Which Way America?

I have had some minimal luck continuing my digging into that KRAB
radio archive.  The IA's wayback machine is still broken but if I let
my browser keep re-trying and come back hours later the page will
load (eventually).

What follows is an excerpt from the latest finding from that KRAB
radio archive.  You might think this sounds like an X post or
something given that we are in the end-stage of capitalism, a time
when the snake must begin to eat itself because all else has been
eaten (maximum exploitation).

This recording, "Which Way America?", was from a 1935 radio broadcast
in New York where social philosophers give speeches in favor of the
socioeconomic system they think the US should adopt.  There were four
advocates, one for Fascism, one for Socialism, one for Communism, and
one for Democracy.  It was rebroadcast by KRAB in the 1960's.

What I find interesting in this particular speech (below) is aimed
toward the *actual* system the US had, and has, which is not
democracy but capitalism.  They are not the same nor are they
compatible, at least not for long.

--- Begin Excerpt ---

"Like every ruling class, however, the present capitalist class will
seek to maintain it's power.  In the period of it's rise and
expansion capitalism could accumulate profits and also raise the
standard of living of the masses.  In the present period it can no
longer do this.  Profits can be made only by fiercer exploitation.
Taking even such concessions that were previously granted away from
the masses.

Since capitalism must keep pushing the standard of living lower, it
must eventually seek to destroy every vestige of democratic rights.
Every means of resistance that farmers, workers, small business men
may have.  For, obviously, no matter how meek, peaceful, conservative
an organization of these elements may be, at some point it will try
to resist the imposition of further impoverishment and distress.

To maintain their system, the capitalist will then seek to destroy
any such organization in utter disregard of law, constitution, and
bill of rights.  In other words, capitalism can save itself in the
present period only by the resort to fascism.

Under these circumstances to assume that democratic processes will be
maintained, is an ostrich policy.  Unquestionably, the struggles and
strikes of the workers against impoverishment and injustice, which
now go on daily, will have to be waged ever-more intensely and on a
broader front.  Becoming eventually a struggle against the economic
system as such and against the government, which resists even
moderate adjustments.  As instance the supreme court decision on the
NRA.  And becomes openly an ever-more openly an undemocratic agency
of oppression.  The choice is between fascism and revolutionary
action for a new social order.

To those elements in this country who are well aware from their own
experience that radically wrong, but who hesitate to face the clear
and drastic alternative.  We point out what has happened to similar
groups in classes in Germany and elsewhere.  They espouse fascism
because they wanted an improvement in their standard of living.  They
are being beaten down to the level of bare-existence.  They wanted
national self respect and peace, they are being thrust down the
precipice of war.  They wanted freedom and recoiled from the
regimentation they were told would obtain under socialism or
communism.  They have gotten the extreme of regimentation.  They
wanted a life based on the old virtues and recoiled from the march
forward to a new culture.  They have gotten all the indecencies of
Hitlerism.

This is the choice before you, the choice you must make.  The
negative choice, based on fear, to retain capitalism.  Which means
chaos, war, and the destruction of civilization, or the positive,
courageous choice, of a worker's world and the advance to a new world
of culture and civilization."

--- End Excerpt ---


To hear the whole speech go to https://divarin.net/krab and point
your podcast app or some other RSS app to the RSS link on that
page.
.