The 1950s are coming back

It certainly was bliss in that time, and to be young was very heaven ... but what would "success" for the followers of Baez and Dylan have looked like?

 

Marx and Lenin were both very opposed to the modern bureaucratic leviathan state and admirers of America's ability to check the growth of the state structure. Lenin only denounced the USG when Wilson expanded our national government in preparation for entry into WWI.

Of course, Lenin in power discovered just how useful a powerful police state could be - for its leaders. There is theory then there is practice.

 

Hmmm... I'm not so sure about your characterization of Lenin vis a vis the US. Or of Marx either. They certainly wanted a socialist revolution here. (But of course both of them 'had a side' in the American civil war, and Marx certainly approved, if he did not write, the following words of the International Workingmen's Association after the Union victory, addressed to the people of the United States:

"Never again to be insulted by your own children." What irony!

Certainly Lenin, as a very orthodox Marxist, looked forward to a stateless society after the triumph of world socialism. But no one had predicted that the Marxists would find themselves in power, but isolated, in a backward society. Orthodox Marxism had predicted Marxist victory first in an advanced society -- one with near-universal literacy, a developed economy, etc. Victory in a country like Russia which was in many ways still pre-capitalist was originally seen as something temporary, a launchpad for the European revolution. Once the revolution had triumphed in Germany, Russia would take a back seat.

It was the isolation of the Bolsheviks -- victors in the civil war which had destroyed the Russian workingclass, killed the best and most idealistic of the Bolsheviks, leaving the survivors suspended over a sea of hostile peasantry -- which began Russia's slide into totalitarianism ... at least as I see it.

Note that profound political struggles, civil wars, always result in a serious contraction of civil liberties: Lincoln in the American Civil War, and more to the point, Cromwell and his Puritans in the English Civil War. Yet the victories of Cromwell and Lincoln paved the way for a great expansion of liberty. Democracy does not always enter by the democratic road. The Bolsheviks can be rightly accused of making a virtue of necessity, and thus ending a long tradition of socialist devotion to civil liberties. We can see today the distant fruits of that loss.

 

We will never know but throughout history real change always comes from the bottom up and never from the top down.

 

Yes, Lenin was a very orthodox Marxist until he had to actually rule the USSR, but he did write this as he took power:

"How self-government is to be organized and how we can manage without a bureaucracy has been shown to us by America and the first French Republic, and is being shown even today by Canada, Australia and the other English colonies." "The State and Revolution", VI Lenin, Penguin, 1992, Lenin, 66.

He also expressed dismay at the creation of a large state structure in the US by 1917.

“The bureaucracy and the standing army are a ‘parasite’ on the body of bourgeois society, a parasite spawned by the internal contradictions tearing that society apart, but a parasite which ‘chokes’ all it’s vital pores.” V. I. Lenin, State and Revolution, Penguin. p. 27.

Marx's quote about the flag should give some of those who consider themselves to be progressives a jolt, but I doubt that many of even those who actually still call themselves Communists have ever bothered to read Marx or Lenin. Too bad more conservative anti-Communists did not read them back in the 50s.

Human beings tend to rely too much on the critical summaries created by experts with agendas of their own.

 

Caesar, Sulla?

 

Agree completely. He was also uneasy about the growth of bureaucracy in the Soviet Union after the Bolsheviks had won the civil war. But by then they were riding a tiger, and it was all too easy to make virtue out of necessity.
And the ignorance of the actual writings of Marx/Engels and of Lenin, even among ostensible Marxists, is sad. But, to be honest, when I last read State and Revolution -- some decades ago -- I overlooked Lenin's comments about the US and the Anglosphere, so I can't be too self-righteous. You learn something every day.

 

As you learn new things you become more aware of how much you do not know. We are all functioning around the vast lacuna of personal and universal human ignorance. It is amazing that we do as well as we do, but the record of human history does not offer much encouragement beyond the American Revolution.

“Now in 1917, in the epoch of the first great imperialist war, this reservation by Marx is no longer valid. Both England and America, the largest and ultimate representatives – in the world – of Anglo Saxon ‘liberty’ in the sense of an absence of militarism and bureaucratism, have completely sunk into the all- European filthy and bloody morass bureaucratic – military institutions which subordinate everything to themselves and trample everything underfoot. Today both in England and America the preliminary condition for every true people’s revolution, the smashing, the destruction of the ready-made state machine (developed in those countries between 1914 and 1917 to European and general imperialist standards of perfection).” VI Lenin, The State and Revolution, Penguin, 1992p. 35.

 

In the early 1930s, a philosopher named Sidney Hook wrote a book called Towards the Understanding of Karl Marx. (He was an independent communist, close, I think, to the Trotskyists.) He analyzed Lenin's attempt to explain away Engels' statement that in England, a peaceful transition to socialism might be possible. I think Hook did a good job of demolishing Lenin's justification for this statement and his assertion that, yes, when Engels wrote it was true, but now England and the US have become like continental European capitalism, unreformable by peaceful means. (But you're probably familiar with all this anyway.) I especially appreciated Hook's attempt to explain why Marx and Engels made that extraordinary un-Marxist statement about the possibilty of a peaceful transition, and his final conclusion that he does not know.

