(11-17-2020, 05:06 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: In the FDR to LBJ period, the loyalty was real and unions were not useless. From Nixon though now, pretty useless.
Quote:Feeling a strong allegiance to the president, Meany decided to turn the AFL-CIO’s biannual convention scheduled for December 1965 in San Francisco into a virtual rally for LBJ’s Vietnam policies, which already were controversial in some sectors. Meany lined up an impressive array of speakers, including the president, vice president, and secretary of state. He also invited a large delegation of South Vietnamese trade unionists to the convention and an array of other international visitors. A special breakfast session for all foreign visitors focused entirely on the Southeast Asian crisis. Johnson, insisting the American mission in Southeast Asia was “the pursuit of freedom,” spoke to the convention via telephone. Vice President Hubert Humphrey and Office of Economic Opportunity chief Sargent Shriver both personally addressed the crowd and vigorously defended the war.
https://omnilogos.com/labor-falling-domi...m-war-era/
American labor unions have always been non-oppositional and loyal to power.
Quote:elites and racists have frustrated the Democratic loyalty to the working man and minorities. You are essentially correct though the unraveling, but not in general. The Democrats have at least made the correct promises. We will see how they deliver.
I'm correct about the Democratic Party throughout its entire history. It was no less than FDR who declared himself "the best friend the profit system ever had".
Quote:There is a big difference between the idealized Marxist theory and what actually occurs when you try to implement it.
Marxism isn't a theory to be implemented at al. Marx was quite clear on this point, as in e.g. his Letter to Ruge.
Quote:In fact, the internal obstacles seem almost greater than external difficulties. For even though the question "where from?" presents no problems, the question "where to?" is a rich source of confusion. Not only has universal anarchy broken out among the reformers, but also every individual must admit to himself that he has no precise idea about what ought to happen. However, this very defect turns to the advantage of the new movement, for it means that we do not anticipate the world with our dogmas but instead attempt to discover the new world through the critique of the old. Hitherto philosophers have left the keys to all riddles in their desks, and the stupid, uninitiated world had only to wait around for the roasted pigeons of absolute science to fly into its open mouth. Philosophy has now become secularized and the most striking proof of this can be seen in the way that philosophical consciousness has joined battle not only outwardly, but inwardly too. If we have no business with the construction of the future or with organizing it for all time, there can still be no doubt about the task confronting us at present: the ruthless criticism of the existing order, ruthless in that it will shrink neither from its own discoveries, nor from conflict with the powers that be.
I am therefore not in favor of our hoisting a dogmatic banner. Quite the reverse. We must try to help the dogmatists to clarify their ideas.
Quote:If you are going to win a revolution, you need organization, you need to control whoever is revolting. Otherwise you loose the revolution.
This organization emerges organically, in the moment of revolutionary action itself.
Quote:If you organize enough to win, the folks once they get power have always become a new group of elites, more interested in maintaining power, profit, and keeping the people subdued than behaving according to the theory. The leaders of the revolution become the new oppressive class.
An actual socialist revolution precludes this even as a possibility by dint of the fact that it emerges from immediate material conditions.