>I've just posted "Action Is Being Taken" to the LBO website
><http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Action.html>. Liza
>Featherstone, Christian Parenti, and I wrote it for the debut issue
>of Radical Society, which about five people on earth have seen.
One of your interviewees sums up the whole problem nicely:
***** Liana Molina of Santa Clara University agrees: "I think our economic system determines everything!" But about the student movement's somewhat vague ideology, she has mixed feelings. "It's good to be ambiguous and inclusive," so as not to alienate more conservative, newer, or less politicized members, she says. "But I also think a class analysis is needed. Then again, that gets shady, because people are like, 'Well, what are you for, socialism? What?'" *****
It's not as though there is no theory that interested activists can make use of -- it's just that the sort of theory that helps activists do class analysis is beyond the pale of American political discourse, and few activists on the left today think that socialism or anarchism is possible or desirable, so bringing up theory can split the movement. Hence most activists' pragmatic focus on how to make actions work.
***** In many other countries, activists' tiny apartments are stacked with the well-thumbed works of Bakunin, Marx and Fanon. We'd like to see that kind of engagement here. *****
In the United States, it's OK to read Bakunin, Marx, and Fanon (you can even get some of their works at such mainstream bookstores as Barnes & Noble, not to mention libraries and better bookstores), as long as you don't intend to put their main ideas into practice. -- Yoshie
* Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>