i read those excerpts, and while the recounting of recent history and the ways that disagrees with dem’s marketing is good, i think there is too much brushing over a critical analysis of the past.
Even if they were only doing so to prevent the commies from making the US look bad, the democratic party was once the party of abundance for the white working class.
this is exactly what i’m talking about. the dems were not ever that. they were using racism as a wedge issue to break a working class movement that was an increasingly credible threat to the capitalist system. we can clearly see the institutional role of they play in the passage and congressional veto override (supported by about half of congressional democrats) of the Taft-Hartley act barely more than a decade after the NLRA.
as for my recommended starter book to move a lib toward the left, that really depends on where on that trajectory they are. if they aren’t scared by the word socialism, i’d go for Socialist Reconstruction, published by the PSL. it makes a very compelling case for abandoning the democratic party by presenting policies that would actually fix the problems in our society that the dems would never even mention, much less advocate for.
Lol, I have a feeling you and I are talking about very different libs. No way in hell am I getting the libs I’m talking to to read a book from the psl without priming them quite a bit ahead of time. You can complain about the framing and you’re not necessarily wrong, but for a large chunk of white America the democratic party was perceived as the party of abundance. Expecting the folks who were raised on that to leap right into class consciousness and socialism isn’t gonna work very well, in my experience.
maybe so. i’m pretty open about being a communist, which does do a bit of filtering with who would be willing to take a book recommendation from me. i think that we are in a historical moment where there is a lot to gain from being bolder about what we believe, but it’s always good to have a variety of tactics.
i read those excerpts, and while the recounting of recent history and the ways that disagrees with dem’s marketing is good, i think there is too much brushing over a critical analysis of the past.
this is exactly what i’m talking about. the dems were not ever that. they were using racism as a wedge issue to break a working class movement that was an increasingly credible threat to the capitalist system. we can clearly see the institutional role of they play in the passage and congressional veto override (supported by about half of congressional democrats) of the Taft-Hartley act barely more than a decade after the NLRA.
as for my recommended starter book to move a lib toward the left, that really depends on where on that trajectory they are. if they aren’t scared by the word socialism, i’d go for Socialist Reconstruction, published by the PSL. it makes a very compelling case for abandoning the democratic party by presenting policies that would actually fix the problems in our society that the dems would never even mention, much less advocate for.
Lol, I have a feeling you and I are talking about very different libs. No way in hell am I getting the libs I’m talking to to read a book from the psl without priming them quite a bit ahead of time. You can complain about the framing and you’re not necessarily wrong, but for a large chunk of white America the democratic party was perceived as the party of abundance. Expecting the folks who were raised on that to leap right into class consciousness and socialism isn’t gonna work very well, in my experience.
maybe so. i’m pretty open about being a communist, which does do a bit of filtering with who would be willing to take a book recommendation from me. i think that we are in a historical moment where there is a lot to gain from being bolder about what we believe, but it’s always good to have a variety of tactics.