vG(L|E6 #ACIMoMJ@I*YFD5 J{m@U1eDdTa#_Y)L9 l*8x;Eu<B[8A3wbxlxzPTc( /cQk,_-wGvkS#5D
Read the original:
Is It Possible to Meld the Best of Capitalism and Socialism? - teleSUR English
Supporters of Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn at a campaign event. Labour pulled off a spectacular election turnaround largely thanks to social media. Photograph: Danny Lawson/PA
Socialism is stubborn. After decades of dormancy verging on death, it is rising again in the west. In the UK, Jeremy Corbyn just led the Labour party to its largest increase in vote share since 1945 on the strength of its most radical manifesto in decades. In France, the leftist Jean-Luc Melenchon recently came within two percentage points of breaking into the second round of the presidential election. And in the US, the countrys most famous socialist Bernie Sanders is now its most popular politician.
The reasons for socialisms revival are obvious enough. Workers in the west have seen their living standards collapse over the past few decades. Young people in particular are being proletarianized in droves. They struggle to find decent work, or an affordable place to live, or a minimum degree of material security. Meanwhile, elites gobble up a growing share of societys wealth.
But grievances alone dont produce political movements. A pile of dry wood isnt enough to start a fire. It needs a spark or several.
For the resurgent left, an essential spark is social media. In fact, its one of the most crucial and least understood catalysts of contemporary socialism. Since the networked uprisings of 2011 the year of the Arab spring, Occupy Wall Street and the Spanish indignados weve seen how social media can rapidly bring masses of people into the streets. But social media isnt just a tool for mobilizing people. Its also a tool for politicizing them.
Social media has supplied socialists with an invaluable asset: the building blocks of an alternative public sphere. The mainstream media tends to be hostile to the left: proximity to power often leads journalists to internalize the perspectives of societys most powerful people. The result is a public sphere that sets narrow parameters for permissible political discourse, and ignores or vilifies those who step outside of them. Thats why social media is indispensable: it provides a space for incubating new kinds of political thinking, and new forms of political identity, that would be inadmissible in more established channels.
Every movement needs a petri dish for developing the specific contagion with which it hopes to infect the body politic. The Reformation had the printing press. The French revolution had the coffeehouse. Todays new new left has Twitter and Facebook.
Last months election in the UK offered a stark illustration of this dynamic. Much of the British media attacked Corbyn relentlessly in the weeks leading up to the election. An analysis from Loughborough University found that Labour received the vast majority of the negative coverage, while a study from the London School of Economics concluded that Corbyn had been the victim of a process of vilification.
In another era, such an assault mightve proven fatal. Fortunately, social media gave Corbyns supporters a powerful weapon. Banished from the public sphere, they built one of their own. They didnt merely use social media judging by the number of tweets and Facebook engagements, they dominated it. Pro-Labour memes, slogans, videos and articles saturated online networks. Some were funny, such as a viral video of Corbyn extemporaneously eating a Pringle. Others were serious, drawing on independent leftwing outlets such as Novara Media to advance an analysis of austeritys corrosive effects on British society. Together they made millions of people feel connected to a common project. They made Corbynism feel like a community.
Crucially, this community didnt just exist online. Contrary to the old refrain about the internet not being real life, the digital ferment paid analog dividends. Young people the heaviest users of social media turned out in greater numbers than usual, and they voted overwhelmingly for Labour.
Whats so bracing about the British election is how many elite assumptions it overturned. These include the belief that social media is bad for democracy. The notion that Twitter and Facebook play a toxic role in our political life has become a pillar of elite opinion in the era of Brexit and Trump. Its a familiar argument: online platforms deepen polarization by enclosing us in echo chambers where were only exposed to views we already agree with. Partisanship flourishes. Compromise becomes impossible.
The French Revolution had the coffeehouse. Todays new new left has Twitter and Facebook
This analysis has some truth to it, but largely misses the mark. Theres no doubt that social media can be a cesspool. It can spread misinformation, abuse and all manner of extremist hatred. After all, social medias defining trait is its capacity to connect like-minded people. It follows that the communities it creates vary widely by the kind of people being connected.
But this aspect of social media is also what makes it useful for todays socialists. Bubbles can be beneficial. They can provide an emerging movement with a degree of unity, a sense of collective identity, that helps it cohere and consolidate itself in its fragile early phases.
Of course, movements cant stay bubbles if they want to win. They have to move from the margins to the mainstream. But social media is the soil where they can begin to take root, where they can cultivate a circle of allies and agitators who will carry their ideas out into the wider world. And this is good for democracy, because it enables genuinely popular political alternatives to emerge. It weakens the power of elites to police the limits of political possibility, and amplifies voices that could not otherwise make themselves heard.
