> the opposite of conservative is liberal. And if the Nation asked the
> question Is Obama A Real Liberal? they'd not only have to answer it
> emphatically Yes, so would you and Doug.
>
> The Right has a huge advantage here. Their wing and their center both
> agree, whether they like it or not, that they share a common identity:
> they are all conservatives. The only difference is how fierce or how
> true a conservative they are. Which gives the wing enormous moral
> leverage over the rest. The center always has to admit they are the
> less true, less fierce representatives of a common creed. That means
> they are always implicitly apologizing for their compromises.
>
> But on the left that isn't true. For us, liberals -- the wing we want
> to influence -- are as much a defining other as they are for the
> right. And we are for them. We're divided against ourselves
> internally, in our fundamental categories of thought.
This is astute. For the left, liberals are the Other, but the same dynamic doesn't hold on the right. And this relationship needs to change. That's basically what I was trying to get at here: http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20090914/012915.html
But for that relationship to change, a lot of other things have to change. It seems to me the model for the right relationship is obvious - the popular front. But this raises a paradox: In the past, it's typically the *left* that's been most enthusiastic about popular fronts. It was always a matter of persuading liberals to join with the disreputable red-pinks, not the other way around. And the assumption on all sides was that when liberals do join up, it's the radicals who get the most out of the partnership. Yet today the left stands deliberately aloof from liberalism. Why is that?
I think it's because now the left has nothing to offer the liberals. As a result, the liberals aren't interested. So any coalition would be us joining them, not the other way around. Liberals no longer for the most part have a fear of or a principled opposition to working with the left - it's not the early 60's anymore. It's just - why bother? What can the left do for us? In the 30's, the CP could deliver some valuable goods to the liberals. First, they had a model to offer - the USSR - which the liberals were by definition unpersuaded by, but also attracted to. And the Communists had the troops and the dedication; only they would put in the time to set up front groups, organize unions, reach out to blacks.
Today it's not just that we have no power (numerically the radicals are always much smaller, they certainly were back then) it's that we can't offer either troops or a model. Actually, we can offer troops to some extent - all those liberals who went out to march against the Iraq war were marching in demos organized mostly by 60's veterans, mostly radicals. But the politics were such that in the end, the marches organized by radicals ended up largely serving, de facto, as foot-soldiery for Nancy Pelosi and MoveOn.
In other words, what we have now is a popular front in reverse. Instead of the radicals being the core and the liberals the outer periphery, as in 1935-39 and 1941-45, it's the other way around. Now liberals are the core; radicals can choose either to tag along behind, all their shouted caveats and objections lost in the wind, or they can march off sullenly to tend their marxist garden. As a result, most choose the latter.
So I agree, the left needs to stop thinking of liberals as the Other. But that has to come in the context of some movement that would allow the left to actually exert some gravitational pull.
SA