"American leftists are in fact among the most disorganized & decentralized in the world, with little to show for all the leaflets, phone trees, etc. There is no political party on the Left to speak of in the USA, not even a social democratic one. American leftists are in a position to lecture neither British nor Palestinian leftists. If American leftists were so well organized, they would be able to stop the US aid to Israel, Plan Colombia, etc."
Amen to that. As should be apparent from the obsessively narrow focus of my postings recently, the question why this is the case is really, in my opinion, pretty much the only one worth asking these days. And if leftist intellectuals are going to be worth anything at all, they should be investigating this question in the same way as a pathologist diagnoses a chronic disease.
"Political correctness," depending on how one defines the term is potentially one aspect of the problem and it is worth discussing more generally how this plays out in practice.
Other potential symptoms or causes:
1) The tendency of what Cockburn called intellectual "cops" (Irving Howe being the parade example) to successfully masquerade as "comrades." Their job-for which they can anticipate lavish rewards from establishment institutions-is to patrol the left boundary of acceptable discourse, and crack down on deviance the second a mass movement shows any signs of achieving critical mass. I don't need to mention the names of the frequent contributors to this list who fit this description to a "T."
2) The tendency for extreme and dishonest slanders directed at those few principled leftist who manage to achieve mass visibility to be gleefully circulated by leftist intellectuals, either out of jealousy or pure spite or out of a counter-productive fixation on leftist purity.
3) The tendency to confuse "transgressive" lifestyle choices (i.e. non-standard sexuality, restrictive diet, ) or aesthetic or artistic tastes (appreciation for popular culture, jazz, blues or rap) with expressions of radical political activism. (This is the Baffler and Tom Frank's beat, of course.)
4) The intellectual variant of 3), to regard analysis of "transgressive" lifestyles, critiques of "patriarchal modes of thinking and feeling," attacks on the cultural canon constitute a real contribution to progressive politics.
5) The tendency of leftist intellectuals to believe that academic victories constitute real victories-or as someone said, that "taking over the English department" can be compared in importance to "taking over the senate."
This is a partial list, obviously.
Flame away.
Peace and love,
John