on some of the ethical questions of the publication of the piece:

If a celebrity is harming innocent people (say by committing crimes or domestic abuse) or if their scandal pertains to the career that made them famous (such as a sports star using performance enhancing drugs), that is obviously newsworthy. But what about Angelyne, a celebrity who hasnt been in the public eye for years, whose personal story in no way pertains to why she was famous, whose leaked information did not involve her hurting anyone and, most importantly of all, who seems to havestrong emotional reasons for not wanting her information known to the public? There are occasions when the curiosity which fuels journalism should be tempered by compassion toward the individuals whose feelings might be trampled in its wake. It isnt the worst thing in the world for Angelyne to have been unmasked against her will, but its deeper implications are uncomfortable to contemplate.

The New Yorkerpublished a piece by Patti Smith honoring playwright/actor Sam Shepard following his death on July 30. She describes visiting him and writing alongside him after hed begun battling ALS:

We had our routine: Awake. Prepare for the day. Have coffee, a little grub. Set to work, writing. Then a break, outside, to sit in the Adirondack chairs and look at the land. We didnt have to talk then, and that is real friendship. Never uncomfortable with silence, which, in its welcome form, is yet an extension of conversation. We knew each other for such a long time. Our ways could not be defined or dismissed with a few words describing a careless youth. We were friends; good or bad, we were just ourselves. The passing of time did nothing but strengthen that.

Meanwhile, also forTNY,Hilton Als writes more specifically about Shepards work (as derived from certain elements of his history), as well as his plays relationship to jazz and hip-hop:

Like hip-hop Shepards first scripts were hopped up on their own language about race and women and guys doing guy stuff that they didnt understand and didnt question. The electricity in the dialogue was Shepards own; the energy that makes these early plays live, still, keeps the words tumbling out of his characters mouths.

Kristy Puchko writes in a reported piece forVanity Fairabout the gloriously queer afterlife of Death Becomes Her, the 1992 Robert Zemeckis film in which Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn play rival celebrities whose competition is, quite literally, undying. She speaks withDrag Race Season 5winner Jerick Hoffer, aka Jinkx Monsoon:

Hoffer ties Helen and Madeline to a lineage of beloved bad women who dared to be both divinely stylish and unrepentantly ambitious. I think this is a trait that runs throughout the queer community, the obsession with the hyper-feminine female villains, Hoffer explained. And we see it in Disney movies and in movies like Death Becomes Her, and in characters like Poison Ivy and Catwoman. Almost all the Disney villain witches are gay iconslike Sleeping Beautys Maleficent, with her cold cackle and cool cape, or The Little Mermaids octopussy Ursula, whose design was reportedly inspired by the defiant drag queen Divine.

The Intercept profiles Jabari Brisport the Green Party candidate the DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) is endorsing for New Yorks 35th City Council District. The article, written by Zaid Jilani, details Brisports ideas on halting the processes of gentrification in Brooklyn and bringing change into the hands of the community, rather than private developers who end up capitalizing on the displacement of the poor. The article focuses on Brisport, but also uses his politics as a means of addressing how the DSA wants to position itself in the current climate:

Give more community control, he suggested, pointing to theredevelopmentof the Bedford-Union Armory in Crown Heights. Brisport opposes plans to turn the 138,000-square-foot armory into a bonanza for private developers. Instead, he issupporting residentswho want to turn the site into a community land trust. Under such a model, land development would be approved by a nonprofit controlled by the local community.

People from the community organize into a non-profit, and then you can turn over the land to them, instead of wealthy developer, he explained. They can choose who they contract out to. Maybe theyll contract out to a non-profit. Ultimately, theyll have final say in the negotiations.

Speaking of New York politics, Maura Ewing has published a piece inThe Atlanticon the potential decriminalization of the evasion of subway fares the policing of which is an element of broken windows strategy (the policy largely implemented by Rudy Giuliani and William Bratton in NYC, facilitating decades of racial/class based discrimination by the NYPD):

Between January and late June, nearly90 percentof the people arrested for fare beating were black and Latino. And its often teenagers who dont pay: According to Hamilton, 16- and 17-year-oldsrepresentedabout 70 percent of arrestees last year.

Two state legislators from Brooklyn recentlyproposeda law that would decriminalize the offense, the latest in a growing wave of local officials who argue that evading a $2.75 subway fare is no reason to land behind bars. Turnstile jumping, or fare beating, is currently considered a Class A misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in jail. No one should face the nightmare of arrest, a criminal record, loss of housing, or deportation over fare evasion,saidone of the bills sponsors, State Senator Jesse Hamilton, at a press conference announcing it last weekUnder the law, evasion would be considered a civil offense. Those caught would be charged up to $100, but their criminal records would not be affected; neither would their immigration status if they are undocumented.

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Sam Shepard, Angelyne, Democratic Socialism in Brooklyn: This Week's Recommended Reading - Flavorwire