[lbo-talk] State of the US Left

[Carl Remick]

>From: "Dennis Redmond" <dredmond at efn.org>
>
>The US Left continues to lead the world in its ability to generate
>circular firing squads.
>
>I'm convinced, though, that much of this has to do with the larger
>pathologies of US society: money-driven, polarized, riven by social,
>spatial and ethnic apartheid, an archaic 18th century capitalism
>masquerading as a high-tech superpower, etc. There must be a reason that
>the US ends up with the same Naderesque politics of entrepreneurial
>moralism (or as Doug and Liza so accurately tagged it, activistism), over
>and over and over again.
>
>Here's something I've been thinking about for awhile...
>
>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. I'm not a marketeer or a salesperson or a lawyer, but
>those are the priorities of the larger society. I'm not even allowed to be
>a professional culture-worker or theorist, because no university will hire
>me, despite being outrageously overqualified for most of the jobs out
>there. (Four years on the market, and absolutely nothing. I don't even
>have a *campus interview* to show for it. Pure market McCarthyism.)
>
>Not that I would change a word of what I've written or a single concept
>which I've formulated. On the contrary, it's pushed me to work that much
>harder on my geopolitics/theory/texts, messages in informatic bottles for
>more fortunate galaxies, to paraphrase Heiner Mueller. But the US Left
>lacks even the most basic support structures, spaces and places -- a
>political commons, if you will -- where long-term conversations can happen
>between identity-movements, artists, interested laypeople, union
>activists, NGOs and political parties.
>
>Or I am wrong about this?
>
>-- DRR

Seems to me an accurate depiction of the US political landscape as a Möbius 
Strip.

But while I believe you're correct, I'm too isolated to know for sure ;-)

Carl

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