>I consider myself a Left intellectual, but I feel horribly isolated from
>most US social movements. Nowhere to plug into, because I don't do
>community activism or street heat, I don't do foundation advertising or
>NGO fundraising.
This statement is so odd to me. I don't mean that critically. I mean that these are exactly the ways people are connected to social movements. And it isn't all that hard to do and be adequate or even good at. You can't throw a rock into the air without hitting some kind of activist or group out do some good.
As to the question of intellectuals...let's admit it...We/they (I resist the "I" word though I am authorized by some universities to put letters after my name) haven't really done much as a class fraction for working people since the 1930s. Even in the 1960s, McCarthyism meant that radical intellectuals were pretty isolated (or isolated themselves). And they haven't got out of that funk. Some of us relish it.
And as for intellectuals talking politics or theory to one another, my experience (say for example on lists similar to this one) hasn't resulted in much other than in the exchange of information--often quite useful. Talking to each other isn't really where it's at, in my view.
For example, we can and do spend a lot of energy going back and forth betwen the two or so dozen people here who have something to say about electing Bush or Kerry, but in the end 100 million people are going to vote, not just us or the left. It might be that the left is stuck in a revolutionary vanguard mode and it doesn't realize that social progress, peace, liberation, socialism all require those millions of people to get. My point is worrying so much about what we say to each other matters less than what role we play in the communtiy, in our unions, our workplaces, etc.
Take care,
Joel Wendland http://www.politicalaffairs.net
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