Karl Marx for next US president

Depressing as fuck.

"Thinking would be a new experience for them". Couldn't have put it better myself. Stupid bastards. Honestly what chance do we have? This "civilisation" is fucked.

Well, if you really think that why bother to post on here? This kind of semi-concealed self loathing does no favours to anyone including yourself.

 Personally, I think this whole line of argument is fundamentally flawed and smacks not a little of "Great Man" conspiracy theory – the super-intelligent Übermensch that is our master class  have cunningly ensured  the relentless dumbing down of the  proles and their slavish adherence to the status quo.  As if.  Our masters don't strike me as being any more – or less-  intelligent than us and most  of them have only got to where they are by virtue of having chosen the right parents I think the fact that the majority of workers continue to basically accept capitalism and all that it entails has got sod all to do with intelligence –  or, rather, the lack of it .  Dissing your fellow workers as cretinous buffoons, apart from being incredibly insulting, is plainly false. You mention the internet, Ozy. But if you have the cognitive capacity to surf the web or accomplish any of the myriad of other  technical tasks that goes with living a life of a modern wage slave then you sure as hell have the raw ability to grasp the simple case for socialism.  Unfortunately your  use of the term "stupid" implies that they lack that ability. This points to  what i have long thought is a basic weakness in the SPGB´s approach – its over emphasis on rationality.  The basic assumption is that the case for socialism is pretty much self evident and mere exposure to that case, given our basic rationality,  will compel individual workers to accept it.  When they fail to accept it,  this can seem utterly incomprehensible and  at times can lead  to a quite opposite response – a complete repudiation of the assumption of rationality to which the individual had previously appealed  in putting forward the socialist case.  Some would argue that it is a characteristic of black-or-white thinking that you can switch so easily from one extreme to the other. I would suggest it would be helpful to turn our attention elsewhere if we are to discover why it is that workers are not currently coming round in their droves to  accept the case for socialism,  I'm not a great fan of the French sociologist/anthropologist,  Pierre Bourdieu, but I do think something like his key concept of habitus goes quite a long way to explaining why this is the case: There is a succinct explanation of ´"habitus" in Wikipedia as followsBourdieu thus sees habitus as an important factor contributing to social reproduction because it is central to generating and regulating the practices that make up social life. Individuals learn to want what conditions make possible for them, and not to aspire to what is not available to them. The conditions in which the individual lives generate dispositions compatible with these conditions (including tastes in art, literature, food, and music), and in a sense pre-adapted to their demands. The most improbable practices are therefore excluded, as unthinkable, by a kind of immediate submission to order that inclines agents to make a virtue of necessity, that is, to refuse what is categorically denied and to will the inevitable And also here Habitus is one of Bourdieu’s most influential yet ambiguous concepts. It refers to the physical embodiment of cultural capital, to the deeply ingrained habits, skills, and dispositions that we possess due to our life experiences. Bourdieu often used sports metaphors when talking about the habitus, often referring to it as a “feel for the game.” Just like a skilled baseball player “just knows” when to swing at a 95-miles-per-hour fastball without consciously thinking about it, each of us has an embodied type of “feel” for the social situations or “games” we regularly find ourselves in. In the right situations, our habitus allows us to successfully navigate social environments. For example, if you grew up in a rough, crime ridden neighborhood in Baltimore, you would likely have the type of street smarts needed to successfully survive or steer clear of violent confrontations, “hustle” for jobs and money in a neighborhood with extremely low employment, and avoid police surveillance or harassment. However, if you were one of the lucky few in your neighborhood to make it to college, you would probably find that this same set of skills and dispositions was not useful—and maybe even detrimental—to your success in your new social scenario.http://routledgesoc.com/category/profile-tags/habitus This chimes quite a lot with how I see things.  Workers don't reject socialism  because they are "stupid", they reject it because they cannot see the immediate relevance of socialism to their lives and the structures of everyday living.  If we can break through that particular impasse we stand a chance of gaining ground and social influence. Habitus reminds me a little of the ideas of George Walford and his Systematic  Ideology (Walford, for people, who may not have heard of him, was a trenchant and long standing critic of the SPGB).  Accept that Bourdieu´s concept of habitus is not a static one – like Walford´s hierarchy of ideological types – but dynamic.  I would like to think that as the socialist movement grows it will reach a critical threshold where factors that once worked against us – including habitus – will start to work in our favour Looking at the question of socialist consciousness from the perspective of "habitus", seems to me to be a much more rewarding approach than simply appealing to workers´ rationality – or indeed discounting the ability of workers to think rationally for themselves as you seemingly do, Ozy.   In fact I would go so far as to say that part of the reason why workers fail to be drawn to socialism is because of attitudes such as you express here.  If you have such low expectations of workers then to be quite blunt  you can hardly expect them to join you, can you?  All  you are doing is reproducing or reinforcing a ruling class ideology that keeps them in their place     

The task of the Socialist Party is to show workers that it is a practical proposition which calls for their urgent attention in order to transform a picture of how we could live into a movement for how we shall live. To transform this desire into an immediancy for the working class. Democratic decisions will need to be made, not by leaders but by all interested people. That people are capable of organising their own affairs in common is one of the things that has clearly demonstrated. The socialist movement must be "the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interests of the immense majority"(Communist Manifesto). SOYMB blog has a useful post discussing this topic which i recommend.http://www.socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2013/07/who-we-are-socialist-party-of-great.html#morehttp://www.socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2013/07/who-we-are-part-2.html And my own http://mailstrom.blogspot.com/2012/02/socialism-and-socialists.html