> My point, and it's hardly an original one, is that
> the left, whatever that is, purports to agitate on
> behalf of the masses, but the masses mostly don't
> give a fuck.
This is not the way I think of it. "On behalf" suggests that the masses *consciously* (or even half consciously) delegate certain functions (expressing the workers' "radical needs" and "broader interests," as Marx put it) to the left. Or that the job of the left is to survey the masses and simply repackage what's in their minds.
No, in at least some Marxist traditions (e.g., the one I come from), some people work and live under conditions more conducive to see the bigger picture of the shitty world we live in. (And I'll put the things in the terms of a simple dichotomy. Obviously things are always more mixed up.) But that is an abstract, hence one-sided or incomplete, bigger picture. The left incarnates socialism as an evolving doctrine, as shifting emancipatory ideas. And the challenge is -- to put it in a formula many Marxists have used -- to "weld," merge, or combine socialism with the workers' movement. The tragedy of Western Marxism (and nowadays of all Marxism), according to a former (or still?) Marxist (Perry Anderson) is precisely the historical difficulty of executing this merger.
The split between the doctrine of socialism and the empirical reality of the workers' movement is the complex form in which the early historical split between thinking and doing has taken in our times. There's nothing teleological about this. The perception of this split between brain and arm has a verifiable history and the impulse to restore the unity is visible, also verifiable, at least as a promise in our contradictory practices in work and life today, as we are.
And the workers' movement is understood here in general, in the sense that workers as a collective entity are always in motion, whether they are politically united or not, whether they are conscious of their common interests or just a bunch of individuals entirely gripped by "the ideology of the ruling class." Of course, if the workers are dispersed and without a spiritual compass (e.g. socialism), their commonality, that is, their movement is merely an abstraction, a promise. But even at its political weakest, the workers' movement is not a mere passive receptor of the left's intellectual input. The left is not the active syringe that injects consciousness into an intellectually inanimate working class.
The workers' movement, crude as it emerges from its concrete history, comes along with its own perception of the world, rougher on the edges if you wish, more immediate (the practice of workers being less mediated by general ideas). The day-to-day mental framework of workers is not to be merely discarded. In fact, the emancipation of the workers can only be conducted by the workers themselves. So, it's by their taking their destiny into their own hands (to use the cliche), by reaching out and grabbing the tools at their hand (hopefully here, socialism) that they transform and liberate themselves.
The synthesis of socialism and the workers' movement is expected to be a complex, contradictory, rough process, full of false starts, conflicts, and vices. Goes with the territory. For leftists, the key here is genuine, honest engagement (not patronizing) with their needs and interests. (So, if you read in my first paragraph that I don't recognize the need to survey what's in the minds of actual workers, that is not so. Communication is back and forth.) Still, it is necessary to go through the troubles of uniting socialism and workers' movement if the categorical imperative inherent to human, social labor is to be realized, if we are going to re-appropriate (at a higher level of social power and consciousness) that thin layer of world we have created on top of the natural world, often with unintended consequences; if we are going to abolish the divorce between thinking and doing, if we are going to renegotiate our engagement with nature, if we are to get a hold of ourselves as a species.
For another long rant, typed just minutes ago and partially directed at Carrol, click here:
http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.economics.progressive-economists/59044