In her book, _Woman Questins: Essays for a Materialist Feminism_, Lise Vogel includes an autobiographical article. The gist of it. She had earned a Ph.D. in art history, had her dissertation printed to good reviews, and had obtained a good position at Brown University. Whe had also, while in grad school, been increasingly involved in politics (Mississippi summers, etc). She gave up her career at Brown, returned to school to gain a Ph.D. in sociology, and is now teaching a horrendous load at Rider College, mostly working class students. I urge people to get the book and read her account (as well as the theoretical essays that follow). When I met her for the first time at the 2002 Socialist Scholars Conference, she was not complaining. She was busy thinking.
Like the complaints within the CPC in the early 1930s about the peasants of Hunan and their uncouth ways, the complaints about americans on this list seem to come from a vantage point outside history. For awhile in the early '70s my wife and my older daughter attended the discussions of a local women's group here in Bloomington/Normal, but quit because all most of the participants did was whine about how apathetic other women (and particularly their own mothers) were, etc etc etc.. When Jan asked them how they came to be different from their mothers they simply blew past the question. They were, after all, outside history looking down from a tower (which they had afterall built and climbed on their own) at those who were too stupid to have arrived already at the standpoint of their betters.
It makes perfectly good sense for most people to simply concentrate on living their lives as best they can, and if that includes taking it for granted that the politicians in D.C. are telling the truth, then that makes perfect sense too. And I find complaints about them offensive. That we (or some of us) are in a position to know better ought to be seen as our luck, not their fault.
And incidentally, I find equally detestable those who, also from a point outside history looking down their noses at the struggle, compile endless lists of each of the structure, "No wonder the left never got any place." Piss.
We can only stumble along and do our best, and we need to quit bellyaching either about "the people" or about the history of our movement. And every so often the contingencies of history open up for us (as they did for the last year or so) and we have a chance to reach others. What we do in between those openings is prepare for the next one. We won't reach everyone on any of those occasions. We won't even reach a majority, but over the last two centuries we have had an impact on the world. We will again.
Carrol
Carrol