[PEN-L:30285] RE: Reply to Michael Berube

["Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>]

Title: RE: [PEN-L:30284] Reply to Michael Berube

>> Christopher Hitchens and Marc Cooper chastising the left from the
>> pages of mass circulation bourgeois media such as the LA Weekly, the
>> Boston Globe, etc. Years ago, when people like John Reed spoke on
>> behalf of the left, they had ties and accountability to a largely
>> working-class base. Nowadays, we find all too often that journalists
>> and college professors speak only for themselves and through the
>> auspices of the very publications that are beating the drums of war.

Is there anyone out (in the U.S.) there who doesn't "speak only for themselves," i.e., has actual organic links to the working class and have been elected as representatives by some sector of that class?

Or is it simply some people _assert_ that they speak for the interests of the working class (as, for example, the Spartacist League does)? who chose them or any other sectarian group to speak for the working class? who chose _any_ intellectual or researcher to speak for the working class?

At least in the U.S., I'm afraid that sectarians and isolated intellectuals are in the same bad situation as the leftish journalists and college professors. The state of working class organization -- and that of various other anti-establishmentarian forces -- is pretty damn weak, demoralized, and divided. No-one can be a John Reed or an Eugene Debs.

Thus, I can see someone disagreeing strongly with someone like Marc Cooper (as I do), but I see no high horse to sit on. I can't claim to have ties with and accountability to any kind of working class base. Nor can anyone else I can think of in the United States.

If you want to disagree with Cooper, do it by criticize his facts, his logic, and the information he leaves out. But the stuff about his connections to the working class are irrelevant at this point in history.

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Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine