[lbo-talk] Michael Lerner tattles: the state of the antiwar movement

ravi ravi at platosbeard.org
Thu Sep 20 19:18:13 PDT 2007


On 13 Sep, 2007, at 0:53 AM, Mr. WD wrote:
> On 9/13/07, ravi <ravi at platosbeard.org> wrote:
>> Now that I
>> have used the word ("conscience") I realise immediately how it (or
>> its absence in frameworks) explains why civil disobedience has little
>> chance of occurring in modern (global North?) leftist circles.
>
> I don't understand this skepticism that effective civil disobedience
> can emerge in the North. Woj identified some good reasons why CD
> doesn't come as naturally to folks in the global North, but that
> doesn't mean mass CD is impossible or even unlikely. How do you
> explain the U.S. civil rights movement, a bloody decades-long struggle
> in which CD was a key strategy? <...>
>
> On 13 Sep, 2007, at 8:43 AM, Doug Henwood wrote:
>>
>> You sound like Yoshie: there's some Left that could take power, or
>> exert considerable influence, if only it thought and did the right
>> things and weren't so wussy. But there are people of principle and
>> conscience - just not many of them.
>>

Re: sounding like Yoshie, I will take that as a compliment. Now moving to the criticisms:

a) I did not write that CD cannot happen in the North. Just that its chances are very low in *modern* North *leftist circles*.

b) I didn't imply that a Left exists that could have considerable influence. It doesn't. But that's the thing: [successful] struggles of conscience are not just unlikely (to succeed) but also not based on an atomic calculus.

c) The US civil rights movement -- not a very modern event, at that -- (AFAIK) was not as much a modern North Left struggle as it was a struggle by minorities against a specific form of oppression, religious and religiously motivated leaders, enlightened northern liberals, and so on... perhaps even hippies... many of the very sort of people it is fashionable to ridicule in modern North Left circles.

In fact it is quite the opposite of "thinking" and "doing the right thing" that is required! "Thinking" and "right" are valuable when they are not an obsession (i.e., the truth might set you free but won't necessarily set you off, and being "right" matters only in the absence of tolerance and presence of vain dogmatism), but IMHO they do not generate a movement (or at least a successful movement) in a rhetorical backdrop that confuses "conscience" with "conscious" without noticing the difference! ;-)


>> And it's not just the left, is it? What is the Indian left doing to
>> reverse neoliberalism there? Would some conscience-fueled civil
>> disobedience make the difference?

I am not up to speed on the current Indian Left and from what I know I cannot say they are doing much to reverse neoliberalism. But surely you do not read my message as a "India vs USA", "third world romanticism", thing, do you?

--ravi



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list