[lbo-talk] Check your privilege: Rise of the Post-New Left political vocabulary

Shag Carpet Bomb gracehinchcliff at gmail.com
Mon Feb 17 04:40:33 PST 2014


Shag has a comment! She thinks everyone should read this article on "white skin privileges" and "white chauvinism". http://www.sds-1960s.org/WhiteBlindspot.pdf

Noel Ignatin (aka Ignatief) was a central figure in the development of critical whiteness studies, editor of the journal Race Traitor.

Also highly recommended is Thomas Brooks 1969 NYT article, "The New Left is Showing Its Age." The article is only available in print, in anthologies, or at the NYT archives. It is an account of the SDS and its internal struggles, particularly around the Austin conference, the piece was entitled "The New Left is Showing Its Age". I recommend it also because, in it, Brooks takes aim at SDS as a lightening rod that attracted a lot of "wild in the street children of affluence" and was, at core, "a cult of violence, a totalitarian temperament, and [had] elitist contempt for the values of the working class" - characteristics that would, Brooks smirked, assure its continued success in the world.

Meanwhile, Brooks highlights this, from Staunton Lynd, early on:

""SDS is beset by internal difficulties. Factionalism is so acrimonious within the organization -- "racist" is a pet expletive -- that Staunton Lynd...was prompted to write a letter to New Left Notes: "Is it too much to ask that we try to recover the sense that we face overwhelmingly difficult objective problems to which no one has ready answers, and that we are all going to need each other in finding a way through them?" Complaining that SDS has stopped learning from failures and successes, Lynd noted that, "SDS had become indistinguishable from the Old Left sects.... Caucuses form, meet secretly, circulate position papers. Finally, amid much mutual denunciation, there is a vote.... What is missing is the formerly shared commitment to certain ways of behaving toward each another, and toward all human beings ... We did not feel this ethical commitment stood in opposition to Marxist analysis. It was one way to begin to "build the new society within the shell of the old." Thomas R. Brooks' 1969 NYT article, "The New Left is Showing Its Age."


>From the other piece, these quotes (among many others, stand out)

"(Those) who worry about the difficulty of "selling" the rank-and-file on the idea of repudiation of the white-skin privileges should begin their charity at home: they should first "search their hearts" and ask if they, themselves, are sold on the idea of repudiating the white-skin privileges, and if they maintain a 24-hour-a-day vigilance in that effort"

But I kinda like this one, where they suggest that Lenin's "dictatorship of the proletariat" line could be used as a way to observe "elitist" reactions and, thus, see who was the real revolutionary and who was jsut a bourgeois fakers. LOL

"Perhaps, too, we can take some comfort in this situation from recalling that Lenin insisted on making the whole distinction between a true revolutionary and "any ordinary bourgeois or petit bourgeois" in the movement turn upon the acceptance of the subtle Marxist idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat."

As the authors point out earlier in the two essays, dialecticians don't take things at face value, but look beneath them. Thus, in the "feelings" expressed as elitist disgust at the idea of a worker dictatorship there is an objectively anti-revolutionary support for capitalism. Out on the ear!

"That we-the advocates of the position set forth in your letter to PL-are merely whites reacting subjectively out of feelings of guilt for our complicity in the white supremacist scheme of life in the US. ... It is precisely the subjective factor, the fatal flaw of the labor and democratic movement ill the United States, the influence of the bourgeois racist doctrine of white supremacy, upon which we must concentrate our attention, That this should have its concomitants in the subjective feelings of individuals is only normal, and one may say, necessary. John Brown was "subjective" about the abominable system of chattel slavery. Remember also Marx's "subjectivism" in his bitter comment to Engels: "The bourgeoisie will remember my carbuncles!" If anyone doubts the revolutionary relevancy of such "guilt feelings," he need only begin to "act them out" and the bourgeoisie will let him know it through a thousand agencies!"

On Tue, Feb 4, 2014 at 9:06 PM, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:


> Some history could be written on the question Robert raises. "Chauvinism"
> was not infrequently used for a while in the '60s, and many groups spent
> some time arguing over whether it was an acceptable term. The history would
> have to come from documents, not direct memory. When I try to remember some
> of these debates I can't confidently differentiate what I believed then
> from
> what I came to believe since then. Some groups in the '60s did, I think,
> insist on using the phrase "male chauvinism"; that phrase covered up or
> avoided what (I just discovered yesterday) is still a problem. I was
> reading
> an account of a recent meeting in Chicago among with people from a number
> of different socialist groups as well as independent radicals attending. I
> quote one sentence from that report: " The facilitator was a woman, and two
> of the presenters were women. However, during their presentation, side
> conversations in the back of the room escalated." That's a complaint that
> was made thunderously (often to deaf ears) in the '60s. I think
> "chauvinism"
> would interfere with efforts to stop that 'practice.' Perhaps shag has a
> comment.
>
> So I can't really answer your question, but I suspect "chauvinism" does and
> _did_ have an individualist slant.
>
> All terms that refer to "attitudes" can be used for unprincipled attacks in
> internal debate.
>
> Carrol
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]
> On Behalf Of robert wood
> Sent: Tuesday, February 04, 2014 7:17 PM
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Check your privilege: Rise of the Post-New Left
> political vocabulary
>
> Carrol, I'd be curious where you see the difference between the language of
> privilege and the concept of chauvinism that was a significant framework
> for
> the CP in the 1930's. I have some ideas, but I'm curious about your take
> on
> the question. Thanks, Robert Wood
>
>
> On Tue, Feb 4, 2014 at 5:13 PM, Michael Smith <mjs at smithbowen.net> wrote:
>
> > >
> > > On Feb 4, 2014, at 5:35 PM, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
> > >
> > >> This is babbling nonsense. "Check your privilege" is simple bullshit.
> > Or it
> > >> could be a deliberate attempt to sabotage political discussion.
> >
> > I'm strongly with Carrol on this one. 'Privilege' is the stinkiest red
> > herring ever dragged across the trail.
> >
> >
> > ___________________________________
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> >
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