Charles writes:
[...]
Your reply is a little
misleading...I'm not opposing
super-strong stimulus plan/temporarily
"nationalizing" banks
I'm criticizing some Pen-Lers
posturing as lefter then O,because
he is calling for broad mass unity
(calling it papering over conflict)
when Keynesienism papers over
class conflict, too
[...]
...Pen-L and mass media
progressive/Keynesian economists should
make proposals in a friendly manner
to Obama, as in a Popular Front.
Not as the tone predominates on Pen-L.
==============================
Sorry, Charles, I seem to have misunderstood where you were aiming your
fire.
On "tone": I think it's a function of the relation of a far left group or
individual to a political organization or struggle led by liberals or social
democrats.
Radicals who actively participate in an organization - be it a trade union
or a party supported by the unions - are more sensitive to the effect of
their words on it's members and supporters, who for the most part remain
firmly loyal to their leaders and policies unless and until they become
convinced through experience that their leaders are acting against their
interests. That's largely true of participation in any group. You have to
measure what you say and when to say it when you place yourself in
opposition to a leadership which still has the support of the organization ,
especially if you haven't had a long history in it.
Those outside a group aren't bound by this constraint and have more freedom
to criticize it and it's leaders as sharply and often as they like. In doing
so, they believe they are being consistent with their principles and helping
to hasten a reckoning between the members and the "misleaders". I happen to
think this is a recipe for futility and self-isolation, and that it would be
revealed as such in practice, in actual engagement with the intended
audience. You and others on the list would agree. But that's the theory
which animates the hostile criticism of Obama which you find objectionable.
There's not much point asking the critics to be more restrained when the
underlying differences over "tone" are political - not politesse.
The same differences in tone towards Obama and the Democrats today are an
echo of the differences on the left between the supporters and critics of
the Popular Front to which you allude. This is a very old debate, and it
will remain an endless and unresolved one unless US working people move left
of the Democrats, and the process reveals which part of the far left was
more accurate in its analysis of how the process would unfold. At this
point, neither part of the US left inside or the outside the party has much
influence, and that's best kept in mind, IMO, in discussion of the issue.
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