But there's also this important point, made by Sam Gindin: > Very good response; I think you are right on re labour. The one thing I'd add, and I think it is very significant, is that this crisis in labour overlaps with the crisis on the left. I'm convinced that any renewal in labour won't happen until there is an organized left with feet inside and outside labour - and even then it would have to be a left of a particularly creative kind. Which raises the unavoidable question of what we do to create such a left if neither the unions nor the democratic party are sites to make this happen and the notion of this happening through the old Leninist structures seems no less of a dead-end. THIS is the challenge that needs taking on....
---------- There are many of "us" who know how to operate within a left movement that exists. NO ONE, now or ever, past or present, knows how to bring such "a left" into existence. It was not the intention of the Montgomery NAACP (1956) to "bring a left into existence." It was not the intention of the Freedom Riders (1960) to "bring a left into existence." It was not the intention even of the Free Speech Movement (1963) to "bring a left into existence." But at some point along the line, and essentially due to these events, "a left" emerged in the U.S. for the first time since the late 1930s. _At some point_ within such an emergence thought (theory) has to become more self-conscious, grounded in an understanding (set of abstractions) of what has been happening. We never _quite_ succeeded in doing that in the mid-1960s, & I suspect a mechanical explanation rather than a critique gives the reason: it wasn't in the cards. It couldn't be done, and it is false to argue after the fact that we should have done such & such or shouldn't have done such and such. That kind of explanation is a manifestation of mindless voluntarism, the assumption that a true practice is always available. There was no possible left practice in the 1960s that would have carried the left beyond what we did achieve. (One can daydream as to what would have happened had Malcolm & King not been assassinated, but I suspect nothing radically different.) It is true that white leftists miserably failed to build solidarity against repression of the Panthers; many did call for that, but masses did not respond -- and it is dealing in magic to speculate on what might have been.) Now ever since I read Josh Moreley's brief post from Madison I've believed that the process has started, and OWS did come along, and its momentum has not been really lost, manifesting itself in various ways. There is a battle brewing in Chicago for next September. But I think there is no way _yet_ to theorize what is happening: but something is happening! Leftists of any persuasion need to join it the best they can. Carrol _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
