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Comrades, I honestly feel that this is the most dangerous times in America since the '60's. Difference being that: This rise is occurring in a crisis of the world-wide capitalist economy whereas we waged our battles while the economy was speeding off the boost that was provided by war spending; there was room to buy off sectors of the 'middle-class' whom we had already alienated by race-based resistance and then almost-open rebellion against capitalism. Necessary resistance, carved up out of segregation's beaten bodies, but doomed to failure as the connection with the majority of workers necessary never obtained. This time the militant thrust is coming from the right not the left. They are organizing, growing, buying and practicing with guns, electing representatives, holding protests, sponsoring social events, dominating the press and the airwaves. I saw Anderson Cooper, doing the story on Shirley Sherrod (great and brave comrade that she is) apologize 5 times (presumably to Fox News), that while the edited film controversy was engineered by a right winger, the Left did shit like that too. It was amazing this reporter bending over backwards (again 5 times) to be "neutral", neither "Left" nor "Right". That's the domination of the means of communication that the Right forces have obtained And we sit arguing amongst ourselves. Comrades, these are dangerous times. We need must talk to each other, organize together, elect working class representatives whose mission is to articulate our side of the story. Here we are in a failure of capitalism and it is the very same m'f'ers who, engineered this crisis trying to save capitalism through speculation, who are dominating the discussion. We must get our ideas out and before the mass of workers. JAI On 11:59 AM, Mark Lause wrote: > I agree with Manuel that Louis' Christian blogger nailed it, so to speak, > but I don't share some of the assumptions here. > > The Right isn't doing that well because its mobilized its people any more > than because of the merits of its ideas. Who does well when people aren't > actually in the streets relies heavily on who occupies the corporate media > platform and the Right is usually going to do better there, if only because > our ideas and arguments are so reprehensible to the owners of that > platform. In terms of actually mobilizing people, lobbyists can stage tea > party events but these rarely mobilize many people at all. Just enough for > the cameras. > > As to excoriating the list because of our failures to mobilize.... I'd bet a > very sizeable portion of this list are in their 50s or older. As I've > pointed out elsewhere, we knew in 1970 that the future did not belong to > sixty-year olds. We need to face that factin 2010 when we're in the > neighborhood ourselves. Most of us can add a great deal to enrich a > movement but we can't detonate one...unless we're talking about a movement > among retirees and the aged. (THAT might be well worth considering.) > > And as to regroupment, the builders of parties of all sorts had a long > litany of disparaging names and arguments they applied to those of us who > dared even hint that such an effort would have been useful back when we had > mass movements in the streets. The last serious meetings I attended on > this, I looked around the table and saw nothing but what could have been an > SDS reunion... Good coffee, nice snacks. Utterly irrelevant in terms of > social forces or even the next chapter in the political history of the > American Left... > > Solidarity! > Mark L. > ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