I'm not sure what you mean about the record of human history not offering much encouragement beyond (after?) the American Revolution. I think we're doing pretty well, all things considered. If we can just keep from blowing ourselves up, I believe the future is bright. Of course we'll have to wade through blood to get there.

 

The very same! And you're lucky to have had actual access to him.

He was almost certainly a communist at some point early in his academic career - and he lost tenure because of it if memory serves. But you're right, he was far more a believer in collectivist smallholding .. modelled on universally successful models of subsistence agrarianism. He was into barter etc also, for many years. Wasn't a big fan of money. Interestingly, his success as a human animal was also marked. By that I mean survival - choosing to off himself at age 101, rather than suffer the sharp decline. He was apparently fit and well when he took himself out. A lifetime of vegetarianism and a physically active life + low stress.

I will have to argue a point, meantime. Socialism isn't determined by who owns what, it's determined by profit. IOW, when a collective works only to produce the means of their owns survival, with little to no profit. A 'collective' working for profit is still Capitalism.

 

It would only ever have been possible before decades of extreme wealth and ease destroyed the work ethic in huge sectors of the populace.

 

That's the problem. No one at the bottom (all those who claim to be socialists and egalitarians) will make the slightest effort to change their own lives in keeping with their professed ideal. They'd rather keep living a cushy First World life and just pay lip service.

 

In the 50's we paid a LOT more in Taxes. Today we just put our spending on America's Credit Card.

Trump is poised to raise America's Debt the most .............. in times of a Good economy .............

 

Given that 38 million children have been forced out of school by the coronavirus, the new era of the stay-at-home mom may be coming sooner than I thought.

 

worse case scenario we could be heading to the 1750's bit the 1950's

 

I could live with the 1950s coming back.

Hell I could live with 1972 coming back.

Fewer abortions, we still had a manned space program that actually went somewhere.

Original Star Trek was still the standard by which all others were judged.

 

If data from the Guttmacher Institute is correct we have lower abortion rates today than we had in 1973 when abortion was legalized. 1973 the abortion rate was 16.3 abortions per 1,000 women of legal child bearing age, since 2014 it has been lower at 14.6 per 1,000 women and even lower since 2014.

 

The 50’s was the sweep it under the rug and pretend era. We’ve adopted that mindset concerning our economic structure now so I could envision the opposite occurring. Re-evaluation of priorities.

 

Only a part of europe was in rubble And we were not protecting our nation from imports in order to help europe. Where did the money come from to rebuild Europe?

The US has never needed to export anything in order to have a middle class and prosperity for workers .

Our huge consumer market created by living wages was the key .And the fact we can be self sustaining .

We never competed with cheap foreign labor because tariffs evened our cheap labor from poor nations

Globalism is destroying what our founders created. And cons are responsible for offshoring our middle class jobs. The bastards.

 

Actually, I agree that there may be a swing towards the 50's life where the middle class ruled. The majority of Americans are not racist so this time around the minorities will have a much better shot at the middle class. In the 50's taxes were born considerably more heavily by the richest and a return to that is in order, perhaps not the oppressively highest taxes but considerably higher than now. The middle class gained most of it's strength through collective bargaining. Instead of competing with each other for jobs by accepting lower and lower pay they competed with management for higher pay. For decades the powerful have done everything they could to divide the American worker because while they may have power we have numbers and when united our power far exceeds theirs. Most Americans believe in fairness though and I doubt that the new unions will follow the paths of some of the old that got too greedy for power but will be more of a partnership with management.
A return to a 50's mentality with a 20's sensibility would be a good thing.

 

Most of Europe from the channel to the Pyrenees east into Russia was in rubble.

Laugh in the face of anyone who tells you differently.

Yes, our foreign trade is part of the reason we have had some prosperity for our workers.

 

Who are those people doting over Clinton signing Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China? Cons?


Who has been standing at the Southern border welcoming cheap labor to compete with poor Democrats so wealthy Democrats can afford landscapers, maids, servants and cooks? Cons?

 

Sweep what under the rug? Pretend what?

 

We also had a 90c minimum wage the federal budget was 2/3 military 20 infrastructure and the rest social programs. There was no EPA no endangered species act no clean air act. No energy agency, and the black rate for out of wed lock births was lower than that for Caucasians. By the way that 90% tax rate effected precisely one American and he left the country so it never actually collected a dime. That one American was J.Paul Getty. By the way there were far more tax exemptions then than there are now. Perhaps the most important was mortgage exemption for all properties own.

 

Someone wrote "By the way that 90% tax rate effected precisely one American and he left the country so it never actually collected a dime." That is, my friends, right wing horse crap.

The Trump bail outs are collectivism, socialism if you must, but don't deny it.