On 2011-07-05, at 12:17 PM, Dissenting Wren wrote:
> I've been on the receiving end of comments from Carrol that I've considered intemperate or unfair, and so, I suppose, would many others, but that doesn't mean that we get to dismiss his political position with faux-clever one-liners or responses like this one. The first two paragraph here caricatures Carrol's position, the third is one of the dumbest examples of atomistic voluntarism I've come across, and the last is incoherent.
>
> 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).
And the earth rotates around the sun. Who would argue, or has argued, that there does exist an organized left of any consequence in the States? Carrol believes, and you evidently agree, that he is making a signal contribution or dispelling widespread illusions in insistently repeating what is obvious to everyone.
>
> (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).
Also trite. Carrol is well-intentioned and gets a good deal of personal satisfaction out of his local activities, but it is debatable whether this amounts to "serious" political work - historically understood within the Marxist tradition as involving some relationship to unions, parties, and/or other organizations with a working class following. Carrol's experience in these arenas seems limited, at best.
>
> (3) An organized left cannot be built within or in alliance with the Democratic Party.
Not with the DLC leaders and their circle beholden to Wall Street, but an organized left would certainly (and crucially) have at some point to be built in conjunction with disaffected rank and file DP activists, who, on the basis of their own experience and disillusion with the direction of the party, would need to leave the party in sizeable numbers for a viable third party on its left to appear.
>
> (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).
Again, this merely defines the task, not how to go about accomplishing it, which has historically been subject to a great deal of disagreement among those affiliated with left wing organizations, large and small. Freelancing individuals like Carrol and the rest of us whom you describe as a collective "we" have never been, and will not be, in a position to take advantage of such opportunities when they present themselves. The choice typically confronting serious radical individuals in an explosive political crisis has been which left organization engaged in the process of acquiring a mass base to join. Others like Carrol are more inclined to jealously guard their "independence" - In any case, that's not a choice we are presently confronted with, and Carrol's activities, like that of most other would-be "revolutionaries", has more to do with expressing solidarity other people's struggles than with what is commonly understood as "organization building". I'd be interested to know what organizations has Carrol built with the methods, such as they are, which he has urged on us these many years?
>
> (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.
More truisms, except for the assertion that mass mobilizations occur mostly independently of the efforts of left wing activists in the sects, unions, and other spheres where discontent spills over into protest, which, as Brad noted, is false. Marxists have generally ascribed a "semi-spontaneous" character to such protest, indicating the necessary convergence of both objective and subjective factors.
> (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").
The typical fare which has been offered up in Sunday speeches by far left and, in more muted tones, by trade union and social democratic leaders for generations.
> 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.
Political consciousness is a relative thing. For some, Carrol's observations are "powerful, coherent, serious, and deserving of a more considered hearing". For others of us, not so much.
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> 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
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk