I agree that actual experience with theoretically-driven movements has played a huge part in the evolution of activist-ism -- certainly we thought a lot about that but perhaps we didn't spell it out as much as we might have. On this and many other points, Steve Duncombe has a really excellent response to -- and engagement with -- our piece in the new Radical Society [preposterously labelled April 2003 even though we just got it in the mail]. Nothing from the mag seems to be online, and RS is pathetically unavailable in most bookstores but it looks like people can buy that single issue by calling Routledge customer service 1 800 354 1420.
Liza
> From: Thomas Seay <entheogens at yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Wed, 4 Feb 2004 07:23:21 -0800 (PST)
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Activistism piece
>
> --- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>> I've just posted "Action Is Being Taken" to the LBO
>> website
> http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Action.html
>> Liza Featherstone,
>> Christian Parenti
>
> This is a fine article that Doug, Liza and Christian
> have written and I agree with it. However, IN
> ADDITION to anti-intellectualism and american
> pragmatism, wouldn't it be fair to count the FAILURE
> of
> many 19th and 20th century theories (or at least the
> incarnations of those theories) among the reasons that
> the American movment is so anti-theoretical?
>
> I mean, who among those of us who went through the New
> Communist Movement does not still feel the sting? In
> the end, that movement ended up bickering over who was
> the most ideologically pure, even though it had
> minimal impact on American society in the 70s when it
> was at its height. Finally, a whole generations of
> seasoned activists who had embraced theory got burnt
> out and withdrew. Those that remained, like the
> American RCP, just persisted in their claims of
> ideological purity. The trotskyist movement went its
> course also and what you end up with there is the WWP
> which seems to have made a fetish out of the type of
> activism that the "activitism" piece describes.
>
> Now I just wonder if this might not also be a reason
> for this problem of snubbing theory.
>
> -Thomas
>
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