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October 28, 2013

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Alain

I think this hits the mark. I have a 20 year old daughter and I speak to her friends. Given the proliferation of social media, ironically, I think these kids are more isolated and detached. And you are definitely correct regarding exposing government corruption and general institutional failure: all of this only confirms the mistrust young people have in collective solutions. Since all the institutions are rigged for the benefit of the few, why bother trying to change them. You are better off looking out for yourself.

That is why Occupy was so hopeful - it was an expression of collective action and collective will. And it was outside the reach of existing institutional expressions of dissent. But it is this very lack of institutional structure that has made it difficult to sustain. As you say, "If people feel isolated, we have to build connections that prove they are not." This is the great challenge for any leftist movement today, communist or otherwise. But I think it is the only way forward.

Isam Al-Tal

It goes without saying that cognizance of objective reality is a slow process. "One-Dimensional-Man" America has been manipulating a feeling of abundance among the working class for quite a while. The new realities created by disillusionment following the casino-economy collapse need time to make the psychic individualism among Americans make way for realizing that class-struggle is the prime social fact. Ages of disinformation and desocialisation of Americans by giant corporations have really screwed Americans into turning to their dark individualistic insides, but then even human nature and struggle for survival laws, not to mention the role of "revolutionary" (yes revultionary-like it or not!) thought would definitely violently push "Occupy-Wall-Street" individualism into some knowing collectivist "revolution" against the sons-of-witches that have turned the whole world into a slaughter house.The main problem, I think, is that should-be "revolutionaries" have long enjoyed liberal fantacies. Objective realaity, I believe, will, sooner or later, make them rethink their pseudo-bourjois niceties. Reread Marx! He's much more contemporary than leg-streching academics who think that social struggle is simply doing some relaxed quantitative reasearch.

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