> It's not just megachurches. Almost all religious organizations, even
> small ones, offer social services of many kinds. What social services
> secular leftists offer? Nothing, for there is currently no secular
> leftist organization that can rival even smallish mainline Protestant
> denomination.
Most small and medium churches offer some kind of social services, in addition to regular social activities. I firmly believe, pardon the pun, that most church membership in the U.S. is driven by people who are interested in community. Capitalism is so effective at dividing people, privatizing social spaces, and otherwise alienating people that churches just reap the desire that most people have for community.
This should be obvious to the left, but the left just prefers to wallow in its own imagined marginalization. I just don't get this, because we always say that we want to build a society that bring back community and all those good things we want. In some ways, leftists are more pie-in-the-sky than the religious people. They promise imaginary rewards, but they provide concrete things for people.
And it pisses me off to no fucking end that those of us who understand this and who have been working on a strategy of building counter-institutions, are berated and undermined by idiots who refer to our work as being "lifestylism" or whatever. I've worked on projects like infoshop for over a decade because I understand that American working class movements a century ago had networks of counter-institutions.
If you don't have a base of counter-institutions, community, counter-culture and radical infrastructure, then you ain't going to see any mass movement develop. You can't just create political organizations and expect people to flock to them. The primary function of political oranizations are to have meetings and people hate meetings.
If we can't give working class people something now, they aren't going to buy any of our programs, no matter how eloquently they are stated.
> There are trade unions, but trade unions are by nature exclusive, and
> laws, employers, and unions' own rules make it very difficult for
> American workers to join one even if they want to do so.
And union organizers are some of the most elitist, sanctimonius, condescending people that you'll run into on the left. I have met very few union organizers that didn't turn me off by their attitude.
> And in an increasing number of areas outside the USA, religious
> organizations, which provide social services as well as armed self
> defense, are often the main organizations of resistance to the empire.
You know, this is obvious to me. I think the American left just wants to deny the obvious. They don't want to hear this. It's just more comfortable to rationalize your own marginality.
Chuck