True Leftism vs. Alan Grayson-style Leftism

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"True leftism" seems rather badly defined, and sometimes seems to include all who dare oppose Hillary.

You can oppose Hillary without being an ISIS and Putin apologist.

Grayson opposes bombing "ISIS" from all I can tell.

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I think Stalin was fairly awful on balance and a key figure in the Soviet Union's degeneration into an imperialist oligarchy (albeit a very different sort than the United States was and is).

what? stalin was comparatively more 'conservative' in the soviet sense than most of his major rivals. look at beria.

once he eliminated Trotsky and the "left" the policies he adopted re: collectivization and industrialization were anything but conservative.  say from 1928-33.

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The U.S. labor movement was never really explicitly socialist, and certainly not the one that existed during the passage of the New Deal,

many of the organizers of the 1930s, especially with the CIO, were socialists, and during the Comintern's 'popular front' period many people who were deeply involved with the CPUSA worked within organized labor.  I can point you to an Irving Howe essay if you actually care.  you could also read up on the 1934 strikes in Minneapolis, a heroic and bloody effort led by avowed Trotskyists that ended in the unionization of the trucking industry.

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The U.S. labor movement was never really explicitly socialist, and certainly not the one that existed during the passage of the New Deal,

many of the organizers of the 1930s, especially with the CIO, were socialists, and during the Comintern's 'popular front' period many people who were deeply involved with the CPUSA worked within organized labor.  I can point you to an Irving Howe essay if you actually care.  you could also read up on the 1934 strikes in Minneapolis, a heroic and bloody effort led by avowed Trotskyists that ended in the unionization of the trucking industry.

Jacobin just ran an article on it, making this quite easy for you, Lief.

Red Teamsters: The radical teamsters of Minneapolis showed what democratic unionism looks like.