blindpig (1000+ posts) Fri May-13-11 03:40 PM
Original message
The social counterrevolution in America ........
The social counterrevolution in America and the tasks of the working class
Two and a half years after the Wall Street collapse and multi-trillion dollar bail-out of corporate swindlers, the ruling class is carrying out a savage and unprecedented assault on the living standards and basic social rights of tens of millions of working class families in the United States.
Help me out here.
How does this work?
Supposedly the rich want us all bankrupt...
...BUT...
...the rich want us to spend our money on the trinkets they produce.
How does that work?
Against the backdrop of an intractable recession, with long term unemployment at its highest level since the 1930s, the political elite—Democrats and Republicans alike—are engaged in a bipartisan campaign to destroy crucial social programs upon which the working class depends.
What is unfolding in the United States is a social counter-revolution—the ruthless and systematic destruction of the fundamental gains and social rights won by the working class over a century of struggle.
Your revolution got you epidemic levels of out-of-wedlock pregnancies and all the attending ills of illiteracy, crime, poverty etc.
Tens of trillions of dollars in transfer payments and poverty is worse than before.
You've told people they shouldn't have to lift a finger and they took you at your word.
On health care, the Obama administration and congressional Republicans are conspiring to cut trillions of dollars in Medicare and Medicaid, the programs for the elderly and poor.
We spend trillions on Medicaid?
Even when Medicaid is due to be gutted by Obamacare all he could come up with was $500 billion over 10 years.
Oh, BTW: ObamaCare guts Medicaid by $500 billion over 10 years, so stop bitching about evil Republicans.
One study estimates that a proposal from Republicans to cut Medicaid—which the Obama administration has refrained from publicly criticizing—would raise the number of people without coverage by 44 million over the next decade.
One unnamed, unsourced study.
State governments throughout the country, bankrupted by the economic crisis and starved of resources by the federal government, are carrying out their own sharp cuts in services and eligibility.
Did you know federal resources are collected from the states?
Public education, a central concern of progressive movements in the United States for over 150 years, is being dismantled.
Cities throughout the country are closing public schools, expanding private charter schools, increasing class sizes, laying off thousands of teachers, and imposing sharp cuts in pay and benefits. In response to cuts in state funding, public colleges and universities are raising tuition to levels unaffordable to the vast majority of working class youth.
more...
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/may2011/pers-m13.shtm...
fascisthunter (1000+ posts) Fri May-13-11 03:42 PM
Response to Original message
1. we win in the End
the evolution of mankind.... democracy.
Oh for face ****s!
Pure unadulterated bullshit.
Evolution? Democracy?
Evolution is about cataclysm, starvation, competition. It is brutal, unthinking, unknowing, uncaring, unintended, unjudged, unmourned, unjust.
Grow-up you *****.
Uncle Joe (1000+ posts) Fri May-13-11 05:41 PM
Response to Original message
4. Kicked and recommended with one quibble, I believe the author's view
of the protests in Wisconsin is too narrow and short term.
The social counterrevolution will not be defeated by mere protests. As last February’s events in Wisconsin proved, the protests of the working class could not reverse the policies of the state government.
Wisconsin was a watershed moment, the momentum has shifted and it was only the beginning of the awakening here in the U.S.
I suspect the protests will grow in number, scope and impact across the nation and politicians standing in the way of this rebirth will pay heavy a political price.
Thanks for the thread, blindpig.
How's that recount going for you?
blindpig (1000+ posts) Fri May-13-11 05:49 PM
Response to Reply #4
5. It is gonna take more than protests...
it's gonna take strikes, big ones, long ones, general strikes. It's gonna take the kind of organization that we don't have now and a growing sense of class solidarity. We can be pretty sure that will happen, our capitalist master show no sign of letting up in the onslaught besetting us.
I'd say "get a job first" but I think it would be more useful if you started a business. Then you can deal with people like you as you wonder if your life savings will evaporate beneath a mountain of taxes and regulation.
leftstreet (1000+ posts) Fri May-13-11 07:26 PM
Response to Reply #4
7. Do you think the WI protests promoted class solidarity?
I'm not seeing much evidence of it
socialist_n_TN (1000+ posts) Fri May-13-11 07:44 PM
Response to Reply #7
10. I think it did, but then I'm an optimist............
But it's going to be a SLOW process at least at first. At some point I think that it will hit a "critical mass", but it ain't there yet. But yep, I think that Wisconsin helped.
On what planet is this "Wisconsin" they speak of?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x1097051
