> So we're powerless on Iraq, but you think you can turn it around with
> Iran and Palestine? That doesn't make any sense. Why not emphasize
> something with some actual promise, like living wage legislation or
> national health insurance?
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That's a good point, and it's interesting to speculate on why this doesn't
happen. I think it's because the Marxist left is now mostly concentrated in
university and professional circles and doesn't have the same interest in
these bread and butter issues that it had when it was based in the working
class. Minimum wage and health care issues are not issues which affect
academics and college-educated professionals in the same way, for example,
that job creation programs, collective bargaining rights, and social
insurance benefits affected working-class communists and social democrats
during the Depression. It was easy to campaign for these kinds of reforms
then, not only from ideological conviction, but because they directly
affected how you and your family, friends, neighbours, and workmates lived.
That's not to indict today's left for occupying a different class position - history is responsible for that - or to argue against the kind of reorientation you propose, but simply to suggest why this is much easier said than done. It's not by by chance that today's far left is at a distance from these issues and has spent more time talking about "connecting" with the masses than actually doing so. Nor that it's natural habitats are interactive Internet forums and tiny "vanguard parties" where debate and discussion is more extensive and often more stimulating than in mainstream political milieus. Nor that when the left isn't discussing and debating, it's practical political activity mainly consists of building solidarity coalitions which, however necessary, are still too often inevitably composed of like-minded individuals addressing struggles outside their own experience.
Given the alternative of devoting their energies to reform coalitions around issues of social spending and redistribution which are invariably tied to and dominated by the main institutional expressions of the American working class - the unions and the Democratic party - you can see why, almost by default, middle-class radicals feel more comfortable in the solidarity coalitions and discussion circles of their own peers.
I know from my own experience how rewarding it could be to participate to in a self-described vanguard party, and how difficult it sometimes was by comparison to sustain more "mundane" reformist political activity in the unions and political parties in which working people congregated. I did so because I regarded such participation in the mass organizations as a political obligation for a Marxist, but now, excepting for those rare periods when the working class rises to challenge the system, I no longer have a missionary's view of it. I still agree with you, though, that if you're politically active, it's more productive than not to address those issues where there is some "actual promise" of developing popular opposition and speaking to broader audiences.