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difference without apologies
It's a well-worn argument to suggest that the Left (whatever exactly that is) should spend more time learning from the Right (ditto), taking a few leaves out of the books of Reagan, Wall Street, Madison Avenue, the Southern Baptist Convention, Bush, the Republican Party, Harper, what or whomever have you...
They must be doing something right, it is suggested. And the reason the Democrats remain in opposition, the US army is in Iraq, property relations have yet to be abolished... is that the Left, perhaps particularly some ultra-leftist fraction, is too busy with merely "symbolic" politics, too obsessed with political and personal purity, to face up to the real questions of power.
A latest version of such a rebuke, directed specifically our way (if also while digging up a history of the SDS and the 1960s more generally), comes courtesy of the Valve: More Groovy Street Theatre. But it's a tired, tired complaint. Moreover, it'd at least be something if it were a Lenin denouncing us as infantile.
Anyhow, where does one start a response? By pointing out that to discredit critiques of "the idea of power" is effectively to discredit critique tout court? By noting that a pragmatism extolling the "socially viable or politically efficacious" is a posture as ideological as any other? By observing that there may be a reason or two why the Right does certain things (populism, to take but one) rather better than does the Left? By contrasting a simplistic critique of the 1960s (simplistic in part because it's no more than a mirror image of the Reagan/Thatcherite blaming of all social ills on that period) with more sustained historical reflection? By pointing to the raft of counter-examples from "New Labour" to the sorry recent histories of (say) the US Democrats or the Canadian Liberals? By demonstrating that this "more politically efficacious than thou" stance shares too much with the fantasy of a "more politically pure than thou" position that it invents as its own sorry justification?
Further suggestions welcomed. In fact, apologies. Comments are now closed. Scott is welcome to have the last word.
By Charles Denis Bourbaki | January 27, 2006 in Afflicting the Comfortable, Doltishness, Fashionable Nonesense, Post-politics, Protest, Robust, Scalable Enterprise Solutions, Specious Rhetorical Strategies | Permalink
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Comments
I'm going to go out on a limb here and show some towering contempt in preferring not to respond to posts "informed" by the politics of Sean Mc-Doesn't-Get-It. Scott Kaufman's post strikes me as deeply and disturbingly malformed, as the comments over there do not hesitate to suggest. This impression does not, however, detract from my personal fondness, general liking and respect for Scott in any manner.
On re-viving Students for a Democratic Society (reviving with a silent hyphen, mind you!), Scott McLemee has a, shall we say, more positive take (for which you will need to scroll down, some).
Posted by: Matt | Jan 28, 2006 12:19:58 AM
The times they are A Changin'
Posted by: nonymous | Jan 28, 2006 12:29:28 AM
Probably a good call, Matt. The Valve post is "malformed" at best. Still, and without necessarily dignifying such "ignorant guy yapping", it also seems worth addressing, from time to time, the more general argument. It is indeed far from uncommon.
And what's at issue is serious: whether politics is simply a matter of negotiation and disenchanted imitation; or by contrast how we should attend to (and indeed invent) other forms of political activity and engagement.
Posted by: Charles | Jan 28, 2006 1:29:04 AM
No I agree, without condition; only sorry if I'm short on suggestions just now. Maybe the Lenny Bruce dvd we rented tonight will offer inspiration (it's either that or "Grizzly Man")...Good post.
Posted by: Matt | Jan 28, 2006 1:47:31 AM
It might be worth reconsidering the formulation of "facing up to the real questions of power". A bit like in realist film, the semblance of 'reality' (not to mention 'power') which one's approach or success might be judged by takes quite a bit of editing, decisions about angle, lighting and so on. The realpolitik gesture merely declines to be open about those processes, or to simply assert their naturalness.
Posted by: s0metim3s | Jan 28, 2006 9:42:30 AM
Charles I think you nicely sum up the key issue that Scott is raising:
"whether politics is simply a matter of negotiation and disenchanted imitation; or by contrast how we should attend to (and indeed invent) other forms of political activity and engagement."