Instead of sealing people off into echo chambers, social media can serve as a stepping stone for movements that aspire to achieve mass appeal. Just because social media helps midwife a movement doesnt mean that movement is fated to insularity. Labour began its campaign trailing the Tories by more than 20 points. In seven short weeks, the partys activists pulled off the most dramatic turnaround in modern British history. Powered in large part by social media, they closed the gap quickly enough to wipe out the Conservative majority. Labour now enjoys an eight-point lead in the polls a stunning reversal from a few months ago.
If polarization were as absolute as many mainstream observers believe, such an upset would be impossible. But political preferences are far more fluid than is often assumed. Many people are up for grabs, especially at a time when anti-establishment feeling is running high. As a result, social media doesnt necessarily strengthen existing partisan divisions. It can also scramble them, by surfacing new political possibilities. This is especially helpful in luring the large numbers of non-voters to the polls. Its no coincidence that the British election saw the highest turnout in 25 years.
The prospects for turnout-driven victories are even greater in the US, where political alienation is particularly pronounced. Only 55.7% of the voting-age population cast ballots in the last presidential election. Given these numbers, the model of an electorate split down the middle, locked into their irreconcilable Facebook feeds, is misleading. You cant have a country divided in half when half the country doesnt vote.
These are the people that the rising American left must win if it wants to replicate the success of its British comrades. Non-voters already form a natural constituency for progressive politics: they tend to be younger and poorer, and broadly support redistributive policies. But organizing this silent social-democratic majority will require more partisanship, not less.
Tepid centrism will not politicize people who believe that politics has nothing to offer them. Only a strongly defined alternative can. Social media offers a way to articulate that alternative, and to push it into public view. Tweets alone wont put socialists in power. But given the scale of the lefts ambition, and the obstacles arrayed against it, theyre not a bad place to start.
Read the original:
How social media saved socialism - The Guardian
Now that Im almost 30, Ive become a bit set in my ways. Im done, for instance, with people who wont split the bill in restaurants. Is there anything worse than sitting across the table from someone who makes you pay a little more, just because you had an extra Sprite?
Well, it turns out there is actually. And thats a socialist who wont split the bill. Being young, relatively speaking, I am surrounded by Corbynistas. At dinner, they sit and spout nonsense about the boy Corbyn and his politics the importance of equality and sharing the wealth. And then the bill arrives
As soon as that metal dish lands on the table, economic idealism vanishes quicker than you can say, Jez we can. In fact, restaurant visits have merely confirmed to me what Ive long suspected about my generation. Namely, that even the noisiest socialists are a little bit capitalist at heart.
A recent YouGov poll suggests my experiences are not isolated examples of hypocrisy. It turns out that 63 per cent of 18- to 24-year-olds believe that they should only pay for what they had at a restaurant and theres even an app to help them work out the splitting of the bill. Meanwhile, 51 per cent of 65-year-olds are happy to spread the cost of their dinner. It makes me want to move to Eastbourne.
Of course, some might say that young peoples frugal attitude to bills is simply the result of our dire economic situation, but Ive witnessed this kind of tight-fistedness long before 2008s recession. At university, for instance, no one ever did rounds, but trotted off to the bar for one Malibu and Coke at a time.
Corbyns youthful following have made great play of their beloved leaders calls to end austerity and his support for free school meals, free universities, free healthcare and the rest. But if the Labour leader ever became our prime minister, how will these people feel about paying for it all when they cant even handle subsidising a friends soft drink?
Original post:
Corbynistas believe in socialism, until the bill arrives - Spectator.co.uk
A plenary session crowd at Socialism 2017 (John Snowden)
SOME 2,000 people packed into a convention center on Chicago's Near South Side last weekend for the four days of Socialism 2017, an annual gathering for political discussion, debate and entertainment.
This was by far the biggest Socialism conference ever, one-third larger than last year, and one of the biggest national gatherings of the radical left in the new Trump era.
As usual, there were a dozen sessions or more to choose from in each time slot--around 160 in all--covering a dizzying range of topics: from building emergency response networks for defending immigrant workers, to the latest developments in struggles in Europe, to the history of the Marxist tradition, to celebrations of artistic and cultural figures.
It was a super-sized version of past conferences, but that wasn't the only difference. This year, there was a greater sense of urgency and purpose than ever before.
