I concur with Reed's view; as a postgraduate student in Mass Communications / Journalism at Bowling Green State University between 1989-1990, I took a vociferous stance against the 'first' US Persian Gulf War, in my column WORD UP in the student newspaper BG NEWS. I am not a pacifist, but I felt the war was an expression of American jingoism, and would become a disaster. Which it has. I protested in Dublin against the 'second' Persian Gulf War, not because I knew Saddam Hussein to be a socio-pathic political thug who played the USA, British and Russians against each other, but because I knew innocent people would be killed. It went ahead, and became another disaster. Because of the digital and social media revolutions of the twenty-first century, I am reviving my column WORD UP at <https://www.facebook.com/wordupcolumn/>. Getting back to Reed's view, the following is the first post, directed to an American audience, in my new online column. Would love feedback on the crit-geog list or on the fB page. I know I'll take a bit of flack, but if you are fighting the good fight, that is worth it. Thanks for this forum, and thanks to Reed for priming the pump.
Best,
Charlie Travis
"Political Science"
If I had to peer review the political scientists discussed in the VOX article "We asked 6 political scientists if Bernie Sanders would have a shot in a general electionI" I would ask, is there an amnesia in the discipline? It's like economists discussing climate change, its like chalk talking about cheese. They never saw Trump coming. As if Franklin Delano Roosevelt as president didn't absorb the best elements of the "Socialist" Revolutions of the early 20th century, energize American capitalism to fight a war on two global fronts (European and Pacific) and enact job programs during the Great Depression in the 1930s ?!? I think we are hung up on terms ("socialism") we don't really understand, and really have no relevance anymore, and I'm not expecting Social Security to fund my retirement. Simply put, what Bernie I think is advocating is this: the taxes we pay as U.S. Citizens will be distributed democratically (that is the ideal) and will go into health, education and transport infrastructure, instead of funding corporations like Dick Cheney's and Hillary Clinton's Wall Street chums and crowd to engage in jingoistic pop up wars for profit which destroy our country's soul.
WORD UP
https://www.facebook.com/wordupcolumn/?ref=h
Dr. Charles Travis
Research Fellow, School of Histories and Humanities
Arts Building, Office: A6.004
Trinity College, The University of Dublin
Ireland
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
ORCID ID:0000-0002-9278-5364 / orcid.org/0000-0002-9278-5364
https://tcd.academia.edu/CharlesTravis
------------------------
An Dr Charles Travis
Comhalta Taighde,
Scoil na Staire agus na nDaonnachtaí
Foirgneamh na nEalaíon.
Oifig: A6.004
Coláiste na Tríonóide, Ollscoil Átha Cliath, Éire. [log in to unmask]
________________________________________
From: A forum for critical and radical geographers [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Reed Underwood [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Saturday, February 20, 2016 6:17 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Sanders and socialism?
I believe there are many socialisms, and I welcome Sanders and the energy he's
bringing into American politics.
But Sanders isn't making socialism popular or populism socialist. The American
people are doing those things, sitting around with their friends and wondering
why all the wealth is going to a small sliver of the population, and why so
many Americans don't feel all that hopeful about their futures. Those Americans
are making the Sanders campaign, not the other way around.
The U.S. has a long tradition of socialism. American socialisms have always
been more pragmatic than theoretical, and they've tended to be non-marxian or
at least less interested in Marx. What it's not historically that interested
in, what, say, Eugene V. Debs, wasn't interested in was fighting over who's
the more or better radical. What it is interested in is achieving a country
that works for working people, a cooperative commonwealth.
In this sense, I think Sanders absolutely does represent the American socialist
tradition, and I think his campaign is largely built on the second part of
your definition of socialism, the "abolition of conditions of oppression". To
use "reformist" as a slur is to veer off into some sort of coffee-shop pissing
match. You could have called Debs reformist, too, or Lincoln, or Whitman, or
Dewey and on and on. It's not useful or meaningful, unless you're only
interested in revolution in the abstract, for its own sake. And what has the
"revolutionary" academic left got for American working people over the
last couple of generations? Lower wages, more hours, worse jobs. High tuition
and student debt. A surveillance state and militarized law enforcement
apparatus. On issue after issue, the "revolutionary" left has failed to move
the needle and has more often ceded the field to reactionaries, authoritarians,
plutocrats.
