I take ideas seriously. I am not a cynic like you.
> I have talked to many, many
>workers and seldom met any who were
>hungry. I'm not saying these people are
>the rule. I appreciate the data suggesting
>that a significant percentage of the population
>has problems obtaining food. But the better-
>off are not a thin 'aristocracy' either. And
>there will no left -- social-democratic or
>revolutionary -- without them.
This is the central problem of world politics. The working-class of the imperialist nations are self-satisfied because they enjoy the privileges accrued from the plunder of third-world nations. When your neighbor goes to the Sunoco station to fill up his SUV, there is a power relation implied in that transaction. The reason there is a CIA is to make sure that the power relations persist so that the ruling class of the US will retain a social base among the well-paid trade unionists, what some people call "Reagan Democrats."
>
>It isn't clear which group could be most interested
>in left politics. Oppression does not strictly
>correlate with activism.
Oppression definitely correlates with activism. The blacks are fighting Guliani in order to have a Million Youth march in Harlem. American Indians are probably the most activist group of the population. Will blue-collar workers become activists? I don't want to sound like an economic determinist, but economics will have a lot to do with this.
>
>If I told my neighbor he was oppressed, he
>would conclude I was nuts.
Right now your neighbors probably are not interested in political discussion of any sort, judging by my encounters with both blue and white-collar workers at Columbia University. When they do become open to political discussion--including radical ideas--people like yourself who preach class-collaboration will have to be challenged. This is what our ongoing debates on the Internet are a precursor to.
>
>Politics which depend on descriptions of
>extreme privation clearly have limited
>prospects among better-off workers. Nor
>are they likely to be impressed by
>predictions of doomsday.
Why don't you make this point at least a dozen more times? Is this what they call a mantra?
They will
>certainly be repelled by blanket
>accusations of racism, as well as by
>policies which threaten to redistribute
>their income to the poor.
You are not dealing with Weathermen here. You are debating with people who are simply making the case that racism has prevented the working class from successfully challenging the rule of capital. David Roediger, Theodore Allen and others have written eloquent history. Have you ever read any of this?
>
>Absent the coming of doomsday, left politics
>has be broad enough to appeal to this sort
>of person with the only thing that will
>work: a persuasive appeal to enlightened
>self-interest.
You have a different concept of left politics than I do. Your idea of left politics is electing Al Gore. My idea of left politics is to abolish the capitalist system. When you use the word "social democracy" from time to time, it is an Orwellian abuse of language. What you mean to say is the capitalist welfare-statism, which is not social democracy. David McReynolds is a social democrat. So is the Progressive Magazine. I have known social democrats. Sir, you are no social democrat.
>It's sort of like bird-watching. ("Martha,
>look there's a red-breasted spotted Pabloite!
>See the Guevarist feathers on his tail?")
>
The one who is amusing is you. A think-tank employee who has more ambivalence about the 1960s radicalization than David Bowie has about his sexuality. The reason you enjoy chatting with people like me is that they remind you of what you were before you became a pillar of the establishment. I would rather get out of politics entirely and take up organic gardening or birdwatching than be a defender of the status quo like you. As Willie Loman said in "Death of a Salesman," the woods are burning.
Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)