[lbo-talk] Purging Black Votes: 2000 and 2004

[Wojtek Sokolowski]

Doug:
> We - and I'm including myself in this - are rather lacking in a
> compelling vision of the future. Part of the reason may be that we've
> lost that old Hegelian/Marxist trick of finding the seeds of the new
> in the belly of the old. So much left discourse is about horrors -
> exploitation, genocide, heat death of the universe, the evils of
> "globalization," the crimes of Howard Stern - that people don't want
> to listen to us, and we have no plausible strategy for making things
> any better.

Doug, I think the discourse to which you are referring IS the left
strategy.  The Left has always a strong tendency to escape from the
reality to a utopia - be it utopian socialism of the 19th century or
literary criticism of the late 20th century.  The Hegelian/Marxist trick
you are referring to was not only an exception to that tradition, but it
became possible due to the changes of the material conditions of
production (cartelization of the economy) rather than sheer appeal of an
idea.  

Unfortunately, the Left has ceded the control of the production to
capitalists and it hopes that the ideal (contradictions, which are the
realm of logic not reality, or an ideology with mass appeal) will
overturn that control.  It is not much different from voodoo or a prayer
circle.

Wojtek