Now this may sound lame, but can't it be both at the same time? Clearly we need to envision and participate in other forms of engagement and not merely settle for whatever mechanisms already exist. But simultaneously, we also need to be engaged at the "ontic" level of politics - building the structures and capacities for participating in politics as it is played.
Certainly the democratic party response (represented by tools like Gore and Kerry) can be summed up as "imperialism lite." Nevertheless, they are clearly a far better choice than the Bush military Junta. Many might disagree with me but it seems absolutely certain that so many things would be different: domestic spying and the powers of the "Unitary Executive" would not be on the table for discussion, basic reproductive rights would not be threatened, "enemy combatants" would not exist. We could make a list of such things but I think you get the idea.
I do not share all of the cynicism represented in Scott's post. I think the SDS movement was, if nothing else, a wonderful experiment. And the Port Huron Statement is a brilliant affirmation of participatory democratic ideals. But we also have to "stop the bleeding" before we can find a cure. Thanks.
Posted by: Alain | Jan 28, 2006 11:08:23 AM
Craig, I wasn't, as you suggest, mouthing a Reagan era critique of the New Left. If anything, I was mouthing Irving Howe's infamous critique of the New Left. One can drop out, yes, and critique to one's heart content, but if one does one must also deal with the very real consequences of such an action. To date, the New Left's legacy has consisted of political theater and little else: the Civil Rights movement is more a product of WWII-inspired empowerment on the part of African-Americans; women's liberation had material origins in the changing nature of the workforce and the family; the Vietnam War ended not because people protested but because, well, the US lost, &c. What, therefore, did the New Left accomplish? What have its heirs?
I also think you missed the final point I maade in that post: contra the idea of complicity, they still have so much left to compromise. Everyone in the '60s assumed we had reached the nadir, and that withdrawing at this point wouldn't make things worse but could, possibly, make them better. They were, frankly, dead wrong. Can we at least agree on this? And if we can, doesn't that suggest that, bad as things currently are, another retreat into purely symbolic politics might have similarly unimaginable consequences?
Matt, I don't think my post malformed, altough I obviously knew I'd catch flack when I wrote it. If anything, I wrote it because of a profound distrust of the sort of symbolic gestures that brought us to this particular historical moment. Whatever else the evisceration of a left coalition has accomplished, the one thing we can definitively point to is the current administration. (Which is why, to return to Craig's critique, I don't see myself parroting Reagan conservatives...if anything, I'm complaining about how quaint Reagan conservatives seem today.)
Alain, I appreciate the benefit of the doubt, and I do think that I'm about as cynical now as I've ever been...which is why this statement says more eloquently what I intended to say:
Clearly we need to envision and participate in other forms of engagement and not merely settle for whatever mechanisms already exist. But simultaneously, we also need to be engaged at the "ontic" level of politics - building the structures and capacities for participating in politics as it is played.
Posted by: Scott Eric Kaufman | Jan 28, 2006 1:50:10 PM
Note to readership: this is my first comment in the thread! Scott, I think you mean Charles.
Posted by: Craig | Jan 28, 2006 2:16:28 PM
Actually Craig, I was preemptively tarring you.
Posted by: Scott Eric Kaufman | Jan 28, 2006 2:22:08 PM
Have I become predictable already? Either way, I'm duly scared.
Posted by: Craig | Jan 28, 2006 2:24:54 PM
I'm sorry to be the one to have to inform you, Craig, but you jumped the shark like three weeks ago.
Posted by: Scott Eric Kaufman | Jan 28, 2006 2:28:24 PM
The right obviously is doing something right - i.e, winning elections, dominating the mainstream media, influencing public opinion, and implementing conservative policies. It would be plainly idiotic for the left not to try to learn the appropriate lessons from this success.
