> Doug, almost _all_ my posts for several years have directly or
> indirectly wrestled with the problem of somehow _raising_ those
> necessary divisions. That is why I tend to sneer at proposals about what
> the government should do because I think such proposals are irrelevant
> lacking the divisions to enforce them on the government.
>
> It may be that my searching for such a route is utopian also, but it has
> the virtue that if somehow it did work then proposals for state action
> would cease to be _merely_ whistling in the dark.
>
Carrol, you don't seem to realize that your line of thinking is subject to a pretty serious logical problem - one of infinite regress. Whatever the right way to build a left is, it must involve presenting the teeming millions with a way of thinking about politics that is compelling to them. The problem is that the teeming millions do not themselves share your belief that "how to build a left" is the central question of politics. If they did, they would already be on the left. Instead, they tend to think the central political question is about "what the government should do." So talking about "how to build a left" could not actually lead to a left getting built, even if it were done in an intelligent way.
In fact, the problem lies even deeper. If history is any guide, a new left, if one were ever to materialize, would probably start with people who are struggling with some set of issues in their daily lives - fighting their boss or their creditors or their landlord or whatever. How to "build" that base of people is a meaningless question. "We" have nothing to do with it. (Unless "we" were actually physically organizing people.) But even if such struggles did appear, that would just be the basis for a left. To actually become a left, those people would have to become politicized. They would have to come to see their fight against their boss/creditor/landlord as part of some bigger fight that fits into a broader vision of politics.
Now, *if* the teeming masses became politicized by some compelling vision of politics, *then* some of them would start to care about your question: how to (further) build a left. But if there is no left, then there is no one to care about how to build a left, which means that talking about how to build a left will not build a left. Much more productive to talk about what the government should do. At least it has the theoretical potential to lead to a left getting built.
SA