Damian Smith of Washington, D.C., said he had missed the previous two or three Socialism conferences. "But then something happened on November 8 at around 11:45 at night," he said, "and I realized that I had to go this year. It matters a lot what happens here."
How to take the ideas discussed at Socialism and make them relevant back home in the local resistance struggles of the Trump era--that was on the minds of people throughout the four days.
"This was my first time being here, and it was absolutely incredible," said Lindsay Cesar of Greensboro, North Carolina. "I feel like I came in full of ideas I couldn't quite articulate, and now I feel way better equipped. I feel inspired to talk to other people and groups in the area and convey our politics to them, so we can come together more."
Socialism 2017 was host to some truly special events. Comedian Hari Kondabolu brought down the house late Friday night with a set that went on three times longer than expected. Nation columnist Dave Zirin moderated a generations-spanning discussion on athletes and activism. Author and actor Wallace Shawn introduced his new book Night Thoughts in a conversation with Haymarket Books' Anthony Arnove.
But there were special ideas and insights coming out of all the discussions. "I was watching someone talk about a political question that they had been working through over a period of years, about their understanding of postmodernism," Damian Smith remembered. "And right there, they were able to come to a conclusion about it in this discussion. I realized I was seeing someone's whole political trajectory in a few minutes--that's something that happens at this conference."
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
AT A packed plenary session on the first night of the conference, author and Princeton University professor Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor spoke on racism and the resistance to Trump. It was a speech she was supposed to give Seattle a month before, but had to cancel after receiving dozens of death threats after a Fox News slander campaign.
"We will not win just because we believe that our side is right," Taylor told the rapt crowd. "We have to know what it is we are fighting for, and we have to openly debate and strategize our way forward. And most of all, we have to be involved in protests and demonstrations and building social movements to win concessions from the political and economic establishment."
Taylor was a participant in another highlight for many Socialism attendees--two sessions honoring the 40th anniversary of the Combahee River Collective, an organization of Black women that broke new ground in the struggle against oppression.
Two members of the collective, Barbara Smith and Demita Frazier, gave their own accounts of the experience, and authors such as Sharon Smith and Barbara Ransby, who have been inspired by the Combahee collective, joined them onstage.
Of course, there was one revolutionary anniversary that was at the forefront of everyone's minds--this is the centennial year of the Russian Revolution of 1917. There were close to a dozen sessions specifically devoted to the revolution, though its history ran through many more.
That's a fitting tribute to the continuing relevance of the revolution, as Elizabeth Terzakis explained in an inspiring presentation at the final plenary session of the conference.
"The Russian Revolution is crucial for us to study because it shows us the working class in movement," Terzakis said, "so that we can see what it is, what it is capable of and why it is the only force with both the desire and the positioning to not only achieve self-emancipation but to liberate all of humanity in the process."
Socialism couldn't forget another lesser-known anniversary: This year, the International Socialist Organization (ISO), a co-sponsor of Socialism, turned 40 years young. Paul D'Amato, editor of the International Socialist Review, packed his session on the history and politics of the ISO full of insights on how socialists organize.
In fact, Socialism 2017 was the latest in a series of summer educational events that the ISO has been sponsoring since the very first of those 40 years, as Bill Roberts, a founding member of the ISO, remembered:
In the early days, our summer schools were at church camps. For the first one in 1977--in Germantown, Ohio, at a Methodist camp--we had maybe 100 or 150 people. From then on, through the 1980s, we might get up to 300 people.
But when you get 2,000 people this year, it's a different feeling. In the earlier days, we were hanging onto the ideas with small groups of people. We had great events, and they kept people going. But I think this gives you an idea that there's something else bigger than us.
More than a few attendees this year were coming back to the annual conference for the first time in some years.
Keith Danner, from Southern California, had the same reaction as pretty much everyone who attended a previous Socialism: "It's so much bigger."
But Danner also reflected on some of the qualitative differences--for example, the participation of more people of color and an intense focus on the anti-racist struggle. "And," he said, "you can see the reflection of the struggle for trans rights in a way that was never here before."
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
ONE REASON for the larger size of the Socialism conference was expanding participation from around the U.S. left. Jacobin magazine was a co-sponsor this year, coordinating a series of meetings. A number of Democratic Socialists of America members made the trip to Chicago for the four days.
As always, there was an impressive array of international speakers to bring a global perspective to the discussions. Author Neil Davidson communicated the excitement of left-wing Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn's triumphant showing in the June election in the UK. Two members of Greece's Internationalist Workers Left provided updates on the struggle that rattled Europe's bosses a few years ago.
