--- On Mon, 8/17/09, Bob Morris <bob.morris at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> So where is the Left? Absent, far as I can tell. I'm not
> trying to start a
> flame war. I genuinely don't understand why a left that put
> hundreds of
> thousands in the streets in Iraq war protests has done
> little during this
> crisis, one which seems custom-made for it and a
> once-in-a-lifetime
> opportunity.
[WS:] I think demographic composition of modern society may explain why the left gained so much popularity then but not now. To make a long story short - the working class of the industrial age maintained strong group cohesion aka solidarity and the left's appeals to that solidarity fell on sympathetic ears. The modern working class aka lower middle class lost that sense of solidarity, thanks to suburbanization, television and popular culture extolling individualism - therefore left's appeals to solidarity fall on deaf ears. However, without appeal to working class solidarity, the left is reduced to post modernist "deconstruction" of ideas - a largely meaningless babble whose appeal is limited to narrow literati circles.
Wojtek