MG: 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.
And yet for all that those of us on the left frequently fall into the trap of speaking as if we were already constituted as a collective subject. If only we would do this... If only the left.... There's a difference between a position that one would defend on reflection and ways of talking that embody that error.
> (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).
MG: 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.
And what do you know of Carrol's work? I don't think I'm letting out any secrets by mentioning that Carrol is a member of Solidarity, which has always taken the work you refer to quite seriously. Shall we criticize Carrol for being located in a college town in downstate Illinois, rather than an industrial center?
> (3) An organized left cannot be built within or in alliance with the Democratic Party.
MG: 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.
Of course the left will recruit from those disaffected from the Democratic Party. This seems entirely consistent with Carrol's emphasis on recruiting those who are near us and already moving in our direction. Note, though, that you elide "organization" and "party" here. We need not wait for a viable third party option to appear in order to build an organized left.
> (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).
MG: 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?
Ad hominem and tu quoque. Your portrayal of Carrol as some lone wolf is based on I-don't-know-what misapprehension, and if our thoughts are to be measured by our success in building powerful left organizations, then we're all down for the count. See, tu quoque cuts both ways.
> (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.
MG: 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.
Not truisms at all. There are tons of leftists who think that their job is done when they simply come out in support of mass struggles, and tons more who would rather destroy a mass struggle than be unable to control it. Both of those approaches are defenseless against the predictable DP demobilization. If we want to build on "semi-spontaneous" mobilization rather than see it (a) sputter to a halt from lack of direction, (b) be strangled by sectarian wrangling, or (c) be co-opted by the DP (or are you pretending that those things never happen?), then the kind of strategic thinking I talk about above is necessary.
> (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").
MG: 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.
MG: 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.
Dickishness posing as argument.
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