>Since I have great sympathy for the activism fetishism, let me note why I
>think it exists.
It's of utmost importance that every left-winger should be involved in activism of some kind, though not fetishistically. Fetishism tends to produce burnout, I think. Moreover, everyone has his or her personal affairs to take care of, too: sickness, family obligations, employment circumstances, clinical depression, etc. Women in a sexist society are at a disadvantage when it comes to activism as well. Few women with children can devote a lot of time to political activism -- the problem well discussed in an excellent labor documentary _Union Maids_ (1976).
>Secondly, and probably most importantly, most political writing and
>intellectual work is pretty much useless, and I include a good chunk of my
>own work in that category. It's the nature of the beast that there is an
>almost darwinian winner-take-all nature to a lot of intellectual endeavor
>that, as far as impact, only the very best insights capture the public or
>activist imaginination in a way that makes it matter at all. On the purely
>incremental level, every door an activist knocks on and every leaflet handed
>out has an obvious if sometime tiny gain for the movement, a stark contrast
>to the sense that 95%+ of intellectual work is just folks in comfy shares
>entertaining one another with little relevance to one another.
I'd like to think that all leaflets that I've handed out in my lifetime have been "an obvious if sometimes tiny gain for the movement." It's hard to believe this on a bad day, though. One of the saddest experiences for me was leafleting for clemency for Wilford Berry (called "the Volunteer" because of his wish to die), with me & three religious lefties in the cold streets. Some people took our leaflets, but other people simply hurled abuses at us & Berry. "Fry him!" Etc. As it happened, our efforts were in vain, and Berry got executed on Feb 19, 1999 -- the first man to be executed after Donald L. Reinbolt, who killed a Columbus grocer during a robbery & was the last prisoner executed in Ohio on March 15, 1963.
Well, live & learn, I suppose.
If there is any gain from the leafleting for Berry, it is a gain that will only become apparent in the future. Nearly all gains from political activism today are like this.
It would be nice to be able to have faith in the cunning of the Hegelian reason working mysteriously in Columbus, Ohio, USA.
hotep,
Yoshie