My sense, though, is that when intellectuals have historically become an important part of mass movements, they have usually been sought out by organic leaders of these movements whose consciousness has grown as a result of their own experience in struggle, rather than the other way round. They then nurture each others' understanding and the intellectuals frequently move quickly into leadership positions. But these have to be real mass struggles, not imagined ones by hopeful intellectuals.
Until that stage is reached, it doesn't much matter whether left intellectuals restrict their activities to small sects and list serves or become more widely involved in such movements as exist - at least insofar as being able to exert any meaningful influence on those movements. The real benefit in this period accrues to the individual who experiences personal growth and satisfaction and acquires the essential first-hand knowledge which informs theory. Jim Straub is a good example; he can always be counted on to inject a healthy dose of realism into these discussions from his vantage point in the labour movement.
Jim's point about the types of compromises which are required for "mass work" is an essential one. Left intellectuals who have gone into mass movements have immediately been confronted with the choice of standing at the back of the hall and peddling their "line" to an unresponsive audience or becoming involved in the structure and politics of the organization in order to gain and exercise leadership withiin it in pursuit of its more limited objectives. Those from left sects who have chosen to participate meaningfully in mass organizations have frequently found themselves in conflict with their leaders and comrades at a distance who have accused them of "adaptation to the backward pressures of the masses", "liquidation into the mass movement", "careerism", etc. This fear of losing their best cadre to the mass movements into which they are sent - a not unreasonable fear, it has turned out - is one of the underlying reasons for the sectarian character of the small left groups in a period when their language and policies are way in front of the masses. If the LBO list were run like a tightly-disciplined "vanguard party", you could expect it wouldn't be long before people like Jim Straub would be chastized for not selling the party press or pushing the party line hard enough and for adapting to the backward pressures of the members, the trade union leaders, and the Democratic party.
Anyway, these are just a few more thoughts to flesh out Jim's sobering take below on Yoshie's proposals, which deserve to be seen as those of a serious political person. They're having a similar debate over on Marxmail about other greener pastures being sought in similar desperation.
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----- Original Message -----
From: Jim Straub
Sent: Saturday, December 02, 2006 1:22 AM
Subject: [lbo-talk] Re: Time to Get Religion
When Yoshie first broadened her "populist-religions-better-MLs-than-MLs" line to attempt to include the US awhile ago, I suspected she had a broader ideological hypothesis behind the scenes we were seeing glimpses of. So it's good to see a straight-up mission statement on the subject.
And I'm really, really, really in favor of any operational plan for the left that involves us engaging with ordinary religious people instead of smaller and smaller sects of each other exclusively.
But before going into any big picture world-historical-ideological-whatevers, isn't it worth point out the obvious? How on EARTH is a left bent on whittling itself down to smaller and smaller islands of purity, and fighting bizzarre doctrinal disputes that have nothing to do with 99% of the people in our country, and incapable of engaging politically with people whose views are even somewhat different than our own, ever POSSIBLY going to engage politically with religious america, which is infinitely MORE challenging to get down with for a lefto? You want to have smackdown debates about who is more islamophobic because they don't support the right shia party, or dismiss the 'left-wing of capital' (which as far as I can tell means mainstream leftists in the US), or wouldn't vote for Strickland over Blackwell (Yoshie?), or whatever? I got news for ya--- you ain't seen nuthin in terms of false consciousness yet!
Certainly I stand my ground in some (when you think about it) unnecessarily shrill arguments about unions or whole foods or whatever, but other than e-mail and beers with friends, I talk to nobody but working-class republicans every day, and go to these churches most sunday. And I just have a hard time imagining someone hawking a trot paper at them, much less building a political movement there. Not that I'm saying it shouldn't be done, but, ...
And don't go there about mainline congregations, small and shrinking and upper middle class, where lefties who sit on policy boards issue left resolutions about political issues the general membership couldn't care less about. Or the unitarian universalists, the nice folks thomas jefferson was pretty sure would be a majority of the us population by now, who are probably a bit smaller in size than freedom road socialist organization at this point. Or american judaism, which has a smaller presence in the US working class than many of the smallest and wackiest christian sects.
No, if you're talking about us getting with the religion that is going to dominate the hell out of future american spiritual life, we gotta talk about megachurches, we gotta talk about the pentecostalists!, the Mormons! The Jehova's Witnesses (of whom five people in the service unit I'm working on at the elko hospital now can't join the union because its against their religion), assemblies of god, missouri synod, church of the nazarene, holyness christianity, the megachurch on the edge of town, the rubes who actually attended Ted Haggard's sermons all these meth-smoking-blowjob years. We gotta talk about TD Jakes, Left Behind, the purpose driven life and the Ray of Jabez. Yeah, some goofy fucking shit! The big kahuna of them all, the southern baptists--- who are a lot bigger (-outside- of the south!) than almost any other denomination!
I do believe you'll find some 'insufficiently anti-imperialst' positions there.
However, having shouted all that through chortled laughter, I have to say I applaud the effort yoshie is taking in rethinking our un-sacred cows and re-engaging with the thought of most ordinary people in this country. And also, events as they accelerate in Iraq do seem to be bearing out some of her points about Sadr. So much so I get the feeling he may not still be alive for us to argue about this time next month. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20061202/14c850c1/attachment.htm>