Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: > >> In addition to the how-to questions, though, leftists also have to > reckon with their fundamental problem. We, lacking in a new powerful > world view since the loss of the myth of inevitable dialectical > progress, do not have as much passion for social change as white > evangelicals here and Islamists and Bolivarians abroad. We are not > unlike George Herbert Walker Bush: we lack "the vision thing." We > need a world view that inspires faith in the work we must do, without > which no one will get or stay motivated to put in her time and money, > make her skills available, and mobilize all other resources she has, > for any cause.
There are complications. First, re the empirical existence of whether the "myth of inevitable dialectical progress" was ever a major factor in strong revolutionary (or other mass) movements. (DIGRESSION: Yoshie earlier suggested this was borrowed from Christianity, which may be the case. But I think I could challenge that mass, religious based, political movements were ever moved by an analogy of that. For example, while some of the ideologists of the English Revolution, more or less after the fact, raised such visions, and while some _fractions_ of it seemed to have been so moved, I don't believe it is accurate when applied _either_ to the _origins_ of that movement or to the main victories of the movement. Eventually, in fact, the religious element in the Commonwealth may have led to the Restoration. And Milton's last attempt t salvage it appealed pretty much to something like "common sense" [ambiguous phrase] in the sense Paine used that phrase over a century later. Paine's idea was that the things people _knew_ in common, that were a common possession, should be the basis of revolution, and he specifically contrasted that to religious beliefs, which were about what people did not know.) The slogan of the Russian Revolution was not any grand vision, but Bread, Peace, Land. Similar slogans moved the Vietnamese and Chinese Revolutions. The Cuban Revolution to begin with was simply bourgeois democracy. Also: mass movements seem usually to _begin_ almost by accident, and only at somewhat later stages develop some general vision to hold them together. Since we don't have a mass movement now, it might not be useful to speculate on what the general slogan(s) of some future mass movement might be. I've never read the book, but the tile is fascinating and suggestive: "They Should Have Served That Cup of Coffee": First an almost accidental demand for a cup of coffee [this is not quite accurate], then Freedom Now!, and all of a sudden the Panthers, according to J. Edgar are the most serious domestic threat to u.s. security. These things come out of the air. The kind of conversation Yoshie has opened is I think of great importance, but not for the conclusions we might reach from it but from the kind of questions it throws up, questions which might [or might not] prepare us for the next (if it comes) failure on someone's part to serve that cup of coffee. Only then, in that context, will we be able to talk concretely about "vision." It is easy enough to see the inadequacy of whats-his-name's "framing" argument and other ideas liberals are throwing up as to how their beloved DP can rally the people behind it. But I'm not sure marxist ideas of how to jump-start a movement will look much better in retrospect. The disaster in Shanghai in 1928 [date?] came from the Party following a wrong "vision" imported from Moscow. A debate like we are having now thanks to Yoshie _might_ prepare us to be more flexible when a political opening occurs, but probably the debate _won't_ provide the vision we need, which will only emerge from a summary and critique of the practice of a movement which has emerged seemingly from nowhere, if one does emerge. Carrol
