Our only hope really does rest in revolution...

[RadioRaheem84]

...not like it never did, but now it is more apparent than ever.

The job market is so devastating out there that where once one could rely on a "healthy" economy (i.e. plentiful subsistence wages) to cushion the ills of capitalist society, now there is not even hope for that anymore.

Even for college grads, the situation is more hopeless because of student debt.

While the rest of the world is awakening to the madness, it seems like Americans are dead asleep.

I feel that even the protests in Wisconsin are so centered on a single issue that it won't awaken Americans to the crippling depression in the lower sectors of society.

What on Earth could possibly be done to remedy the situation in the States?

[Fulanito de Tal]

Take control of the vast majority of the oil supply. Once this occurs, the rest of the world will be at the mercy of the US to eat.

[Sixiang]

I know what you mean. I'm going to be in debt for my student loans for college for a long time. My sister is still paying her college loans at 30-years-old. Everyone just seems to be going day-by-day, paying their bills, working, and doing this, that, and the other.

[RadioRaheem84]

Really this just reminds me of the life in Chile, to be honest.

Everyone is always raving about the economy in Chile and Latinos use it as a grand example of Latin American progress, but in reality I just saw most of the people just eeking by paycheck to paycheck. The rich and upper middle managerial class have it best.

Same situation in Poland from what I saw.

It seems like the real goal for the first world is Poland and Chile.

They are places where the economy is "healthy" according the Economist, which is code for good for business, but still bad for the working class.

[Sixiang]

Really this just reminds me of the life in Chile, to be honest.

Everyone is always raving about the economy in Chile and Latinos use it as a grand example of Latin American progress, but in reality I just saw most of the people just eeking by paycheck to paycheck. The rich and upper middle managerial class have it best.

Same situation in Poland from what I saw.

It seems like the real goal for the first world is Poland and Chile.

They are places where the economy is "healthy" according the Economist, which is code for good for business, but still bad for the working class.

Have you visited those countries?

[RadioRaheem84]

Yes

[smashcapital]

The situation in the U.S. just hasn't deteriorated enough yet for the majority of people to want to do anything about it yet. People are starting to get more angry about the situatuation here, but it is still at a point of all talk and complaining about things. Once the government starts implementing more severe cuts to things dissent will probably grow. The politicians aren't getting any smarter and they want to deal with the financial problems by putting it on the backs of the lower and middle classes. This will only increase the wealth gap and make the people more willing to become active and possibly take action.

The Wisconsin protests had been centered around a single issue, but it at least did have the effect of showing that Americans are willing stand up against measures that they oppose for a sustained period of time. Something that has definately been uncommon in our recent history. Who knows? Maybe there is hope for us yet.

[Sixiang]

Yes
Interesting.

One of the things we need is class consciousness. How we get it to spread I am still trying to figure out.

[Ostrinski]

Interesting.

One of the things we need is class consciousness. How we get it to spread I am still trying to figure out.
It will happen by itself if you believe in dialectics.

[Sixiang]

It will happen by itself if you believe in dialectics.

I'm still quite new to dialectics and am in the learning process of it, so i can't really respond to that right now. Also, I'm not interested in starting a DM shitstorm in this thread.

[Fulanito de Tal]

Interesting.

One of the things we need is class consciousness. How we get it to spread I am still trying to figure out.

You can help by participating in my qualitative study! :thumbup:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/apolitical-proletarian-identity-t152825/index.html?t=152825

[RadioRaheem84]

The situation in the U.S. just hasn't deteriorated enough yet for the majority of people to want to do anything about it yet. People are starting to get more angry about the situatuation here, but it is still at a point of all talk and complaining about things. Once the government starts implementing more severe cuts to things dissent will probably grow. The politicians aren't getting any smarter and they want to deal with the financial problems by putting it on the backs of the lower and middle classes. This will only increase the wealth gap and make the people more willing to become active and possibly take action.

The Wisconsin protests had been centered around a single issue, but it at least did have the effect of showing that Americans are willing stand up against measures that they oppose for a sustained period of time. Something that has definately been uncommon in our recent history. Who knows? Maybe there is hope for us yet.


The thing is that I don't think it will ever get that bad.

I think that it will get worse than it is now but I don't ever think it will get Depression bad.

The situation seems like most of the population will just be able to get by and make ends meet but still get screwed every election.

The goal of the upper class has always been to me an attempt to win back all the surplus value, but letting people have just enough to subsist.

That's why I think the goal for many in the US is for it to look like Poland or Chile.

[Jose Gracchus]

In some sense a relative decline can awaken people to attacks on them by the ruling class, and a perception of class interests, as well as invoking them to act in a collective manner, which further is positive for class consciousness. On the other hand, sustained attacks on working people in the past often have the result of driving them to abandon politics in pursuit of individual survivor, and "everyone for themselves" consciousness, which is deleterious. Other variables are whether the de-industrialization in the West will continue unabated, which has had a negative impact on class consciousness, and deprived working class organization of direct access to some of the most important fracture points in industrial society, or whether the driving down of relative wages and benefits, as well as a perceived need to counter the increasingly multi-polar character of inter-imperialist competition and attempt to ameliorate self-destructive capitalist tendencies [like environmental destruction] will encourage perhaps some re-industrialization in the medium-to-long-term. Hard to tell.

[ckaihatsu]

I'm still quite new to dialectics and am in the learning process of it, so i can't really respond to that right now. Also, I'm not interested in starting a DM shitstorm in this thread.


I'll suggest here that 'cognitive dissonance' may be as good, or better, than dialectics at framing material situations:





Cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding conflicting ideas simultaneously. The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance. They do this by changing their attitudes, beliefs, and actions.[2] Dissonance is also reduced by justifying, blaming, and denying. It is one of the most influential and extensively studied theories in social psychology.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance


History, Macro-Micro -- Political (Cognitive) Dissonance

http://postimage.org/image/35rsjgh0k/

[cb9's_unity]

Workers are stuck into thinking and talking in capitalist terms. They have had it beaten into them that there is nothing besides capitalism, and thus the only way for things to getter and worse are through wage increases, tax cuts, or 'entitlements'. So the workers go back and forth from democrats to republicans hoping to cash in on whatever tiny bribe either party is promising.

Our goal has to be to crush the legitimacy of capitalist terms. The left needs to become better at constantly revealing the inadequacy of bourgeois arguments. Otherwise the workers will keep buying the shit that the democrats are a party for the working person, and that the republicans are actually a party against oppressive government. IMO the left needs to create some sort of large propaganda unit that will have the size and resources to formulate and distribute specific anti-capitalist arguments across the population.