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We The People are possessed by the Spirit of Capitalism to the degree that pretty much the entire country is either addicted to money-making, or unwilling (for fear of being labeled a “Socialist“) to confront and denounce the preposterous notion that we can have (for everyone) good healthcare, wages, education, environmental protection, housing, foreign policy, etc. that are owned and run for profit. America will not significantly change until more of us, including Progressives, understand and demand that “free enterprise” has no role to play in the satisfaction of basic/vital needs for "the people."
The simple truth is that private enterprise should (at best) be banished to the margins of society, or confined to flee-markets, where people can compete and haggle, win or lose, if they so desire, about non-essential matters of life and death, but certainly not about the satisfaction of basic/vital needs. Unfortunately, the American love affair with Capitalism still captivates “the people,” their Representatives, and the so-called Intelligentsia in this country (with too few exceptions to make a social difference at this historical time).
It’s true that many, perhaps most, of the American people are on the right/correct side of many, perhaps most, of the important issues, but they are also overwhelmingly committed to the primacy of the private sector for achieving these social goals. The big problem is not only Sarah Palin and the Republicans, or Obama and the centrist Democrats, but the Progressives as well because they are also unable or unwilling to stand up for a planned economy (at least regarding the satisfaction of basic/vital needs for everyone).
Any solution that looks like Socialism gets rejected or ignored, even by Progressives. The S word is poison in America, just like the “N” word that was used to viciously end all rational conversation and freedom. The only way to take the hateful venom out of this term is not to run away from it, but to explain what it really is because the reality behind the word is something healthy, good and beautiful, but this is something, I now realize, that Progressives do not do and will not do.
47 Comments
You rarely find answers in extreme positions. On the issue of the role of governance in the economy, the position of capitalist and the communist are equally extreme.
The way the rest of the world defines these terms, a socialist would be the realist’s position between the two named extreme economic viewpoints. The view that the economy must be regulated by the state. Some activities considered reasonable for the state to operate industries that the people consider it unreasonable to seek profit.
All positions are extreme positions now. The “moderates” are on the road to ruin like everyone else.
And compromise positions rarely resolve fundamental problems. Go figure.
History has proved that centralized planning on a large scale doesn’t work, especially when it comes to the economy. Socialism in the end hurts the poor the most because they become dependent on the State, while the rich are more self-sufficient under such a system. So Socialism will not fix America, or the world’s ills.
And America’s economic system is not capitalist. In the center of the economy there is the Federal Reserve Bank, which is a large, private, central bank that sets the interest rate for the entire economy, and unconstitutionally issues the country’s currency.
Watch the film The Secret of Oz, it’s a great documentary by Bill Still
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D22TlYA8F2E
What you described is Communism. Socalism does not equal communism. Communism does not equal socialism. You need to learn the difference between them
Governance in Norway, Denmark and Sweden works very well, thank you. Norway Sweden and Denmark are democratic socialist states. Socialism is a mixed economy. Regulated markets. State ownership of a few key industries (oil, health care) Some free market. Those three countries have the top living standard, lowest infant mortality, and the best educated population in the world.
We need to stop flinging insults at the “socialists” and start taking notes how they got things working better than we do.
One of the reasons we are in trouble here in the US is that so many of us can’t tell the difference between socialism and social democracy. “Socialism” is about public control of the means of production. Social democracy is what Sweden has.
-You’re wrong. Socialism is state ownership of some key industries, but capitalism is allow on a limited regulated basis. Communism is state ownership of ALL industries.
-There is quite a bit of state ownership of industry in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. Energy and Health Care
-Social democracy = democratic socialism = mixed economy
It appears that you might benefit from Googling up the terms whose alleged definitions you have been casually tossing about.
Sweden, Norway, and Denmark indeed qualify as mixed economies – but so does the U.S., though we most certainly don’t qualify as a ‘social democracy’ (of which Sweden is indeed a good example, as cassiodorus suggested) or ‘democratic socialism’.