Symbolic politcs are only helpful to the extent they help achieve the mundane political goals of those on the left - shaping public opinion, winning elections, and implementing progressive policies. At the end of the day, I have no idea what other meaningful purpose symoblic politics could have.
If street theatre no longer helps attain these goals- or even worse actually stands in the way - it ought to be disdained.
Posted by: blah | Jan 28, 2006 3:54:22 PM
A small pedantic note: isn't it pretty much an established historical fact that (as the politicians themselves admit) anti-war protest contributed greatly, if not definitively, to "ending" the Vietnam war?
They've wisened up some since then, to be sure (just read Christian Parenti); but without the more radical wing of the "symbolic" left (as if politics were ever anything but), the disneyMLK caricature/benigning industry would never have been necessary in the first.
Luther Blisset over on Scott's thread writes:
"Yeah, I hate symbolic politics too! Screw you, Martin Luther King, Jr.! Screw you and your March on Washington! Screw you and your stay in Birmingham Jail! Don’t you know that politics means pinching your nose and voting! That’s it! Marching, talking, writing, that’s all just so symbolic."
Yeah, not to mention the example of Malcolm X has nothing at all to offer in a time of renewed COINTELPRO-era measures and paradigms. Liberation Theology failed because it was just too damn symbolic. None of these complete failures had anything to do with an unprecedented backlash on the part of those in (greater) power, including some pretty significat symbolic, paradigmatic adjustments. It's only "street theatre" when "the Left" (whatever this is) does it, not when some acidhead CIA goon smashes skulls in Chicago.
Those are just some of the incredibly reductive, and thus deeply unhelpful (not to mention lazy and habitually cynical - rather than 'kynical') conflations I see in your position, Scott. Of course it isn't hard to identify a sort of MTV carnival pseudo-politics these days, and within the self-marketing so-called "anti-globalization" or "anti-free™trade" demos especially. I'm not saying there isn't room for sociological critique of them. But to use this identification of a contempory poverty as grounds to dismiss the entire new left, from say 1967-1972, as nothing but a complete failure, well. It's just plain sort of naive, opportunistic and unhelpful. Is this what they call the "new historicism" then - blame everything wrong with the present on the losing side's efforts from broad and indiscriminating swaths of the past? Frederick Douglass he doth come to mind.
The point about power relations (Archive's esp.) is not just academic. The point about post-politics is not just academic. But then we've had these sorts of conversations before.
Posted by: Matt | Jan 28, 2006 4:34:32 PM
Scott, less of the ignorant guy yapping, please. To take some of the points you puport to address to Craig: I wasn't saying that your blaming the ills on the present for the follies of the sixties was "mouthing a Reagan era critique of the New Left." I said that the posture you were adopting was a "mirror image" of that critique. Nor did I ever claim you were original.
As for the legacy of the New Left, I'm glad to see that over on the Valve some of the commenters have suggested paths towards what I termed a "more sustained historical reflection" on the SDS, the anti-war movement, and the like.
And yes I got your point about "purely symbolic politics" and compromise. That was precisely the point my response to your sideswipe was attended to address. As Angela notes, it sets up by contrast a rather strange conception of a political "real" secured, apparently, by electoral participation and the like.
And I agree with Alain that the image of the ultra-pure leftist that Scott invents is an unhelpful mirage. But to put it this way: Scott, how much compromise do you accept of those to whom you give up political representation? You seem to set up the possibility of an infinite compromise, secured again by this New Left monster of infinite refusal.
There are important issues here, around (to use rather different language) strategy, tactics, Exodus, autonomy, the real and the symbolic, and so on. And again I apologize if, as Matt suggests, by stooping to respond to the cheap jabs of Holbo's mighty organ I have also allowed myself to become reactive (as Nietzsche might say). Still, there goes the myth of ultra-left purity once more.
