>Someone else on the list made the comment that the publish-or-perish
>system drove social scientists and other analysts to come up with a "new,
>revolutionary" idea about class composition etc every other year whether
>social circumstances merited this or not. This is similar to how I feel
>about Post Left Anarchism.
It's really the old capitalist model of innovation, isn't it? In order for a product to be marketable, it must appear to be the newest thing under the sun. An invention, with a patent. The problem is that ideology arises from historico-material conditions, not wishful thinkers.
>Post Left Anarchy seems, to me, to be the product of a few people wanting
>to position themselves as founders of a "seminal, new idea" and thus as
>"important" analysts, whether or not their analysis reflects anything
>really existing.
Reminds me of the "New Democrats".
> All
>the things that are supposed to be hallmarks of "post leftism" -
>autonomism, direct action, anti-auhtoritarianism - have been notable,
>major strands of the left since well into the early 19th century. It has
>existed side by side along with the auhtoritarian or statist tendencies.
>It is not "post"-anything. The fetish for everything being "post"-this or
>"post"-that taken to its logically absurd conclusion is exactly what
>"post-left" anarchy is.
Silly as this may seem, it reminds me of punk rock-- a perfectly dialectical response to the shabby commercialism that pop music had sunk to in the ' 70s. But, the second it took off, it became commodified like everything else. A political ideology ought to be well-thought-out and well-contextualized before being dropped on the world-- otherwise it quickly loses its integrity.
Also, I think it's important to remember that political ideologies cannot create-- or act as a substitute for-- actual movements. After all, we're not talking about trends in painting, here (Fauvism and post-Fauvism)-- we're talking ultimately about real people acting on real things in real life.
>As Sam Dolgoff, the late anarcho-syndicalist organizer stated, "the
>principles of mutual aid, direct economic action, autonomy, federalism,
>and class strugglr are all deeply rooted in American labor tradition."
>This also seems to be what post-leftists say "post-leftism" is, despite
>the fact that it's actually nothing new. By this criteria, the radical
>labor movement of the Red Scare era is more post-leftist than anything
>today.
To be fair here, I think that the anarchist embrace of the term post-Leftism emerges out of very sincere-- and real-- concerns. The concerns are that so much of "the Left" has embraced either Social Democracy, Stalinism, mainstream Green politics, or Liberalism, that there is no room for revolution. Everyone seems to have "cast their lot" with capitalism. The concerns raised by "post-Leftism" are very real-- ones that leftists of all ilk need to come to terms with. Perhaps this is the real "common ground" issue that needs to be discussed-- the drifting of so much of "the Left" towards pro-capitalist, non-revolutionary politics.
Best, David