[lbo-talk] political surrealism and "postfordist" strategy

Jim Devine jdevine03 at gmail.com
Thu Feb 16 08:11:52 PST 2006


Chuck: >The American Left does not offer a culture of connectedness that alienated Americans can plug into. There is lots of stupid hostility to any form of "counterculture" and in anarchist circles "lifestylism." This is incredibly myopic and a recipe for political marginalization. All great resurgences of the American Left in the past century were accompanied by cultural movements. And more recently, the anti-globalization movement attracted many people and one reason was that the movement provided something to belong to. Even those pathetic anti-war mobilizations in Washington offer something in terms of a short-lived community and the empowerment of being with lots of people who think like you do. <

The Communist Parties and the Social Democratic Parties, where and when successful, involved a big "infrastructure" of cultural institutions that encouraged working people to participate in, belong to, and identify with the movement. On the other hand, the idea of anarchist organizing anything made be think of John Sayles' "Anarchist Convention" and giggle. But that's unfair. I'm sure that the CNT/FAI in Civil War-era Spain also had a cultural infrastructure.


>But Lerner's argument that the Left needs more spirituality is
bollocks. The last thing this religion-saturated country needs is more religious and spiritual mumbo jumbo. It would be more productive and effective to build a secular version of Lerner's vision. <

Organizations such as Hamas in Palestine have also created large cultural infrastructures and public-service organizations, redounding to their favor in terms of getting popular support. But Chuck is right that the last thing the US needs is organized religion. I have no faith at this point that a William Jennings Bryan-type "social gospel"

(a relatively left-wing religious populism) will come back in a significant way. I guess that the social gospel movement was largely a response to the IWW and other forces that were further to the left (as it were).

Organizations such as Hamas are succeeding because neo-liberalism has eviscerated the welfare states (or in the US, the "welfare" part of the warfare-welfare state) and destroyed and/or corrupted leftish nationalist movements such as Fatah or the Ba'ath Party. Lacking a welfare state of some kind -- and weak community organizations -- Hamas fills the gap. -- Jim Devine / Bust Big Brother Bush!

"There are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil." -- Alfred North Whitehead



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