Originally posted by
[email protected] 6 2004, 03:40 AM
We have several choices to make. The first is whether we want to pay attention to the real world, or prefer to keep to abstract discussions suitable to some seminar.
Or some message board...!
One of the things I've noticed is that when otherwise well-meaning people want to advocate a really shitty position, they preface it with an appeal to "paying attention to the real world".
Well, the real world is shitty...is it your wish to "accept" that?
In the "real world" we live in a period of reaction. The "real choices" are all reactionary.
In my opinion, we should be "unrealistic"...and even, on occasion, "utopian".
We should advocate what we really want...even if that makes us "ineffective", "dreamers", "not real players", blah, blah, blah.
When the first abolitionists began their agitation (in the early 1830s), "serious politicians" thought they were insignificant nutball dreamers at best and, at worst, a dangerous subversive threat to "the American way".
Less than four decades later, the Confederacy was a smoldering ruin and private property in slaves was history.
I think the lesson is quite clear: we should try, as best we can, for what we want...and then we'll see how we do.
If we support what we don't want...guess what we'll get?
Then there is another choice: electing Bush or seeking to prevent his election.
In "real world" terms, it's unlikely that the "left" (broadly defined) has the sheer numbers to do either. If the "left" portion of the American electorate is somewhere between 5 and 10 percent of the total, it would likely have to vote unanimously for Kerry or for Bush to affect the outcome.
In addition, the "left" electorate is concentrated in only three states -- New York, Massachusetts, and California...Bush can lose all three of those states and still win.
Since US elections are pretty much bought, [Bush] will therefore win, unless there is a very powerful popular mobilization to overcome these enormous and usually decisive advantages.
But why should there be "a very powerful popular mobilization" on behalf of a Bush clone -- Kerry?
In recent decades, up to half or more of all voting-age Americans have greeted our ceremonial "elections" with a big yawn...why should that change?
It's a matter of judgment, of course, but mine is that those who favor electing Bush are making a very serious error.
Well, I haven't heard of any lefties who argue that we should "actively support" Bush...but perhaps my circle of acquaintances is too narrow.
Or perhaps this is meant as a sort of back-handed criticism of those who propose to ignore the "elections" altogether; i.e., if you don't "actively support Kerry" "then" you must be "supporting" Bush.
Nonsense, of course.
The people around him are likely to cause very serious, perhaps irreparable, harm if given another mandate.
I think the "irreparable harm" was accomplished long ago...the Taft-Hartley Labor Relations Act (1949?) -- which barred freely elected communists from holding office in trade unions -- was the end of "civil liberties" for the left in the United States.
Since then, we have been "permanent outsiders" here, tolerated when we are weak and freely (and violently) persecuted whenever we show signs of strength.
To involve ourselves in bourgeois electoral politics is to pretend that we of the left are "real citizens" just like conservative Democrats and reactionary Republicans.
But, in their eyes, we are not part of the "Volk Community"...not real Americans at all.
Their eyes see more clearly than those of many lefties...we aren't part of their community. The sooner we realize that, the better we'll do.
Activist movements, if at all serious, pay virtually no attention to which faction of the business party is in office, but continue with their daily work, from which elections are a diversion -- which we cannot ignore, any more than we can ignore the sun rising; they exist.
An astounding sentence! On the one hand, Chomsky admits that bourgeois elections are a diversion from our real work...a true statement. And then, in the same sentence, asserts that we "cannot ignore them" because "they exist".
The Superbowl Half-Time Spectacular also "exists". Shall we take part?
Those who prefer to ignore the real world are also undermining any hope of reaching any popular constituency.
No one will listen to us unless we "take seriously" that which around half of all Americans already ignore.
It seems to me that our potential "popular constituency" is...rather large.
We are unlikely to "reach" them with a message of the "importance" of what they have already recognized as a pile of shit.
Few are likely to pay attention to someone who approaches them by saying, loud and clear: "I don't care whether you have a slightly better chance to receive health care or to support your elderly mother; or whether there will be a physical environment in which your children might have a decent life; or a world in which children may escape destruction as a result of the violence that is inspired by the Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz-Cheney-etc. crowd, which could become extreme; and on, and on. Repeat: "slightly better."
Repeat it a lot! If you repeat it often enough, some fool might believe it.
What ruling class politicians will actually do once elected is impossible to predict in detail...but it will always be bad unless there is massive discontent and even rebellion in the streets.
Telling people to vote for Kerry on the grounds that things might be "slightly better" for them in terms of social services is like constructing mathematical systems to "win the lottery". Even if possible, the real world result won't be very helpful...your ticket will still be a highly probable loser.
Note also the appeal to support Kerry on the grounds that if we don't, that means "we don't really care about people".
It's politics as charity -- a core message of reformism and also quite wide-spread among less sophisticated Leninists.
The message is that we of the left are "humanitarians"...in fact, we're "more humanitarian" than even Jimmy Carter or Mother Teresa. We are just here to "help people". We are "so good" and "so virtuous", right?
Wrong! We who are serious are here to abolish wage-slavery!
That is the human suffering that we wish to eliminate from the face of the planet. That is what will get rid of capitalists and their violent state machinery. That is what will make "all the goodies" freely available to all on the basis of need.
I have no quarrel with individuals who wish to personally devote their time and energies to the immediate alleviation of human suffering...though I do point out that they are unlikely to have any measurable impact on the totality of suffering. There's simply too much of it.
But I have a deep and profound quarrel with those who place "relieving human suffering" at the heart of our project; it would mean that we would never get around to attacking the root cause of human suffering...class society!
In this "election" and all of those to come, I think we should tell people the plain truth.
No one you vote for is going to change your life for the better!
If you want a better life, you'll have to fight for it.
So those who prefer to ignore the real world are also saying: "please ignore me." And they will achieve that result.
Oh dear. No cover of Time? No invitation to write an op-ed piece for the Washington Post? No face-time on the dummyvision?
What this is, really, is an appeal to egotism...a powerful appeal in class society. Many lefties have a pretty deep-rooted fear of being "ineffective" or, to put it another way, "unnoticed", "ignored", "insignificant", etc. By the standards of class society, your "status" is no better than that of some poor wino asleep on the sidewalk.
How "intolerable"!
I propose a different alternative: that we deliver our real message as best we can...and let time do its work.
If we do our real job and do it well, the time will come when the bourgeois media will come calling and we will be "significant" and no longer "ignored".
And when they do show, by the way, my advice is that we should tell them to fuck off! They are a bunch of professional liars, are they not?
:redstar2000:
The Redstar2000 Papers (http://www.redstar2000papers.fightcapitalism.net)
A site about communist ideas
I have emailed him this response...sometimes he just sends an email telling how busy he is and how he cant respond to long emails....but we will see.