The specter that still haunts capitalism
Despite being declared dead and buried for decades, recent opinion polls show that almost a third of Americans prefer socialism to capitalism. Socialism beats capitalism outright among people in their 20s, low-income people of all ages, and especially among African Americans and Latinos. But while the idea of socialism is in the air, what it means is vague to most people, and how to achieve it even more so.SocialistWorker.org journalist Danny Katch is the author of a new book that is an entertaining and insightful introduction to what the socialist tradition has to say about democracy, economics and the potential of human beings to be something more than being bomb-dropping, planet-destroying racist fools. Here, we print an excerpt from "Ghost Stories," one of the opening chapters of Socialism...Seriously: A Brief Guide to Human Liberation.
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A ghost is haunting the United States--the ghost of socialism. All the old powers are united in their aim to eliminate this demon: Presidents and preachers, Hillary and Rush, Wall Street CEOs, and NSA spies.
Where is the Republican who doesn't claim that his Democratic opponent is a socialist? Where is the Democrat who doesn't run away screaming from this horrible accusation?
This means two things:
1. Socialism is widely seen by the One Percent as a threat to its rule.
2. It's about time that socialists should openly make our case to the world and replace the boogeyman version of socialism with a declaration of what we're really all about.
Read more: http://socialistworker.org/2015/09/08/the-specter-that-still-haunts-capitalism
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dislike of things socialism, instead preferring to find some way the workers took control. Not the industrialists, not the government, and they even disagreed on ownership. The communists even wrote letters back to their handlers telling them they could not work with these IWW folks. 
What they agreed on was that the workers in the one big union, the industrial union, should control labor, it's application and destiny.
But business, the government, and the business union conspired to kill off the IWW, using their anti-war stance to brush them with socialism and communism, and prison terms to stop their work.
"They both get taken over by oligarchs in the end." < Because they were destroyed, and quit fighting. Many were killed off or jailed, many others said they were going to join the opposition AFL Business Union, and try to change it from the inside.
They gave up the fight for control for a promise of future work and prosperity, perceived comfort. They have never been stronger than they were then.
Until the fight begins again and disrupts business as usual, nothing will change.
even the Paris Commune (my favorite example) only lasted about 2 months because they were crushed by outside forces while they were busy voting.
Some socialists think the answer is that it has to be a worldwide effort. I'm not sure that is possible, especially given how nationalistic countries are currently.
It may be that the best we can get is a mixed system - at least at this point in time. Not ideal by any stretch but that is the reason some of us are supporting Bernie.
