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I hear you, Max. Several times in the past, I have said that this list
should focus more on practical politics and coalition-building than on
theorizing and ideological purity. But I certainly see flaws in this
position. The left's road to oblivion since the sixties has been paved
by temporization.
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There were many roads to oblivion, all of which departed from the demise of civil rights and Vietnam as issues that belonged mostly to the left. CR and VN became mainstream; basic legal goals of CR were achieved, obviously without much realization of their future inadequacy from the standpoint of economic equality. To this add the swirl of sectarian ideologies. Those not focused on the working class were bound to die, since they were based on a particular form of New Left fantasy of revolution by students/minorities/women. Some of those that were worker-oriented were too hokey and extreme, or entailed colonization of workplaces by college students (which had some good results, though its optimality as strategy is obviously debatable).
U.S. workers weren't ready for revolution, and the relevant lefts did not present them with something to do in the meantime that could be sustained for an extended period.
Temporizing was the least of it, in my view. Clinton is a creature of the vacuum, not of the space once occupied by the left.
I agree that one can dwell on coalition building or organization to the deteriment of principle and theory. Both the New Party and LP are vulnerable to this concern. Of course, excluding present company, armchair activists are vulnerable to the reverse criticism.
mbs