[lbo-talk] Chomsky and Tea Party

[Carrol Cox]

My concern with all arguments of the form "The left should (should not)
reach out to this or that sector of the population is that no organized
left exists to do thie. This is an old song of mine, going back over a
decade, but it still seems accurate. In the '30s the focus of organizing
was the point of production. Neighborhood organizing  or general appeals
were  auxiliary to this  central focus. In the '60s left organizing
focused on the Black community and on tyoung workers on the college
campuses. And in both eras there were reasonably strong organizations 
carrying out this work. Neither of these periods is going to be
repeated: History simply doesn't work like that.

I have argued, however, and this also still seems correct to me, that
one feature of the '60s left will probably be characteristic of future
left movements: multiple 'centers." There will not be in the futuree any
single hegemonic left party. Beyond that negative charactterization I
don't believe prophecy is possible. We do not know, we do not even have
reasonable speculations, as to the form of leeft organizing in the next
upsurge of left activity. In such pereiods arguments about "reaching
out" to this or that group can be grounded in and immediatrely tested in
actual attempts by the proponents to _do_ that reaching out. That is,
during periods of left upsurge there can be a substantial unity of
thought and action.   Small caucuses of larger organizations can at
least tentatively carry their ideas into practice and formulate their
thoguht accordingly.,

So far I have seen no article or post of the form, seven of us here have
found a way to identify the residences occupied by sympathizers with TP
and we have been conducting a loaded opinion survey through which these
people disco er the real basis of their attraction to TP and some of
them have joined our effort.

I hope the preceding paragraph brtistles with enough absurdities to
illustrate the problem I am posing here.

Carrol