shag carpet bomb wrote:
> so carrol, are you saying that leftists are only those people who *do*
> something?
>
> i was reading Karl Marx and the Philsophy of Praxis again. Kitching, the
> author, would say that praxis would include participating on a discussion
> list. I take it you don't agree with that?
"Doing something" is not a simple notion. A good deal of doing does consists insitting around in chairs and talking to each other. When Jan & I pulled together a red group here in B/N back in '73 the first principle of unity was that no one would say "Let's do someting" for at least a year or two. The second was that we would come to every meeting and on time. It was a bit over 2 years before we did 'visible' things. Under similar condtions I would do about the same again.
Attending meetings with regularity is doing something. And it's collective. But the talking or writing does eventually have to express itself in some minimum way. In addition, leftists do have a task to perform: keep visible left activity going until the issues arise that will generate a new upsurge. We have to keep something alive. A discussion list such as this probably qualifies as part of that task, but it's a bit iffy.
But by the briefness and flippant edge of my post I was also indicating some scepticism of the use of the classification. Why do we have to set up these catetgories? What do we do with them? The people who will be at th 30-minute monthly demo at 5:30 this Thursday have made themselves visible, to each other and to the cars going by. They have acted out, in however minimal a fashion, that some frafment of A Left exists, is alive. That makes them worth talking to. And the E-list of the group has over a 100 names. The existence of the demos speaks to those on that list that the list has a center, and that there is an ongoing action/instsitution that, when they choose or feel the need, they can become part of. And that makes it worthwhile for me, once in a while (carefully not to overload busy people) to post on the list, perhaps expanding their sense of possibility.
An insurrection, incidentally, is merely a large demo that the troops refuse to fire on. No small demos, no big demos, and capitalism last forever.
So "active leftists" and "leftists" in part name the 'same' thing: but at some point being a leftists is pretty pointless un less there is A Left, a Movement. And that has to come from active leftists inn some senes or other.
Just feeling my way.
Carrol