[lbo-talk] Magnanimous Despair was Always Crashing...(was: Effective Infighting)

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Tue Jul 1 14:36:25 PDT 2008


Dwayne Monroe wrote:
>
>
> Although we've thrown about a million words into the air -- like flak
> shells, desperately hurled against B-24s over the summer, 1945 skies
> of Berlin -- the debate's heart is easily summarized: is it better to
> work inside The System (represented here by electoral politics) or
> outside?

Actually, I don't think this is the contrast, because mass movements for reform are NOT "outside" the system; they are an integral part of it, and the only way in which the "system" ever been changed in substantial ways. I'm too interested in a long thread on the Abdiel episode in PL on the Milton-L list to read many of these posts, but I believe someone threw out the moldy old chestnut re "reform vs revolution" and someone pulverized that for the gimmick it was. I believe other posters have spoken of the failures of Socialist & Communist paties (or their disappearance), and though that is also an evasion it gets a bit nearer to what seems to me the basic difference: Those urging work with/in the DP have fallen, I think, into deep despair of the form, What Is, Shall Be, ever and ever, amen. What leads me to this view is the very intensity with which they are urging us to be join an effort which simply does not need us and to which we have nothing whatever to offer. Were everyone engaged in this argument to suddenly agree with Julio and Marving and plunge into work with their local DP organizations what would the result be in Novembere: Exactly the same as though they had all agreed with DP enemies and spent the summer and fall urging votes for Nader or whatever. Exactly the same as though they had all suddenly joined the McCain campaign. We have a strange case of fleas approaching an elephant with intentions of rape. But they clearly BELIEVE.

If you have read Johnson's Rasselas you have a perfect model for these devoted advocates of the DP: The aging astronomer who is looking for someone to inherit his terribly crucial task: his predictions as to the rise of the sun in fact are not merely predictions but theCAUSE of the sun's rising when it does each morning, and when he dies the Sun will no longer rise unless he has trained a successor. The intensity of Marvin's and Julio's campaign on this list would seem to indicate that great things (the victory or defeat of the DP) depend on their winning this argument -- every bit as silly as Johnson's Astronomer.

No matter what the CP had done in the 72 years since its collapse into the arms of the DP not a single electoral result would have changed; no one would have noticed which side the CP is on. NOr will anyone notice which left liberals such as Marvin, Max, or Julio is on.

So what drives them. I can only assume that they struggle to convince themselves, that conviction being a necessary defense against the deep political despair into which they have sunk.

Now I do not argue against despair -- it is the only correct perspective. But I urge a more magnanimous despair rather than the suppressed despair which tears them inwardly.

The Definition of Love by Andrew Marvell

My Love is of a birth as rare As 'tis for object strange and high: It was begotten by Despair Upon Impossibility.

Magnanimous Despair alone Could show me so divine a thing, Where feeble Hope could ne'er have flown But vainly flapped its Tinsel wing.

We cannot predict the future, in general or in detail But we KNOW the conditions under which a brighter future (however unlikely, even impossible it may be) will arise if it does: the appearance of a new mass movement of the left - probalby in some organizational form which neither our ourpredecessors nor we could imagine. So from out despair we struggle for that future. We do not differ in this from those who came before us. Their efforts in almost all instances disappeared, leaving no trace behind. But not always - and by those few rare exceptions humanity has defended itself against the ravages of capital. Presumably our efforts will like most, will accomplish nothing that lasts or that is visible. But what if we or some of us form part of the geneology of some future Rosa Parks!

Nothing Marvin or Max or Julio do will make a difference next November. Their futility is certain. How much better to give what effort, what bains and passion one is capable of, to the magnanimous despair of contributing to the appearance of that future Rosa Parks.


> Interesting and important but I can't help thinking that all this has
> happened before and will happen again. 1960s veterans: didn't you get
> into jagged bottle bar fights 40+ years ago over this same issue?
> Weren't you arguing about degrees of lesser evilism and which Dem
> candidate was more or less responsive to progressive pressure and why
> Robert Kennedy, or whomever the Democrats put up front, deserved --
> with the usual 'I'm not a sucker, but...' caveats inserted as a
> preamble -- 'our' support?

Yup! And not a year passes without more being revealed of what a slimeball Robert Kennedy was. But our work in building the Peace&Freedom Party that summer and fall did add considerably to the mass who participated in the Moratorium in November of the following year -- a demonstration which (according to several members of the Nixon entourage helped prevent the use of nuclear bombs against North Vietnam!

Carrol
>



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