Carrol
On 10/6/2011 11:20 AM, shag carpet bomb wrote:
> But how does anyone know she has no experience? I worked in the same
> building as she did, and I wouldn't presume to know any such thing
> about her supposedly lacking experience with practical politics. *I*
> lack such experience - if you're talking "mass" politics -- whatever
> the fuck that is.
>
> 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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>
>