I'll happily throw my lot in with a "reformist" like Sanders, somebody who
can credibly talk about democracy and equality and who works for both using
democratic and egalitarian means over the empty rhetoric of the academic
"revolutionary" left, which long ago lost any meaningful link with the
everyday lives of working Americans.
Cheers,
Reed
On Sat, Feb 20, 2016 at 07:48:34AM -0500, Raju Das wrote:
> We live in interesting times. Ideas, including in our own left-leaning
> discipline, which have nothing/little to do with Marxism are called Marxist.
> Politicians who have nothing to do with socialism are called socialists.
>
> The word socialism is being heard in the US quite a lot, thanks to Sanders.
> It seems there is a class struggle occurring over an important keyword:
> socialism.
>
> As I understand it, socialism ≠ reform of capitalism. Socialism is the
> abolition of capitalist class relation. Socialism is the abolition of the
> conditions of oppression of refugees, of immigrants, of working class women
> and racialized minorities and so on.
>
> Words and the concepts that are described by words are different things. It
> does not help to say there are different meanings of the word.
>
> While one must appreciate that Sanders has helped make the word socialism
> popular, the same cannot be said about his relation to the concept of
> socialism, and its underlying objective content:
>
> At a recent town hall meeting in Las Vegas, Sanders was asked what he meant
> by socialism. In reply, he said this:
>
> “When I talk about democratic socialist, you know what I’m talking about?
> Social Security, one of the most popular and important programs in this
> country, developed by FDR to give dignity and security to seniors… When I
> talk about democratic socialist, I am talking about Medicare, a single payer
> care system for the elderly. And in my view, we should expand that concept
> to all people…
>
> “When I talk about democratic socialist, I’m not looking at Venezuela. I’m
> not looking at Cuba. I’m looking at countries like Denmark and Sweden…”
>
> What? Denmark and Sweden are Sanders’ model countries? Does he not know that
> Sweden is set to expel some 80,000 people fleeing the imperialist wars in
> the Middle East, that Denmark will seize the assets of asylum seekers, and
> that these countries are busy dismantling welfare programs and imposing
> austerity on the working class?
>
> While no one can be against social reforms of the kind he talks about, why
> is the need to describe these things by using the word socialist? I was also
> intrigued when I heard some people describe Obama a socialist a couple of
> years ago.
>
> The fact that what are bourgeois reforms can be called socialist (and what
> are simply bourgeois ideas can be called Marxist) signifies the extent of
> the right-wing – blatantly anti-worker and bourgeois (and imperialist) --
> character of a society and the direct/indirect complicity of the ideological
> spokespersons of the bourgeoisie, including from the Left and so-called
> critical circles, in the reproduction of the bourgeois rule, than anything
> else.
>
> Just call your reforms by its first name, i.e. reforms, Mr. Sanders. [One
> could say the same thing to most of the peddlers of left or so-called
> critical ideas: call your ideas bourgeois, or left-bourgeois, than Marxist,
> socialist, etc. Coexistence of multiple perspectives is fine. A good thing.
> But intellectual dishonesty? Not sure. ]
>
> Like many, I actually appreciate the fact that Sanders -- like many people
> in academia -- criticizes growing inequality in the US. But his criticisms
> -- like those from the Left and criticals -- are more system-reproducing
> than anything else: they fall in the category of 'the oppositional criticism
> [that] is nothing more than a safety valve for mass dissatisfaction, a
> condition of the stability of the social structure’ (Leon Trotsky). This
> really leads us to ask: what does being critical or radical really mean in
> these times?
>
> Raju
> (Raju J Das
> York University, Toronto)
>
> --
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