I know some people think it's naive or plain stupid to try to tell the U.S. left what its next move should be.
One argument is that these lists are not a proper venue for that. These are not public plazas and we're not standing on a soap box addressing an eager audience who can make a difference. I disagree. I know that the motivations of those who read these posts are diverse. I'm not saying this is the only or best place to leverage one's ideas. But it's not a bad place to do so. As far as I'm concerned, anywhere I can make my case works fine. Another frequent argument is that there's no such a thing as a U.S. left, but splinter groups and organizations with their own agendas and dead set frames of mind and vested interests. The reply to this argument is that, indeed, that's the U.S. left that exists. Although under all sorts of local conditions and circumstances, virtually the same description applies to most countries I can think of. Another reason I hear is that, even if this highly fragmented left were to act in concert (a big if), that would still be a very narrow segment of the political agency of the country. The effect of the left's coordinated action would still be between small and negligible. My answer to this is that, the effect of a small U.S. left acting in unison depends on (1) the goal it sets out to accomplish and (2) the points where it chooses to apply its effort. In principle, with a reasoned choice of goals and strategy, the left can make a big difference. Consider the goals the U.S. left should take up currently. There's a massive amount of social discontent out there. Economic insecurity and the wars are the main sources, and -- for the time being -- they appear as constants. It is true that, for reasons that shouldn't surprise the left, regular working people do not have a coherent theoretical framework to understand the crisis informing their actions. In fact, nobody really has that. We're all groping for an understanding of current history, using whatever tools we think we have at hand. Yet, again, that's what happens everywhere. So, that's no reason for passivity. My point here is that the left can go after fairly ambitious goals, e.g. a significant set of reforms involving health care, macroeconomic and environmental policies, and ending the wars. Even partial success in these areas could help working people in the U.S. achieve higher levels of unity and organization. The energy that could propel the U.S. left is there, diffuse, but amenable to organization and direction. As far as the points where the left should direct its efforts. One can always pull ideas from one's pants, but the logic of the situation (if you allow me this figure of speech) dictates focusing on blasting Obama's policies, his retreat from the hopes he arose (regardless of whether he promised this or that change or people just imagined that) -- which, by the way, does not require that he be demonized personally. More importantly, the practical conclusion from attacking Obama's policies is that a primary challenge against Obama should be now in preparation. The idea here is simple to conceive, but (obviously) hard to execute. It consists of isolating Obama, leaving him with the support of Wall Street and the political-establishment, but depriving him from any significant mass support -- mainly young people, organized labor, and African American working people. We can't avoid the issue of personal leadership. Any political challenge against Obama would have to be personified to be serious. Frankly, Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky, Ralph Nader, and other well-known figures of the left are not up to this task. If we exclude miracles, the personification of the primary challenge to Obama -- if it's going to emerge -- is most likely to come from inside the Democratic Party! A bunch of people here are going to say, "What? Another Democrat again? Don't we learn anything? Democrats are part of the problem." Etc. So, basically, we go to square one in the old debate we've had here for years. As far as I'm concerned, the Obama fiasco doesn't alter my view of how the U.S. left can and should relate to the Democrats as a political formation: http://www.swans.com/library/art11/jhuato01.html. To paraphrase Marx: The U.S. left makes its own history, but it doesn't make it as it pleases. It doesn't make it under ideal circumstances, but under the circumstances that actually exist, as they emerge from the past. The Democratic Party -- or, more precisely, the political and ideological disunity and fragmentation of the U.S. working people which is the real basis on which the Democrats stand -- weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the U.S. left." I'm not saying we should just perpetuate things as they were and are. What I'm saying is that the process to change things cannot start by denying where we currently stand, believing that one can just will its way out of it. IMO, the U.S. left cannot choose to avoid the *in*fighting with the Democrats, without making itself irrelevant. There are things the U.S. left can choose, but this is not one of them. I don't see an alternative, except in the form of a massive waste of political energy. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
