Under what conditions will we be able to bring socialism back into our categories and models so that the economic left is fully represented? It will come after a long and grueling popular struggle that accompanies the inevitable objective developments. Meanwhile, Joel, ChuckO, and others properly opined that a first step would be to obscure the intellectual-practitioner division of labor in our worlds of analysis and practice. Get INTO the real-life community where a lot is actually going on. The "Productivity" and "Alinsky" threads naturally flowed from this. I did read the Playboy interview stuff on Alinsky that Kelley suggested. As a paid community organizer decades ago, I was influenced by his "Reveille for Radicals." That's when the feds, local governments, and foundations threw bits of money around to 'enable community self-determination.' That's when groups like ACORN were fledglings and union organizing was somewhat viable. Changing time-place-condition factors left their mark on all models of the day, including Alinsky. Today isn't exempt.
Kelley and others are right about volunteerism and charity in the U.S. today. Dozens of millions (40,000 K, I believe) provide hundreds of millions of hours producing a large bundle of value in the forms of charitable giving, organizing, and labor time. Nearly every element in everyday life is covered. Of course this props up capitalism and may continue the thrust of privatization. But it also gets people of some affinity together, be it poverty, color, gender, labor, faith, war, or a specific problem. I have to believe that the social process of mutual defense and problem solving is pregnant with a new left. A new left is always being born. I remember when the 'new left' of the 60s was trying to congeal with the 'old left' and reach out in the 70s to the community 'non-left.' A lot transpired for a short time and we learned much, but conditions changed. Today, selected and confusing facts from the ocean of available information is seeping into the consciousness of some non-left 'volunteer-activists.' As was true of most of us at some point, they need a collectivized process to aid in interpretation of facts and speculate on resistance tactics and bigger-than-average solutions. We have to join them wherever they are because that's where the left is being reborn. Seems to me that's where the "support structures, spaces and places" in Dennis' initial inquiry likely are to be found.
This is getting too long, but I don't want to shortchange the labor question, my favorite. I'm taken with the notion of labor-community coalition. Groups like Black Workers for Justice and Jobs with Justice come to mind. Even though the success of these experiments can be questioned, the principle of joining where you work (whether unionized, NLRB, or independent) with where you live or who you are is an organizing winner. One has to believe that workplaces and occupations 'naturally' will become organized in the future, with or without the AFL-CIO. And that new coalitions of workers' delegates will be formed. Entropy can be interrupted. Few believe that community associations and coalitions of associations will soon disappear. Most of us have to work and we all have to live somewhere. Seems reasonable that many super "spaces and places" will be found in the richness of the labor-community mix. It may become a spawning ground for the future left. Patience!
Bob Mast
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