> Marx would have agreed that there exists a level of poverty that incapacitates workers for any higher task. The headline may give the simple empirical truth.
My immediate reaction to the headline was roughly the same as Dennis' (if I understand the annoyance suggested by his subject line correctly) but after reading the article and thinking about some of the practical challenges involved in a current organising effort, I realised the point Carrol invokes (for the umpteenth time) is probably, unfortunately, very valid. Which in a way goes to the recent Julio / SA / Carrol exchange (and even the Doug-v-Patrick-Bond throw-down of old about the effects of "hard times" on radicalisation / mobilisation / leftishism). Contra Carrol, it might even be the basis of an argument in favour of engagement in electoral politics, if only for the sake of whatever limited minimising of damage to the exploited classes can be achieved thereby - and only as a kind of emergency back-stopping move to try to create (or rather, defend) the space for more meaningful engagement of workers in the "higher task" of organising. Maybe the key is to realise that one can't engage in electoral politics with any hope of achieving genuinely "left" goals, but only in order to minimise damage to the space from within which such goals *can* be pursued.
And even if they *can't* - well, hell, there's always Sisyphus and his goddamned rock.