Doug Henwood wrote:
> Carrol Cox wrote:
>
> >Doug Henwood wrote:
> >
> > > Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
> > >
> > > >the alternative to leftish symbolpolitik is getting involved in
> > > >realpolitik, but i do not think that the idealistically oriented left is
> > > >ready for such a drastic move.
> > >
> > > Just who are you talking about here? Who are these symbolic
> > > politicians? Most of the left academics I've met are active,
> > > sometimes very active. Who are these detached demons you (& Lou
> > > Proyect) keep invoking? Or do you just have a need for them?
> >
> >I suspect that private definitions of both "realpolitik" and "idealistically
> >oriented" are at work. Max would consider *all* left politics as
> >woolgathering. And for over 200 years "letter writing" or
> >petition-carrying have been central to revolutionary conceptions of
> >"realpolitik" (if that is translated as simply "realistic politics" -- it
> >usually has the flavor, however, of buddying up to power).
>
> Well the folks I'm talking about are involved in union work on their
> own campuses, antisweatshop activism, anti-intervention movements -
> real gritty stuff, in other words. Eric Alterman, in a Wojtek-ish
> diatribe against postie politics, quoted Nelson Lichtenstein as
> saying that the strongest student support for the University of
> Virginia's Justice for Janitors campaign came from the theoryheads in
> English. When I was at the UVa English department 20 years ago, it
> was hard to tear folks away from their Dryden.
>
Yes. For example they probably collected signatures on a statement of solidarity from students. They almost certainly distributed leaflets, which is both a pretty gritty and a pretty symbolic business. And one might add that even in the midst of actual armed conflict, most political work takes a pretty symbolic form. During the Vietnam war there was a CIA joke suggesting that instead of napalm they drop mimeograph machines and paper on the "Viet Cong," who would then spend so much time making leaflets that they wouldn't get around to fighting.
I can't find the passage now, but in *Through the Russian Revolution* by A. R. Williams there is an account of one outside military attack which was defeated solely with leaflets.
But I think Doug's point throws an indirect light on the limits of maillist politics. Back in the '70s and '80s I sat in on a number of meetings between different marxist groups. We moved in our discussion *from* shared practice (e.g., support of the Pontiac Brothers) *to* discussion of more theoretical issues. None of these discussions resulted in great successes -- but *neither* did they result in the non-cyber equivalent of a flame war. In fact I am still in (friendly) contact with some of the people involved in those discussions. BUT had my only relationship to them been through a maillist, they would probably have ended up calling me an asshole while I dismissed them as pipsqueaks.
Is there *any* way of linking maillist discussions to actual political practice?
Carrol