>
> They seem to be based on a core of grad students of Moishe Postone at
> Chicago who say their touchstones are Marx, Lenin, Luxemburg, Trotsky and
> Adorno. Their project is based on the slogan "The Left is dead, long live
> the Left" and they seem to have a particular animus against the 60's New
> Left and against Third Worldism. As for their own politics - the poor dears,
> when you strip away all their benighted grad school verbiage, it apparently
> boils down to the idea that socialism means people should work less and have
> a guaranteed income. Which is fine, but they mostly seem devoted to finding
> ever more grandiose and opaque ways of saying that, without making much
> effort to elucidate how it might actually be brought about. Still, it's nice
> to see the young people getting involved. (By which I mean people our age.)
I had a bit of a browse around their site, and there's some good stuff. I do think it would be great to see more focus on our own societies on the part of the far left, and less emphasis on foreign wars and what they call 'third worldism'. Regardless of the rightness or importance of these things on a world scale; connecting with people begins at home. But I think that's happening to some extent anyway, thanks to the economic crisis. And while I'm sure everyone has parts of the left they wish would disappear, the idea that nothing good came of 'the left' since the 1960s seems absurd, and the desire for a blank political slate is fantasy.
Also they seem to have a thing for Eustonite types, who I loathe, because of their utter lie that opposing the wars means support for the Taliban/Saddam/al'Qaeda. And as others have said, the idea that there's a 'Left', singular, with a singular ideology, naive or otherwise, is silly.
That said, I'm always glad to see the emergence of a marxish grouping with an open political culture. I wish one would emerge over here.
Mike Beggs scandalum.wordpress.com