For what it's worth, I think I agree with the core of Carrol's position, which I understand to be the following.
(1) There is no organized left in the United States worth the name (and an unorganized left is no left at all).
(2) One key task of leftists is to build an organized left (and anyone who knows anything about Carrol knows that he has gone about this seriously for decades).
(3) An organized left cannot be built within or in alliance with the Democratic Party.
(4) We do not now have the ability to build mass organizations of the left, so we must attempt to move from our current state of disorganization to a state of minimal organization by recruiting those who are on the periphery of the left. (This does not preclude the possibility that it may be possible, at some unpredictable but not far-off time, to build mass organizations; but since those opportunities are unpredictable, we should now be about the business of building organizations that can take advantage of those opportunities as they present themselves).
(5) Leftists will of course throw themselves into a myriad of struggles, whether they belong to left organizations or not. The difference that an organized left can make is that, when mass mobilization occurs - sadly, these days, mostly independently of our efforts - an organized left will intervene not just by throwing more numbers into the struggle, but by attempting to sustain and augment the level of mobilization, in distinction to the Democratic Party's predictable attempt to demobilize and turn the movement into currency for short-term political gain.
(6) This is the key task for the left we hope to organize because barbarism currently looks like a more likely outcome of the crises of capitalism than does socialism, and if we hope to change that, we should aim to build the capacity to intervene decisively in these "moments of danger" (cp. Benjamin, "On the Concept of History").
Carrol can tell me if I've misinterpreted him, but I don't think I have. His position may not be the correct position, but I think it's a powerful one, and it is minimally a coherent and serious one. It deserves better consideration than it sometimes gets here.
________________________________ From: brad <babscritique at gmail.com> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Sent: Tuesday, July 5, 2011 8:01 AM Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Response to MG -- Was Poll....
>And my main ARGUMENT or THHESIS is simply that when such fissures appear or seem to appear what leftists do is plung into action, attempting to build on those "successes" (illusory or real). Neither Marv nor Brad seems very interested in the question of WITBD _now_, each in his/her local situation.
>
> Carrol
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Which goes against 547 other posts by Carrol in which he claims that
we should not attempt to reach out and build anything, but focus
narrowly on those who are already leftists.
I also have no idea why Carrol thinks that Wisconsin is a fissure, or more accurately, why he doesn't see 1000 fissures everyday. Is Wisconsin the only place where people are resisting capitalism today or do people resist capitalism almost constantly. One lacks the necessary creativity if their only means to be engaged in struggle is to wait for something that fits their predetermined form of a movement toward revolution.
As for what leftists do: if you think for one second that anything in Wisconsin happened without leftists building it from the very start, you miss the whole point. We don't wait and "plung into action" we are the fucking action. We are the seed. There is no action without the initial work of leftists. To sit by and wait and then be reactive, is what causes reactionary action.
On the DP: I don't think anyone said that we should in advance label movements as reformist. However if their outcome is reform and their stated goal was reform then the proper conclusion should be that they were never more then reform movements (that does not mean that they lacked the potential to become otherwise). The DP does not have its stated or even unstated goal to soak up radical movements and turn them into reformist movements. In a social system where politics is formally separated from economic activity any political system will structurally do that (it is incorrect to view this formal separation as real!). That is the very nature of capitalism and that is its strength. The goal is to reconnect through action the political (in all its guises) with the economic. I don't narrowly define the DP as simply an electoral device and I see fissures whenever I put myself into those circles. It is these fissures and the people I connect with there that convince me that it isn't the grave yard of social movements but can and sometimes does act as the source of social movements if even through defeat and disillusionment.
Brad
___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk