> Okay, but when very unabstract things like university occupations,
> factory occupations, street rioting, strikes, etc. happen, much
> of the left largely ignores them or belittles them or, at best,
> immediately despairs that there aren't more of them. When I hear
> the word organization, I hear a lament, not an acknowledgment of
> opportunity. What I hear is, I wish there *already existed* an
> organization that could use this opening to institute a politics
> at the macro level. In other words, there is no possibility that
> politics is created in the course of action; politics has already
> happened and just has to be administered.
Much of the creative work is not theatrical. Strikes require resources to sustain them, and you can't assume the spontaneous charity to provide for you--especially with labor as weak as it is today. When strikes are easily broken, creative isn't the word.
Where are all these factory occupations (plural)? And what was the last American street riot to become an organized force and persist after hosing down the fires?
Bill Bartlett wrote:
> What you are describing is no more than petitioning for whatever
> crumbs the capitalist system can spare. In making demands of the
> employing class, one implicitly acknowledges its right to
> continue to rule. Thus actually re-inforcing the capitalist
> system, rather than challenging it.
What it acknowledges is the simple fact that there is no movement to abolish capitalism in the US. You are ignoring the vicious state of American labor law, under which you can be fired for what you just said.
One reason there is no repeat of the CIO organizing in the 1930s is that much of their actions are now illegal. And American workers are in a defensive crouch, blaming themselves for corporate layoffs. We still have to argue that the provision of health care is even a political issue.
If you define every strengthening of the position of labor that doesn't abolish capital as the "reinforcement" of capital, you have defined away the left as the right.
Shane