But finally, one other thing. Scott's position resonated with me in part because I have recently elsewhere also seen and heard so much denigration of the "symbolic" on the part of those who allege they value the literary.
Scott's post echoed a crude affirmation of social democrat Realpolitick that seems increasingly common in what I'd have thought were the unlikeliest quarters. Never mind that, like populism, Realpolitick is something the Right do rather better than the Left, and again for good reason. If these are the people into whose hands we entrust literature, then God help us all. For they are prepared to sacrifice it as lightly as they sacrifice everything else.
(I know it's been said before. But still.)
Posted by: Charles | Jan 28, 2006 4:59:33 PM
A small pedantic note: isn't it pretty much an established historical fact that (as the politicians themselves admit) anti-war protest contributed greatly, if not definitively, to "ending" the Vietnam war?
No. This is actually a disputed issue. See, e.g., here, here, and here.
Posted by: blah | Jan 28, 2006 5:28:48 PM
A small pedantic note: isn't it pretty much an established historical fact that (as the politicians themselves admit) anti-war protest contributed greatly, if not definitively, to "ending" the Vietnam war?
Not to my knowledge, no. It's "common knowledge" that the spectacle hastened the end of the war--taken for what it's worth--but it's not established historical fact. The strongest argument I've seen to support it is that public pressure prevented the military from sending over enough troops to get the job done, but that implies that more troops would've won a war the brass obviously didn't know how to fight.
Yeah, not to mention the example of Malcolm X has nothing at all to offer in a time of renewed COINTELPRO-era measures and paradigms. Liberation Theology failed because it was just too damn symbolic. None of these complete failures had anything to do with an unprecedented backlash on the part of those in (greater) power, including some pretty significat symbolic, paradigmatic adjustments. It's only "street theatre" when "the Left" (whatever this is) does it, not when some acidhead CIA goon smashes skulls in Chicago.
You're confusing a number of issues, as was LB. The Civil Rights movement was a concerted political action, not political theater. It wasn't symbolic in the sense that the New Left stunts were so much as acts of civil disobedience. Big difference. But your mention of Malcolm X is fortuituous, since the veiled threat he presented is partly responsible for MLK's success: MLK could point to X and say "That's your alternative."
As for whether Mayor Daley's thugs performed "street theater" during the '68 Democratic convention, well, that statement's borderline absurd. When a machine-politician sends his low level enforcers out to attack protesters, that's as "inside politics" as you get, I'd say.
I'm not saying there isn't room for sociological critique of them. But to use this identification of a contempory poverty as grounds to dismiss the entire new left, from say 1967-1972, as nothing but a complete failure, well.
I'm not blaming the New Left really; I'm merely pointing out what they proudly did, the steps they open took and their consequences. They didn't form the kind of coalitions the New Right did, and look what's happened: the extreme faction of the Republican Party has lurched the country to the right. The New Left had an opportunity to build (or at the very least, sustain) the coalitions of the Old Left. Instead, its leaders decided to withdraw from the arena of conventional politics, which also had the salutary effect of ensuring a centrist Democratic Party of the sort the DLC runs.
Charles, I don't know where to begin addressing your oh so generous broadside. I'm tempted just not to. Should I ridicule you for suggesting I thought my arguments original when I cited the thought informing them in the post itself? Should I chuckle at your assertion that my belief in the inefficacy of the New Left makes me unqualified to teach literature? Should I consider seriously the false binary you've created--it's symbolic politics or electoral participation--as if there isn't far more to both symbolic and conventional politics, like say where time and energy are invested? Decisions, decisions...
Posted by: Scott Eric Kaufman | Jan 28, 2006 5:39:15 PM
Scott, on generosity, know thyself. Likewise, on false binaries.
As to the broader point on the relation between the symbolic, the efficacious, and the literary, perhaps it would be better to wait for another occasion. Rest assured, however, that the point is not about you and your qualifications.
