Germans Protest Against Corporate Greed

[Nerthus]

Germans Protest Against Corporate Greed

More than half a million people across Germany on Sunday took part in traditional Labor Day rallies to protest against large-scale unemployment and greedy managers. Riots expected in Berlin failed to materialize.

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,...570830,00.html

[Scoob]

The key is balance. A socialist movement has little hope right now IMO, but a type of social democracy is more possible. People are simply too happy with the consumer goods that capitalism supplies to fully abolish the system.

Citizens and consumers need broad alliances to balance out existing corporate alliance. And since many regions will be cheaters (expect this from places like Mexico, Malaysia, etc), corporations that do business there must be blacklisted in cooperating nations.

This needs to be done in an ideology that is both modern and palatable to people.

[IrishThirdPosition]

Abolish capitalism, reads the shirt

... and introduce bureaucratic socialism, reads his boxer shorts

[Scoob]

The task is to come up with something that is neither bureaucratic socialism nor plutocratic capitalism. New technology (Internet in particular) might make this more feasible via community participation or even issue-based coalitions.

So perhaps the best thing for critics of the system to do is organize based on single issues, instead of promoting party platforms (which inevitably lead to many schisms and more often than not, political marginalization or irrelevance, inaction and ineffectiveness). Issue based politics is also more difficult to coopt and corrupt (note how the US Republican Party is socially conservative, while promoting an extreme form of neoliberalism as "freedom".)

This seems to be happening already to some extent, with many nationalists, greens, and socialists finding common ground. Just remember that the forces of neoliberal policy and corporatized globalism are already well organized at all levels. In-fighting and bickering = weakness.

[Perun]

Ever heard of Third Way economics, ie Corporatism or Distributism?