On 2012-01-31, at 11:55 AM, Carrol Cox wrote:
> Your sense of political consciousness is mere playing verbal games…
I don't think so, unless you can indicate which statements below constitute mere playing with words rather than a genuine attempt to understand the issue. I may disagree with you and indict you politically, as I frequently do, but I wouldn't suggest that you're a political charlatan who doesn't treat ideas seriously.
> ...and
> seems to me to reflect almost total despair of significant improvement in
> the conditions of u.s. workers.
Despair also has nothing to do with it. I indicated earlier that there's been a rise in political consciousness in the US over the past year, evident in the trade union struggles against public sector cutbacks and Occupy movement. But it's impossible to predict whether it will deepen or fade, or in which direction it will go. I think it will mainly depend on whether the system has exhausted its capacity for reform, and becomes widely seen to have done so, making larger numbers receptive to radical alternatives. The long political decline of the labour and socialist movement coincided, after all, with a steady rise in the living standards of the working class, so it's reasonable to expect, though nothing is certain, that a revival of mass radical politics would correspond with a decline in living standards. This is the nub of our differences; like many leftish academics, I believe you have an exaggerated sense of the power of ideas to change consciousness and pay scant attention to the material conditions which affect whether they resonate with the masses or are seen by them to have little relevance to their immediate needs.
BTW, I slipped up in referring to Lenin's WITBD below when I had in mind his Left Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]
> On Behalf Of Marv Gandall
> Sent: Tuesday, January 31, 2012 9:38 AM
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Greece says Goodbye to Democracy
>
>
> On 2012-01-31, at 6:31 AM, Carrol Cox wrote:
>
>> The evidence on electoral preferences has nothing whatever to do with
>> political consciousness. Political consciousness is measured by
>> participation in or support of mass movements.
>
> Wrong. Political consciousness is measured by parliamentary as much as by
> extra-parliamentary activity. The classical Marxists were as attentive to
> the shifting vote tallies of the German SPD, Italian and French SP's, the
> British Labour Party, etc. before the First World War, as well as the
> parties supported by the Comintern after it, as they were to the incidence
> of strikes, demonstrations, and other forms of mass action engaged in by the
> working class.
>
> Lenin's controversial advice to the fledgling British CPGB to "enter" the
> Labour Party was based on the LP's electoral strength, which he used as a
> register of the backward political consciousness of militant British trade
> unionists relative to their continental counterparts. Later Marxists did not
> assess the level of working class consciousness in the 30's and 40's solely
> with reference to industrial militancy while dismissing the sharp increase
> in votes for Communist and socialist deputies as having "nothing whatever to
> do with political consciousness". Careful attention was paid equally to the
> electoral fortunes of the established bourgeois parties as a measure of both
> mass and elite confidence in the bourgeois-democratic political system,
> notably during the collapse of the Weimar republic and rise of fascism.
>
> Your one-sided understanding of political action is consistent with
> traditional anarchist and other ultraleft notions of the sort precisely
> targeted by Lenin in WITBD, a polemic you profess to much admire. You're an
> equally enthusiastic fan of the Black Panthers, but one supposes, given your
> remarks above, that your enthusiasm would not extend to Bobby Seale's 1973
> mayoralty campaign in Oakland when he garnered nearly 40% of the vote.
> Presumably, this represented an unnecessary detour into the electoral arena,
> again a wholly meaningless indicator "having nothing whatever to do with
> (the) political consciousness" of Oakland's black community at that time.
>
> Those who participate in the mass movements which you support don't draw an
> artificial distinction between their activity in the streets and political
> action aimed at influencing or gaining state power; each arena is seen as a
> means of gauging their popular support and of realizing their demands.
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk