Certainly not: I work exclusively in supple and full-bodied analysis.
> Elimination of de jure discrimination destroys civil rights
> > movements through their success, so women, Blacks, queers, etc. of
> > lower classes and strata now face a more powerful capitalism, better
> > legitimated in multicultural fashion, without the material and
> > ideological resources for resistance that their erstwhile organic
> > intellectual leaders supplied.
>
> What does this passage argue? There's no success like failure, but
> failure's no success at all? "Resistance" is to be preferred over
> victory because it provides leadership opportunities for organic
> intellectuals? This is way beyond a critique of partial victories.
That isn't what the passage argues. Yoshie's is in fact a version of an argument made by Manning Marable in Beyond Black and White, which acknowledges the successes of the past, but also points to the ways in which formal oppression moulded a collective identity that has now been lost to a highly dog-eat-dog, individualistic, atomised and competitive world of poor man's capitalism. He argues for a new African-American politics that is rooted in the attempt to roll back the onslaught of corporate capital. Yoshie is arguing for class-based politics, and is making the commonplace left-wing argument that capitalism has been empowered by its ability to adapt to the formal demands of the 1960s movement.
Ditto this:
>
> > It's no secret that the seemingly more gender-egalitarian spirit of
> > capitalism today has been achieved, in the case of the United
> > States, by bringing men down as much as bringing women up.
>
> If men have been enjoying unearned privileges of patriarchy, it's
> going to be hard to reverse that without bringing some of them down,
> isn't it?
On the other hand, if male workers haven't been 'enjoying unearned privileges', but rather are being exploited by the capitalist class, then it makes perfect sense that capital would try to incorporate a feminist flavour to the extent that there is a demand for it, and - rather than allowing it to eat into their own profits etc simply force male workers to accept shittier conditions. On the other hand, however, I think Yoshie is closer to describing contemporary capitalist ideology than the actuality of capitalist practise, in which it remains the case that the working class is stratified according to race and gender, so that women are educated for and apply for and accept the least empowering roles with the least financial reward.
The separatist ideology is very nostalgic for the organic leadership
> possibilities of segregation.
What does this mean?
> I don't detect support for the retrograde social policies of the
> > Islamic
> > Republic in Yoshie's writings.
>
> She repeatedly denies they exist, or minimizes them.
That's devious. Of course, if they don't exist, Yoshie denies them. If they are being exaggerated, Yoshie minimizes them. This is like the argument that someone who denies that genocide took place in Kosovo is 'downplaying the atrocities'.
You, like her, assert this without really offering any evidence. I
> don't see many American left-wingers obsessing over Iranian social
> policy. Most attention paid to Iran on the American left is about
> trying to stop the Bush administration from launching an attack on
> the country. We do have bloggers like Doug Ireland going on about
> Iranian persecution of same-sexers, but we also have people like my
> friend Richard Kim of The Nation criticizing Ireland's work.
Evidence would necessarily be anecdotal and dismissed as such, because I don't have time to conduct an extensive survey. My comment is based on my experience of trawling left/liberal publications and discussion fora. True, there is discussion of stopping an attack on Iran, but the only aspect of Iranian society that generates any real attention and heat is that which pertains to our perception of Islam. I find the perception intuitive, but the Kim article makes the point for me - and you quote it, suggesting you agree with me.
I read the damn thing, and I'm aware of its "nuance." It offers a
> very interesting class analysis of the rise of political Islam, which
> neither you nor YF show much interest in.
Do not, please, evacuate your chutney pipes. You referred to Harman's pamphlet as a book about Iran, which it isn't, so I thought it possible that you hadn't read it for a while or weren't very familiar with it. I wasn't being deliberately condescending, but then who has to try when you're as frankly Allah-like as I am?
It's not true that I show little interest in a class analysis of Political Islam. I think I might have even written a few things on the topic, and I've certainly read a few on them with interest. In fact, I'm sure I mentioned something in this thread about Iranian capital annexing the conservative clerical leadership, and I was probably thinking of Harman's argument when I did so. I'm still in the dark as to exactly why that is important to the argument we're having.