And none of those terms is equivalent to ‘socialism’ – the term that has been under discussion here.
You are wrong: communism is not “state ownership” of the means of production; rather, it is non-ownership. We, everyone living here, would decide, democratically, what we want to produce, using what methods, for whom. There is no “ownership”. Communism is the term Marx coined for the system of production that will follow capitalism, because the term “socialism” was associated with utopian socialism (e.g. Robert Owen, Saint Simon, etc), a theory that to change society you must change human behavior. For Marxists, to change human behavior you must change society.
To the original author: I am a Marxist and I largely agree with you, and I have been welcomed warmly here. Though most here are from a different perspective I have found much curiosity about Marxism (along with a few who claim to know what it is but are simply repeating folk homilies about it).
Glad to hear that you’re a Marxist. Me too. Your explanation of the difference between Socialism and Communism is interesting, and somewhat original, I believe? You probably know that Marx saw Socialism as the first stage of Communism, entailing the “dictatorship of the proletariat,” or rule by the intellectual State (as I interpret this concept), which was eventually to “wither away,” and be replaced by true economic Democracy. Agree?
My little bit about socialism isn’t novel, it just is a (very) rough paraphrase of Engels’ “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific”. In general I think your definition of socialism is the same as conceived by Marx, as a transitory phase between capitalism and communism, when the new society is still living with its “birth pangs” from the old one. Thus, the end distributional system of “from each according to his/her abilities, to each according to his/her needs” will not yet be in place and some system of differential wages, i.e. “reward according to desert” will still exist for that short time, to disappear as we get more used to the new system of not working for money.
Yes, that’s exactly right. Since you know something about Engles, I wonder if you find in Marx the basis of communitarianism (in the sense of going beyond the nuclear family) that Engles discusses in his book, “Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State?
Well, to a point, and not “communitarianism” in the liberal sense, e.g. Rawls or Dworkin. But he certainly regards the so-called “family unit” as exploitative and not worthy of retention. Good sources for this include not only the bit in the Manifesto “Abolition of the Family! … Do you charge us with wanting to end the exploitation of by their parents? etc.” and in Capital, such as Chapter 15 “Machinery and Modern Industry” in which among other things he notes that male workers become a “slave dealer” by selling his family, toward the end of that same chapter he quotes approvingly from a factory report that is critical of the fact that “parents are able, without check or control, to exercise this arbitrary and mischeivous power over their young and tender offspring”, and the next page he notes that collective labour can make familial relations more humane. And there are numerous places were he discusses (with disgust) bourgeois families and their propensity to seduce each other’s wives. But I would stop short of saying that he has a well developed argument concerning family relations.
That’s good info! Thanks. And my conclusion exactly: “He has no well developed argument concerning family relations.” I find the most visionary suggestions in the “Economic And Philosophical Manuscripts,” written when Marx was a young man and much under the influence of Hegel’s speculative philosophy. You know, after reading this post, that I have given up of Liberal and Progressive politics, and I was wondering if you know of an organizations, associations, websites, blogs, etc. that want to revive radical politics in America (in the sense of “going to the root of the problem,i.e.Capitalism) other than DSA and other than the American Anarchists groups, both of which I find seriously inadequate for reasons that I will not go into at this point?
I don’t know of any, those I have checked out in the past were not well patronized or were associated with one branch or another that I am not sanguine about, e.g. Trotskyism, Frankfort School etc. In general Marxist discussion seems confined to academia here, something that Marx would find appalling I think. I come to this board despite certain liberal tendencies because most of the denizens are as disgusted with the status quo as I am and many at least will listen to to appeals from the far left, and frankly one’s sanity depends on knowing that there are others out there like you, not just a very small cadre on a board with few visitors.
