Let me repeat: there is an indefinitely large supply of issues which (if one were writing an objective academic account of capitalism) one would want to list, and many of them, again in objective academic or philosophical terms would _seem_ to be better issues to move people with. But in fact how many issues in the history of capitalism have _in fact_ triggered large mass movements?
1. Union recognition. (Once unions achieve recognition they are no longer sources of radical action. (This is nothing against unions: we need them. But we can't expect union activity to be a source of movement.)
2. Women's rights. (Sort of. One would guess that what inspired Mary Wollstonecraft was that she kept getting elbowed to the sidelines in the 1790s equivalent in France of England of modern political maillists. The 19th c. movement emerged from the same thing happening in the anti-slavery movement. Much of the energy of the Second Wave of the '70s flowed from the same thing happening to women in the civil rights and anti-war movements.)
3. Anti-lynching.
4. Protracted War.
That's about the complete list.
Maybe it shouldn't be that way. But then almost nothing that's going on around the world now _should be_ that way.
All the other things that you may think are of greater importance won't generate a movement _except_ as they are used to expand movements which have their core in anti-war and anti-imperialism. Perhaps the struggle against the Patriot Act. You can't build a movement for positive things except as an emergent feature of Struggles Against. That's a simple prediction, not an argument about what should be.
So the only way to argue against it is to go out and organize, and then come back when you have people actually in motion. I won't hold my breath.
Without ever speaking more than two minutes at a time, and not more often that about two times about every three months, I have persuaded about 30 people in Bloomington-Normal that they have an obligation to keep BNCPJ alive and ready for the next time when something sparks mass interest. Two other people (seconded by Jan and me) persuaded the same 30 people that burnout of leaders was a major barrier to that survival, and that hence the generation of new leadership was an obligation on all those with (as a young sociology asst. prof put it) "fire in their belly." As I said a couple years ago on this list, I'm having fun for the first time since ERA went down in flames. During that time, until both of us and our friends more or less burnt out after the Gulf War, we had clawed at one thing after another with our fingernails, just hoping. One possible focus after another would fade away. (We saved one, perhaps two, lives along the way, but nothing more came of it.)
Anti-War is the framework for everything else.
Carrol
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Your fetishizing of negation as the prime mover of social movements is utterly toxic and confuses dialectics with cynicism.
There was a reason the feminist movements weren't called anti-patriarchy movements. Feminism is not reducible to anti-patriarchy.
There is a reason why United for Peace and Justice and Veterans for Common Sense isn't called the anti-Bush or movement. Peace movements aren't reducible to anti-violence or anti-militarism no matter how many times the media or know-it-alls try to describe them in such terms.
And if you hadn't noticed from the posts by Ulhas over the past few years, there's an enormous social movement going on in Asia that's picked up on what has gone on in Europe, North America and other regions of the world, a social movement to build capitalism. When was the last time you heard that called the anti-feudalism movement?
Nor is there an anti-surveillance movement. There's a civil liberties movement fighting the anti-freedom movement called the US government, large numbers of citizens associated with the Republican party as well as other right wing parties and authoritarian governments across the planet.
Nor is there an anti-globalization movement.
Ever notice how we enable our political opponents to cynically tack the anti prefix in front of every social movement of the past 100 years or more?
Try *tarrying with the positive* for a change. You'll have more fun. It's also why Quakers and Unitarians make better organizers than members of the species known as Curmudgeons.
Peace and freedom and techno-ecological sanity is the framework for what we do and want. Let's stick our opponents with the anti prefix for a change.....It's a young century, we can learn to do it and trying to do so is not Romanticism.
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20030721/018224.html
Of course, I'm not holding my breath with regards to you letting go of your fetish for Olympian pronouncements any time soon..........
Have a nice day,
Ian