How NOT to build the Left in the Age of Trump, Andrew Taylor
As we all know Doctor King didn't approach that Southern cracker LBJ to make demands. Naww...He stayed clean away from LBJ because the Texas president was notorious for dropping the N-word. Right ? MLK was so principled he wouldn't put movement pressure on a white supremacist President to get a landmark civil rights and labor Bill called "The Civil Rights Act of 1964" - or some such scraps from Master's table.. Right? We working-class progressives ought to say that the US president is "illegitimate" and blame Russia. That's the way to make progress and feel good about yourself at the same time!
And in 4 years it'll be great for The Democrats when shit's way worse because we didn't apply pressure trying to broker a deal for the poor. The Dems will govern again and we won't press them with demands either cuz they do for us ?
And in 4 years it'll be great for The Democrats when shit's way worse because we didn't apply pressure trying to broker a deal for the poor. The Dems will govern again and we won't press them with demands either cuz they do for us ?
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How to Build the Left in the Age of Trump
Left-wing radicalizing of the hardest hit most vulnerable strata of US society can only conceivably gain a following, once Trump's campaign promises of Jobs, large-scale infrastructure projects and reversal of Trade Deals fail to stimulate the economy and the recession deepens. The key to the growth of revolutionary movements will then depend on their strategic locations in the socio-economic centres of the crisis with organized cadre and democratic popular fronts that are able to give voice to local discontent with a nation-wide plan of struggle, one that is inspired by a clearly anti-imperialist, socialist program. Privileged liberal Democrats' moral outrage unlinked to ‘spontaneism’ and a lack of deep rooting in factories and poor neighbourhoods of the underclass is not of itself a path forward.
The major weakness of the social movements is manifestly clear: as they gain any influence and mass support, they with the Labor component turn toward or ally with the ‘centre-left’ political leaders who when out of power are with the Left, but in power with the Right.
If the left doesn't build any organizations of resistance and struggle within the different collectives of youth, in the inner-city neighbourhoods and rust-belt towns, organising among the youth getting vocational associate degrees, and among the unemployed - the anger and discontent of the capitalist crisis will increasingly take reactionary forms among "the lost generation" of white Americans who are already emboldened by the rise of Trump and the utterly vain hope for a renewal of the capitalist social contract of the 1950s. Urban crime will continue to increase , especially gang shootings, drugs, prostitution, ersatz escapist religious scams - and from the side or reaction - use of NSA and FBI and CSIS mass surveillance in stepped up targeting of unionists, activists, the poor, the escalation of police violence vs the young black males and poor whites, police technological militarization, and total vitriolic polarization of the nation.
The proven Left method of mass struggle is building a movement of Demands rather than mere 'Anti-ness'. Therefore we must demand fulfilment of Trump positive promises of massive factory job returns, a reversal of the deleterious economic and social effects of globalist Trade deals, job protection . We must take each political leader at their word AS IF we believed in their intentions and rhetoric. Only when that portion of Trump's base from the declasse "middle-class", the workers and unemployed workers are disillusioned with "The Trump that Failed" (as it WILL FAIL) will there come to birth a Left, anti-corporate, pro-socialist path of social salvation.
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