Re: [Marxism] Swarthmore professor gives Ward Churchill failing grade

[Octob1917@xxxxxxx]

And it does indeed boils down to the specifics of lifestyle issues. The US
radical left, with its heavy academic slant and academics being what they
are in the USA, tends to be affluent and utterly disconnected from the
living relity, and the subjective concerns of the working class.


Reply:

Very well said. I found this to be the case in my years living and active in 
the US. The so-called far Left is predominatly the preserve of white 
intellectuals, whom, as you rightly state, enjoy zero credibility with the 
working class and even less with the oppressed black communities. Based on my 
own knowledge and study of the US Left, the collapse of the Old Left, largely 
as a result of McCarthyism and rising living standards post WWII, in effect 
began the process of the erosion of class consciousness in the States. The New 
Left, which came to the fore during the Vietnam War and later, began and ended 
on college campuses, where it has more or less remained ever since.

In my experience the white intellectual socialist clique is afraid of the 
working class, and with good reason. Because regardless of how effortlessly one 
can quote Marx or Lenin, unless you are of the working class all you can offer 
is paternalism. Never solidarity. And if workers and those living in oppressed 
communities can spot anything it's a dilletante.

J

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