The population 'reachable' by the left has to be detrmined by practice. That is, if a left movement becomes visible, then other embryonic movements will appear and some of them will become part of the left. You cannot establish by sociological and/or economic analysiss _in advacnce_ who is reachable. I think Chomsky has for some time now in his political analysis been engaging in an awful lot of wishful thinking.
Where ever they happen to be, leftists should probably stay there and work on reaching what can be reached there, but it _must_ (this much I think we know) reach them in terms of issues that are legitimately left, and it must NOT wobble on key issues (migrant rights, racism, gay rights, etc.) jut to avoid offending workers in a particular area.
Chomsky, actually, isn't talking about class, though he thinks he is. If he were talking about class he would not stick to people who were poor and angry; he would also pay attention to the large proportion of the working class that is in decent economic shape at present. In stead of looking at class Chomsky is looking at "identity," and an identity subjectively defined from his own 'druthers.
Carrol
"B." wrote:
>
> I sorta kinda agree with Carrol.
>
> "Take the angry white males who are maybe joining what they mistakenly call militias, paramilitary forces. [This is is from the post-OKC bombing and Michigan Militia/Tim McVeigh era - yet still relevant re: Tea Parties and "populism." -B.] These people are angry. Most of them are high school graduates. They're peoples whose incomes have declined maybe 20% over the last 15 years or so. They can no longer do what they think is the right thing for them to do, provide for their families. Their lives are falling apart. They're angry. Who are they supposed to blame? Not the Fortune 500, because they're invisible. All there is around is the government. If anything is wrong, it's the government's fault. ... These are the same kinds of people the CIO was successfully organizing in the 1930s, but who the left are not reaching today."
>
> -Noam Chomsky, _Class Warfare_, 1996 (!)
>
> Carrol Cox wrote:
>
> "But leftists of the present do _nnot_ have these limits imposed on them (as the great explosion of "The '60s" demonstrated. So if leeftists today allow this 'historic' practice to dominate their thought, then they are _by choice_ making themselves irrelevant to the class struggle."
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