Posted by: Charles | Jan 28, 2006 5:55:36 PM
If you think that's ungenerous, you completely misread the friendly, playful tone that exchange.
Posted by: Scott Eric Kaufman | Jan 28, 2006 5:59:00 PM
Scott writes:
"The New Left would have created coalitions had it not spent its collective energies on blowing your mind. While the New Right hunkered down in positions of power, the New Left waged a public relations war against the idea of power in all its various guises: “The System,” “The Man,” “Them.” Capitalize one letter of Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff‘s famous diatribe and you capture the attitude perfectly..."
"Like Dr. Wagstaff, the New Left favored performance over complicity in the system. (The resurgent popularity of the Marx Brothers in the ‘60s wasn’t an accident.)"
Are you really so sure that I'm the one confusing issues?
Again, LB is simply spot-on:
"Rich writes, “The sphere of politics is not neatly divided into the two alternatives “symbolic” and “electoral”.”
That’s exactly my point. Scott wrote that he’s of the “change the system from within” group. If by “the System” Scott means the government, then that leaves all political work outside The System in the realm of what Scott seems to be criticizing as “symbolic politics.” I think symbolic politics is totally essential, as long as they are in the service of specific policy changes and not just of a lifestyle.
And Rich, if community organizing equals non-symbolic politics, then a good deal of the anti-war and Black Power and gay rights and feminist movements wouldn’t be symbolic. I’ve met a lot of black folks who had steady meals due to Black Power community initiatives.
I’m not trying to defend the New Left. But too much of the anti-New-Left critique sounds like a bunch of straight white men complaining that *their* agenda lost because of the New Left, when the true forces that defeated the Old Left include (a) the association of American class politics with Stalinists and Communism; (b) the “defeat” of Communism; (c) the demonization of the black and urban poor; (d) the use of abortion, and now gay rights, to split the blue collar vote. The Right has grown in power precisely by alienating the cities (both symbolically and actually), by pitting white against black, by pitting Christians against gays and abortion. Point of fact: if the Democrats had opposed abortion in 04, the Republicans would have lost hard.
And the reaction by a lot of anti-New-Left guys is to blame blacks, women, and gays—by blaming the New Left."
Posted by: Matt | Jan 28, 2006 5:59:52 PM
As I told LB, Matt, I'm not sure why people consider the kind of coalition-building responsible for the Civil Rights movement as "symbolic." If I meant that, and I thought it fairly obvious that I didn't, then the only thing that doesn't belong to the realm of "symbolic politics" would be voting...which would be absurd.
Posted by: Scott Eric Kaufman | Jan 28, 2006 6:08:51 PM
It's true, today voting is mostly symbolic.
Or was that "symbolic." What you mean to reference by this word, and its stakes, are, to say the least, unclear.
Posted by: Matt | Jan 28, 2006 6:22:06 PM
"then the only thing that doesn't belong to the realm of "symbolic politics" would be voting...which would be absurd."
Scott, as per my comment on the Valve, your post there sure seemed to buy into that absurdity.
Posted by: Jon | Jan 28, 2006 6:22:28 PM
Jon, re-reading my post, I'm not sure why that is. I spend the majority of it focused on the New Left's disdain for coalitional politics and eventual withdrawal from them, and only indicate, glancingly, that the concerted apathy of the refusal to vote represents one such withdrawal. But that's neither here nor there, since absolutely everyone took it to be that vote/everything-else-is-symbolic binary.
Posted by: Scott Eric Kaufman | Jan 28, 2006 6:32:13 PM
the concerted apathy of the refusal to vote represents one such withdrawal
But the disagreement, surely, has much to do with the way you assume desertion (whether from voting or certain 'united fronts') is apathetic. It might indicate a lack of affective purchase, or an increasingly negative affective response, to particular kinds of politics, but it doesn't follow that indifference is thereby the order of the day.