Yes, that’s pretty much my experience also, but I do like the Frankfort School a lot, except that it’s no longer “alive” in America as far as I can tell. What you say about preserving sanity in this world is necessary and true, but I’m a radical (like you ) which entails a good deal of social estrangement, I believe, and makes it difficult to act. “The purpose of philosophy is not to interpret the world but to change it.”
There’s a lot of intelligent comments on this site that have led me to a question for you. If you see a difference between Liberals and Progressives, then how would you charcterize it?
I’d be interested in hearing the answer to that as well (i.e., what the view from the outside is). For myself, I was never happy considering myself a ‘liberal’, because back in the ’60s that had a bit too much ‘big government is the solution to everything’, ‘tax-and-spend’ implication for my comfort. ‘Progressive’ avoids that and (at least historically) implies a more pragmatic view of solutions (which for someone with a libertarian streak on top of a strong underlying social conscience fits much better).
Ok, here is my take, this will be long so bear with me. First a technical definition from a political science perspective (when I was teaching university-level US Government I diagramed this on the board using a box with four compartments), then a bit of a broader answer. We will start by defining four political perspectives in the USA according to two axes: a) attitudes/ acceptance of government involvement in/ regulation of personal/ private matters (in particular, whom you can have sex with and how, the portrayal of sex in the media, access to medical procedures for expressing one’s sexuality, etc., but also issues like prayer in public school, etc) and b) attitudes/ acceptance of government involvement in/ regulation of the economy (many areas, including workplace standards such as wages, working conditions, hours of service, etc, consumer regulation such as food safety, product safety, price gouging/ dumping,etc; regulation of transport systems such as airlines, etc.). Using this rubric: populists favor both G regulation of personal/ private matters AND the economy; conservatives favor G regulation of personal/ private matters, but not G regulation of the economy; progressives favor G regulation of the economy but NOT G regulation of personal/ private matters; and liberals support neither G regulation of personal/ private matters NOR G regulation of the economy. Now, someone will object that in their usage liberals are closer to how I have defined progressives; my reaction: not anywhere but in the USA for the past half-century. Classical liberals (Adam Smith, John Locke, etc) and liberals in all other parts of the world (the Lib Dem party in the UK, the Free Democrats in Germany, etc) define liberal in the way I have, and associate Keynesianism (which, before it died here, we associated with liberalism) with Social Democracy (i.e. our progressives). (Once around 1990, a professor of mine from Peru said in class “Latin Americans are opposed to Reagan’s liberal policies”, which caused much head scratching among the mostly American students, until someone held up his hand and confusedly said “Reagan isn’t a liberal, he is a conservative.”). And be quite sure: Obamarahma is a liberal in the way I have defined it.
I will continue this in another post…
Okay, now what are the commonalities between progressives and Marxists? In my classes I would ask: Okay, what is left out and why? The answer I was looking for is that perspectives that do not consider the state/ government to be a desirable entity do not belong up here, including most obviously anarchists, but also Marxists. But in addition Marxists do not believe in rationing through the market. Rather, they believe that what is to be produced, using what methods, by whom, for whom should be decided democratically. The state, the entity responsible for the maintenance of territorial integrity etc. but especially its role in furthering class rule (the use of militias to break up strikes, etc) is obviously not the mechanism by which to accomplish this goal. How can this be reconciled with the general view of progressives that a) the market is something worth maintaining and b) government is a useful tool in smoothing out the rough spots, none of which can be reconciled with Marxism? My view is that the views of progressives are in a way still suffering from the “birth pangs” from their previous beliefs, i.e. primarily liberal theories. The problem for structural theories such as Marxism is that what it explains is not visible on the surface of society, and requires a great deal of contemplation in order to understand. Take the wage bargain: what is seen on the surface is a worker selling his/her “labour” to a capitalist in a free and equal transaction. It then looks like the capitalist assembles a number of inputs (raw materials and labour) and then adds a profit on top of that. What is not seen is the whole historical process by which the majority of the population came to own nothing but their ability to perform work, that therefore profit is in fact unpaid labour-power due to the power capitalists enjoy in the wage bargain, i.e. the capitalist can hold out for a better deal while the worker cannot. So here is the bottom line for me: many progressives are prepared to be Marxists but just have not made the last leap. Why? Because we Marxists haven’t done a good enough job of making communism seem realistic.
