[Marxism] re: Some comments on Stan Goff's post

["M. Junaid Alam" <alam@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Josh wrote:

"The New Left never went from a movement of predominatly privileged
college kids to one that fused with the fighting (most often black)
working class in the way that the RSDLP/Narodniks, FMLN, Vietnamese
liberation movement, (almost every successful revolutionary group) did.
Of course this is a huge generalization but I think it does hold in
general."

I think this is a very powerful observation. The Vietnamese nationalists
at the core leadership consisted of the sons of landlords and the
bourgeoisie. That is an historical fact. Yet they were quite clearly
able to draw connections with the masses. However, I am not so sure
about the Narodniks. Didn't they try to fuse themselves on an individual
level with peasants and basically get their asses kicked?

Anyway, the question that begs itself here is why didn't the New Left
movement spread? I do remember reading one account of students going to
Appalachia, the poorest part of white America, with pretty abysmal
results. More generally I recall that the students became victims of
their own success: on  a local level basic needs would get met, and then
the population was satisfied enough not to push further.

Josh wrote:

"I don't know that this is a productive characterization Junaid - even
if we said this was accurate which I don't think it is, one could say
much worse of almost any other social sector."

Well, is this one assessment or two? Why isn't it productive?  Because
it's innacurate, or quite apart from that? In my opinion it could not be
more accurate, which is partly evidenced by the fact that your rejoinder
is not really convincing here -  pointing to a snobby white woman taking
pictures of latino workers doesn't really deal with the very real
question of a cyclically self-destructive American black culture that is
evidenced in every major city. I don't think one can dimiss violence,
guns, drugs, misogyny, and the commercialization of all those trends in
hip-hop culture and the subsequent glorification of it in youth black
culture as "innacurate," never mind by saying that it's just as bad in
other groups, which it actually is not, looking at the statistics.

It is understood from the outset what this is a result of - white
oppression systematically infused into the social relations blacks find
themselves in. But this is where I would have to agree with Cornel West,
who points out that between liberals and conservatives there is the
dichotomy of structuralism v. behavioralism; the former blame everything
on social structures and latter blame everything on individual behavior.
It would come off as no profound revelation to say that these two are
connected, but the question is, how?

I submit that to say the depressed state of a people is a "result" of
their oppression is, to borrow Marx, no more illuminating than saying "a
Negro is a black man." This is all well understood and axiomatic for
anti-racists. However, it cannot become an excuse for inaction,
inactivity, and paralysis in a community; such an attitude leads to
defeatism and impotent frustration. Look at the explosion of commentary
that erupted after Bill Cosby's chastising of the black working class. A
lot of black people actually welcomed hearing that message, and most of
those who opposed it did it on mainly on the grounds that it was bad PR
to air the dirty laundry of the black community. But whatever the view,
the reality is Cosby's scathing attack clearly hit a nerve.

The only problem with Cosby, of course, is that he is a middle-class
condescending ass-kisser whose famed TV program was about licking
maximum white ass in showing to "respectable" whites that blacks could
be just as wonderful and decent and elegant as them. Cosby is the
fulfillment of Baldwin's nightmare: that when blacks achieve equality,
"it is, of course, the Negro who is  presumed to have become equal,"
meaning that the final destination of equality was to become white. Or
as Fanon said in Black Skin, White Mask, the only way for the Negro to
escape his condition in white society is to become white.

Conversely, then, approached from the positive side (in the
philosophical sense of the term), what black America sorely lacks is a
real leader like Malcolm X. Note how Malcolm X did not waste time
kvetching about how the white man did this and that when it came down to
the business of actually organizing blacks into the NOI or Muslim Mosque
Inc. There was a strictness and discipline involved in becoming a member
that required a whole 180 degree turn-around in lifestyle. Malcolm
himself exemplified that turnaround, from pimp and hustler to a man of
discipline and keen intellect. That is a big part of the reason why so
many of us admire him even though there was clearly some crazy shit
involved in the NOI philosophy. So, it is just plain silly for anyone
now at this stage to either glorify or excuse the pimp and hustle
culture of today, when instead we should point out the pressing need for
some internal redevelopment in the black community. That doesn't mean
playing crusader-hero as an outsider and telling anyone what to do, but
admitting that the problem exists on an observational level avoids the
need for senseless self-flaggelation about why there are such few blacks
in leftist circles.

That after all was the larger question: why aren't there more blacks
involved in the leftist struggles today? Except that it was by Joaquin
put more in the tone of, "Why are we so stupid so as to have failed to
attract them?" And here I will reiterate another, even more damning
point. Forget about us entirely for a minute. How can you explain that
was absolutely zero coordinated or cohesive national response to
Katrina, in which several hundred thousand black people had their homes
and jobs and communities destroyed and significantly damaged, as a
clear, direct, and transparently obvious result of government cronyism,
misprioritization, incompetence, and malevolence? Aside from one rapper
dude dissing Bush there wasn't jack shit in terms of action and we all
know it.

So on this matter I think there is proper analogy with what  the Black
Commentator editors had to say about why they didn't advocate blacks
mass-joining the Green Party, which was that if blacks, who have a much
more substantial presence in the DP, have been unable to get anything
done there, the problem is not what party they are in, but rather their
community's failure to be politically active enough to influence the
party they are already familiar with.








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