On 12/8/06, Carrol Cox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
>Only American commoners can make Washington withdraw all its
> troops, without leaving any US base in Iraq or its neighbor, but they
> are not interested in making such a momentous social change, at
> present. :-0 -- Yoshie
I have been more and more lingering on the hypothesis that as long as
the u.s. remains hegemon of the imperialist system there will be no left
of any significance in the u.s. A _real_ u.s. left might place on its
banner Brecht's "Germany, Pale Mother," with "America" replacing
"Germany." In other words, a u.s. left worthy of the name would have to
return to Marx's slogan that Workers know no country. And I cannot see
that happening.
It is perhaps, however, worth while to take as a hypothesis a variation
of Yoshie's "they are not interested in making such a momentous social
change," working instead on the premise "they do not believe in their
power to make such a momentous social change."
Writings by leftists today are filled with complaints: complaints
about their own governments and complaints about other people's
governments, the latter probably becoming more frequent than the
former, especially in the social democratic quarters. Specialization
in complaints is sometimes justified by invoking Marx: "ruthless
criticism of all that exists." :-> But, to me, what many leftists
say sounds like futile whining, for it's not accompanied by much
thought about how we can change things .
Leftists in the West who are not happy about issuing an endless stream
of complaints about all that exists tend to go in the direction of
utopian speculations, drawing up blueprints for market socialism,
participatory economy, and so on.
Neither complaints nor utopian blueprints help Americans think about
what potential powers they have, how to collect their strengths, and
how to make social change. What Americans on the broadly defined Left
need is chances to think about such how-to questions. They need to
learn the ABC of political organizing from successful organizers at
home and abroad today, as well as successful organizers of the past.
How did they do it, and how do they do it, whether they are white
evangelicals at home, populist Islamists in West Asia, Bolivarians in
Venezuela, students and unionists in France, or Black reformers and
revolutionaries of the American past?
In addition to the how-to questions, though, leftists also have to
reckon with their fundamental problem. We, lacking in a new powerful
world view since the loss of the myth of inevitable dialectical
progress, do not have as much passion for social change as white
evangelicals here and Islamists and Bolivarians abroad. We are not
unlike George Herbert Walker Bush: we lack "the vision thing." We
need a world view that inspires faith in the work we must do, without
which no one will get or stay motivated to put in her time and money,
make her skills available, and mobilize all other resources she has,
for any cause.
--
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
<http://mrzine.org>
<http://monthlyreview.org/>
