tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33431390.post3939117515292918514..comments2024-03-26T11:07:03.496-04:00Comments on Ed Notes Online: How the Global Left Destroyed Itself (or, All sex is not rape, but most poverty is) | naked capitalismed notes onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15018047869059226777noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33431390.post-7218837378538252982016-11-30T17:26:08.387-05:002016-11-30T17:26:08.387-05:00Of course, my mouth-foaming was, I hope to people ...Of course, my mouth-foaming was, I hope to people who know me, rhetorical.<br /><br />Thank you, Michael, for clarifying the intent of the argument. I have been reading so many ill-tempered, unpersuasive and simply canting arguments about "identity politics" the last three weeks that I may be primed to react like a hydrophobic dog at this point whenever I see the term.<br /><br />I accept that American leftists, and most certainly the Democratic Party, have fetishized elements of what we used to call, less pejoratively, "cultural pluralism" (and words really do mean something short of enforced PC-ism) to the almost complete ejection from the conversation about developing a message that promotes fuller class consciousness and economic policies that can reach a much broader swathe of the American people.<br /><br />I urge everyone, however, to think constructively about how pluralism and populism can be joined together to make a compelling alternative message to the on that's been piped into the political culture for years now. I haven't been to a MORE meeting in a very long time and have PTSD thinking about some of the arguments about all of this, though I understand that things have calmed down in that grouplet of my friends and colleagues. <br /><br />I expect that the conversation will be no easier to resolve on the national stage than inside MORE but we can surely hope.<br /><br />Good luck on Friday. I hope to get a full report.Harris Lnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33431390.post-85832895952429317162016-11-30T13:46:40.762-05:002016-11-30T13:46:40.762-05:00Harris, it's not that those whose identities a...Harris, it's not that those whose identities are oppressed lack a class-based understanding, it's that (in the case of the US) the Democratic Party completely abandoned the language of class, and substituted in its place the language of personal identity, important but incomplete. And that language of personal identity was too often underpinned by attitudes that were deeply class-bound. It reached a point where it appeared the Democrats were indifferent to economic suffering , inequality and injustice, just so long our neoliberal overseers met some gender, racial and other metrics. That is indeed a house built on sand, as I think the election has proven.<br /><br />It's not that civil rights, gay rights - I personally witnessed the Stonewall rebellion and its aftermath as a politically precocious 12 year-old, and saw the powerful Left currents at work in the gay rights movement of the time - and feminism must be sacrificed in order to achieve some fairy tale image of class consciousness; it's that the Democratic Party, symbolized by the Clintons, triangulated away its base by sacrificing workers - no matter their race, gender or gender identity - on the altars of "free trade," Silicon Valley and Wall Street.<br /><br />If it had remained even remotely true to its New Deal roots (which, admittedly, were problematic in many respects), we'd be having a very different discussion today.Michael Fiorillohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02120229151713643775noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33431390.post-62252087993602366862016-11-30T12:41:28.028-05:002016-11-30T12:41:28.028-05:00Is it possible the issue is foaming at the mouth w...Is it possible the issue is foaming at the mouth which can prevent rational discussion? The comment yesterday listing the heart of the progressive movement disenfranchised people in my category. Being cut loose from the progressive movement may prove liberating ed notes onlinehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15018047869059226777noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33431390.post-52202994388648013632016-11-30T12:12:10.352-05:002016-11-30T12:12:10.352-05:00I'm foaming at the mouth (some may think that ...I'm foaming at the mouth (some may think that my natural state) that some people on the left actually believe that those of us who find themselves by the genetic lottery or by choice in the "identitarian left" do not, or cannot, have a full and complete understanding of the way that their lives are embedded in a class structure which perpetuates racism and that the centuries long struggle to free individuals from social and cultural repression does not also advance social justice and the fight against capitalist and class-based oppression.<br /><br />It's not "identitarian politics" that destroyed the Global Left--it's the binary and absolutist thinking on the left that categorizes people and processes like this that will be its death.<br /><br />I won't be able to attend the ICE meeting, where I hope that some element of my understanding of the issues now facing us gets some voice.Harris Lnoreply@blogger.com