>"The business world" has its own brand of mystifying and obfuscatory talk,
>doesn't it? Not to mention its own perches in academia (in economics
>departments and b-schools, etc.). If they're supposed to be the measure of
>political effectiveness, it's probably not because they speak the common
>man's lingo on all occasions. Corporations and the right use different
>languages on different occasions and at different times, just like leftists
>do.
This is where I stand on things. I think it's expecting far too much of an e-mail list to be able to reverse the sorry state of the left. And while I know that's not quite what Carl meant, it is effectively what he's saying. Take this (from carlremick at hotmail.com):
> You can't claim to be laying the foundations for social
> transformation when -- month after month, year after year
> -- listees gripe endlessly about the unremitting 'such as
> it is' state of the left, which continues to dwindle away
> to nothing.
Pardon me, but did anyone really make the claim that e-mail lists like this one are "laying the foundations for social transformation"? Hardly. Every now and then probably a few of us meet in person, but how many people on this list really know about the day-to-day political work of others they only know through e-mail contact? I know that if I wrote out all the details of every bit of political organizing I did in the course of a week, it would make for a pretty long account that might not necessarily be useful to people in wide-ranging locales. So let's cut the crap: grandstanding over e-mail is quite possibly the most empty gesture of one-upmanship on the face of the earth.
And yes, I DO think -- from the point of view of an activist engaged in a whole lot of practical political work -- that the social movements of today need an analysis, and could use more people who are willing to develop a deeper understanding of the issues at hand. No, it's not a matter of "academics" bringing the light to the unwashed masses. But anyone who's ever participated in organizing people for social change knows that it takes some real thinking about what you're up against to accomplish much of anything. Now, when I'm talking to people on the street about the Living Wage, does that mean that I cite report after report about the financial intricacies of putting it into effect, talk about all the intricate maneuvers that we'll need to execute when it comes to the funding of non-profits which comes from the state, etc. etc. etc.? Obviously, no. You agitate by talking -- and listening! -- to people and understanding where they're really coming from. But if someone is going to get super-involved and help forge the strategy of the campaign, that person is going to have to come to understand a complex set of things. And yes, sometimes, when you spend your time in an atmosphere with other people who are already on the same page as you, you have to be able to check yourself, to make sure that when you're talking to the "uninitiated," you aren't dropping a lot of acronyms or something. For lack of a better term, this is common sense.
And I think the same applies when you're talking about the "big questions." Assuming that some day we want people to come to the point where they think of capitalism as the enemy, we'll have to at least have some conception of what capitalism is. Does that mean you go out and start talking to people about five hundred years of expropriation and primitive accumulation, imperialism, Taylorism, etc.? Obviously not. But that doesn't mean that those of us who are already committed to an anti-capitalist project should stop talking about these things. Because in the long run, it really does help us to know what we're up against.
John Lacny