[lbo-talk] Response to MG -- Was Poll....

Marv Gandall marvgand at gmail.com
Tue Jul 5 21:08:53 PDT 2011


On 2011-07-05, at 4:41 PM, Dissenting Wren wrote:


>> We need not wait for a viable third party option to appear in order to build an organized left.

Maybe this is the crux of the matter: How would an "organized left", which you counterpose to a political party, actually be organized? How would you begin to build it, starting tomorrow? What would be it's goals and activities? Perhaps you can draw on Carrol's writings to assist you. I have found much angry moralizing and exhortation but little that is concrete and specific in them.

In fact, my sense is that yours and Carrol's idealized "organized left" would be no more organized than it is today: a loose collection of self-described socialists of varying hues who periodically come together at meetings or online to plaintively ask themselves "what is to be done?", who demonstrate from time to time on behalf of other people's causes and who, if they are really ambitious, come together for a short time to issue revolutionary manifestoes and other material circulated mostly within their own academic and professional milieus. This is not the kind of sustained and focused activity which historically characterized the organized left based in the working class.

As far as I can gather, Carrol also effectively rejects participation in electoral politics, considering this to be the antithesis of political action, rather than another expression of it, complimenting strikes, demonstrations, and other forms of action in the streets with the intention of converting demands into legislation.

I'm not an anarchist, and can't conceive of an organized left other than one which organizes itself as a political party or, in unfavourable conditions, as a political tendency within a larger party supported by trade unions and working people, in each case with a clearly defined program and engaging in political activity at all levels of the political process. The historic split between Marxism and anarchism has turned on this issue, which is why I consider Carrol and not a few other embittered former Democrats on the US left to be anarchists in spirit if not in theory, whatever their protestations to the contrary.



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list