First let me see if I understand you (in a very selective way). Your perspective is that Liberals do not favor Government regulation of the economy, but Progressives do. Marxists, on the other hand, don’t favor the maketplace or Government/State regulation. If I agree with this, I still don’t see how Progressives are suffering from their past ties to Liberalsim in a way that prevents them from becoming Marxists? Could you try again?
It seems to me that Liberals and Progressives are tied to the marketplace, and closer to one another than they are to Marxism. Perhaps you will agree that Obama is a liberal, and Alan Grayson is a Progressive, but they might be allies in their rejection of Marxism? What do you think? It seems to me that Progressives are not prepared to leap beyond the Capitalism economy?
I see by the lack of response here that most firepups are not ready to take a stand and admit what our choices are. This shows that most seem to be liberals and not true progressives and few understand that it is going to take radicals to change anything.
The belief that we can change our free market system and corporate political parties to benefit the the majority of Americans is doomed to fail, 40 yrs of trying shows that it has already failed.
The meager attempts by the Left to change the status quo is called Socialism and Communism by the Right so why don’t we adopt that label and go for the real thing, American 21st Century Socialism. We can learn a lot from the failed so called Socialism of the 20th century.
This new Socialism will have to avoid the top down autocratic model and be a more responsive model.
I don’t know if Americas will ever be able to see the truth about this choice even as we become a third world nation. Many countries in South America have made that choice and they are building real 21st century Socialism. They have many challenges but they have rejected neoliberalism and have kicked out the IMF, the World Bank, the CIA, the DEA and many userous corporations.
There is some deep agreement between us. I would like to add that I no longer expect real change to come from America (but I will certainly welcome if it does happen). A new Socialism will more likely come from some other place (or places) on planet Earth, perhaps Latin America?
Thanks for the reply Glenn, i usually get deafening silence for a reply or censorship from the mods for advocating Socialism here. It will probably take another generation living under the Banana Repubilc conditions before Americans will wake up.
If it happens it will have to be our version not something copied from foreigners, since we are exceptional. Venezuelanalysis.com is a great site for info on what is happening down south. There is an excellent 4 part analysis of their goals and challenges recently published there.
Thanks for the info. I will check it out. At least the folks I’ve run into on this site are willing to have a reasonable debate about Capitalism, in contrast to what I’ve experienced elsewhere, but it still amazes me that there is such widespread consensus about the desirability of Capitalism in America, including the best and brightest people. After listening to Obama’s speech with all his cheeleading for competition, hard work, and American greatness, I realize how far we have to travel in order to fulfill our potentialities as human beings.
While I certainly wouldn’t want to see socialism advocacy banned here, neither would I support it. There’s a vast gulf between reforming our political system to remove the pernicious influence of bribery so that we can try to find a good middle-ground between unfettered capitalism (which we’ve come dangerously close to now) and no capitalism at all (which has not worked all that well elsewhere in the past and certainly seems to lack some important incentives for economic health).
Single-payer health care? Great! Completely socialized medicine? Not unless we’ve tried single-payer and found it wanting. Strong controls on the financial system? Great! No private enterprise at all (save for worker-owned co-ops)? Not unless we’ve tried a mixed and well-regulated economy and found it wanting.
If you want to advocate full-blown socialism rather than a mixed economy, knock yourselves out. But don’t expect a great deal of support from progressives and liberals: there’s a reason that we’re not just called socialists, you know.
I understand your attitude Bill and realize that the US is not ready to make that choice. This is why we are doomed to continue our slide to third world status.
