Maybe I didn't read the piece carefully enough, but nothing in it suggested to me that Taibbi had any problem with, say, USAS or anyone who is organizing against the war (aside from his comment about ANSWER's Che t-shirts). Instead -- and in a counterproductive tone, I'll agree -- Taibbi criticizes the American left's total aversion to privileging any kind of good political activity over other good political activity. Like you, I can offer no clear answers at the moment about what The Solution to the American left's predicament might be. However, isn't it at least fair to ask the question as to whether it is more urgent to, say, agitate for universal health care than, say, advocating for calling civil unions to be recognized as "marriages"? And yet, in many circles within the American left, merely raising this possibility is going to evoke howls of righteous indignation.
We need to start a conversation about which issues are most important when it comes to advancing the long-term political goals I think most/all of us share. I'll go out on a limb and say those are 1) stop. the. war. and 2) amnesty/citizenship for all illegal immigrants now, as this would substantially empower those on the lowest rungs of the working class.
-WD
On 6/15/07, andie nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Maybe I wasn't clear. (1) I wasn't aware that "the
> left," including long-haired (it's back in now, it
> seems) college kids had ever abandoned economics. Even
> back in when I was a poofy haired college kid, as I
> mentioned, one of the two big left activities on my
> sleepy and conservative Ivy league college campus in
> the late 1970s was union organizing rights. (The other
> was anti-apartheid.) Through the late 190s and today,
> "Seattle" type work around globalization,
> anti-sweatshop work, living wage organizing, etc. and
> the like have been very lively among students in past
> decade.
>
> (2) It's not clear what work around "economics"
> involves. I belong to a group (Solidarity) that has a
> long time commitment to "industrialization." Lots of
> the members "went into industry" and have done good
> work in their unions, or working or union democracy.
> But they haven't exactly rocked the working class.
> Others I know just got sidelined into dead end
> assembly line jobs -- if they could keep them. Or is
> what Doug does work around "economics" -- he edits
> LBO, writes books with economics stuff in them. Does
> that count? Is it "economics" if I teach employment
> discrimination but not if I teach civil rights, or is
> employment discrimination too much about class and
> sex? Is it "economics: if I teach white collar crime
> but not if I teach about habeas corpus?
>
> (3) You can't seriously be suggesting (I guess you
> can, Richard Rorty was, and I used to yell at him for
> this) that we've "done enough for now" by way of
> fighting sexism, racism (and these aren't economic
> concerns??!!), homophobia, and -- today, when the
> government is actively and openly practicing torture,
> detention with charges, and criminalization of vast
> swathes of speech -- repression of political speech!?
> That with an illegal war (waged, in some manner or
> fashion because of oil) that nobody seems inclined to
> stop, that we've done enough antiwar work? "For now."
> We can take this stuff up when? Maybe when union
> density gets back up to 15% in the private sector, or
> in 2025, whichever comes first, or what?
>
> (4) Fact is, basic point. Nobody knows what to do.
> People like Rorty who think we should drop everything
> and work in the progressive wing of the Democrat
> Party, such as it is, to promote the immediate
> material interests of the working class, higher wages,
> better working conditions, more secure retirement
> benefits and health care (does that count as
> economic)? no more have a recipe for reconstituting
> some new version of the old New Deal coalition than
> people, if there are any, why say we should work only
> on "lifestyle" issues like abortion rights. If I
> thought that we could light the fire by, I dunno,
> industrializing, I'd be all over it in a New York
> minute. But I don't. Do you?
>
> (5) There is nothing wrong with working to improve the
> material well-being of the working class. I'm all for
> it. But Taibbi is wrong to blame the college students
> for failing to do what no one else, including the rest
> of us, have figured out how to do, and which is
> probably beyond the power of any group other than the
> working class itself to do. That's why a sneer like
> his is not constructive. Neither is it constructive or
> sensible to suggest that Brian is detracting from the
> struggle by focusing on homophobia or bitch by
> addressing feminism, or me by harping on civil
> liberties, etc. Taibbi has got a real problem by the
> trail all right, but he doesn't know what to do about
> it any more than anyone else.
>
>
>
> 9#0
>
> --- "Mr. WD" <mister.wd at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On 6/14/07, andie nachgeborenen
> > <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> > > formerly the Party of Lincoln! -- but maybe civil
> > > rights is another one of those lifestyle things
> > that
> > > it's bad for long haired layabouts of
> > > nose-ring-wearing students to bother about.
> >
> > This is a rather disingenuous characterization of
> > what Taibbi was
> > saying. The piece was not perfect, to be sure, but
> > Taibbi makes a
> > very good point:
> >
> > That point is that it is a happy reality that the
> > left has made
> > serious advances in the last 50 years in a number of
> > arenas: women's
> > rights, gay rights, civil rights, free speech
> > rights, environmental
> > politics, and so forth. This is not to say that
> > further advances are
> > not necessary, or that some of these gains are not
> > being reversed.
> > _But_, IMO, many on the left continue to
> > overestimate the subversive
> > value of working in these arenas. Emphatically, it
> > is a good thing
> > that these issues are no longer considered nearly as
> > subversive as
> > they used to be, but that is because capitalism
> > thrives in a world
> > that is far less sexist, racist and homophobic --
> > and capitalism has
> > proven good at adapting to popular concern about the
> > state of the
> > environment. I would submit that organizing on
> > behalf of a
> > formerly-reviled, now-mainstream organization like
> > the ACLU or the
> > NAACP is only marginally more subversive than
> > organizing a golf
> > tournament to raise funds to cure breast cancer.
> > What is wrong with
> > saying 'look, we've made decent progress in these
> > other areas, let's
> > get back to economics for awhile'?
> >
> > -WD
> > ___________________________________
> >
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> >
>
>
>
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