PEN-L message, Re: [Pen-l] Obama sells out to Wall Street

The proposals have to express an articulated need. For instance health care. Some articulated needs do not grip the citizens because they do not see how it relates to them. Other articulate needs have little to no chance of success - (saving all of Detroit's Big Three), because there is no unity of identity between capital and labor to make the need compelling.

In my opinion national health care is winnable. Because virtually every strata or layer of all classes have a need for it. Expanding welfare - food stamps and housing and clothing articles and utilities and utility payments are winnable, with strong effort, because virtually every layer of diverse classes in our country have a stake in its expansion.

One of the reason the various communists and socialists groups have been sectarian for like . . . forever, is because their program is different from the programs the workers are living. No one is asking for economic communism yet. Only the poorest workers are on that path. We know that the only way to transfer the necessities of life to people who have no money is to give them these things as part of the new society social contract. And send our bad ass children to safe, good public schools.

Most of the workers still believe that somewhere and somehow they are going to find jobs, even if they do not pay well. The program should be based on how folks think things out.

Only a narrow layer of workers are losing their mortgage. Finding help is important for some of these homeowners, but the majority of the working class and basically all of capital has no stake in this issue. Most certainly the sellers of structured debt have no interest in "saving mortgages." Plus, it makes sense to walk away from a high mortgage and the workers have some raw basic common sense.

The program is what people are already doing and aspiring to do. 12, 1200, 12,000 or 120,000 people wanting economic communism is not sufficient for change. All we can do is hammer away at things that have a probable chance of winning and issues expressing moral outrage.

In a message dated 1/17/2009 1:02:43 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, lnp3@xxxxxxxxx writes:

Sandwichman wrote:
> Critique is necessary but not sufficient. There also needs to be a
> vision of what the alternative might be. The way to advance such a
> vision is in the form of proposals to the powers that be, even with
> the understanding that they will not adopt such a program.
>

Good idea. This afternoon I will put together a proposal for a planned
economy based on collective property relations to Tim Geithner. I am
sure he will give it his prompt attention.