SA wrote:
>
> Carrol Cox wrote:
>
> > I would say, however, that _at this
> > time_, anything that gets vaguely left activists talking to each other
> > is o.k. with me, however bogus the particular issue might be.
>
> You mostly persuade me. And I think your argument that ideas come from
> action (and that without action ideas are inert) is a really valuable
> one, and something intellectuals often forget.
> But I think you
> underestimate the extent to which people who are engaged in action
> necessarily interpret the *practical* dilemmas and circumstances they
> find themselves in on the basis of the *intellectual* ideas they've
> picked up, whether directly or at second hand, in books (or articles, or
> whatever).
No disagreement actually, though this seems to apply to individuals as individuals. But we will skip that for now. (We have a problem here that on maillistswhat a writer takes for granted (as 'going without saying, isn't at all obvious in the post usually.)
? People engaged in action aren't tabula rasas whose ideas will
> be formed ex nihilo by praxis. Their ideas will be molded by their
> praxis *as interpreted* through particular sets of ideas inherited from
> the wider (left) culture. So sitting around bullshitting about corporate
> personhood isn't entirely pointless, assuming some people are listening.
I don't really disagree with any of this. But I want to widen and/or complicate it here and there, and also to make some distinctions, plus a couple notes on the context of this discussion. (Or at least do some of that.)
The topics on which I have most insisted on the priority of practice, involve the specificity of goals in the building of mass movements or of the nature of goals which will necessarily be put into practice by future generations.
For example, I am strongly against trying to provide any detail at all about how a socialist world would operate (how goods would be distributed, how production decisions will be made, work will be distributred, etc.) And I believe that such attempts are potentially not only futile but vicious and will frustrate efforts to establish and maintain democracy. In respect to a future socialism the intellect is simply totalitarian and anti-democratic. Such specifications can only become realunder an authoritarian regime.
And what applies absolutely to envisaging a socialist rgime applies with varying degrees to all goals: they have to be kept vague, with details worked out collectively within the movement. (This is relatd to the matter of whether "The Left" should revolve around a single party (of any sort). There will be too much pressure for specificity within a single organization or even within a formal coalition. I think the mix of conflicting and cooperating organizations in the '60s was in fact about right.
Also (as I think the preceding remarks underling) your observation above on bringing preformed ideas to the interpretation of practice is true of the individual, but it is not true of collective decisions -- collections of individuals in a given group, collections of groups at a "higher" level. And note -- _abstractly_ everyone has to acknowledge (and I underling _abstractly) that his/her ideas must be in large part wrong, but the individual has no way of knowing, at any given day, which of his/her ideas areright, which wrong. That sorting can only come through debate. And I think that kind of debate can only occur effectively, or at least most effectively, on the basis of shared practice. And there will never come a time when unanimous agreement on all issues will be the case. So there will always be aaneed for shared practice and raucuss debate within the frmawork of that shared practice.
The previous paragraph also point to what Ian calls my fetishism of the negative. Mass movements are necessarily diverse in attitudes towards the movements ultimate purposes, and it is simply easier to agree onnegatives than on a carefully crafted positive goal. Anti-War movements are a simple case. It is utterly disruptive of such movements to try to formulate the peace they hope for: the only slogan that works to organize the movement is some versionof Stop It! Troops home now. (The movement will in any case not be represented at the final negotiations nor will it affect how those negotiations will turn out. It can do no more than create pressure by making it difficult for the state to carry on the war.)**
I've leeft a lot out, and these are helter-skelter observations rather than an organized argument, but I hope at least they suggest places for further thought and discussion.
Carrol
>
> SA
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