>...and I expect I could add at least a few more such,
>with a bit research.
Oh Alinskyism has spawned lots of organizations, for sure. But what have they accomplished politically? Most of them have become so dependent on foundation and/or government support that they effectively have no constituency other than their funders. They've been powerless in the face of reaction - they were structurally incapable of doing anything to stop welfare "reform" (no mass constituency).
Aside from the lack of constituency (other than foundation program officers and dispensers of government contracts), most of the community organizers I've talked wtih have no big picture analysis at all - they only care about their particular neighborhood, or issue, or demographic group. That doesn't make them bad people, but it does help explain why they've been so ineffective, and why they're so susceptible to co-optation.
>Now, turnabout's fair play: what has doctrinaire
>Marxist purism accomplished in the same time (50 yrs)
>or indeed ever?
Who spoke in favor of "doctrinaire Marxist purism"? Not me - just ask Lou Proyect!
One could make a very long list of what was wrong with the CPUSA. But they did do a lot in civil rights work, union organizing, and popular education. They were the only predominantly white organization that gave a damn about African-Americans before the 1960s.
>(I consider Alinsky to have been a
>non-doctrinaire, non-purist marxist. A Marx's marxist,
>as it were.)
I suspect this would have surprised him.
>Sorry, that was a bit more obscure than I intended. My
>point was that it's quite easy to lose the north and
>end by mouthing inappropriate slogans instead of
>looking at the situation in a practical way.
Once again you seem to thing that situations and practical solutions are transparently self-evident. They're not. How do you approach, say, the housing problem - a major area for community organizations - without thinking about how housing patterns are related to income distribution, capital flows, the influence of real estate developers on local government, a region's place in the national and global economy, etc.?
>>Un-American? What precisely is American, then? Were slavery and Jim Crow
>>American or un-American? How about Mark Hanna and PACs? Andrew Carnegie?
>
>They were/are symptoms of parasitic infestation,
>nothing more (or less). If you don't like that
>construction, perhaps you'll explain in what way it's
>helpful not to distinguish between progressive and
>regressive elements in a social structure?
Parasitic in the sense of extracting surplus value from the toiling masses? Sure, I can accept that. But that's doctrinaire Marxist purity (DMP), isn't it?
>>Yeah, I know I've turned off the masses now.
>
>I really can't imagine anything more classist than to
>demand of folk who are regularly denied good education
>and kept in wage slavery that they deliver perfection
>or be dismissed as unworthy.
Hardly what I was doing - I was anticipating your reaction to my DMP. I think it's rather patronizing to think that the masses are too stupid to bear hearing the truth.
Doug