OK, I suppose I've got a personal interest in this question....

[socialist_n_TN]

but how long do y'all think it will take before worker solidarity internationalists are considered "terrorists" by the respective governments of the capitalist system? I see where Erdogan has already blamed the unrest in Turkey AND Brazil on some unnamed international conspiracy. How long will it take every other government to pick up on this? Or will they?

[GeorgeGist]

1. I need a scorecard.

[socialist_n_TN]

3. A scorecard for?....

Pardon me, but I'm a little thick this morning.

[niyad]

2. we have a state employee in TN saying anyone who even asks about water quality is a terrorist,

so my guess is, last week.

[socialist_n_TN]

4. Ah yes, but that's just local politics......

How about on an international scale?

[niyad]

5. my first thought was, "you mean you aren't already?" the powers that be are running scared,

and every one of us is their enemy.

[socialist_n_TN]

9. I don't disagree, but.....

in the past, up to now, we've been able to organize AND we've pretty much been ignored. IOW, I guess what I'm saying is that they haven't come right out with it. Until Erdogan hinted about it recently. However, since we've found a small amount of success, I figure this will be the next step.

And as a Trotskyist, this has ALWAYS been in our wheelhouse. Hence my question.

[byeya]

6. It'll just take a slow news day that follows a series of lies and gaffes from 0bama to get his

surrogates to mount this attack.
If there's an international confab about worker solidarity than so much the better for the oppressors.

In my view, the script is written and waiting to be used.

[socialist_n_TN]

8. "...the script is written and waiting to be used..."...

Well that's my opinion too, but I wanted to see what everyone else thought.

[byeya]

11. I think it's obvious. The Elite want wage suppression which they are getting and will ruthlessly

stop any but the most limited and timid attempts for wage earners to keep up with inflation - forget capturing increased worker productivily.
Until and unless workers realize that they have more in common with workers in most other counties than they have with the 10% who own 90% of stocks and bonds - and therefore corporate entities - then only limited progress can be made. Once internationalism is back on the labor table - and in the USA unions divorce themselved from the Democratic Party - worker progress can be made. At this point, the Elite will marshall all its assets - M$M; government spy agencies; police departments; elements of the military; 0bama and his coterie - to institute a Honduran-style clampdown.

[Downwinder]

7. They have been for all of my lifetime, and probably yours too.

[socialist_n_TN]

10. Wel,l not really. Or at least not OPENLY.....

And especially not since the capitalist restoration in the USSR. Internationalists were pretty much ignored until Erdogan's statement recently. Might be a factor of some success in the consciousness raising arena.

[Downwinder]

14. "Big Bill" Haywood?

[byeya]

15. Also the Blair Mtn, WV, revolt and the Molly Maguires did not spring up out of a vacuum.

Wherever you have capital in control you have oppression in varying forms and intensities. Now that workers have been stripped of most meaningful workplace rights, including the right to organize, capital will try to finish the job of creating indentured servants out of us.

[socialist_n_TN]

18. I'm not saying that it hasn't gone on in the past....

Hell, the philosophical basis of the entire Cold War was over this, even though the Stalinists were FAR from internationalists. I guess I'm mostly talking about since the capitalist restoration in the early 90s in the USSR and more immediately since the crisis of capitalism that began in 2007. Erdogan's statement was the first time I'd heard anything about this LATELY.

And of course, since everything coming down the pike about the creeping (galloping?) fascism descending on the developed countries, especially the USA.

[byeya]

21. Yes, I am beginning to see your point now and your frame of reference and agree with you.

I do think it's a malignant dirge we haven't heard since the Cold War and I do think we'll hear more of it especially with the pain brought about by austerity.(SEP?)

[socialist_n_TN]

23. Nope...

L5I.

[byeya]

24. OK. Just a guess. Thanks for the reply.

[socialist_n_TN]

27. Not a bad guess.......

Although it seems that there are a ton of Trotskyist groups out there, in the overall scheme of things, there's not really that many.