I hope you realize that as long as our capitalist overloards control the political process and all the levers of power we will get nothing but more Banana Republic. They are on the move to dismantle the remainder of the New Deal and no Progressive-Liberal candidate is going to stop them.
They will not give up their power and control it will have to be taken from them.
(Thanks, cassiodorus, for saving me from having to point that out.)
That’s precisely why my post referred to “reforming our political system to remove the pernicious influence of bribery”: did you miss that part when you read it?
My point is that there’s more than one way to address the problem of “capitalist overloards (who) control the political process and all the levers of power”. And reforming the way elections are held strikes me as likely somewhat more feasible than fundamentally changing the economic structure of our democracy.
America had a development policy up until the 1970′s when the monetarists took over and financial capitalism started to once again assert itself. They gave us the market Oracle.
The market Oracle is no better than a communist planner. In fact, if you look behind the Oracle’s curtain, you might just find an ex-communist planner.
The American government used to do a much better job of shaping the economy. Government handles the broad strokes but doesn’t try to micro manage the planning of every last widget in the economy(something a soviet planner might attempt).
Just look at healthcare, they talk about providing coverage to a much larger % of the public but where in that plan was the resource allocation to build the needed hospitals and train the needed doctors and nurses? Will the market Oracle conjure them up? Or more likely, the market Oracle will make off with an increased revenue stream without increasing healthcare infrastructure 1 single iota.
Too many broad brushes painted at progs in the diary, yet more whining about censorship by the mods for a topic catagory.
Not rcc’d.
This was good, though:
I’m with Adam @8.
And aside from arguing how many political models dance on the head of a pin, the reality is that our present sitch is gonna collapse because too few have too much.
It’s all unsustainable, and history proves empires collapse for the reason.
Just a matter of when the collapse comes. Could be economic, or a foolish choice to bomb a country, or mama nature might interfere from the cosmos.
But the SYSTEM is unsustainable as it is. Too big a gap tween have’s and have not’s, and growing wider daily.
The solution is easy to see, tax the rich and investigate the criminals.
It has always been easy to see, that is why they spend so much time, effort and money on efforts to obscure it.
I consider myself a progressive and I work very hard to promote my progressive (socialistic) ideas, like for example legalizing pot and promoting gay marriage. I put it together as part of a package of human rights, that if followed for everyone, would end war globally. It was a big vision I had.
Since you are ignoring all my efforts, and then turning around and slandering me with your statement above, how do you suggest I take it? I’m not seeing any constructive criticism in your slanderous lies about me, so what did you mean by that?
Or am I just taking it all too personally?
I think you are taking it too personally? My point is, as wayoutwest put it, “No Progressive-Liberal candidate is going to stop them,” –that to say, not going to stop the planetary destruction of global Capitalism.
How about utopia, a classless, moneyless society? If you dismiss the possibility as preposterous, ask yourself why?
There an evolutionary social stage beyond socialism and communism, in my opinion, that could be called “communitarianism,” (and it could be regarded as an advanced stage of communism) that may be what you have in mind? If so, then we are in agreement?
The real conflict between Capitalism and Socialism is the worship of the profit motive and the myth of American individualism. Profit is primary workers, safety, enviornment and society are secondary.
Socialism can tolerate free enterprise but American Capitalism can not tolerate any form of Socialism. This is why they are proceeding to destroy what remains of the New Deal. I believe American Capitalism could have worked for everyone if it could tolerate a strong social safety net but it is apparent that it will not.
The myth of the rugged American individual is used to dupe the masses into believeing that anyone can join the upper class. The truth is that only with the help of or on the backs of workers does anyone rise.
As long as profit is paramount power and wealth will flow into the hands of the few, society, the enviornment, and justice will suffer.
It’s worse than that. The more of a “rugged individual” you are, the less likely you’re ever going to join the upper-class. Conformity to upper-class norms is a prerequisite for entry, and their norms are hardly those of rugged individuals. This should be self-evident in how much old money stayed out east, rather than pioneering across the vast wilderness to the Way Out West.
