Carrol wrote:
Marvin, Nathan, et al greatly underestimate the strength of the capitalist class and overestimate the strength of the working class in the u.s. Hence they have no sense whatever of the insuperable difficulty of utilizing the DP or the AFL-CIO for progressive action. They are utopians in the deepest sense of that term -- of proposing ends (e.g., a progressive DP) without any practical notion whatever of how those ends may be achieved.
--------------------------------------- Right. This discussion invariably careens out of control and is always inconclusive. It's necessarily inconclusive, because there's no empirical way to determine which view is more accurate, which is why in turn it so easily leads to extreme charges and countercharges. We'll only know who was "utopian" in retrospect if and when there is a radicalization of the American working class, and I accept it could be me.
Anyway, I think you have replied to me in error on PEN-L. "Nathan" doesn't even post here. To put your comments in context for this list, this was our exchange yesterday on LBO: * * * Marvin: I think the question which always needs to be asked is whether the liberal/social democratic parties still retain the allegiance of the mass of politically progressive trade unionists and social movement activists who are our political kin, and, if so, how do we best connect with them given their present consciousness?... Carrol: This is what the vast majority of leftists have been doing for 50 years, and each year the left and workers in general are weaker than the year before. Do you really want to continue to pursue a strategy which will eventually have us trying to decide between two parties, both of which are to the right of Reagan Republicans and Thatcher Tories? Marvin: The vast majority of leftists, including those who made revolutions, have viewed the matter this way for a lot longer than 50 years. But we've been over this so many times you know my answer. It's essentially twofold: a) the issues separating conservatives and liberals are not insignificant, especially as concerns the existing rights and goals of the social movements, which is why they continue to support the latter over the former, and b) it seems idealist to me to think you can devise a "strategy" to sever their current political relationships any more than you can conjure up a strategy to overthrow capitalism in the absence of a social crisis and mass protest, which amounts to the same thing.
