[lbo-talk] Rethinking Liberalism

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Mon Apr 23 14:55:00 PDT 2007


On Apr 23, 2007, at 5:36 PM, Marvin Gandall wrote:


> For Marxists and others on the far left, there really is no good
> alternative: either huddle together in intellectual and activist
> ghettoes
> and hurl manifestoes into the void or mix in more mainstream
> milieus and
> progressively discover through practice that the mass of the
> population is
> simply unwilling - because it finds it unnecessary - to become
> involved in
> anything other than well-contained electoral struggles for incremental
> reform. There is little possibiilty to merge theory and practice,
> as there
> once was and could one day be again.

Wise advice, as usual, Marvin. The thing I find so hard to understand is that Jim has spent a lot of time trying to organize workers into unions - and once organized, keep them there - and from what I hear, the experience has made him very aware of the fact that the thinking of the American working class has little in common with Ours. Soooo, Jim, do you really think that parachuting more of us into places like Las Vegas ("interesting in a cultural studies kind of way for a few days, but after that, you realize it's just a shithole" - Christian Parenti, after a recent visit) will make that much of a difference?

Doug



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