Reed on post-defeatism

[Brad Mayer]

Certainly nothing against 'dispersion', especially if it unites the many
separate movements already underway.  But there is no need to simply
counterpose it to 'concentration'.  Why not both?  We need to move on many
fronts, not all at once, but by moving from one to another in a flexable and
above all unpredictable manner.  Predictability is death.  B.  Kagarlitsky
put it nicely in "The Twilight of Globalization": "The crisis of the left is
produced not by a lack of 'realism' or 'ideological obsession' but by a lack
of ideological vision."

I'm still waiting for that left tax policy that (by various measures)
abolishes taxes on the working class.

And by all means,  "GET OFF THE DEFEATIST CYCLE".

-Brad Mayer,
Oakland, CA


> The Progressive - February 2001
>
> GET OFF THE DEFEATIST CYCLE
> by Adolph Reed
>
>
> The other lesson is that we can hope to do either only by talking and
> fighting explicitly for what we want by offering people a clear,
> practical, alternative vision of how the country should be governed
> in their interests. Only through generating grassroots-level
> discussion around such practical alternatives can we create an
> activist base deep and broad enough to break the rightwing/neoliberal
> dominance of public debate, withstand the aggressive and dishonest
> opposition of the powerful interests aligned against us, and mobilize
> support for the kind of society we all know we need.
>