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

Todd Archer todda39 at hotmail.com
Mon May 3 12:35:34 PDT 2004


Doug said:


>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

All these imperfections of "The Left"! It's a wonder "we" get anywhere!

While I certainly can't disagree with this assessment, I'd have to call for a little less self-flagellation (something I think "The Left" is good at too). "We" (even the "non-radical" left) have always been sidelined, to a greater or lesser degree depending on circumstance, by those who have the clout in society; it's not as though for lack of trying "we" "failed" in the past or are doing so now. We've always thought the best of our fellow humans, trying to make things better for everyone, but we get let down for various reasons that don't have to have anything to do with being "Left". It's a damned imperfect world, and I share that feeling of hopelessness at what goes on vs. what we do to make it better, but we can't go around taking on this joyous burden of being so completely at fault for not making the world better.

We're up against states, money, power, human weakness, ignorance, the "desire not to know", violent repression, threat, and even just the fact that we're out of step with so much of what passes for "normal" in human societies. The odds are stacked WAY up against us. They've been that way for the longest time, back even when the bourgeois were the progressives. For what's been done, we deserve a pat on the back, for being part of that line that tried to make a good difference.

There are all sorts of visions for the future out there (even in Marx's time), but how many will even get close to actualized if Power doesn't give us the chance to do it? And how many people will want to believe in something better if they're so shit scared of losing what little they have now, so they cling to it maniacally, no matter the harm it's doing them or the chance that things might get better. "Better the devil you know . . . ." And it's really hard to talk about visions of a better future when a strong intellectual paradigm's elevated doubt into such a caustic substance that nothing's foundation is safe, that the status quo "wins" by default.

We can see better days coming out of the here and now: Iraq won't be under military occupation forever, Bush's blunders will eventually get him booted out of office, more people will get pissed off with the things "the way they are" and start to look for alternatives. Openings will come. Militancy will grow. This won't happen smoothly or without loss of ground, but to say it won't happen at all is to ignore history and cede the ground to our opponents.

It's not easy being left. The temptation to despair is omnipresent and can easily mask itself as critical discourse. We don't "help" each other enough (not just the solidarity thing, but simple emotional support); I doubt the Right is as hard on itself as the Left is.

All we can do is try our best (trite though that advice may be).

Todd

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