> your defenition does not say anything about what the "left"
> is for. That's because the "left" has a multiplicity of contradictory
> tendencies that don't easily lend themselves to a unifying vison, a very
> serious problem if one is trying to build a disciplined and sustainable
> opposition.
I could care less what the left is "for," if by that you mean some sort of clear blueprint for the future. Like Doug says in the conclusion to his book, "off the shelf utopias may be useful thought experiments, but they're of limited political use" (I've been getting a lot of mileage out of that quote lately whenever someone asks me what I'd replace capitalism with)
As far as what *I'm* for in the near future, well, things like universal health care, full employment for all with a living wage, and end to corporate welfare, basically all the things in the Labor Party's program..
>Third, your defenition is a bit baroque: why make an
> allowance for the cultural studies people? In making such an allowance,
> you (thank you very much) prove my second point.
Well, because even though they aren't committed to action, they do tend to look at things from an anti-capitalist, anti-racist, etc. perspective, even if they limit their analysis to things like literature and film.
> Well, insight is a subjective matter but I do not consider the insight
> that I gained into my "leftism" as a result of ceasing to identify as a
> leftist very "silly" at all. (Hmmm. Is that a bit of lefty arrogance I
> detect? Maybe you should ASK me why my decision was so important to me
> instead of dimsmissing it).
Believe me, friend, I haven't been in the left long enough to act arrogant, so if I came across that way, I apologize. Tell me, why was your decision important to you?
>
> Here are some questions:
> What's the difference, if any, between a "leftist" and a "progressive?"
I like the definition of progressive offered by Paul and Mari Jo Buhle's Dictionary of the American Left (first edition): basically a liberal who was opposed to cold war liberalism. So progressives and leftists aren't the same things, IMHO. Progressives want to tame capitalism, make it more human. Leftists want to abolish it.
> Between, if any, a "Marxist" and a "progressive?"
I won't give a definiton of what a Marxist is until I read a bit more. I wasn't turned on to Marxism until I discovered Lou Proyect's marxism list and this here lbo-talk...
> Between, if any, a Marxist (of any variant) and a "leftist?
Well, I assume most anarchists would consider themselves leftists, and they try to distance themselves from Marxists as much as possible, since they seem to believe in Bakunin's ideas about a "red bureacracy" being the worst possible tyranny. Then you have the New Left of the 60s, which drew inspiration from anarchism and refashioned it into ideas about "participatory democracy," while rejecting the Marxist notion of the proletariat leading the revolution (at least that's my understanding).
> Between, if any, being "left of center" and a "leftist?"
liberals and progressives = left of center.
> Is a homophobic, mysoginistic, anti-capitalist, Black nationalist a
> "leftist?"
Only if he thinks of himself as one. From what I can tell, most black nationalists advocate black capitalism and "buy black" campaigns. The only black nationalists who are anti-capitalists that stick out in my mind are Malcolm X in his later years and Kwame Toure. I'm not sure if Manning Marable is a nationalist. Adolph Reed sure as hell isn't. Homophobia and misogyny aren't limited only to black nationalists, BTW. I know a lot of white leftists who have these tendencies (yes, I know I'm contradicting my broad statement about the left being anti-racist and anti-homophobic).
> You ignored my thoughts about left demogoguery. Any reason?
I must have missed them. Repeat?