> It isn't so much "experience" as failure to show any _knowledge_ of
> the
> history of efforts (successful and unsuccessful) to build the kind of
> party (or any kind of party) that she wants.
>
> 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
>>> ___________________________________
>>> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>>
>>
>
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>
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