During the closing plenary of the 2005 Left Forum—the conference formerly known as the Socialist Scholars—Bogdan Denitch of the Institute on Transitions to Democracy asserted, “Ninety-nine percent of the American people are to the right of us in this room.” Granted, in context, the remark was to be taken as a wake-up call. Yet, there was something self-congratulatory about it… return to article
-
subscribe to print magazine
-
email this article to a friend
-
Reader Comments (11)Page 1 of 1 pagesIndeed we do need to step outside as well. I’ve not seen an ITT column with this kind of thinking in a long time. I’ll be watching Jody Kolodzey’s column’s in the future.
Posted by Ben Manski on May 5, 2005 at 7:29 PM TO THE FAR LEFT:
I wish to communicate something to you I feel very passionate about. Pardon me if I come across preachy. You can be, in my opinion, an important force in resuscitating genuine democratic impulses and advancing the further devlopment of democracy. But you can’t do it the way you have been going. From this report you seem to be beginning to realize that. You can be a powerful ‘outside’ by becoming able to penetrate and understand and touch deeply a culture not disposed to democracy even though its deepest conviction is that it is the model of democracy. Wow! What a task!
How useful or un-useful the far left critique may be should not be the focus of attention. Relevance is the central issue. Forget morality and self-confidence rooted in feeling you are right. There are no existing blueprints.
Aristotle laid down a fundamental pragmatic principle: “Whatever is reeived is received according to the disposition of the receiver.” For the most part--very, very most part--the various dispositions of the American people abide within the realm of a virtually closed hegemonic culture, not a democratic one. (By democratic I mean roughly open-minded, concerned about common matters, compassionate, disposed to dialogue, wanting informed opinion, and focused on the solutions that a community can come to agreement on.)
Becoming relevant, in my opinion based on 25 years of experimenting with developing a small democratic culture entails putting intense effort into finding out how to connect to people within this virtually closed culture. This becomes priority #1, #2, and #3. Expect it to take 100 years. Know that humility must over-ride FEELING sure of yourself and your opions. Very, very few of us are predominantly democratic in our personalities. We carry our inherited culture deeply within us. The process of developing democracy as much as possible in our country must bring us into deeper understandings of what it means to be democratic in our hearts, minds, and behavior. The two are inseparable. Non-dogmatic self-evaluation is a life-long process.
This prodigious effort of self-work and finding out to connect with the so undisposed audience is worth it, well worth it. There is a democratic tradition in our culture that is still breathing although it is buried within hegemonic dimensions of overwhelming passivity, consumerism, Chistian Coalition and Corporate America predominance.
I hope this is useful.
joncehart
Posted by joncehart on May 8, 2005 at 6:25 AM Reading ITT online is usually a good antidote for having to live in right-wing Republican Idaho.
However, I find joncehart’s comments more relevant than anything you wrote in your report on the recent 2005 Left Forum. Your report is chatty, but it says nothing about politically relevant views that might have been exchanged at this forum, although having seen the escalating irrelevance of the far left to anything communicable to ordinary folks in this country, perhaps there was nothing of relevance actually said there!
The far left is still mired in straightjackets of ideology, unfortunately.Baraka—“The question is, what kind of alternative have we, the intellectuals, created that they feel magnetized to?” --made the crucial point.
Likewise, the postmodernist, post-colonialist critics have the same problem that Baraka points to here. They are also irrelevant to the growing perception among all kinds of citizens that we have a lousy political system that is malfunctioning and corrupt. These intellectuals have nothing to offer. What does the Left have to offer in the way of remedies today?
Posted by jo on May 9, 2005 at 9:02 PM At this time the most viable ‘remedy’ would be to forestall the momentum of our retreat to the nineteenth century and halt any further erosion of the rights and sensibilities we once cherished. Damage control in the form of a meaningful and authentic opposition. For that to happen, people have to have the courage to speak up in defence of their beliefs and stop waiting for someone else to it. Despondency and complacency are killing the left. Get off your asses and be heard.
Posted by trouble in the Heartland on May 11, 2005 at 4:32 AM A progressive rennaissance in this country is, first off, inconceivable under current social conditions. The current political lineup, class structure, and reigning political discourse can only be changed after a period of prolonged economic and social turmoil.
That having been said, such a crisis period, while not uncommon in the history of capitalism, does not at all guarantee a progressive revival.
What the Left has to do to take advantage of such a situation is to consolidate and expand its power at the grassroots level, getting out its message to receptive communities (particularly working-class neighborhoods long taken for granted by the Democratic Party) through low-cost information distribution techniques and community organizing campaigns. One example is the successful mayorship of the late Miguel Contreras in Los Angelos.
That way, when the shit finally does hit the proverbial fan, there will be an institutionalized alternative to the current ideologies. Otherwise, the only alternative available to victims of conservative policies and ideas might be a rabid nationalist in the vein of Pat Buchanan.
Posted by Matthew Klauber on May 12, 2005 at 10:28 AM Matthew,
This is the beginning of a rough proposal:
This proposal climbs the slippery slope of betting that a mass movement for a new kind of governing democracy could develop cooperative power throughout our country never before achieved. As such, it as much a political tract as it is a proposal.
Currently five interests seem dominant in our political and cultural life:
to be passive
to sustain and expand corporate interests
to impose a radical theological ideology
to protest and resist
to build a center-left governing coalition, and
to revitalize civic life.The Alliance 21 Project directly addressed the serious threats to our 230-year democratic experiment arising out of this tangle of fierce conflicts. It’s federated national organization would extend all the way down to a groups of Sub-alliances that together form a Local Alliance in every congressional district. It’s extensive and creative use of the internet as an organizational tool and as a system for collaborative problem-solving would make possible a civic force that could advance our democratic experiment to a much stronger and richer variant of democracy. The whole network would operate outside of the political parties as did the civil rights movement.