If you’re looking for individualism, talk to the next homeless person you meet. If you’re looking for conventional pieties and platitudes mixed with rigid normative behavioral expectations, talk to the next banker you meet.
GlennP: Good blog, but the real solution besides more leftist politics is a clear orientation towards reviving political struggles within the working class.
BillTodd: “No private enterprise at all (save for worker-owned co-ops)?” Why can’t Americans have a system of worker-owned coops replace hiring of labour for small-business profit altogether?
Captjjyossarian: Development of computer technology and enterprise resource planning has furthered the possibility of more micro-planning than the rather broad strokes of the Soviet planners. One of Reagan’s economic advisers noted that, behind the Soviet planning rhetoric, enterprise managers dealt with each other instead of through planning mediators.
GlennP (again): Communitarianism should be combined with Populism. Communitarianism alone is prone to influences by bourgeois communitarians, and Populism alone is prone to influences by petit-bourgeois individualism.
Feel free to join the Socialist Party USA, a multi-tendency organization that doesn’t suck up to the Democrats and is trying to pull away from the Greens.
I’ve been following this discussion with interest but didn’t have anything particular to contribute. But since you ask:
We COULD have ANY kind of system, I suppose. My own preference would be to give the kind of mixed economy that we seemed to be headed toward in the ’60s at least a chance before deciding that only more radical change would suffice.
In other words, I’m not much of an ideologue: I like to see what works in practice, and until we’ve tried that I see little reason to move farther left (though I appreciate the existence of something farther left to make it clear that other options exist to be considered).
If you want a more theoretical justification for not moving directly to something purely non-capitalist, one might be that we’ve evolved via struggle, that we’re still very much creatures of instinct (yes, we can and should try to be rational but can never completely succeed in this – and if you want evidence of that just look around: it permeates our current insane politics), and as long as there’s a really good safety net some modest amount of incentive will encourage our reach to exceed our grasp and thus lift all boats together.
But that’s mostly conjecture (as is most ideology IMO), so don’t take it too seriously. Just consider me a skeptic who considers incremental change (when possible) as a way to avoid the dangers of being whip-sawed between unsustainable extremes.
OK, I’ll check out the Socialist Party USA. Thanks!
I don’t understand your comment about Communitarianism, probably because we have different understanding of the concept. What I have in mind is commun-ism, that is to say, an advanced stage of communism in which the nuclear family is overcome in favor of what might be described as second-order tribalsm or families-by-chocie.
If you are a Marxist you should NOT be favoring co-ops or a mixed economy, for that preserves the most negative features of capitalism, and Marx was scathingly critical of them. FOr example, in regard to Robert Owens’ co-ops, in Chapter III of Volume I of Capital:
In sum, the production of commodities requires a class of free but propertyless workers, whom are compelled, through economic necessity, to work for the capitalist of their choosing or starve. A system of co-ops, embedded within capitalist production, would maintain that structural coercion. So, essentially what one is doing is maintaining exploitation of workers (except that a group of managers will likely do the exploiting), as well as the unplanned nature of capitalism (with its tendency toward crises due to investments being made haphazardly and imbalances developing, etc). The problem with capitalism is not simply the firm-level behavior of the bosses, it is rather the system as a whole, which forces the majority of the population, the working-class to do things they would not otherwise do. The problem isn’t the just the inability to make a living for the majority, it is the inability to make a life, a meaningful, fully human life.
P.S. I am registered with Socialist Party of Florida (which is associated with Socialist Party USA) but now I am rethinking that.
You are right again about co-ops and a mixed economy, from a Marxist perspective. Why are you rethinking your involvement with the Socialist Party of Florida?
P.S. Thank you for your in-depth answer to my question about the difference between Liberals and Progressives. I’m going to ponder it, attempt to simplify it, then respond.
