David wrote:
>James Brown certainly seems to be asking a pertinent question: why the
>anti-intellectualism on the left?
That's Jenny Brown, btw. But I didn't ask it most recently, others including Henwood et. al wrote about it.
Dennis Robert Redmond wrote:
>The Left has to create its own institutes and think-tanks; noone is going
>to do that for us, least of all the company in a company town. We need the
>rough equivalent of what Indymedia has done for the Web-press --
>structures close enough to the ground to feed into campaigns, but
>permanent enough to think strategically. Kind of like an informatic
>Vietcong.
I agree, particularly about permanence. I work for one such, grassroots funded. But it pays, like, $2.80/hr. Care to make a donation? : ) I'm not impressed by the ability of the Indymedia sites to do much more than keep us updated on protests and events.
My point is not that we can look to universities for our theory but that this is what leads to anti-intellectualism among the folk. But let's not get too extreme on how cooled out the universities are, clearly there is more stirring at there than the power structure would like: a USF prof was suspended in Tampa for denouncing Israel on O'Reilly Factor and a community college prof. in Jacksonville was fired (or rather, no contract renewal) for inviting a speaker for King day who was going to criticize Jeb for the election theft. And they've been trying to reduce the number of tenured profs to zero by eliminating tenure altogether, I believe primarily to enhance political control. And Lieberman and Lynn Cheney, wasn't it? have that group to shut up professors who denounce the war(s). These dogs aren't barking at nothing.
Justin Schwartz wrote:
>Well, that rules out some of the most famous intellectuals in history:
>Socrates, who declined payment; Descartes, Locke, Spinoza, Bacon, Leibniz,
>who either didn't have had to work for a living (the first two) or had to
>make a living at a trade (lensgrinding, law, diplomacy), not to mention one
>Karl Marx, who made a living as a journalist, and his friend Engels, who ran
>a business.
Well, there's a lot of (I think partly sexist) denial about how these guys got their work done. I'm just reminding that there's a material basis for study time. Wives, slaves, mothers, garbage collectors, peasants, parking lot attendants. I'm not opposed to all division of labor, but it does create certain illusions. If we deny that time is what primarily makes intellectual output possible then we think it can be done on the fly (or by 'smart people') and don't see why we should dedicate our dues money toward it. The Communist Manifesto was hired done by a union.
David wrote:
>So, maybe a partial answer to [Jenny's] question is: The
anti-intellectualism is
>present because the theory behind it has been coopted, and is so pervasive.
Yeah, this blocking effect happens in feminism too. Women's Studies became the study of women, or the study of how people have studied women, certainly no longer the study of how women have and are organizing to change the lives of women. Women's Liberation, the movement which originally demanded and won Women's Studies, is hardly mentioned except to occasionally criticize NOW or feminism for being elitist or racist. Eager feminists come to college, take classes, leave discouraged.
Speaking of parallel organizing, does anyone have info on the RAND Corporation creation of New College (the one I know is in Sarasota, but I think there are others.) As I understand it, the goal was to create a magnet for all the radicals and then jam them into a roadstead campus in the middle a nowhere where they could be 'free' of grades and structure and not have any influence on anyone. My only source is this 1971 or '72 paper on the liberal takeover of Women's Studies at San Diego State, that and knowing a bunch of New College grads.
Jeffrey Fisher wrote:
>> Jenny Brown:
>> Don't even get me started on the corporate foundation-funded liberal
>> thinktanks. Talk about giving analysis a bad name. And these same
>> foundations give grants only for action action action when they fund
>> 'grassroots' groups, completing the break. Union-funded thinktanking is
>> better, it being dues money and all. Contrast the Green Party program
>> criticized earlier with the Labor Party program
>> (http://www.thelaborparty.org) and you'll see what I mean.
>i'd be interested in hearing more analysis of this.
So would I. My current pet example of liberal thinktank obfuscation is that damned Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, "covering the uninsured." It's a $10 million ad campaign, god help us. (www.coveringtheuninsured.org if you need an emetic.) Anyone who's spent more than a few minutes thinking about health care reform knows the INSURED also need insurance, insurance the insurance company can't weasel out of, jack up our rates on, limit, deduct and co-pay us to death with. I.e. national health insurance. By contrast, Dennis Redmond posted the Health Care for All-Oregon website. (www.healthcareforalloregon.org) They're good and they're on the ballot this fall. Darn, just checked their site and they've changed the front page to something more professional and less explanatory. They used to have a chart on the front page showing where the money goes. Phooey.
Jenny Brown