Reply #79: LOL [View All]

[William Z. Foster]

Do you have any idea how much manufactured consumer trash is pouring into the environment? I am opposed to all of it. The solution is to regulate industry, not obsess over people's personal habits. Good grief are we going to have the Prius versus Hummer debate as well now?

So are you denying that the "personal responsibility" theme promotes a right wing political agenda?

Personal choice, consumerism, personal values and personal beliefs and the like are fine, but they are no substitute for political solutions to public social issues and problems. Leave that moralizing stuff about improving human beings to religion. It has no place in politics.

Just imagine what could happen if even a fraction of the effort and thought being put into this "they are making bad choices" nonsense were put into organizing and resisting, and fighting back against those who are waging all-out war against the working people. But that sort of solidarity and collective action is precluded so long as the left is controlled by people who see social problems as being caused personal failings (always the personal failings of others) and the solution to social problems being to improve human beings (and always it is the poor people that people want to reform) and punish those who won't get with the program - and that is the core of the right wing agenda right there.

The attitude you are expressing here is relatively new in the political left, starting about 1970, as people abandoned organizing for "activism" - self-expression, self-actualization, personal choices and alternative lifestyles, "speaking truth to power" rather than battling against power, "being the change" rather than changing things so that working people have some chance at being anything other than poor, and "making the right choices" rather than fighting for working people to have ANY choices. Now you, and far too many Democrats, want to go further and punish poor people for "making the wrong choices." Since that happened the political right wing has gained more and more power and the working class has slid farther and farther down. It has led to many Democrats, progressives and liberals and even socialists to be taking the side if the haves rather than the have nots. This has weakened and crippled us in the battle with the right wing.