Hell, I have been involved with M-L organizations where careful study of _elementary_ texts such as the Manifesto and Wage Labor and Capital was considered too demanding -- never mind actually reading Capital or The Development of Capitalism in Russia or The History od the Russian Revolution.
John McWhorter, a very smart neocon Black linguistics scholar at Berkeley, has a recent book on the deterioration of written and oral communication in the US that discusses factors that may contribute to this that also might be relevant to the decline of theory on the left -- theory, by which I mean the attempt to explain concrete phenomena by reference to empirically grounded generalizations or disciplined normative argument, and not Theory, PC honking as done in cultural studies programs. McWhorter suggests, plausible, alas, that TV, mass education oriented towards a tight labor market, and other factors contribute to the fact tht if a politician were to talk like John Kennedy or Adelei Stevenson he'd be trashed as a freak who talks like a pretentious jerk. Marx or Bakunin or Mill or Madison must come off the same way.
McWhorter pessimistically suggests the change is irreversible in view of material conditions. If so, we need new ways to do theoretical education.
jks
--- Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> wrote:
> Doug wrote:
>
> >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/>
> ___________________________________
>
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