I wasn’t really serious, sort of a harsh, snarky reaction to the person who advocated both co-ops and the Socialist Party USA. I vote for them mainly as a protest vote, which I think is worthwhile, but they aren’t even running anyone in November. I will be writing in “Single Payer” for every office this year as was suggested in another post here a few days back, just to show my contempt for both major parties.
Ah – a bridge across the ideology gap. I too thought that was an attractive solution for those like me who had no one on the ballot worth voting for but preferred not to be lumped in with the simply apathetic (I’ve been leaving upper ballot slots blank since 2003 – save for Nader votes – but suspect that doesn’t make much of an impression).
I guess for me the question of commonalities revolves around the dialectic of history, and the question of reform v. revolution: can capitalism be made humane by tinkering with it or must it be replaced by something else? Marx for example once said that he would rather have one worker join the movement than 100 turncoat petit-bourgeois. And he involved himself in debates among the various working-class oriented groups fighting the bourgeoisie. Would he have regarded the group we call progressives as opposed to the interests of the working class? Should we? I am saying that it is premature to label all progressives in that way, that it is a static definition of where they came from, where they are now, and where they are going in terms of their theoretical development, whereas Marxism is inherently dynamic. All of us born in the US have been indoctrinated in liberal ideas since we were born, “The American Dream” is the pinnacle of liberal thought. But most of us are not exposed to Marxism unless we attended grad school. If I could get all progressives to read Capital I would, and in fact that is what I am trying to do. I personally am not sure what Grayson is, he came out in favor of the large telecoms against net neutrality, and he is a multi-millionaire, my guess is Marx would consider him, and others like Sanders and Feingold to be turncoat petit-bourgeois. I do not think most on this website however are worthy of that disdain. I think they are on the right path on the difficult road to consciousness. One just needs to look at the disdain for what is called “corporatism” here to see that they are not permanently “tied to the marketplace”; all options are being considered, I think.
Thanks for a very thoughful comment. You touch on key issues, some of which I have wondered about. Marx did actively involve himself in reformist politics, but he never lost his focus on criticizing and overcoming Capitalism. I don’t say that Progressives are opposed to working class interests, anymore than Marx saw the trade unions, for example, as opposed to working class interests, but I do think that the evolution of consciousness involves “leaps of consciousness,” and if Progressives do not soon make a leap into radicalism (in the sense of understanding that private enterprize should not be the primary engine of our economy), then America has a dark future.
I realize that Progressives are vast and diverse, but Joan Walsh, for example, who is a leader of the movement–I think you would agree?– said several week ago on Hardball (I think?) that we have a “wonderful capitalist system.” I don’t mean to pick on Joan, and I actually like her a lot, but so much of the leadership seems to be unable to see the alternative of Socialism/Communism, or am I mistaken?
Tough questions, eh? Part of the problem is with the whole idea of labels and pigeonholing, especially with a group like progressives that are more of an organization around specific current issues than a discrete theoretical perspective. Conservatism is very similar. There really are only individualist and structuralist ways of explaining things, and today those two groups are liberals and Marxists. I myself consider Marxism to be Marxism, a methodology more than anything, and that any modifier makes it not Marxism (the “Rational Choice” Marxists, Elster, Roemer, etc come to mind as not really Marxists). BTW that Walsh quote is repugnant, she is a liberal I think not a progressive.
Really we haven’t even scratched the surface: what should Marxist attitudes toward elections be(what Engels called “parliamentary cretinism)? It is interesting how many of this board’s denizens have come to the conclusion that voting is generally a charade and a waste of time, just as Marx believed. But I have long been intrigued by Piven and Cloward’s argument that while elections in themselves cannot transcend capitalism, the movements that are built through contesting elections can be used to strengthen the larger working-class movement as a whole, building publicity etc. It then is a matter of deciding if it it really useful or not: two steps forward, one step back etc…