The future of socialism in America

[stilltrucking]

I grew up thinking Norman Thomas, Eugene V Debs, Emma Goldman were heroes. Where are the socialist leaders of today?

I wonder what it would take to move the United States towards socialism. Just even slightly. A complete collapse of our economy?
"If you are so smart why ain't you rich?
Our national anthem.

When Ben and Jerry ice cream was looking for a CEO, they did not want to pay the going rate for a talented manager, they wanted to follow the European model where executive pay was not 700 or a thousand times more than a worker makes. But they could not hire anyone. They had to bite the bullet and pay the going rate.

Capitalism is that the bottom line, is that is what is causing all the problems, or is it something else?

[mtmynd]

Karl Marx wrote that socialism will follow capitalism then communism will follow socialism. Even though he spoke those words the Russian Revolution was not following the words of Marx... there was no capitalism prior to the revolution. No wonder it failed.

If we look at the broad view of capitalism one could see how socialism would/could follow - all people within a capitalist society soon drown in a mountain of debt where only the elite have control. The people soon cast off that yoke of perpetual debt and socialism must follow, that or else the elite continue to seductively pile more debt upon others even if the debt load is for basic needs - food, clothing, shelter, basic power needs. The elite cannot have those same things, the needs, without the work of those that are nont elite.

Interestingly communism was only a word that was hijacked by Lenin and Mao... there never was a true communism. Russia, China and other small countries that called themselves, or were called communist, never approached the communism envisioned by Marx. He would've gagged at what was called communism.

True communism (which followed socialism) was all providing what they could in return for what they need. Sure it is an ideal at this point in our humanity, but if our humanity is to survive and live in some semblance of harmony, this model will have to be the eventuality... no money exchanges so nobody gets to play the money game. There would be no need in that model. I work in a service sector for the people, I go into a food store and pick what I need to eat provided by those that farm. Sounds unattainable in the 21st Century and indeed it most probably is, but I think Karl Marx was quite possibly hundreds of years ahead of his times.

But some levels of socialism I feel are attainable now. I feel that there are certain things and services that make a country what it is and aid in the general welfare of its citizens. Among those are socialized education on all levels, health care, basic healthy food needs, clean water and sanitation and power needs, i.e., electricity and or other power needs, and protection. The people obviously need these things and services in order to make their country a country that serves its people and betters the people. The people need to pay for these things and that would require severe taxation in order to maintain that level but as long as jobs are there, taxes should be paid knowing what they are paying for. At least that would eliminate the extreme poverty that we are witnessing if not living under.

[enough]

[Zlatko Waterman]

A few comments from Hugo Chavez ( who makes the Pentagon's trigger finger twitch since Chavez now leads the world's fifth largest producer of oil . . .) on the prospect for a 21st century socialism:


(link)


http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2005/640/640p16.htm



--Z

[MrGuilty]

What little I know of Marx is that Russia was the last place in the world he expected a revolution. He was thinking of Germany or France?

I have never read the 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon but I like this quote

Everything happens twice in history The first time as tragedy, the second as farce.

I heard it from it, from a room mate in college park around the 1971-1972 the cultural revolution was going about that time, he thought it was so cool, he walked around carrying a picture of chairman Mao
.

I just found out that Marx did not say that, he was quoting Hegel. So what do you think, do you think there is any chance for socialism to get a foothold in USA? How about Israel as a model. Small socialist communities (kibbutz’s) pockets of sanity in the asylum of capitalism. Could the idea spread? I am so out of touch with mainstream.

Professor Z I have not checked the link yet. But I will. How is that when some small poor country down south wants to embrace socialism we get bent out of shape, but we are cool with China. Lots of dough to be made there I guess?

Thanks for the comback Cecil

[mtmynd]

Hi, MrG-truck... I'm sure that somewhere out here in America there are some folks living in a socialist-style environment - monasteries come to mind, but there must be some others.

In today's environment I can't see the idea spreading too far. There's just too much out there that would prevent most from embracing the idea. Oddly enough, though, people don't realize that somethings like our city parks and streets, public libraries and swimming pools, even our police force has socialist qualities but nobody seems to bitch too much about them, eh? They are provided from our taxation.

[MrGuilty]

Yes I know you are right, not much hope for socialism here.
I appreacite your time and effort.
I tell ya cecil I am waiting for martial law, the constituition suspended. We don't need no more stinking elections. El Presidente for life Just got to take a deep breath sometimes.
They say it is an ill wind that blows no good.

sorry about the user names, just phases and stages,

“socialism or barbarism” from the article about chavez.

