As for supposedly criticizing her presumptuousness, that's not the issue. I don't care that she's a leftist criticizing OWS. Or that she's an academic. Or that's she's never engaged in practical politics before - a contention I find extremely dubious anyway.
What does trouble me is this weird grandiosity - what I call two sides of the subject of history problem on the left. Dean imagines that she can write a piece about the problems with OWS and then say that she (and I presume those she hopes to influence) aren't going to support their struggles if they don't adhere to a set of left demands about how they should run *their* revolution.
As a lone individual sitting in upstate NY, she's gonna make this happen how, exactly? For several days now, these folks have invited critics to join them - in manifold ways. There's no excuse for not engaging directly. I purposefully didn't post to her blog and posted here as an illustration of exactly the problem with this studious, purposeful disengagement with "them" who possess "their" revolution.
Dean probably has no idea about what i typed because I elected to stay disengaged and ignore her invitation (public blogging) to respond. Even if she does know about my comments, she wouldn't be wrong to say, "oh, fuck that broad. why should I be bothered to listen to anything she says. She didn't even respond on *my* blog. Obviously, she doesn't want to have a conversation with me...."
Which is exactly how people at OWS will likely respond - if they know about any of these criticisms at all.
Finally, the issue is that what she is really upset about is how weak the left is. But instead of actually dealing with that, the "problems" become the problems of some nascent political formation.
e.g., people are noticing goofball Ron Paulites there. Yeah. So? There are also goofball leftists there. There's something offensive in the list of grievances about conspiricism. That's not a problem of this political formation: that's the result of leftists have so lacking in anything resembling even WEAK ties politically because they insist on a posture of disengagement jsut as Dean does here -- even when they are invited to engage -- that we were taken by surprise by this thing and had absolutely nothing in terms of, forgive the phrase, boots on the ground. Why are Ron Paul's boots on the ground? We know why: their ideology is *mainstream*.
That's the question that ought to be asked at the symposium. Instead of saying, "why is that movement so wanky, so liberal, etc.?"
Why don't we have "boots on the ground". Why are the people who are complaining about this movement caught out, surprised. It's not like there were notices flying around.
I got one 6 weeks ago and thought it was an invitation to organize the local Survive Zombie Invasion party! LOL I thought the occupy was an allusion to the occupation of zombies come the end of October. ha!
John Gulick wrote:
> Carrol Cox:
>>There are quite a scattering of people who dream of what they call
> refoundation -- and these are people
>>who unlike Dean have actual
> experience in mass politics
>>I've just read a bit of Den, plus comments on her on this
> list, but she doesn't seem to have the foggiest idea
>>of where actual
> Parties come from or the conditions and practices which make them
possible
> Eric Beck:
>>anyone who gets their politics from
> watching the world rather than from reading Zizek
> JG:
> I don't have a huge problem with Dean's "presumptuous" --
commentators
> will commentate --
> or her so-called "Leninist" politics. Let a thousand schools of
> thought contend and all that. I'm
> just very skeptical about her credibility to write and speak
> authoritatively about what she writes
> and speaks about, for the reasons excerpted above. Maybe she will
prove me wrong
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