Missing socialism
St 09 listopadu 2016
While listening to the Decline of the West episode I was told about this quotation when John Steinbeck was supposed to describe the political landscape of the US 1930s’:
I guess the trouble was that we didn’t have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist.
—John Steinbeck: America & Americans, 1966
It is strange and I feel strange, but I have been thinking about working class politics a lot lately. It is not about socialism v. capitalism (even less), but about elites v. non-elites. We, elites, whatever are our political opinions, have made system worked well for ourselves, discarding any avenue those others could influence the power, as long as the only avenue left to them were great influential elections, like Brexit or the Presidential election in US.
We, conservatives, were talking a lot about how the genuine associations are the most important part of the community, but we haven’t walked the way much. Perhaps, we should listen to our own words more. There is now high probability that Michigan will go for the Republican, and it seems like I am hearing professor Barry Bluestone talking with admiration about the labor unions, which are now dead and burried. I wouldn’t be that sorry for them, except there working poor lost yet another opportunity to speak to the public affairs in a civilized voice. The only way how can they speak now is to give us, elites, a middle finger.
(It is emotional time right now, so it is highly possible that I will update this blogpost more than once.)