andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>
> This happens in warfare all the time -- you win the
> battle but strain your forces to the breaking point.
> Meade thought -- right or wrongly -- that was what
> happened to the Union Army at Gettysburg. However,
> that doesn't mean the other side isn't defeated and
> prostrate itself. And we're not nearly in even as good
> a shape as Lee was in retreat from Gettysburg.
I think all statements about the "shape of the left" tend to be incorrect, in that they ignore that (if I remember correctly the terminology from a few decades back) the _primary_ pole of politics in the u.s. is the strength of capital. Until that strength is undermined considerably by factors external to "the left" leftists must focus on doing what they can to prepare and to remain prepared for that time when the conditions under which we make our own history will be those that favor us. Whining about our current weakness and/or defeats merely detracts thinking from analyzing clearly what we can and must do at the present.
Labor, the CPUSA in the '20s; the anti-war movement during the Korean War; the black liberation movement in the 1930s and 1940s.
Carrol