From: Chuck0
It's about time the Left started talking about the warts on the Mumia
support campaign.
Cooper hits the nail right on the head, when he talks about how the
large Mumia movement has failed to turn his support into a broader
opposition to the death penalty. This was talked about within the
movement several years ago, but was apparently dropped in favor of Left
spectacles such as "Millions for Mumia," which was only attended by
15,000 people.
The problem of course is that "The Left" as an organized entity which does this or should do that or makes this or that mistake -- "The Left" in that sense doesn't exist. And if I understand Chuck0's theories of organization, he is dedicated to the proposition that no such left *should* come into existence.
In other words, those weren't "Left spectacles" -- they were simply an activity that one group tried. Anyone that wants to can try to set up their own local Free Mumia group, and carry on their own activities. If they succeed, the "Mumia Movement" (not really accurate term) will notice them. I tried to start a group locally three years ago -- I sent out a leaflet to everyone who I had worked with in the '70s and '80s. It bombed. (Several people offered to contribute money -- but without people money doesn't do much.)
Us authoritarian leninists (including but not limited to those who call themselves "marxist-leninists) hope to see a grouping with some sort of hegemony on the left -- and then when we fuck up people like Chuck0 will have the write to complain. But no one has the right to either praise or blame "The Left" at the present time. When you do, you look and sound as foolish as Robert Graves did when he launched a really impassioned attack on Aeneas for his approaching Dido in the presence of her husband in the underworld. You are getting all excited about something that exists only in your own fevered imagination.
To put it in another way, if "The Left" (or even "A Left" of some significant force and unity) existed, these maillists (pen-l, lbo, marxism, leninist-international, m-fem) would either not exist or exist in a radically different form. We would be living in a different world than the world we live in, and so in a sense "we" would not be "we" but someone else in that other world. But the history which is us does not, at present, contain such a left.
Carrol