Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> On Mar 4, 2007, at 6:02 PM, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> > I'm afraid Obama has an uncanny ability to say what people want to
> > hear
>
> I think it also works the other way around - people hear from Obama
> what they want to hear.
As an ex-weatherman, ex lrs-member said to me back in '92 (explaining why he would vote for Clinton) "I would like to win for a change." Understand, that slogan doesn't mean "I want to achieve this or that goal" but merely "I want to win" just to say I won. Some of my former lrs-comrades in Chicago had sincerely hypnotized themselves into the belief that "Daley represented the progressive wing of the bourgeoisie."
Except for those widely separated times when capitalism really badly wounds itself the opposition (whether revolutionary or reformist) is going to lose -- and it will lose even worse if it hypnotises itself into thinking that it could win if it only had another strategy or only didn't make this that or the other mistake.
The job of leftists is to keep trying and losing trying and losing until their trying occurs at one of those times when capitalism has wounded itself. If they don't keep up the fight (without illusions of some new trick of winning) they won't be prepared when victory is possible.
The major fact of the post-war period up to and including the present is the enormous strength of capital. Part of that strength is creating the illusion of correctible weaknesses or errors on the left, so in trying to correct those irrelevant errors leftists stop being leftists.
Carrol
Carrol