OK. Here's my quick morning ramble.
What differentiates American "activists" and "leftists" from most working people is good old fashioned American optimism: activist and leftists have it, working people, by and large, don't. American optimism is, of course, the flip side of American conquest and empire, which is to say that American activists and lefties--most of them hailing from an American middle-class brainwashed by the sometimes subtle propganda that is American optimism--don't really see power and for all of their apparent intellectual sophistication, organizing know-how and moral outrage, are looking at the world through rose-colored glasses.
>Fighting the first fear is why reform struggles are so essential,
>giving people the experience of winning small incremental victories
>against capitalism , if done in the fight for non reformist reforms,
>can help build both the consciousness and organizations that may
>someday turn from reformism to revolution.
Well, this sounds very nice except for one thing: there are seriously diminishing returns on reform struggles (increased concentration of the power of global capital, etc.). Most reform struggles these days are egregiously non-idealogical. Organizers don't talk about capitalism because they know full well that many of "the people" will stop listening to them. Or, alternatively, organizers, viz. their middle-class comforts, are not interested in doing the really hard work required to make serious idealogical struggle in this country possible.
Let's be honest. American "leftists" and "activist" are not really interested in sacrificing anything for "the cause" because they don't even know what "the cause" really is. Even if they could agree on "the cause" they all have wildly different ideas of how to work for it.
Activism is a by-product of American optimism. American optimism blurs ones ability to fully grasp the huge tragedy (a completly un-American concept) that is the American condition. The "left" is, intellectually and strategically, a useless concept. Both "activism" and the "left" need to die in order for a disciplined, creative, morally and ethically anchored, un-sentimental, revolutionary anti-captialist, pro-democracy opposition to be born.
Yeah, yeah, I know cut a few corners here but I gotta go. Bon jour, tous les monde!
Niles