It's the way you define the boundary of the political that's, in part, at issue. And all great political movements, to the extent that they exist as movements and not just sociological figments of such, contest what this boundary is. This is why, among other reasons, they're called movements.
And it's in movement that power lies. States (and capital) merely respond to such, for better and usually worse.
Posted by: s0metim3s | Jan 28, 2006 8:50:37 PM
Matt, your comment inspired me to post about the symbolic over at Posthegemony.
Posted by: Jon | Jan 28, 2006 9:22:40 PM
But the disagreement, surely, has much to do with the way you assume desertion (whether from voting or certain 'united fronts') is apathetic.
Actually, I think the disagreement's with so many different people on so many different fronts that it's no wonder no one ever brings up such issues. However, in this case, I can clarify something:
I don't think apathy an appropos description at all, hence the oxymoronic phrase "concerted apathy." (I should note that I've been on an oxymoron kick, which may be partly responsible for the confusion.) What's responsible for the debate is my choice to illustrate instead of define "symbolic politics," I think, since that's led everyone to assume I meant "voting is political, everything else isn't."
Posted by: Scott Eric Kaufman | Jan 28, 2006 9:38:52 PM
Are we, then, back to discussing the paradigmatic and the exemplar?
Posted by: s0metim3s | Jan 28, 2006 10:29:27 PM
Hmmm... is the New Left really to blame for the decline of mainstream Democratic politics, or did it succumb to its own internal tensions and contradictions?
Was the New Left really self-defeating, or did the extraordinary pressure brought to bear on it both by public sources of power and by covert and clandestine ones have something to do with it?
Mind you, one characteristic gesture of the New Left was to backett off the experiences of the old left as not worth paying much attention to or learning from. Would be a shame to make that mistake all over again...
Posted by: McKenzie Wark | Jan 29, 2006 4:54:56 PM
Was the New Left really self-defeating, or did the extraordinary pressure brought to bear on it both by public sources of power and by covert and clandestine ones have something to do with it?
I must say, it continues to strike me as really odd that Scott seems not to have ears for this. There is now massive evidence for the previously undestimated breadth and depth of such a backlash (previously underestimated to the 5th degree, at least) - again, see Christian Parenti's book, Lockdown America, just for instance - a goldmine of research into the prison-industrial shitf primarily, and which opens with the famous quote from H.R. Halderman: "Nixon always emphasized that the real problem was just the blacks. The trick was to devise a system that recognized this without appearing to...")
Anyway, Scott's response appears to be:
"while I think we agree (how could we not?) that there’s been a backlash, we differ as to its origins. I locate them, pace this post, in part in the withdrawal of leftists from conventional politics."
Which, rather unsatisfactorily, seems to be something of a watering-down of his post's assertions without of course necessarily watering-down anything. In other words, neither here nor there.
Posted by: Matt | Jan 29, 2006 10:52:37 PM
Matt, I'm not deaf to that point, I'm just not wedded to the celebration of a politics which failed in almost every respect. I understand why people would think, "well, the circumstances weren't ripe for its success, but next time it'll succeed," but as I quick check the contemporary political scene, I don't sense that they'd be more likely to succeed now than they didn't then . . . and am frankly baffled as to why anyone would think otherwise. On the other hand, I do see a very successful coup of popular politics by a coalition of fringe interests and wonder whether revulsion to its politics has blinded people to the obvious success of its methods. I don't see why bouldering ahead employing the same ineffective tactics (or rehashing previously ineffective ones) seems like such an attractive solution to so many people. (I think I know some reasons why, but they have to do with the aestheticization of certain political positions and are neither immediately nor self-evidently germane, and since people have spent the past two days willfully or ignorantly mistaking an Old Left critique of the New Left for Reagan Era boosterism, I'm not up for making subtle arguments. Man, quasi-political blogging bites.)
Posted by: Scott Eric Kaufman | Jan 30, 2006 2:25:52 AM
Scott has been asking commenters to return to his post, while acknowledging that "absolutely everyone" has read it in ways that he claims are other than his intention.
