SOCIALISTS ARE WINNING THE BATTLE OF IDEAS

[applegrove]

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/11/socialists-are-winning-the-battle-of-ideas

by NATHAN J. ROBINSON

"SNIP..........

The GOP tax bill’s bringing out my inner socialist. The sex scandals are bringing out my inner feminist. Donald Trump and Roy Moore are bringing out my inner liberal. WHAT IS HAPPENING? (Dinesh D’Souza mocked Kristol for his betrayal of the cause, but D’Souza’s own recent intellectual output is literally a book arguing that Democrats are Hitler.)

One of the problems is that the policies associated with the American right, if presented honestly, are unpopular with the American public. Most people believe the federal government should guarantee health care coverage, with a plurality supporting a single-payer system. I suspect the vast majority of people would be horrified by the consequences of pure free-market health care, in which people who couldn’t afford to spend huge chunks of their income on insurance would either have to put their faith in GoFundMe or die. Yet because the right is ideologically wedded to its belief in free markets, it was incapable of actually proposing any feasible alternative to ObamaCare. It had spent so long defining itself by its hatred of Barack Obama, it fell on its face the moment it was given the opportunity to actually implement something. Likewise, twice as many people want to see corporate taxes raised as want to see them lowered, but because the GOP has no ideas beyond “cut taxes and deregulate,” the only thing it can do is scream about SJWs and liberal hypocrisy while trying to ram through an incredibly unpopular set of “reforms.”

By contrast, parts of today’s left are vibrant and intellectually exciting. It’s a great time to be a socialist, social democrat, or progressive, because these are the groups producing actual serious thoughts on how to solve social problems. This is not as obvious as it should be, partly because many prominent members of the Democratic Party has spent the past two years criticizing Donald Trump rather than putting forward their alternative plans. But that’s strange, because they do actually have positive ideas. Have a look at the Democratic Party Platform. Hillary Clinton’s campaign didn’t talk about it very much, perhaps because it’s a strongly Sanders-influenced document, but it’s actually impressive. It goes through every area of policy and explains what the problems are, and what the Democrats intend to do about them. It’s not a list of complaints about Republicans. It’s a set of clear, though simplified, policy priorities, on how to fix the financial industry, campaign finance, education, health care, and civil rights. I don’t agree with all of it (it contains a totally unnecessary disavowal of the Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions movement). But thanks to the left wing of the Democratic Party, and the success of the Sanders campaign in drawing attention to the actual issues that affect people’s lives the most, it’s the sort of serious statement of priorities that a party ought to have. (Now, if we could only get all Democrats to talk about the platform as much as they talk about Russia…)

There’s a very similar contrast in U.K. politics right now. Labour under Jeremy Corbyn has done unexpectedly well in large part because it has adopted a clear combination of values, vision, and strategy. The most important moment in the last British election was the release of Labour’s policy manifesto, which was widely praised for its specificity: Labour said how many new affordable houses they planned to build, how they planned to allocate new funding for education, what new regulations they would introduce on employment contracts, and how they intended to pay for all of it. By contrast, the Conservative manifesto immediately proved so unpopular that parts of it had to be dropped and the party has no real suggestions for how it intends to improve the lives of the young people who have been flocking to Corbyn’s Labour.

...........SNIP"

[brooklynite]

1. What ideas are those?

I’m not seeing anything notable, here or in the UK.

[applegrove]

2. Health care, democracy, net neutrality, equitable tax system. All the things the GOP is

shoving down the countries throats right now because they have power due to gerrymandering and other undemocratic antics and are being threatened by their big donors.

[brooklynite]

3. None of which require socialism...just empathy.

[applegrove]

4. They are using the term socialism to mean 'government should play a role'. I agree they

could have called it liberal or whatnot.

[msongs]

5. the anti-socialists control the whole federal govt and are packing the courts, rendering them

extremist right wing for the next 40 years. meanwhile the socialists get "ides" to comfort themselves lol

[brooklynite]

9. Care to point to a socialist Government somewhere else?

[dawg]

6. Socialism prevents cavities.

It's true.

(I call my toothpaste "socialism". Apparently, it has become a word that we can now define to mean anything we want it to mean.)

[applegrove]

7. We have alot of stuff in Canada that we just consider liberal. Even the Conservatives

here are afraid to touch healthcare. Though they try other republican ****. I never know what socialism refers to in the US. Didn't like it in the title either but I post as is. Them is the rules.

[LibArts]

8. 👏 n/t

[moondust]

10. U.K.

23 November 2017

UK economy faces 'longest fall in living standards in 60 years'



Popularity of socialist ideas probably a reaction to decades of neoliberalism concentrating too much wealth. Young people apparently pessimistic about their future.