[lbo-talk] The myth of Obama blunders and weakness

[// ravi]

On Aug 1, 2011, at 5:09 PM, Julio Huato wrote:
> Seth wrote:
> 
>> Have you considered the idea that expanding the sense of the possible
>> by putting a (neoliberal) black man in the WH became a substitute for --
>> rather than a spur to -- a more radical expansion of the sense of the
>> possible?
> 
> I just cannot fathom how people disengaged with their subject matter
> can *learn* anything meaningful about it.  The way I look at things,
> this is not about getting right the answers to some political
> crossword puzzle, divining whether politician X is likely to fulfill
> or betray his real or alleged promises.  It is about our
> self-emancipation, which requires that we try things out and make
> mistakes.  It is ad hominem.  How are the masses of poor Black and
> Hispanic working people in the U.S. supposed to liberate themselves?
> By following the safe and canned courses of action prescribed by the
> radical left?  As they say about the financial advisors, if the
> radical left is so wise, how come they are not already in power?  No.

So the radical left should abstain from analysis? I genuinely don’t get this part, for it sounds like an inversion of Chomsky’s points about the responsibility of intellectuals. You write that “we” (and here “we” lumps together both the radical left and 'the masses of poor Black and Hispanic working people’) try things out and make mistakes. And yet you seem to want to arrest the process of learning: we tried electoral politics, we turned out in large numbers, some of us expended energy in canvassing, campaigning, defending, etc, and we now know what we got. So, what’s to be learnt here?

Surely you don’t think that might (“power”) makes right (“wise”)?


> I am talking about method.  The radical left at the
> margins of the electoral process are equivocating their strategy.
> They need to humble themselves a little or a lot, which would be more
> in keeping with their actual political influence.  As Marx put it, the
> educator needs to be educated.

Julio, with all respect, it is talk of method that is missing in the above. All I see is a sort of 'just so’ reasoning… a sort of “paralaxis”, if I may!

	—ravi