>To invoke the spectre of Hitchens, it is all to do with the way the left
>has marginalized itself, less capable of trading on libertarian, consumed
>by absolutist, totalizing, and purist theorizing, petty factionalizing, and
>acting as if critique is more productive than embracing something
>positive. So, if I were to channel Hitchens (he was on the radio this
>afternoon), perhaps he might observe how the movement formerly
>known as the left heaps abuse on the trappings of bourgeois democracy,
>namely civil rights and liberties, or persists in its own mythology of
>how in the last instance all global injustice and disorder are ochestrated,
>covertly and overtly, by the Empire, or that all that is vile and witless is
>capitalist, or the need to be ever alert to the dangers posed by those who
>say they're on your side when in fact they're the main impediment to
>revolution
>(the democratic party, liberals, academics, white supremecist leftos,
>right-wing social democrats, and all manner of apostates, including
>Hitchens himself). Mind you, I'm only channeling a spectre of the
>man himself. As a disclaimer, I should point out that I'm opposed to
>all that is wrong in the world and a staunch supporter of all that
>is right and honorable.
Coy, very coy. Outdoes me in evasiveness even. So where do you stand on civil liberties, absolute control by Empire, etc.?
I ask because I just had yet another run-in, at the CUNY globalization conference, with people who heard my claims about the contradictory nature of capitalism to be nothing but an apology. Silvia Federici, my panel-mate, was going on about how it's been nothing but pauperization since the day Capital was born, how it's been unmitigated hell for women, social indicators keep going down... I said, well, it's not all like that - women can find wage labor liberating (even admidst exploitation) when it's compared to prostitution or rural patriarchy, that life expectancies have risen across much of the globe, that more people can read than ever. She would have none of it, and about half the audience was with her. The ISO, Gott sei dank, was there in force and on my side.
Doug