And Jim, so the left should be too tough to call for nationalisation, welfare or anti racism (no wearing swastikas is really the heroic act)? And what has LM provided instead? Basically Tony Robbins-like inspirational lectures, dressed up with a few marxist and libertarian concepts, that serve as pep talks for the big market middle class that isn't getting off its ass to take advantage of the opportunities life has bestowed upon the priviliged, wallowing instead in lassitude (middle class decadence is a real problem indeed but hardly the one Marxism was out to solve, though Tony R has indeed proven that there is quite a bit of money in adult pep talks). You know the LM positions: learn how to fly a plane--just do it! or just be that subject who can heroically change your own life all by your lonesome (who needs class organisation and solidarity?) Or fuck around without a condom since it's only poor people, homosexuals and IV drug users who have anything to fear! Go ahead and enjoy your Club Med vacation despite the surrounding human squalor! Or don't be a pussy-ass capitalist without nerve to accumulate--just capitalise it! What LM (that minority of the minority) figured is that to survive in the high times of bourgeois individualism, the left had to break with socialism, solidarity and the oppressed, right?
Yours, Rakesh