I like that Z
seems like what we are facing now.
later addition
I just finished reading the piece. He makes a strong case. I get a little squirmy when he talks about Castro.
The last time I checked I was about four years older than you. That means you were about 15 or 16 when Castro came to power. Do you remember him being on the Tonight Show? Do you remember the executions when he came to power? Got dam internet I have tried to stay away from the ex patriot Cuban sites but there were thousands of executions anywhere from 5,000 to 14,000 depending on the source. And then there was the matter of the free elections he promised after he came to power. I just don't know about Castro. I would be very interested to see what you got to say, or check out any links you recommend
About the age thing I am not trying to pull seniority, just wondering what you remember about him when he was still the darling of the American Media.

[Zlatko Waterman]

Yes, Mr. G:

I was a junior in high school during the Cuban Missle Crisis. I remember being afraid that my girlfriend ( who was in the marching band and about to perform in San Francisco) might get vaporized, since she went down to the City on "that" weekend-- " . . .( worried voice of radio announcer . . .) "The ships are now eight miles apart! The ships are now SIX miles apart! "

Many thought, of course, that this crisis would mark the beginning of the end.

"Dr. Strangelove"

http://www.filmsite.org/drst.html



was made in 1963, and Kubrick/Terry Southern created a classic satirical film whose black hilarity is as alive today as it was then.

Of course, today we have Tommy Franks and Company in the General Jack D. Ripper role.

Yes, Castro got a good deal of attention, and has become the "bete noire" of American "conservatives" ( quotation marks indicate that they aren't real conservatives . . .).

Castro is a dictator, as far as I can tell. I have not studied the history of Cuba and am therefore not entitled to evaluate anything beyond Fidel's influence over the American mass media as I have seen it evolve these forty years or so.

I have studied Latin America a bit, read Ernesto Guevara in Spanish and many books about him ( learning "en passant" a good deal about adjacent figures, as one does . . .), as well as material about other revolutionaries. I'm trying to catch up on Hugo Chavez's "Bolivarian" revolution. Check me this time next year.

I just had my sixtieth birthday, speaking of age. As I have announced on this board before, I was born on July 16, 1945-- the very birthday of the Trinity Bomb. Thus, the atom bomb and I are the same age.



Zlatko

[Zlatko Waterman]

G is Still.

Still is G.

Famous quote from a college beer bar ( "The Brazen Onager") in Chico, California, circa 1964:


"Why, Doctor Jekyll, you're not yourself tonight . . ."



--Z

( another phony name)

[stilltrucking]

I remember seeing Castro on Jack Parr show 1959; while he was in New York he stayed in a run down hotel in Spanish Harlem, kept chickens in his room I think. He was a real darling for the first couple of months.

I was surfing on Castro found a couple of links to the Missle Crissis. I was so in Love with JFK in 1960 could not vote yet, now I read stuff that makes me say "Johnny I hardly knew ya"

December 7 1940, had big bang on my first birthday. I think I can remember the war, but childhood memories we fill in the blanks as we get older I think. A big floor model radio with short wave bands, kids pick up on adult fears even if they don't understand. I remember those baths i used to get in my grandmother's kitchen sink, may she rest in peace.

Chavez, do you think he is the real deal or another Castro? Not that I think Castro so bad, hell I afford better health care there, than I can here~ pauper that I am. Chist I got use tilde's because I don't have a clue how to punctuate that sentence.

As always I appreciate the comeback. I don't know what to do about this compulsive scribbling. I am dam near illiterate two years of college English was so boring to me. Now I wish I had paid more attention, wishing I had been an English major instead of pre med

This compulsion did not happen until I was in my early thirties. Been scribbling for thirty years and nothing to show for it. Now it is quickening, as if I am trying to write myself a good death.

I cut this part outbecause it makes me feel like one of those old geezers who can tell you what they ate for lunch forty years ago but they can't remember to zip their fly.


The missile crisis going to U Of Md (about the eight semester of my sophomore year) I was living with my brother he was a flight surgeon at Andrews. They had these hot hangers ready to go. The pilots slept above their planes, they would slide down a fireman's pole into the cockpit, the planes were conected to catapaults, the hanger door would fly open and the pane was hurled out. In the air in less than minute. My brothers quaters were close to the nuclear bunkers. We had emergency supplies. Do you remember those fall out shelter signs in the fifties and sixties. Do you remember air raid drills, under your desk curl up and kiss your ass good bye. Sorry about the pop quiz

btw I got a copy on the joke Have you ever been in Happy Jack's Morro Bay?

[Zlatko Waterman]

Dear Mr. G:


I think you have a good deal of experience to convey that would transform itself into good fiction and poetry, from what I read of your posts.

I don't know if you're familiar with Ray Carver? He is a writer who has taught me a great deal. Oddly enough, our paths crossed several times. He was a student at Chico State a few years before I was, made friends with some of my later teachers, and was an associate of John Gardner, another doomed writer ( and teacher at CSUC) who killed himself on a motorcycle at the age of 49.

But enough of that.

Ray Carver wrote some deliciously incisive and inspiring short stories and poems. He was from the Northwest ( so am I) and wrote about characters who could walk off the pages of my family album.

