There is an audience, so there arguments should not go unrebutted. Also on a personal level if someone publicly mischaracterizes a position I take, I am not going to let it go uncorrected.
> I have to admit being guilty of poking them with comments in a futile
> hope that this will spur some critical thinking and rational debate -
> but this is like throwing pebbles at zoo animals - the reaction is
> quite predictable.
> Unfortunately, the history of left wing movements is full of such
> attitudes. I recently read a piece on the history of the CP in Italy
> in the 1920s i.e. during the fascist advance to power. The "left"
> faction staunchly believed that the "right" faction of the socialist
> movement and social democrats were its main enemies, working with them
> was playing into the hands of the bourgeoisie, and consequently it
> refused to form any common front with them against the fascists. The
> outcome was, as we all know, tragic - they were all eliminated by the
> fascists. A very different outcome from that in, say, Sweden or
> Norway where socialists and social democrats cooperated and created a
> welfare state that survived both socialism and the neoliberal
> onslaught that followed its downfall.
> >From that pov, it is a good thing that these self-styled radicals have
> zero political influence, for as history tells us they could damage
> whatever little chance of reform there is.
> Cheers,
> Wojtek
> On Sun, Dec 4, 2011 at 8:09 PM, Gar Lipow <gar.lipow at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Sun, Dec 4, 2011 at 12:20 PM, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
>>> Gar Lipow sachs and poland
>>>
>>> On Sun, Dec 4, 2011 at 4:47 AM, shag carpet bomb wrote: [clip]
>>>
>>> I think you are really taking part of a real position, and adding some stuff
>>> to it that is not there. I think a lot of people would say that one thing
>>> movements can sometime accomplish is to make politicians and the powers that
>>> be quake in their boots and reform from within to make change that relieves
>>> some pain and suffering.
>>>
>>> .--------
>>>
>>> Yes, this is true, but it doesn't establish what you want it to establish.
>>
>>
>> In this what I wanted to establish was that one point of view was
>> being mistated. I don't confuse stating a point of view correctly
>> with proving it.
>>> Social Movements force politicians to make reforms - but those reforms are
>>> crafted by those politicians and have no necessary relation to what the
>>> given social movement demanded.
>>
>> Hence, the statement you snipped "I think a more reasonable statement
>> of disagreement
>> is that some people would claim that such reforms are such an
>> unpredictable side effect that they should seldom or never be goal,
>> while others would claim than organizing with such reforms as one goal
>> is usually worthwhile, and more likely to make them happen (2 separate
>> assertions by the way). "
>>
>> Incidentally your particular phrasing here is kind of deliberately the
>> raising the barrier for your opponent. "necessary relation". The claim
>> that organizing with reforms as goal does not claim a "necessary
>> relation" which would require 100% correlation, but that organizing
>> with reforms as one goal can sometimes make an outcome resembling
>> demands more likely.
>>
>> (That's one of the reasons demands are a
>>> trivial concern.) For example, in the'40s a Socaial Movement demanded
>>> universal old age pensdions funded by a corporate tax; what the politicians
>>> gave them was Social Security, grounded in a regressive tax and tied to the
>>> lifetime earnings (from specified sources) of the worker. A really shitty
>>> affair subject to constant meddling and ultimate sabotage. Another movement
>>> demanded the right to organize; what it got was the Wagner Act and the
>>> Taft-Hartley Act, which pretty much eventually crippled the union movment.
>>> And so forth.
>>
>> Umm, I don't know if you noticed. But time or at least the illusion of
>> time exist. For decades Social Security improved over time,
>> constant shitty meddling happened starting in past 40 years or so.
>> I'm pretty certain that if we had universal pensions based on
>> progressive taxation, that meddling would have still happened - as
>> proved in other nations that did have truly universal public pensions,
>> though seldom based on progressive taxation. Taft-Hartley was a
>> modification of the right to organize which happened well after the
>> Wagner Act. No one claims that demands are implemented exactly. That
>> most likely happens in a truly revolutionary situation. But the idea
>> that demands did not shape results in those cases seems to assume what
>> you are out to prove. And a claim that demands (by a group able to
>> scare elites to begin with) don't (often, not saying always) shape the
>> nature of elite responses as well the existence of those responses is
>> rather breathtaking. I think the burden of proof of that one is one on
>> you.
>>
>> In saying that reforms weakened movements in those days you are
>> implicitly assuming a counterfactual: successful revolution in the
>> absence of reforms. In the case of the New Deal, I think a more
>> likely countefactual would have been an UNSUCCESSFUL revolution
>> leading to a successful fascist counter revolution. As to Black
>> Liberation, it is hard for me to imagine that having been a successful
>> revolution either. It seems to me that in the two cases you cite, not
>> winning the particular reforms that were won would have led to worse
>> outcomes not better. In the case of Roosevelt there were documented
>> attempts at fascist coups.
>>>
>>> Don't cite the Civil-Rights movement: that movement only deanded that the
>>> abstract civil right of bourgeois equality be extended to Blacks. That
>>> reform was vital, but it was also the groundwork for completely defeating
>>> the actual aims of the Black Liberation Movement.
>>>
>>> The experts you want to count as "allies" are the experts who "counsel"
>>> Congress to pass these reforms that cripple the movements and to "counsel"
>>> the mvements to be "practial" (Crackpot realism) and accept without complain
>>> this submerging of their own actual aims in the "gifts" the state offers
>>> them.
>>>
>>> Sachs remains not just not an ally but a serious enemy. If #OIWS can make
>>> use of him fine; if they accept his counsel as relevant to _their_ actions
>>> and not merely to the information of their members, then they are seriously
>>> endangering their purposes.
>>>
>>> Carrol
>>>
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>>>
>>> ___________________________________
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>>
>>
>>
>> --
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