> Does anybody on this list actually speak in terms of
> offering "support" for this or that nation-state or
> aspiring national liberation group? Carrol's repeated
> statements on this list that there is no such thing as
> a "left" in the United States in any meaningful sense
> also implies that such statements of support are
> equally meaningless, since there is also no collective
> subject capable of effectively (i.e. materially)
> realizing such support.
I know you have a thing for Carrol. I do too, but that doesn't mean he's not wrong most of the time. Carrol assertion that there is no left reflects that politics in the U.S. hasn't attained the level of organization and ideology that he demands. Besides being a bit of a cop-out, I think it also reflects a normalized view of politics: until, say, migrant struggles congeal into something he recognizes as of "the left," they're not really politics.
But even beyond Carrol, your claim is ridiculous (and, I should say, a bit surprising). Let's look just as some of the people associated with this list and events of the past few years. Lenin and his SWP cronies declared, "We all are Hezbollah now." Yoshie has the institutional weight of Monthly Review attached to her pro-Ahmadinejad politics. People here have been active in labor unions that insist on the evils of outsourcing and the primacy of the United States. The antiwar movement that some here were associated with aligned themselves with France and Germany because they pretended to be against the U.S.'s design. In every case, organizations willingly appended themselves to nationalism.
> Open borders isn't some programmatic point to be
> negotiated the way Social Democrats negotiate
> questions like whether the old-age pension should be
> effective at age 65 or 67. It is a fundamental
> position for any anti-capitalist left, like a woman's
> right to an abortion, or the necessity of
> expropriating owners of capital.
Open borders, if Jordan's definition is any indication, is a squishy, meaningless slogan. More than that, it seems to aspire to a radical solidarity but ends up insisting on maintaining the nation. And the state. Why are you defending this?