Chuck wrote:
> You can read Chomsky all day long and understand why
> things work the way they do, but it's a waste of
> time if you aren't riffing off of those ideas by
> doing some kind of organizing, agitation or
activism.
No, doing "some kind" of organizing is exactly the problem. I realize of course that your use of "some kind" is more a convenience of language that anything else, but in a literal sense, the problem with most activism is the sense of duty that one has to do something, "some kind" of something.
Praxis is necessarily goal-oriented. A praxis which is a result of a sense of duty to do something is almost always worthless.
The purpose of critique is to aid perception. There are no privileged positions in society from which one automatically is able to see through reified social relationships to perceive their essence.
Ultimately, the transformation of social reality is unachievable without praxis. But it must be a correct praxis, a praxis capable of actually achieving something, rather than being merely ritualized protest which primarily serves the therapeutic purpose of assuaging the consciences of participants.
The question of whether the social marginality of the contemporary left is a result of its stupidity or whether the stupidity of the contemporary left is a result of its marginality is a difficult question for me. I tend towards the latter. But I think overcoming that marginality involves the necessary step of understanding society at a deeper level than mere populism.
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