> I read denunciations of the cultural left:
>
> "a 'spectorial, disgusted, mocking left' that believes
> the higher is its level of abstraction, the more subversive
> it is.... [T]his left lacks even the most rudimentary
> strategy for translating theory into practice..."
A meaningless statement unless he clarifies what he means by practice. And sometimes the higher the level the abstraction, the more subversive the critique. A critique of wage labor as a historically specific social relation of production is pretty abstract after all.
>
> coupled with denunciations of the reformist left as:
>
> "extremely eloquent in elite debates... entirely without
> troops when the lecture is over. Its class-based analysis
> appeals neither to the racism/sexism/homophobia crowd
> nor to the self-images of most Americans."
This is not a criticism of the reformist left of which Alterman is a representative. It is another criticism of the RSH crowd. And it is a criticism of the masses. The reformist left are the knights in shining armour here.
>
> But what stayed with me were the last three paragraphs:
>
> "But here's the twist. [Reformist Social-Democratic
> Leftist Nelson] Lichtenstein is part of a perfectly
> Rortyite reformist Campaign for a Living Wage at
> the University of Virginia. This campaign is not
> about ending sexism, racism, or homophobia, but
> about getting janitorial staff a few extra bucks
> an hour.
The SRH crowd is often as economistic as this: comparable worth for women, unemployment of minorities,universal health care demanded by gays. And I still don't get why opposition to the death penalty is so wrong? These issues may be subordinate only because the forces with which Alterman identifies--Clinton and the AFL-CIO--are not going to a damn thing about them.
Who are its volunteers? Primarily, says
> Lichtenstein, faculty and graduate students from
> the pomo literature and theory crowd.
So Alterman seems not to have understood the complexity which Lichenstein pointed out to him.
>
> "The fledgling labor/scholar alliance is designed
> to replicate just such cooperation. The most powerful
> speech at the labor/academic conference was given by
> Betty Dumas, a Trinidadian immigrant who was jailed
> and fired for her attempts to unionize the Avondale
> shipyards in New Orleans. Dumas siad the hardest part
> of her struggle was trying to explain to her children
> why their mother was going to jail, when she had spent
> their whole lives drilling them about the importance of
> obeying the law.
>
> "A left that cannot find a way to unite behind the
> Betty Dumases of this world is no left at all."
First, unions are not a good in themselves; they can help rationalize terminatons, they can unionize workers only to legitimize arbitrary workplace hierarchies (as Herbert Hill has argued for years); they can limit workers' initiative and lock them into conservative agreements. But then *THe Nation* should have given a column to someone like Peter Rachleff who has a deep grasp of the theoretical and practical complexities of unionization.
The question Alterman should have asked, given his concerns, is what the AFL-CIO is going to do for the Betty Dumases of the world. Will they organize such workers only to then counsel against action until that moving target of a critical mass has been reached? Will the AFL-CIO attempt to attract support from the HSR crowd on the promise that they are organizing the Betty Dumases while in fact doing nothing for her--except taking her dues to elect Slick Willie like candidates.
Best, Rakesh