[lbo-talk] Left Hook Interviews Goff

Jon Johanning jjohanning at igc.org
Fri Aug 6 18:04:47 PDT 2004


On Aug 6, 2004, at 5:10 PM, Brad Mayer quoted Goff:


> This begins to disrupt the inertia of the good cop/bad cop routine
> the two party system keeps pulling on us. It says we are no longer so
> afraid of the Republicans that we run back to their doe-eyed
> body-doubles again and again. But when and if we do that, if we
> encourage that route of revolutionary defeatism, then we are
> duty-bound to be prepared and organized for the follow through. We
> have to be prepared to escalate our tactics against the returning
> Republicans. Calling on people to take risks carries with it some
> responsibilities.

This sort of argument assumes that Bush is just another Republican President and the people around him just another bunch of s--theads around another Republican President. Leftists voting for Kerry don't believe this -- we think that Bush is far more dangerous, with the people around him, than any of those guys has ever been.

If that is not clear by now to the leftists flirting with four more years of Shrub, I guess it never will be. At least Goff recognizes the "risks" he his calling on people to take, even though I think he vastly underestimates them.


> I still feel some ambivalence about the national elections, for that
> matter, because I'm not 100 percent confident that the left is
> prepared to truly escalate, and because my crystal ball doesn't work.
> I don't know what will happen with another Bush-Cheney term. They are
> really a dangerous crew, and we shouldn't underestimate that. They
> want to nuke someone, as a trial balloon like Jose Padilla, jus to see
> what they can get away with.

Actually, I don't know where he gets that "they want to nuke someone" thing. I think the dangers posed by 4 more years for Shrub are more subtle that dropping a big one. (It could happen, also, of course.)


> But in another sense, that risk is exactly what the advantage is to
> having them back. Bush is reported to be on drugs right now to mellow
> out his mood swings, Cheney is as popular as cancer, and a number of
> scandals are still cooking in the kitchen. I think a lot about Nixon
> these days. It would be interesting to see that kind of crisis of
> legitimacy flowing into the second dip of a recession... maybe even
> another period of stagflation.

Wonderful! "The worse the better" again! That's what these Leftists for Bush always come up with when you let them chat on long enough. The "crisis of legitimacy" Nixon caused really brought the Revo an awful lot closer, didn't it? :-)

These "master strategists" of the Revo who are drooling in anticipation of a Bush victory are not nearly as insightful as they suppose. What's the point of having another Nixon? Is that going to educate Americans more about the nature of the system than the last one did? The radical left is just going to have to stop depending on these clever manipulations of the "internal contradictions of the system" and start coming up with much better theories, and better-expressed, more easily understood expositions of them, so that they (we) can really educate the working class. My confident prediction is that 4 more years of W would only befuddle the American working class even more than they are now, while killing hundreds of thousands to millions more elsewhere in the world. (The risk on the other side, of course, is that Kerry would kill them, too. I don't deny that electing Kerry is dangerous also. The existing system is inherently dangerous.)


> The form of imperialism is unstable right now. Neoliberalism is in a
> serious crisis. It is a monetary-military system, and the war in
> Southwest Asia is wrecking the myth of American military invincibility
> upon which the current system depends. The neocons are stepping on the
> gas to try and leap the gorge, so to speak, and the technocrats like
> Colin Powell, Jimmy Carter, John Kerry, et cetera, want to stop the
> car, get out, and recon for a way around the gorge.

Right now, I'd settle for just stopping the car. If Goff thinks that a defeat of the U.S. military in Iraq would turn the public against the system, he should take another look at what happened after the Vietnam defeat. Most Americans are way too patriotic and pro-military, unfortunately, to draw the conclusions he wants them to draw.


> Just as important for the so-called left is that we continue to
> promote any activity that deepens the political polarization of the
> United States and grow the revolutionary left while deepening its
> connections to concrete struggles.

This is sheer revolutionary dreaming. There just ain't no polarization of the kind he is fantasizing, and no "revolutionary left" to grow, outside of a few handfuls of "comrades" here and there. What universe is he living in?

Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ When I was a little boy, I had but a little wit, 'Tis a long time ago, and I have no more yet; Nor ever ever shall, until that I die, For the longer I live the more fool am I. -- Wit and Mirth, an Antidote against Melancholy (1684)



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list