Meanwhile, Haymarket Books--a project of Socialism sponsor, the Center for Economic Research and Social Change--brought a semi trailer's worth of books for conference participants to covet and take home. The top seller this year was Haymarket's first title to crack the New York Times best-seller list: Naomi Klein's No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump's Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need.
Every aspect of the project of building a bigger, broader and better left was on display at Socialism. The socialist left in the U.S. has made advances in the past year and a half, but we need to make more, and we need more people to do it. "You say you're not a joiner?" said ISR associate editor Ahmed Shawki at one plenary session. "Too bad--become one."
That session on "Build the Left, Fight the Right: Why We Need a Socialist Alternative"--with a huge audience packed into a room the size of a football field--set out the high stakes of the struggle in the Trump era, but also the hope for an alternative. Jen Roesch of the ISO brought the electrifying meeting to a close with a call to take action:
Let's be clear: We need a real alternative. We need fights over any number of pressing issues...We need to fight anywhere and everywhere that our side faces attacks. But Naomi Klein is right: No is not enough...
Such an alternative is not measured in election cycles, and neither is the social devastation, the economic immiseration, the attempt to strip ordinary people of their basic dignity. This long pre-dates Trump--it even predates the latest round of crisis that began in 2008. These are built into the system of capitalism itself and any alternative has to address itself to that fact.
More:
Why Socialism was a big deal - Socialist Worker Online
Collins declaration of conscience
Since January, a group of us from Greater Bangor has been going every week to the offices of our federal legislators. We have shared our concerns with staffers on a number of issues, from education to immigration.
Most recently, we have focused on health care and Congress efforts to replace the Affordable Care Act. We were even able to meet directly with Sen. Susan Collins this spring to tell her how upset we were with Congresss actions to reduce Medicaid funding and take affordable health care away from Maine residents.
We are very grateful that Collins has come out against the Senates health care bill, which would end insurance coverage for almost 118,000 Mainers. Collins is so opposed to the bill that she has said she would vote against a motion to proceed with the measure and doubts it can be fixed. We applaud her strong opposition to the bill and her willingness to work in a bipartisan manner to fix the Affordable Care Act. We hope other Republican senators will see the wisdom of her position. Her action truly has been a Declaration of Conscience, like that of her hero, the late Sen. Margaret Chase Smith of Maine.
Collins has acted in a thoughtful and courageous way to protect all of us in Maine. She has placed the needs of Maine people above partisan politics and has acted as the stateswoman we need during these difficult times. We are grateful for her listening to voters. We also especially appreciate the courtesy with which we have been treated by her staff when we visit her Bangor office.
Samantha Le
Jeanne Curran
Bangor
I sometimes wonder what percentage of Donald Trump advocates, the same who scorn legislation to provide a livable minimum wage and Medicare health care coverage for every citizen, ever supported themselves and their families on $8 per hour without benefits or health insurance. What portion of these libertarian Republicans rely on Medicare, government and military disability payments, Social Security and pensions, or an array of other tax-funded benefits and breaks? Creeping socialism is just fine if it benefits the proverbial me, free-market capitalists and the wealthiest 1 percent.
James L. McDonald
Bangor
While summer ozone season is in full swing, the House of Representatives is considering the Smoggy Skies Act, a harmful bill that would delay life-saving ozone standards.
Ground zone-level pollution, or smog, is dangerous and widespread. Millions of Americans are especially vulnerable, such as Maines children and adults with asthma.
HR 806 deserves the name Smoggy Skies Act. It would delay protections for years and permanently weaken one of the nations strongest public health laws, the Clean Air Act. This bill would make it harder to protect people from asthma attacks, emergency room visits and premature deaths from ozone pollution.
Thanks to the Clean Air Act, our nation has made great progress in cleaning up ozone and other harmful pollutants. Still, millions of Americans live where the air is unhealthy to breathe and, literally, can threaten their lives. Weakening their protection is simply wrong. The bill would put lives at risk by permanently delaying updates to limits on not just ozone, but every criteria of air pollutant. These can include carbon monoxide, lead, ozone and sulfur dioxide. The pollutants cause problems for many at-risk Americans every day, especially during the heat of summer.
Members of Congress, including Rep. Bruce Poliquin, need to save our lungs and vote no on HR 806, the Smoggy Skies Act.
Diane Haskell
Palermo
Read more from the original source:
Thursday, July 13. 2017: Sen. Collins' 'declaration of conscience,' creeping socialism, weakening clean air protections - Bangor Daily News