"I just don't buy it" Doug says. So don't buy. Who is asking you to? It isn't your show out there, nor is it mine. I'm not tryign to make it mine. (I understand that in Chicago, at least as of a few days ago, it was ISO's show! Sneaky fellows!) I would suggest you stay away from the GAs but mingle some otherwise and recruit four or five for a study group.
Do you know how any of the great socialist parties got formed? I don't , but I can sort of guess, and scattered people starting study groups is probably not a bad guess. But in any cae, you really have to stop nagging OWS to do it for you. It's bad for your blood pressure and they aren't listening.
" don't think that we can get anywhere without changing the state. " Eric likes this sentence but I'm not so sure. The necessity of "changing the state" is merely a premise that emerges from any kind of serious political action, not a theory that one goes around proclaiming. It can form the unstated basis of discussion within a collective over what to do next or how one might improve the outreach activity, but by itself it's nothing more than an obseration.
"But purity demands that we not do that because it would step on the prefiguration.
Who is Purity? Does some character in Hawthorne propounded a theory of revolution? I'd advicse just ignoring her. But you have the process upside down; you assume that this prefiguration is an abstract theory tyhat someone dreamed up in her librart and that now they are "applying" the theory out there in the streets. That's nonsense. They are raising hell and Prefiguration is the label they've given to the activity they've found themselves engaged in. Theory always follows practice. If OWS keeps up long enough they (or some of them) will start refining their theorization of what they are doing, and while they may still use the same label the contents will have changed. But for the present, whatever the theory is it's doing the job of keeping them going. When it stops doing that, then ..... What? I don't know; you don't know. We shall see.
And as Eric says below, we do need more analysis of what the hell is happening. But that analysis can't flow from grumping that they aren't doing something else. Serious analysis might suggest various possiblities for action or organization _independently_ of what is happening in OWS.
And I repeat. OWS is not a Party Program. OWS is not going to become a Party Program. And you can critique an event or bundle of events forever without making any difference to anyone.
Carrol
On 10/20/2011 8:17 AM, Eric Beck wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 19, 2011 at 8:06 PM, Doug Henwood<dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
>> I just don't buy it. I don't think that we can get anywhere without changing the state. But purity demands that we not do that because it would step on the prefiguration.
>
> See, I'm always interested in these first two sentences, but they are
> always followed by the ad hominem third sentence. I've always wanted
> to hear more about the first two but never get it, which makes me
> doubt your seriousness and intent. Now I'll just assume that's because
> it's not analysis but opinion, which is fine to express, but doing so
> five times a day doesn't transform it into analysis.
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