Re: [Marxism] Seven Theses on the Current Period, the War and theAnti-war Mov...

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx>]

Octob1917@xxxxxxx wrote:
>
> In a message dated 10/3/2004 9:33:11 AM Pacific Standard Time,
> cbcox@xxxxxxxxx writes:
> It is indeed a huge disaster for imperialism, and the central task of
> left thinking in the u.s. is hammering out the means of building on that
> disaster.
>
> This assumes there is a US left (by which I mean a homegeneous entity capable
> of building anything except egos and the cocoon inside of which they exist in
> isolation from workers, immigrants and members of oppressed communities).

Look, I've been arguing for years that "The Left" is a misleading
concept, precisely for the reason you give here. (Though I don't like
your word "homogenous"; "coherent" is better. When "The Left" comes into
existence again it will not have a single center, but a number of
centers which nevertheless, formally and informally, pursue a roughly
coherent set of practices.) But that argument, as I developed it, was
always in response to posts that inclued such horseshit as "The problem
with the left," et cetera. You can't criticize what doesn't exist, and
such general criticisms of "The Left" were almost always a form of
anti-sectarian sectarianism, when they were not mere whining.

But my argument as quoted is quite consistent with the denial that "The
Left" now exists: Think of "the "Left" as a mere placeholder for A Left
which (may be) emergent, in process. It is through the efforts of the
many scattered leftists and local groups to hammer out a response to the
present form(s) of imperialism that perhaps A Left as more than a
wishful dream may yet take shape.

But your phrase, "in isolation from workers, immigrants and members of
oppressed communities" is merely the left version of the classical
red-baiting formula, "Wherever you find them, Communists come from
someplace else." You seem to think that the act of becoming red
immediately changes one into some freakish form of alien life. Look
about you. All you will see are workers -- only they don't know they
are.


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