Clearly the villains of the piece have been absent here, and it's not clear anyone would own up to the descriptions offered. They need some clarification.
Mme. Y proposes, and I disposes, as follows:
> In my terminology, left conservatives possess the
> following
> characteristics:
>
> (1) economically populist but socially conservative;
O.K., though socially conservative need not entail racism/sexism/etc.ism, this being a conceit of certain lefts.
> (2) think that anti-sexism, anti-racism, anti-heterosexism, etc. are
> divisive and must be subordinated or postponed;
Better to say, put in context, or if I was an academic, "contextualized," though I'm less clear on the economic significance of anti- heterosexism, which is NOT to say that material oppression, obviously including violence, is not associated with it.
> (3) while economy is a materialist question, gender, race, sexuality, etc.
> are not.
No left, conservative or otherwise, would deny the material relevance of gender and race. Sex preference is another matter, along the lines noted above.
Then Cmd. Heartfield surprizes. An effort at self-camouflage, or have I not appreciated his irony?
>1. An inability to appreciate what has changed
So vague as to be almost humorous. We might reply, LAC's fail to appreciate what has not changed (e.g., the fact of class struggle);
>2. A preference for state action over independent initiative
Lear's query is relevant. JH protests that state and collective need not coincide. Nonsense. Institutionalized collective action is just another word for government. Now, for a given area more than one government may exist, and their functions may overlap and conflict in various ways. This is true even if we confine our attention to the U.S. Federal and state governments. For the first time, I see a glimmer of LP's "libertarian" accusation against the LM group.
>3. An innate distrust of ordinary people
Sounds like many members of this list. This sounds like irony, though the previous item did not.
>4. A willingness to scapegoat sections of society, such as blacks,
women, lesbians and gays ... but also suburbanites, 'Essex man' (that's
like New Jersey to you Americans), 'toxic families', football
'hooligans', 'male violence' etc etc.
Ditto # 3. The New Jersey reference is off, but that discussion would take us too far afield.
>5. A preference to see identities entrenched rather than revolutionised
or transcended (I am thinking here of Marx's view that the goal of the
working class is its own abolition, for example).
Ditto again.
Lost in both of these lists is the difference in style of operation, or activities. LAC's seem to be confined by their rhetoric to academic settings. Their political practice appears to be non-existent. I was talking with a friend a couple of weeks ago about this, a fellow left-conservative (you would say) who works on public health/ environmental problems in developing countries (we are everywhere), and she disagreed and offered the example of the Farrakhan organization as an 'identity politics' construct. I disagreed by saying that since the MM March, this movement had done nothing of political note. Some time ago I asked the list if anybody could cite any examples of POMO/ID political activity above the level of micro-groups. I don't remember any responses.
Common among LAC's of both the Judy Butler/Wendy Brown persuasion (and some of her critics here) is a pessimism about the working class and about practical politics. Just reread the last six lines of what Henwood quoted. Every real manifestation of activity in this vein is threatening to academic, abstract, or cyber-leftism, which builds a wall around itself and annoints itself supreme.
WB invokes the terminology of 'medium old leftists' and casts aspersions on their demand for crude materiality. Funny thing was, this was what the MOL's said in their salad days about the Really Old Leftists. Each generation looks down its nose at the alleged mechanistic habits of its predecessors. Of course, the ROL's did more than any of their successors.
This is my favorite part of the WB speech:
> Another tacit, or non-overt rejoinder is simply that we want
>working class heroes back--we want the Joe Hills and the Union Maids
>that we don't have today. We don't want the terribly ambiguous icons of
Amazing. Of course we have these people all around us. We see them less, or we say 'we don't have them,' because instead we have served up to us assorted sideshows by the dominant culture and its radical chic appendages, like the characters above.
>Mapplethorpe and Anita Hill and Rodney King and Mumia Jamal and Humboldt
>County Earth Firsters and, god help us, Paula Jones and Monica Lewinski.
>We Lefties can't rally around them, we can't stand by them, we can't
>identify with them. Alas, they are the icons we are handed in this
>political order. Now I am not, as I keep trying to make clear, entirely
Who handed them to us? Who needs 'em? Monica Lewinski and Joe Hill? Get a grip!
>unsympathetic. A good enemy, a good union struggle, a righteous civil
>rights movement, a clearly imperialist war to resist, these things are
>inspiriting and inspiring. But I want to suggest that we don't have to
As in, "Some of my best friends are union maids."? [not a WB quote]
>jettison these things to recognize that most of contemporary political
>life is far more trying and ambiguous and also demands Left attention. I
Alas, the heroic workers are obscured by things that are "more trying and ambiguous." But who decided that?
>also think there is a certain projection of blame for the character of
>contemporary political life from what's being called here the
>conservative left, a blame for losses that we "posties" can't possibly
>shoulder.
If I remember correctly, it was WB/JB who began by blaming left conservatives. LC's might decry the futility of ID politics or POMO, but I don't think they would attribute our current politics to such trends.
Fragmentation of the left is only along race/gender/ sex lines. It also happens along policy themes, witness the plethora of single-issue operations.
> Another rejoinder might be that we want a clear sense of
>accountable subjects and agency back, precisely what poststructuralism
>is said to destroy and what identity politics is thought not to be able
>to produce.
I think we've got that, and if you can't find it, you're not looking in the right places, or you're not trying hard enough.
MBS