Let me mimic his gesture and repeat the various points I made here, points that I indicated were far from exhaustive:
1) to discredit critiques of "the idea of power" is effectively to discredit critique tout court
2) a pragmatism extolling the "socially viable or politically efficacious" is a posture as ideological as any other
3) there may be a reason or two why the Right does certain things (populism, to take but one) rather better than does the Left
4) [We should contrast] a simplistic critique of the 1960s (simplistic in part because it's no more than a mirror image of the Reagan/Thatcherite blaming of all social ills on that period) with more sustained historical reflection
5) [We could point] to the raft of counter-examples from "New Labour" to the sorry recent histories of (say) the US Democrats or the Canadian Liberals
6) this "more politically efficacious than thou" stance shares too much with the fantasy of a "more politically pure than thou" position that it invents as its own sorry justification
And let me say that I hardly think they can be reduced to "willfully or ignorantly mistaking an Old Left critique of the New Left for Reagan Era boosterism." I'm sorry that they, and the numerous other responses both here and at the Valve, have been represented in that way.
Posted by: Charles | Jan 30, 2006 3:36:12 AM
I thought that folks engaged in this discussion might be interested in a piece in the NYTimes today about judge Scalito. It talks about this being the culmination of an effort that was 25 years in the making:
"Judge Alito's confirmation is also the culmination of a disciplined campaign begun by the Reagan administration to seed the lower federal judiciary with like-minded jurists who could reorient the federal courts toward a view of the Constitution much closer to its 18th-century authors' intent, including a much less expansive view of its application to individual rights and federal power. It was a philosophy promulgated by Edwin Meese III, attorney general in the Reagan administration, that became the gospel of the Federalist Society and the nascent conservative legal movement.
Both Mr. Roberts and Mr. Alito were among the cadre of young conservative lawyers attracted to the Reagan administration's Justice Department. And both advanced to the pool of promising young jurists whom strategists like C. Boyden Gray, White House counsel in the first Bush administration and an adviser to the current White House, sought to place throughout the federal judiciary to groom for the highest court.
"It is a Reagan personnel officer's dream come true," said Douglas W. Kmiec, a law professor at Pepperdine University who worked with Mr. Alito and Mr. Roberts in the Reagan administration. "It is a graduation. These individuals have been in study and preparation for these roles all their professional lives."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/30/politics/politicsspecial1/30alito.html?th&emc=th
Posted by: Alain | Jan 30, 2006 10:50:18 AM
Alain, that article almost makes it sound like the far Right infiltrated the Republican party and changed it from within . . . and that that had been their intention all along. Shame on me for suggesting that the left lost an opportunity to accomplish something similar, or for arguing that it can still be done today.
Charles,
1) to discredit critiques of "the idea of power" is effectively to discredit critique tout court
How so? And where do I call for the abolition of critiques of the idea of power? I seem to recall discussing the ineffectiveness of the particular public relations war waged by the New Left against any and all institutions, against "the idea of power" as instantiated in abstractions like "The System," but I fail to see how criticizing the efficacy of those specific rhetorical gestures undermines critique tout court.
2) a pragmatism extolling the "socially viable or politically efficacious" is a posture as ideological as any other
Everything's ideological. What's your point?
3) there may be a reason or two why the Right does certain things (populism, to take but one) rather better than does the Left
For all your blustering about how criminally ahistorical my original post was, you don't seem to realize that the Left monopolized populist discourse for the latter half of the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries. Are you saying it's impossible for them to do so again? Why?
4) [We should contrast] a simplistic critique of the 1960s (simplistic in part because it's no more than a mirror image of the Reagan/Thatcherite blaming of all social ills on that period) with more sustained historical reflection
You demonstrated the simplicity of my critique where? In the first reply, Matt trotted out the old saw about the peace movement ending the Vietnam War. No offense intended, Matt, but that's a far more simplistic understanding of the era than anything I said, yet I heard no complaints. Or are you only interested in "oversimplifications" which fail to flatter your own position.