He was also a good friend of Bukowski, a writer I do not revere at all. To make matters worse, I even met the man ( Bukowski) several times and spent some time with him at parties. We were never friends.

If Bukowski could think, could make himself revise, and could deflate his over-pumped ego, he might write a little like Ray Carver.

Which is to say, if you have ever read Bukowski with pleasure, then Ray Carver might also please you.

But Carver is a much finer writer, as I've said.

"Fires":


http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... ce&s=books



is a fine book, with some inspiring pages about how to write, how Carver wrote, and what Carver made of the material he used technically as a writer. I have read few other works as helpful to those who labor on the page writing, and who find the process frustrating, or don't feel they are connecting.

Annie Dillard's books on writing are also useful. Read "Pilgrim At Tinker Creek" which she wrote at age 25 and won the Pulitizer Prize with, first. It will show you she can actually write.

Her books on writing are:


http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... ce&s=books


collected here. They inspired me when first I read, then taught them about twenty years ago.


I recommend these books because they are spurs to writing. I think you deserve to have a second chance as a writer, ( after college) and I hope these books might help.

Also, Rust Hills's book on the short story is as fine a book of its kind I have found:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... ce&s=books


Hills was an editor at ESQUIRE, among other places, for many years. He knows a good story when he sees one. He knows how to recommend things that are likely to assist you in writing good stories.

Your local public library is likely to have these books, or certainly can obtain them on inter-library loan, which might take a few days or weeks.

Good writing,


Zlatko

[MrGuilty]

He was also a good friend of Bukowski, a writer I do not revere at all. To make matters worse, I even met the man ( Bukowski) several times and spent some time with him at parties. We were never friends.

I have never read a word of Bukowsi, except bits and pieces posted to litkicks. For some reason I have been wary of him

I am on a journey
I left my literary aspirations behind at litkicks.
(That sentence troubles me. It seems awkward)
What I mean is this.
When I first started posting to litkicks I was still pretty delusional.
Composing reviews I would read about myself in the New York Times.
Thinking about which picture of me I would use on the dust cover.
I even sent Levi an email telling him how I wanted all profits from my best seller to go to AFSC.
No time for me to be a writer. My only concern now is just to right clean well punctuated prose.
I am trying to save the world. When I say save the world, I mean save myself.
I have come a long way in the past five years. I owe so much to Cecil and SooZen. And all those women who have flamed my ass all over the place on the litkicks Flame board. I used to call it my Zen Board
I am going to stroke out or have a heart attack any day.
Just going to vanish from here soon.
A very destructive life style.
I don’t suppose you listen to much country and western music but there is a west Texas troubadour that some have called The Cowboy Hemingway.
He wrote, “My dearest friends are perfect strangers, they wish me freedom and self destruction.”
I do appreciate the advice. It is kind and I know you mean well. But that is not what I am really after.
Fiction only comes to mind because I write so much about my family. It is a small world, I do not wish to bring them any harm Thinking about a post Jamelah made about changing things around to protect identities.
I think about those weary eyes of yours from reading all those freshman papers. I would like to make it easy on you. Most of what I write is spontaneous. But I have been trying to do more imaginary text boxes in word. Then post them after spell check and whatever corrections Bill Gates tells me to make. I need to work on my Basic English skills. That is all I am trying to do. Write myself a good death. Thinking about the word maudlin today. As in Mary the mother of God.

There are a million sentence fragments in the above. I spend hours trying to fix them and I can’t. I don’t mind having no creative writing abilities it is my sloppy writing I regret.

Thank you kind professor
It is an honor to me when you take the time to reply.

In friendship
jack

going to try and sit on my hands for a couple of weeks. I been spending way too much time here.

[stilltrucking]

Wrong Mary


I was an unmarried girl
I'd just turned twenty-seven
When they sent me to the sisters
For the way men looked at me
Branded as a jezebel
I knew I was not bound for Heaven
I'd be cast in shame
Into the Magdalene laundries

Most girls come here pregnant
Some by their own fathers
Bridget got that belly
By her parish priest
We're trying to get things white as snow
All of us woe-begotten-daughters
In the steaming stains
Of the Magdalene laundries

Prostitutes and destitutes
And temptresses like me--
Fallen women--
Sentenced into dreamless drudgery ...
Why do they call this heartless place
Our Lady of Charity?
Oh charity!

These bloodless brides of Jesus
If they had just once glimpsed their groom
Then they'd know, and they'd drop the stones
Concealed behind their rosaries
They wilt the grass they walk upon
They leech the light out of a room
They'd like to drive us down the drain
At the Magdalene laundries

Peg O'Connell died today
She was a cheeky girl
A flirt
They just stuffed her in a hole!
Surely to God you'd think at least some bells should ring!
One day I'm going to die here too
And they'll plant me in the dirt
Like some lame bulb
That never blooms come any spring
Not any spring
No, not any spring
Not any spring


http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/ ... 430001A586