Marv Gandall wrote:
>
> Dennis Redmond writes:
>
> I've been scratching my head since last October
> > about how the notion of "letting them fail" might be a pathway to a
> > Leftwing position,
If by "leftwing position" you mean building a real lleft within a mass movement, there is no pathway to it. There are ways, probably a rather large number of ways, in which leftists in a period when such a left is not goint to appear (such as our period) might hope to contribute to such a period if contingent eents shoudl make one possible. What all these ways have in common is that they maintain and nourish activists who can keep the concept, direction, of a left alive. Periods such as 1905 in Russia, 1960s in several countries, are heartbreakingly rare -- and cannot be willed into existence.
Organized groups must be kept alive from decade to decace, and it doesn't really matter too much how good or bad their politics are. The CPUSA's politics are not only bad now, they have been bad for 70 years at least -- but without the CPUSA, its 'fronts,' its fellow travelers, it's, its ex-members who started this or that little activity here or there, we would never have heard of Rosa Parks or all the rest that followed. And SANE, with its exclusion policy re reds, was a really vile organiaztion. But we shoud be glad it exusted. Quite a few of its activists did real work in building the anti-war movement. Some were still around to help in CISPES work in the 1980s. So a leftist NOW is just someone who does somethng, preferably something sensible, but doing is more importnt, as long as it involves getting a few people together to do it and to try to enlarge whatever it is.
But it doesn't/ wouldn't hurt if there wee _some_ individuals and groups who tried also to keep alive a vision of what A Left would really look like if it existed. And such a left would not be providing wankery to aid the capitalists, proving that the capitalists need to be saved for this reason or that reason. In other words just a few who kept saying NO GOD DAMN IT NO!
And that's what as many as possible of the leftists who had any vision would have been saying last October to the Bailout! Why should leftists at that time add their wee & insignificant little voices to the chorus of establishment progressives callin on us to save the capitalists. That is no way to inspirit the troops or potential troops. That is a way to wrap despair in pwog cheefulness and wankery.
Despite all that, I still like David Harvey, and still hope someday he will recover from the Responsible-Exper virus and say to hell with Marxists saving capitalism
Carrol