[lbo-talk] Spanish promiscuity or German erectile dysfunction?

Marv Gandall marvgand at gmail.com
Fri May 4 20:32:07 PDT 2012


On 2012-05-04, at 5:50 PM, shag carpet bomb wrote:


> At 04:18 PM 5/4/2012, Marv Gandall wrote:
>> political people than the armchair wiseacres on this list who not only talk left, but like to shout it from the rooftops, without having anywhere near the history of engagement with community and working class struggles - and the knowledge gleaned from this practical activity - that Huato and Brown have.
>
>
> you're talking about carrol? describing him as a wiseacre without a history of engagement? that's pretty odd because, reading his facebook page and the people who've mentioned him in comments and post pictures of him, he seems to be one of those ppl smack dab in the center of politics in his area…

I acknowledged earlier that Carrol was active in "small circle organizing in university towns and among the better-educated", but, unless I'm badly mistaken, he's had very little or no practical experience in the Democratic party and the trade unions. Despite this, he has never shied away from presenting himself as an authority on these organizations and from making the most sweeping judgments about workers and radical activists who have made the Democratic party a focus of their political work, though not necessarily the main focus.

Anyone who has been active in broader class-based trade unions and/or political parties as well as the campus will tell you these are very different political milieus, and that radical activists have to take into account the differing social composition, level of consciousness, and interests of workers and students. Left wing campus politics is typically more intellectually stimulating, there are no real material stakes in the outcome, and you're not really held accountable for what you say and do, and I can well understand from my own student days why Carrol finds it so easy to counsel against "despair" and is always able to find "enjoyment in the battle, win or lose." By the same token, I hope you can appreciate why some of us reacted so sharply against Carrol's flip dismissal of the distress being experienced by European workers and his implied rebuke of those who called attention to it as "defeatist", all based on a perspective limited to campus politics and a deep reading of Marxist theory. "Easy for you to say" was therefore not an unfair comment in the circumstances, and Carrol, who has so often justified the criticism he has heaped on others as "political rather than personal" will, I'm sure, view our criticism in the same light.



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