Rakesh and Louis P.

Max Sawicky sawicky at epinet.org
Mon Jun 29 21:56:32 PDT 1998



> . . .
> Left conservatives think that playing down anti-racism, anti-sexism, etc.
> can bring about 'class politics' (e.g. Todd Gitlin, Richard Rorty, Eric
> Alterman, William Julius Wilson, Max Sawicky, etc.) Left cons tend to be
> social democrats (though my experience has taught me that there are

What illustrious company. Thank you.


> marxists who are left cons). The majority of left cons, who are social
> democrats, think that if only what they (wrongly and
> misleadingly) think of
> as 'identity politics' or 'new social movements' disappears, we can get
> Social Democracy going in the USA, with the pride of Americanism intact.

No we think that with less POMO and ID politics many trees will survive. Whether social democracy gets going is another matter entirely.


> Rakesh has nothing but contempt for this line of thinking. At one point he
> denounced them as 'proto-fascist coalition.' And he's quite right to call
> them by that name.

I was starting to miss Rakesh till you reminded me of that.

We're social democrats ...we're proto-fascists. Heck, let's all go nuts.


> . . .
> And the irony here is that both the agendas of left cons and anti-racist
> social democrats are non-starters _at this point in history_; social

Now I'm confused.


> democracy has been made obsolete, not due to either racism or anti-racism,
> but because of objective economic conditions of world capitalism. (This
> should be clear from Doug's question with regard to the UAW and GM.)
>
> I hope I did a reasonable job of representing Rakesh's views. Now, one can

You did fine.


> . . .
> And I think that debating with Rakesh is _far better_ than debating with
> left cons on the list, whether or not we will come to any kind of
> agreement. Left cons don't want dialogue with us; left cons can only be
> objects of our critique and ridicule.

Which must be why Rakesh is gone and we're still here.

Ciao,

MBS

(B is for 'Benito')



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