[Downwinder]

32. Read any hit pieces on NEA or SEIU?

[socialist_n_TN]

34. Of course. I'm in Tennessee after all......

Last edited Sun Jun 23, 2013, 05:52 PM - Edit history (1)

However, I still haven't seen the conflicts in varied countries framed the way that Erdogan recently framed it. At least and as I said, not since the depths of the Cold War.

[Downwinder]

37. Truckers in Greece. Government workers in Spain.

Students in Chile.

They may not be calling them terrorists but they are treating them like they are.

[socialist_n_TN]

38. Oh, I agree with the treatment........

But the framing is not there. Yet. I figure it'll take a mass, coordinated general strike in several countries at once, EVEN IF IT'S OF A LIMITED DURATION, for the meme to make it's appearance.

[Downwinder]

39. Have to get someone like Woody back.

Need some songs that people can sing.

[byeya]

43. One American who did truly great things. In spite of his terrible illness, some of his last

songs were among his best.
I am thinking of "Deportee" as an example

[socialist_n_TN]

46. Billy Bragg?.....

Hey he did a fine rewrite of "The Internationale" and he's from the same genre as Woody.

[HardTimes99]

12. While I'm not sure it's entirely fair or appropriate to label Occupy as 'worker solidarity

internationalists' (at least given the numbers of Ron Paul accolytes at our local Occupy), I would say the FBI and the security services in this country had already designated solidarity movements as 'terrorist.' There were some documents released through FOIA that actually used the 'T' word in discussing Occupy. Don't have those documents\citations ready to hand, but I know other DUers like Fire Walk With Me were monitoring and publishing them here from time to time.

[byeya]

13. I think you make a good point. I think the Randians are 90% wrong but I agree with them

on the right to be left alone; the right to meaningful privacy; and the right not to be the constant target of the fbi and police departments like the NYPD which claim the right to gather information anywhere they please out of their jurisdiction.

[HardTimes99]

16. Ron Paul's staunch opposition to the Iraq War and imperialism in general proves

the old axiom that even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Same applies to Libertarians and the right to privacy, I suppose.

I have very few personal interactions with any of them, because they remind me of cult members, arguably a little bit more sane than your average LaRouche-ite (also anti-imperialist but otherwise completely off the deep end), but only marginally so. The day a Libertarian endorses international worker solidarity (the OP's phrasing) is the day I eat my hat, though!

[byeya]

19. Gulp! I own many fedoras and I'll be joining you. Remember this though, there was a religious

revival in the 1920s, especially in the states of the old confederacy, but when the Depression hit and Hoover did nothing, or less than nothing, many of these rural whites became ardent New Dealers. Hard to imagine today but there was the Solid South which voted for progressive Democrats for a few decades. (Of course one of the prices paid was having northern Democrats accept southern racism.)

Anyway, if times get hard enough, we can see more evangelicals support workers rights as they themselves get stripped of theirs and they suffer extreme poverty. It happened once and might possibly happen again.

[HardTimes99]

29. Excellent observations. I would merely add that American Protestantism had and has some

strongly progressive theological strands (thinking Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich among others) and has not always been a tool of the reactionaries and fascists. Given the recent advent of the MegaChurch and 'Prosperity Gospel' (I swear you can't make this shit up , I'm not looking to Evangelicals or Libertarians to staff the revolutionary vanguard. But one can always hope

If you want a good laugh and you've got a couple minutes, check this out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology

[byeya]

33. Thanks for the entertaining, and scary, link.

Protestants have had their share of pro-worker, pro-internationalist, ministers and lay people. I'd add the Rev. A.J.Muste to the list.

[socialist_n_TN]

20. Hey the day a Libertarian endorses ANY worker solidarity........

would be a good hat eating day. They think that each worker has to strike his (deliberate pronoun choice) own bargain with the capitalists.

[HardTimes99]

25. Ha-ha. Libertarians still have a problem with the whole 'national' idea, much

less 'international'

[byeya]

26. Yes they do. Kooks who can't see the deck is stacked against them. Don't even believe

in having agencies like the FDA and highways should be constructed and maintained privately for profit. God love their little pointed heads.