Or I could respond strictly with logic and say: Just because Reagan and Thatcher said something doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong. If Reagan had woken up, saw that it was raining and said "it's raining," you'd be in a pickle.
Or I could say that your statement about the Reagan-era blaming of all social ills on the '60s has absolutely no bearing on my statement that the withdrawal of the New Left from the political scene is partly responsible for the current lurch to the far Right. Unless, of course, you're aiming for pure rhetoric and emptying what Reagan would've considered "social ills" and what I consider "far right conservatism" of all meaning. I suppose, then, you could say that the structure of our laments are similar despite the fact that I'm lamenting the establishment of the very social order Reagan wanted to establish. But what would be the point in that?
6) this "more politically efficacious than thou" stance shares too much with the fantasy of a "more politically pure than thou" position that it invents as its own sorry justification
The fantasy that "more politically pure than thou" position is a fantasy boggles my mind almost as much as your contention that it's impossible to determine the political efficacy of particular strategies. It isn't. We can look at the New Left's stated goals. We can examine their political tactics. We can see that they didn't accomplish their stated goals. We can say that means something's wrong with their tactics. Furthermore, we can say, as I did, that it's preferable not to employ strategies which failed to achieve their objectives in the past.
Posted by: Scott Eric Kaufman | Jan 30, 2006 12:29:53 PM
Good grief Scott, that was a "small pedantic note" raised as a naive question, one designed to help the conversariat along. I think Charles' points and those of others rather clearly stand, but given your responses (here as well as over there) perhaps it would be better just to drop it (though without necessarily "flying the coop," perhaps). After all one lesson to be learned from the New Left's failures is knowing when to quit.
I will refer readers back to Ray Davis' most recent comment, however, and this will most likely be my last contribution to this thread. Suffice to say we're not about to definitively resolve the legacies of the "counter-culture," SDS, or the New Left today. Ray writes:
"Here’s the “WTF” factor: It may or may not be 1968 in Canadian politics. But it is surely not 1968 in the arts. Who are the new sticking-it-to-the-man novelists? China Mieville? Which major movie directors are forming revolutionary collectives? Where are the rifle-waving poets? Ron Silliman doesn’t count, does he? Jackson Mac Low and Carl Rakosi died recently, and I don’t know of any successors—and those are the kind of “political poets” we could use more of anyway.
Nor does it seem that publishers are getting into radical chic, or that book reviewers are attacking writers for their bourgeois timidity, or that ballet houses are hosting tributes to the Chairman.
You posted your lament on “a literary organ”, but I don’t see the baleful influence of the New Left on literature.
My guess would be that you’re more concerned about the baleful influence of the New Left on English departments—but if I’m correct then that does, yes, seem to land us into “Theory” territory again, and the whole odd problem of determining the political utility of English departments under any circumstances."
I will also say that today's s lot is excellent.
Posted by: Matt | Jan 30, 2006 1:14:17 PM
You don't need a weatherman to know which way, and so on.
You also don't need a new holier-than-thou historicism, spin off the tongue and shelter deeper myths as it may.
(Both of those being links, perhaps worth clicking through.)
Posted by: Blip | Jan 30, 2006 5:20:16 PM
Scott:
I write: "to discredit critiques." You write: "the abolition of critiques."
I write: "more sustained historical reflection." You write: "blustering about how criminally ahistorical."
And so on and so forth.
You're not serious about this discussion, are you? I'd be tempted to say that it's simply a performance, simply symbolic, on your part.
Anyhow, I'm with Matt. It was, in retrospect, a mistake to respond to Scott's sideswipe in the first place, even by trying to raise broader issues. I apologize to all and sundry.
Posted by: Charles | Jan 30, 2006 6:38:13 PM
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