I'll reply when I have some more time.
On Sat, Jul 16, 2011 at 7:30 PM, Bhaskar Sunkara <bhaskar.sunkara at gmail.com>wrote:
>
> http://pink-scare.blogspot.com/2011/07/jacobin-dancing-on-liberalisms-grave.html
>
> I just noticed that the new issue of Jacobin is out. It's well worth
> reading. There is an excellent article by Richard Seymour (previously posted
> on his blog Lenin's Tomb) entitled "How can the Left Can Win?". Lars T. Lih
> has a piece as does Paul Le Blanc. There's also a piece by Zizek and a
> response. I also just finished reading an extremely interesting piece about
> radical political economy, Marxism and neoclassical economics. Check it out.
>
> I should like to say something about this issue's editorial "Dancing on
> Liberalism's Grave". It ends with a cautionary note to the Left:
> Radicals must avoid submerging our identities into an insipid and
> ahistorical “progressivism”; we must remain firmly anchored to the socialist
> tradition and never shy away from the ruthless critique of liberalism. But
> socialists should also be wary of slipping into a rhetorical posture of
> unrestrained invective that only cements the Left’s marginal status in
> American political life. Don’t dance on liberalism’s grave. There’s nothing
> to celebrate.
> I couldn't agree more with this particular set of claims. I, too, agree
> that we should reject ahistorical "progressivism" and remain firmly rooted
> in the socialist tradition. Neither should the Left shy away from the
> ruthless critique of liberalism. And, it is also true that the Left should
> avoid sectarian Schadenfreude in the context of the demise of reformist
> liberalism.
>
> But, having conceded this much, I would like to take issue with the way
> that the Left is carved up by the authors of the editorial. In their
> estimation, the Left has "traditionally" responded in two ways to the
> decline of liberal reformism: by adopting a politically tepid, fiercely
> dogmatic lesser-evilism meant to roll back the rise of the Right, on the one
> hand, or by taking a cynical, sectarian delight in the implosion of
> liberalism on the other. "Traditionally" seems a bit misplaced here, since
> the authors seem only to have in mind the demise of postwar liberal
> reformism in the US in the 1960s and 70s. It's not clear that their analysis
> helps us make sense of previous epochs of reaction and revolt (e.g. the
> 1920s, on the one hand, and the explosion of left radicalism in the 1930s,
> on the other). But this is a side note: let's stick with the period that
> interests them, i.e. the upheavals of the late 60s and early 70s during
> which postwar liberalism died a painful death as a hard-nosed neoliberalism
> was born.
>
> [continued...]
>