Michael Smith wrote:
>
>
> It would be presumptuous of me to give any advice to political
> organizers. I've never done it and don't think I'd be any good
> at it. But whether you're an organizer or a mere opinionater,
> doesn't it matter was der Fall ist, as the man said -- what is
> the case?
I said this 7 years ago. I said it again 4 years ago. I think I've said it several times since: U.S. leftists, no matter what they do or say or how they say or do it are NOT going to have an impact on u.s. policy, domestic or foreign, in the next two or three or more years. I was correct in 2001 and I will prove to be correct this time in repeating it. We MIGHT (only might) begin to move _towards_ having such an impact after about the middle of 2010. That is what, in 2001 and every year since, I have insisted that for the anti-war movement there is only ONE correct demand: Troops out Now! When I and a few others argued that in the summer of 2003, some wiseass responded with the query, "Will that get the water turned on?"
[Digression: Were the Iraq War the Mexican War, and were the current effects similar to the effects in Iraq, and there were 100s of thousands of Latinos threatening to riot in the streets of Chicago & New York and Los Angelos, and were millions more sympathetic with the demand, _then_ Get Water to Mexico City NOW! would be a very good slogan.]
As I have been arguing for about 10 years, all references to "The Left" and what 'it' should or should not do are incorrect at this time. There is no left, though there are 10s of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands or even millions who might rally to A Left if one existed. There are many individual leftists (some Marxist, some just pissed off) -- enough, I think, to form an embryonic left capable of growth if they could find each other and agree more or less (repeat, _more or less_: we aren't looking for a 3rd Int.-type party here) on programs of collective action. Theorizing _that_ situation (and including in one's theorizing the fact that no person or group of persons can at this time speak to _all_ the potential members of that coalition) is probably the main theoretical task of leftists today. Wherever leftists get together they should discuss how leftists that _they_ are in contact with could form provixional groups (mostly ljocal or regional) which could om tirm begin to link to each other in a growing debate over the theoretical basis of building a larger left coalition. Note: theorizing _moving towards_ a left, not centrally concerned with what that left should do if and when it emerges. Probably the two questions overlap, but there is no point in assuming so now.
As to data on what this or that mass of people might passively think now should simply be ignored. It is meaningless. Theories that such data should "mean" something now are merely a symptom of the indifference, even hostility, to theory on the part of too many u.s. leftists.
Carrol
Carrol