First, see my response to Justin. But in relation to what you've said here, I think it offers too limited or an "insider" view of what the religious left is. I agree with your analysis that sees ideological struggles within religious institutions, but that can be (and is) true of most institutions. If I get your meaning correctly, using your definition, those who struggle within the Catholic Church, for example, for ordination of women, acceptance of gays, the right of priests to marry, the right of women to choice...are acting from a "left" perspective within the institution of the church, but none of those struggles says anything about capitalism and its impact on the larger society. It need not question the economic and political assumptions that undergird a system of exploitation in which the church plays but a small part. These struggles can be conducted on the basis of bourgeois liberal assumptions that in no way challenge or question the economic relationships and structure of society in which the church operates.
There are many institutions where similar struggles are going on in which there is no material production involved. Union bureaucracies are a good example. Those who fight for union democracy and rank & file control are struggling with issues of inequitable distributions of power, authority, and influence, but that struggle can take place entirely within a framework that accepts capitalist economic relationships on the job. It complements the left but is not itself the left within unions.
In solidarity, Michael
At 08:32 AM 6/10/98 -0400, Frances Bolton (PHI) wrote:
>
>I agree that the approach is a bit muddy. But let me make one claim more
>explicitly, and maybe that will help. I m going to argue that ther can be
>leftists who operate at different levels of society. In my analysis, the
>church should be understood as a society in and of itself, with its own
>structures of oppression/repression, it's own status quo etc...
>Because that's the case, people within those societies need to challenge
>those inequitable structures. And it just so happens that material
>production is not going on within that society, so people have no reason
>to challenge that within this context. The production and reproduction of
>ideology is another story, and that they are challenging. This is not to
>say that the same people will not engage in a critique of capitaism when
>engaged in other struggles. I'm just speaking in terms of emancipatory
>struggles within the context of the church. If you don't want to coun them
>aas part of the larger US left, I think you have to count them at least as
>the left faction(s) within the churches.
>
>I think our differnce might lie in the fact that I'm seeing the church as
>a world in and of itself, so these struggles, related as they are to core
>clurch ideologies, are have "world-emancipatory" potential.
>
>Yours,
>Frances
>
>
>
>On Tue, 9 Jun 1998, Michael
>Eisenscher wrote:
>>
>> Your approach is problematic. Any "progressive" or "liberal" could be
>> militantly for a woman's right to choose (including many Catholics), or for
>> the rights of lesbians/gays/bisexuals/transsexuals, and any number of other
>> single issues (or multiple ones) without questioning the relationship of
>> those forms of oppression to the capitalist system. On the other hand, it
>> is possible to be part of those struggles and see them as integral to the
>> larger fight to transform society in fundamental ways (cooperative
>> communities, utopian schemes, socialist forms, etc.). So identifying a
>> grouping within the faith community as "left" merely on the basis of those
>> issues without identifying their world view regarding the system and the
>> connection of those issue struggles to changing it offers a pretty muddy
>> definition of "left."
>>
><<snip>>
>
>