>But people who choose such things shouldn't pretend
>that that will fundamentally change the
>socio-politico-economic structure. You can't
>"down-shift" imperialist capitalism out of existence
>-- at best you can carve a semi-tolerable niche for
>yourself out of it, which is a far different thing
>from social change.
Kelley wrote,
>When a load of people are doing that, I can see how, in a Piven and Cloward
>kinda way, you might be going somewhere. But without the political movement
>and some serious theoretical thinking and engaged political practice, I'd
>like to know what these people think is going to happen.
Looks like Tully has struck a nerve! There seems to be some kind of impression going on here that voluntary simplicity is incompatible with political analysis or political action. On the contrary, a bout of "serious theoretical thinking" would lead those who care to do it rather than talk about it to a position very close to voluntary simplicity. By serious theoretical thinking, I mean thinking about what one can actually do to influence others to join in taking action that will result in positive social change. I don't consider "what I would do if I was King/Queen" to be serious theoretical thinking. And what policies "we" would implement if only "we" were a mass movement is just a variety of the what-if wishful thinking.
Notice I said a position "very close" to voluntary simplicity. What I mean by very close is that I find myself working closely in coalition very largely with the eminences of the voluntary simplicity movement. When I look around me at the table, I don't see an awful lot of either academic marxists or traditional left-wing political activists. And, as close as I can tell, my own political practice is guided by what I consider rather serious theoretical insight based, among other things, on a critical reading of Marx and western marxism (especially Walter Benjamin). Among those other things I would name narrative policy analysis and a smattering of neo-classical economic theory. I'm sure I would get nothing but puzzled looks if I mentioned to many of my political allies exactly how this or that strategic direction accords with the analysis of Italian autonomist theory.
There's a line I'm fond of quoting from the program of the 1867 Geneva Congress of the International Workingmen's Association. It doesn't really "prove" anything but it sums up an awful lot of serious theoretical thinking by Marx, before Marx ("The Source and Remedy...") and after Marx (a US Senate Industrial Commission, Chapman, Leacock, Gorz...) on what Canadian humourist, political economist and Red Tory, Stephen Leacock referred to as the "unsolved riddle of social justice":
"A preliminary condition, without which all further attempts at improvement and emancipation must prove abortive, is the /limitation of the working day./"
Anyone who wants to pretend that they're addressing fundamental change of the socio-political-economic structure and who doesn't immediately recognize the salience of that resolution is indeed only pretending to talk about social change. And those who may only intuitively or spontaneously have arrived at an understanding of the need for "down-shifting" are already more theoretically advanced than those who talk about the need for theory and engaged political practice but who are oblivious to the role that the struggle for control over working time has played in the historical movements of working people for social democracy.
How do you build a political movement? Well, you start right where you are.
The Sandwichman