> How many people on this list, for example, many of them aging
> professionals - myself included - have an immediate need for
> government support for pre-school education, children's
> health care, a ban on compulsory overtime, leave to recover
> from household violence, unsafe day labour, union lockout
> rights and wage rates, etc. Some do, but most don't.
You may have a point here. As for myself, I am an aging professional who indeed is not affected by most issues on Nathan's list, but who is affected by others that did not make it to the list - such as sustainable land use and transportation, cooperative housing, public safety, retirement benefits, or affordable health care - that affect both me and people in "non-professional" jobs. I may add that I deliberately tried to put my money where my mouth was, e.g. by moving into a inner city coop instead of, say, buying prime real estate with trust money as many campus radicals did, but that is beside the point.
What matters is that both "professionals" and "non-professionals" have something in common and something not in common. I suspect that they have more in common than not in common - however many believe that the opposite is true. I think the problem is not commonality of interest, but identity politics that creates an illusion of conflict of interests.
While we are at this, I also believe that the reason while much of the left moved away from the mundane bread and butter issues affecting the "non-professionals" has more to do with identity politics than disappointments with socialism. Specifically, with the form of identity politics that developed in the 1960s and is known as counterculturalism. The idea here is that appearance of radicalism is more important (and also cheaper) than being radical, or more precisely, to have an actual impact on politics. Therefore, creating appearances of radicalism - mainly through engaging in or endorsing outrageous acts of speech and communication - became the domain of the left.
Wojtek