"What is it about the left that it draws so many people of gloomy temperament who only want to see the worst in the world? We used to be about possibility, transformation, finding the seeds of the new in the womb of the old. Now we're about why everything sucks and is getting worse."
Your question implies the need for a psychological answer, but there's an important social-educational dimension that can't be ignored.
First, I suppose part of the answer inheres in the frustration, anger, and probable depression that 'left' individuals experience from their studies of objective conditions in economy, politics, and society. Things ARE bad and getting worse. Compared to what? Compared to visions of a more perfect society and successes of past revolutionary or progressive movements which appear to less and less be available to us. Perhaps then, to avoid (possibly to express) intense depression and/or destructive personal habits, we take our tensions out on comrades, or we angrily regurgitate theoretical platitudes calculated to raise the ire of some human target (or political 'tendency'). Let's put the idea of 'agents' on the back burner for now. Assuming the 'left' is a composite of persons believing in some kind of socialism, and forming a kind of extended family of believers, there's a parallel with the nuclear family where the level of violence is the highest to be found.
This is bull shit social-psych 101so far unless we consider that "people of gloomy temperament" are, I suppose, all that the 'left' can draw on. We're a deviant sub-set of a highly depressive general population that has difficulty discerning truth from fantasy, lies through its teeth, constantly borders on rage, and shades into schizophrenia. That's part of the 'American' personality, but I don't rely much on this kind of analysis since capitalism has always made things that way. Granted, the 'left' sub-set of today may be operating in such accelerating conditions (technology, accumulation, concentration, greed, social control, etc.) that it's unable to build any resistance to successfully counter the objective pace of capital. If so, defeatism and ennui might be 'normal' responses.
Perhaps we aren't endlessly bound to these constraints. There's a potentially liberating dimension in the social psychology of the left which could come through the process of organizing and alternative education. I reckon we need to do a thorough overhaul here or, at least, return to left roots. For starts, have many more social forums all over the country, from top to bottom. Forums like the coming July 23-25 Boston Social Forum (with an amazing 550 workshops) lay substantive and methodological groundwork, and get people together. I attended the smaller scale, but similar, Midwest Social Forum held in June near Madison, WI. I'm helping construct a Midwest Labor Center in Detroit that will provide educational resources to the 'non-traditional' working class (out-of-work, homeless, etc.) and possibly organize something akin to the Brecht Forum in Manhattan. Let's get people together and raise consciousness in any way possible wherever we're stationed.
We have to transcend the temporary highs coming from films like Farenheight and The Corporation, and the vast information now available on 'the system,' and the energized liberal peace & justice movement (in a trumped-up critical election year). We pride ourselves as possessors of this information, but it's really only a cheap tool in the act of getting down to the nitty-gritty of grass roots organizing for structural change. There's a serious class-based problem in the social psychology of left organizing which must be solved. 'Left' actors (self-proclaimed) tend toward privilege and/or intellectual exclusiveness. That persona is the last thing we need if we are to successfully participate in a mobilization of the working class which, from one theoretical rendition, is REALLY the foundation of the left, once consciousness is raised. The obvious point learned from the past is that the most exploited and oppressed are the 'natural' class leaders. If this is so, our high priority might be patient inquiry into how this is to be accomplished. And once understood (however tentatively), how can the 'left' be efficiently integrated into any resulting 'social movement?'
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