[socialist_n_TN]

28. Yep. God better bless their pointy little heads because......

the capitalists certainly won't.

[HardTimes99]

30. Reminds me of a great hand-written sign I saw at an anti-war demo

here is Los Angeles back around 2003-04:

"God better bless America, because Bush has fucked it up!"

[socialist_n_TN]

31. Yep. BTW welcome to DU.....

and thanks for giving me your opinion on this thread. I rarely post OPs, but when I do it's because I WANT other opinions. I even want ones that disagree as long as they're reasoned.

[Recursion]

17. If they were effective enough for the government to worry, I'd be happy

As it is, they're just the ground for a pissing contest between SI and 5I.

[socialist_n_TN]

22. Agree that any perceived success is moderate at BEST.....

HOWEVER, I do think it's interesting that all of a sudden, this pops up. I was just wondering if this was a "Back to the Future" moment or just a passing comment by one authoritarian.

[Harmony Blue]

35. They already have laid the groundwork for this in the U.S.

probably within five years.

[socialist_n_TN]

36. Yeah, that's what I'm expecting.........

But I wanted to see what others thought.

I'm not sure it'll take five years though. I think it will depend on the success of the international response to austerity. As soon as there's a general strike, even if it's only for a limited term (24 to 48 hours), in SEVERAL countries that's coordinated, I think that the meme will really start to hit.

[byeya]

40. I think we should look to the docks. That's where a small number of workers with strong unions

and a tradition of holding up undesirable imports, or imports from oppressive countries, could immediately make an impact.
If the organized workers in the transportation sector join locally, then the impact will be greater.

The leadership of the austerity-ridden capitalist countries would be beside themselves and we'd be at a cross point of whether the police and national armed forces could force the docks open or whether other workers would join in solidarity.

[socialist_n_TN]

45. Yep, at least in this country......

I think that the docks and transportation would be where a political strike could provide the spark needed for a national action. Unfortunately, I think that somebody's going to have to die (at this time anyway) before the actions would seep into the general consciousness enough to spur solidarity strikes and actions. Which are illegal BTW because of Taft-Hartley. And by someone having to die, I mean that there would have to be a sacrifice that catches the imagination of the rest of the country and shows in a graphic way, what this galloping fascism means for all of us.

However, even leaving out the USA, there could easily be the possibility of a coordinated general strike in the southern European countries and possibly even in Latin America. In fact, I would almost be willing to bet that's where the original impetus would come from. Even a 48 hour GS in Greece, Turkey, Spain, Italy, Portugal and maybe France, would send a STRONG message that the working class was fed up and ready for coordinated action across borders. Even Great Britain has a history of labor actions like this. Anyway the whole idea is the coordination across borders is what it will take. Of course that will bring out the meme that I talked about in the OP.

[Harmony Blue]

41. Austerity has failed in Greece

and the IMF has admitted this in a roundabout way that austerity was wrong direction to go. It comes down to what changes happen in Greece as that is where they global capitalists are testing these ideas before unleashing them elsewhere.

[socialist_n_TN]

44. Sure it has and, yes, the IMF has admitted it, BUT.........

I'm not so sure they're ready to let the idea go. Remember that austerity is an IDEOLOGICAL policy position, not one that is grounded in fact or practical experience. Ideological policies are extremely difficult to let go because they are (for lack of a better term) "faith based". The neo-liberals have spent the last few decades trying to convince EVERYBODY that their laissez-faire way of doing things is correct. Now, they would have to go back and change that tune, at least in this one area. And that could potentially undercut the whole IDEA of neo-liberalism. Ergo, I'm not sure they'll do it.

Plus, austerity HAS worked (along with the rest of it) to funnel the wealth of nations into private hands at the top of the pyramid. You don't have booming economies in austerity hit localities, but the ones at the top are doing great. So they'll keep on with it rather than endanger the whole scheme by admitting that a part of it is VISIBLY not working.

[Floyd_Gondolli]

42. ...

It's the dictablanda!1!1!!