[lbo-talk] another TP poll: still whiter, righter, more

[brad bauerly]

Bhaskar wrote:
>Let me get this straight, the 27 percent of people with enough
>commonsense to oppose Tea Party bile are completely discounted in your
>view, since you know a tremendous about the private thoughts of these
>folks (what they think about capitalism, how their views are immutable
>and how their view wouldn't be influenced by a visible left).
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No, I said the liberals in that 27%.  I was trying to respond to what
I perceived (maybe incorrectly) as your conflation of the liberals and
social democrats in that group.  But yes, the portion that are liberal
(I am using this term in the correct, non US, way) I think will try
every manner of thing before they look at the capitalist roots of the
problem.  I do think that it will be harder to reach these people than
people who don't have liberal ideology as ingrained.

Bhaskar wrote:
>Lenin hardly thought that the working class was inherently "reactionary" or conservative.
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I didn't say anything about inherently, there is nothing inherent
about any ideology that has been my whole point over the last few
weeks of discussion here.  Which is why we both agree that the
ideology of the TP matters less than their class makeup.

I think we might disagree about how a left movement should proceed.
My position is that the unity and organization will only emerge in
struggle, not abstractly or through the dictate of a group of
vanguards.  The work that codre should be focused on now is to locate
and highlight the universal expressions of the class struggle and help
push those issues that create unity in struggle to the fore. I have
little time for those on the left that think we must first focus on
those who are closest to a pure leftist position.  Instead I think we
should find a common struggle and work out the details- shed the
bourgeois ideology- in struggle together.

Brad

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