> No question about it. But there's also no question that much of the
> discussion that occurs on this list is a very heavy slog even for
> someone who went to college (but not grad school). At this historically
> opportune time, I think it should be a key priority for leftist
> academics to strive to make their thinking more accessible to people in
> general.
No one would dispute this. And many academic leftists write extremely readable works. I think the whole Monthly Review crew is one good example. It wasn't until I picked up David Harvey's Condition of Postmodernity that I figured out what the hell "postmodernism" is. I struggled with Fredric Jameson's book on the same topic, only to give up in frustration about 30 pages into it.
I think the trouble is trying to make Leftist ideas accessible to those of us who aren't college educated without resorting to the pedantic, condescending tone you get from someone like Michael Moore, whose whole windbreaker and baseball cap schtick strikes me as a little phony. I love his films, but those Nation columns, where he admonishes the left for not being able to address "ordinary people," are a bit offensive for the way they portray all working class people as Dorito-munching, TV-watching ignoramuses.
Making ideas accessible to the "masses" is important, but it shouldn't be done through faux-populism.