Alliance 21’s singular mission—avowedly ideological in intent—is two-fold:
to create interconnected cultures of active, informed, and compassionate participation in public life—what I call strong- or rich-democracy;
to redeisgn the basic structure of our tool/the corporation, and democratize our system of wealth distribution.This proposal offers only a direction to move in and a rough blueprint for a vehicle to begin a century-long journey.
One bet is that the proposed movement for a strong-democracy would provide a long-term, value-driven alternative to the theocratic Christian movement. It is also, I argue, the best bet for developing sufficient political power to undo the choke-hold our Corporate America has on our political system and cultural life. Put positively, this means democratizing our economic system.
The whole mission of Project 21 offers a proactive alternative to the ultimately anemic politics of blame-protest-and-resist. Project 21 would offer a systematic opportunity for individuals to educate and empower themselves, and for groups to develop the cooperative power that can both impact their communities and be an essential part of a national network for strong-democracy and democratic capitalism. Proactive problem-solving embraces protest strategically. As such, it is more empowering by its creative process and its productive results.
Boldly, but maybe foolishly, Project 21 takes on the challenge posed by the reigning interest in our country: passivity. At this point we govern ourselves by a democracy of consent. That is, a passive democracy that provides room for a certain amount of active participation and an overwhelming exercise of anti-democratic force. The essential bet of this proposal is that in a world governed predominantly by a democracy of active, informed, and compassionate participation there would be no theocratic Chistian movement; no Corporate America structured according to aristocratic and feudal principles; no massive maldistribution of wealth accepted as norm and natural law; no ‘military-industrial complex’; no planet earth needing emergency room treatment from a broken health care system; and no labor movement over-powered from the outside during one epoch,, eviscerated from within during another, and always having to lift against mass inertia.
Posted by joncehart on May 12, 2005 at 1:41 PM I think Jonce Hart’s proposal is a good template to start from. I would find Nader more credible if he started small.
If he built a grassroots coalition at the state or local level, won some congressional seats, and campaigned for the presidency with the idea of getting enough votes to knock the election into the House of Representatives - then he might have a winning strategy. As it was, the only thing Nader actually accomplished was to help Bush win the 2000 election.
Of course, grassroots campaigns of this sort suffer a number of difficulties. One is that there are obviously limits to what can be accomplished on the local level, without federal funding. Another - and changing this should be the first goal of any grassroots campaign - is that state and local constitutions typically prohibit deficit spending. Abolishing these provisions would provide regional governments more leeway to spend and stimulate the economy. Finally, there is the fact that the globalization of capital markets allows investors to send their money abroad at any sign of a progressive revival.
The point is, again, not to change things from below. That simply wouldn’t be possible. The point is to create a basis for further change on the national level. This will take a lot of time and effort, and I fear that Nader and his followers do not fully appreciate this.
Posted by Matthew Klauber on May 13, 2005 at 2:29 PM If you have the courage of your convictions and vote Nader in the election he would win in a landslide.
The opposition turned the votes by lying and cheating. Simple.
“Don’t waste your vote” they said,"He doesn’t have the money to win” they said,"He is a vote for Bush” they said…
And too many believed that instead of Standing up for the Correct choice. We will regret not getting the chance to have the only worthy candidate put into office.
Posted by Nannie on May 20, 2005 at 1:07 AM Nannie, do you actually believe that? I cannot forsee any realistic scenario in which Nader would win. That’s not just because of money, though that is a serious problem. It’s also because decades of right-wing demagoguery have succeeded in making the word “liberal” a pejorative term to swing voters. We simply live in an extremely conservative period.
There’s also the problem of America’s “first-past-the-post” electoral system, peculiar among the “proportional” parliamentary systems typically employed by other wealthy nations. In fact, I believe that the last candidate to win a presidential election who was not of one of two major established parties was Lincoln. (Someone feel free to fact-check me on that.)
It behooves us to remember that in politics, the means are just as important as the ends—perhaps more so, as in politics, the means have a nasty habit of determining the ends. (Just ask Lenin.) If the problem with the corporate-funded centrists who control the Democratic Party is that they emphasize means over ends, the polar opposite is true of Naderites. We don’t just need the right candidate, Nannie, we need a realistic plan to change hearts and minds.
Posted by Matthew Klauber on May 20, 2005 at 12:50 PM Matthew, yes I believe in what I said
“ We will regret not getting the chance to have the only worthy candidate put into office.”
Posted by Nannie on May 22, 2005 at 11:58 PM Page 1 of 1 pages -
register a new account »Posting Security
Also by Jody Kolodzey
- Giving Science the Finger
Generalizations based on hand shape not only are formulated from small pools of data, but smack of pseudo science. - Left Out
- Labor Paeans
- Patti Smith: Spit & Image
- Remembering Nina Simone
- Stranger than Fiction
Popular Discussions
- The 9/11 Faith Movement
Many Americans believe 9/11 was a conspiracy by the U.S. government
1968 posts since Jul 11 06 - What’s the 411 on 9/11?
891 posts since Dec 21 05 - Democrats: It’s the War
659 posts since Nov 1 05 - Was the Presidential Election Stolen?
459 posts since Jun 19 06 - A Fundamental History Lesson
The rise of National Socialism proved politics and religion don't mix
426 posts since Oct 10 05
© 2005 In These Times | Reprint Policy | Privacy Policy | Powered by Expression Engine | RSS Feeds
