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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brumar89 who wrote (223098)	10/9/2007 2:43:35 PM
From: D. Long	Respond to of 793575

Neocoms? Yep. They prefer the term "socialist", which has new cachet. They scoff at the spread of capitalism as "neo-liberalism". The University of Utah is full of em. Their economics department is probably the last in the West that still give serious regard to socialism.

To: Brumar89 who wrote (223098)	10/9/2007 10:43:28 PM
From: skinowski	Respond to of 793575

Marx was a brilliant agitator …. his followers only read his propaganda, which appeals to their romantic desires to be Prophets of the Future Why are so many people attracted to the obviously discredited collectivist solutions? The influence of "Neo" - as well as the traditional Communist movements - is inadequately explained in terms of propaganda, "penetration", payoffs etc. It appeals to many people on a deeper level -- it is based on a belief that a combination of human goodwill, "proper" thinking, fairness - and of (political) power to act on them - may change the world into a better place... for all people, or at least for most. This impulse to change the world for the better is particularly appealing to young people, and Communists and various other collectivists are very good at recruiting them. At the root of collectivism lie good intentions, and also a certain hubris - the faith in the ability of human beings to change the world - and, if needed, even to change human nature itself. All they want is political power. They are quick to forget that all collectivist experiments always ended in dictatorships and destruction of individual rights. Every time they had a chance to replace free markets and liberal democracy, all they accomplished was totalitarian hell. Such outcomes were and will remain inevitable and predictable every time - in the past and in the future - since collectivism and freedom are as incompatible as... water and fire.

To: Brumar89 who wrote (223098)	10/10/2007 9:10:39 AM
From: Tom Clarke	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 793575

Antonio Gramsci and "the long march through the culture" Our well-informed readers, Buddy among them, occasionally refer to "Gramscian tactics," or describe something as "Gramscian." It is difficult to understand what has been happening politically in the US and in Europe for the past 30 years without understanding the influence of Gramsci (1891-1937) on Western Leftist thinking and strategizing. Gramsci was a clever Italian neo-Marxist who realized that the West, due to its prosperity, its increasingly-wide access to education and opportunity, social mobility, and its readiness to repair injustices (due to its Judeo-Christian morality), would never be amenable to a violent proletarian socialist revolution. So he came up with Plan B, which is often termed "Gramscian tactics." These were based on the idea, as the good Wiki entry says: Capitalism, Gramsci suggested, maintained control not just through violence and political and economic coercion but also ideologically, through a hegemonic culture in which the values of the bourgeoisie became the 'common sense' values of all. Thus a consensus culture developed in which people in the working-class identified their own good with the good of the bourgeoisie, and helped to maintain the status quo rather than revolting. Thus Western "hegemonic culture" became the enemy - even more so than "the ruling class," which was simply a reflection of bourgeois culture. And defeating that enemy could not be done with guns. It required a "long march through the culture" to slowly discredit and undermine its institutions, values, and foundations. This was a brilliantly destructive idea. Eventually, the society would fall apart, opening the way to totalitarian socialism to rescue the mess. Thus the nihilistic flavor of the Western Left which is always seemingly-incomprehensively mingled with extreme Statism. One might well ask why he wasn't satisfied with the remarkable outcome of Western regulated markets, the growth of the welfare state, unionization, etc. - but he wasn't. He was determined to remain true to Marx and to find a non-revolutionary path to economic totalitarianism. A central component of the culture war he envisioned was the war on religion (also Wiki): Gramsci stated that, in the West, bourgeois cultural values were tied to Christianity and therefore much of his polemic against hegemonic culture is aimed at religious norms and values. He was impressed by the power Roman Catholicism had over men's minds and the care the Church had taken to prevent an excessive gap developing between the religion of the learned and that of the less educated. Gramsci believed that it was Marxism's task to marry the purely intellectual critique of religion found in Renaissance humanism to the elements of the Reformation that had appealed to the masses. I hope I do not sound paranoid when I soberly say that much of the wacky, upside-down, right-is-wrong, black-is-white stuff we see in the news these days is directly or indirectly inspired by Gramsci: the attacks on Christianity, the family, individual freedom, morality and moral judgements; multiculturalism; the cult of victimhood, "tolerance," political correctness, the replacement of the roles of family, religion, individual responsibility and choice with government rules, laws, and regs; the expansion of the State and the Welfare State and the Nanny State; anti-tradition, anti-capitalism, anti-success, anti-nationalism, anti-Americanism and anti-Westernism, etc - all the stuff that makes me echo Bob Grant with "It's sick out there, and getting sicker." I am sure Antonio never anticipated that a Green movement would emerge to become an ally of the slow, incrementalist and thus less-alarming Gramscian revolution. Yes, it is all ultimately about suppression of the individual soul and spirit - his freedom, autonomy, initiative and self-definition - the highest and most noble notions of Western Civilization - in pursuit of a collectivist utopia run by "them." In short, it's about the location of power and money. maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com