I know nostalgia for 1950’s US is normally
But fuck imagine what could have been in the USSA after the execution of Henry Ford
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Midcentury America was obviously evil in many, many ways, but it was at a relative nadir of imperialist aggression and a maximum of worker power. It was the last time there was a sense of civilizational purpose in the US and the only time that was purpose wasn’t “kill all indians”. There was a functioning social democracy. Not to genuinely romanticize the era, but there’s obviously something there distinct worth harkening to if you can find the way to thread the rhetorical needle. I mean, at least they could fucking build.
Problem is threading that rhetorical needle has to contend with someone pulling out the sledgehammer and blaming minorities for it changing.
Yup, it’s not an effort I would bother to make in almost any circumstance. Because if someone doesn’t take that stance, they’ll take the other, much more reasonable one - it was a hyper-racist apartheid state where women were fully domesticated subjects that was committing genocidal war in Korea/Vietnam/Latin America. I wouldn’t waste time on this conversation outside a space like this.
At some point, it will be useful to be able to pick apart the US’s history and extract the good things from it, mining them for the process of building socialism. But I think that can only truly be done under revolutionary circumstances.
I feel like it’s still useful now. Almost every conversation about America on Chinese message boards blames minorities for its collapse. I see the same in other global south spaces I’m able to find. It is not just a myth that has taken hold among american workers but it has taken hold among workers elsewhere in the world who are becoming more xenophobic as they are keen to avoid the same fate. I fear that there will be decades and decades of “we’ll end up like the failure of the US if we’re nicer to migrants/minorities” all over the world.