There are "excesses" and there are excesses. Yes, there'll always be individuals and small groups doing stupid things. The excesses at issue here are fundamental flaws in strategic thinking and planning by important leaders and organizations; e.g., SDS, the Mobe, the Yippies, and the more sectarian groups: YAWF, etc., and the Motherfuckers. We believed ourselves moving towards, or actually in, a revolutionary situation. In retrospect we weren't even close. We denigrated and thus didn't understand the fracturing of the pro-war consensus within the Democratic Party and among its corporate supporters. We confused theater with reality. The Panther's parading into the California legislature with guns was great political theater, but the police took it as reality and responded in kind. We took provocative actions against the state without preparation for what it would do in response. We, or at least elements in SDS, greatly misunderstood the youth culture I can go on.. I don't think these errant policies were based entirely on ignorance. They were the result of our experience (and inexperience). We were caught up in a cauldron that we -- and the state -- did not anticipate and for which we were unprepared. We were also young, and youth creates a political dynamic of its own. We didn't create the backlash. Social change creates backlash. Where we erred was delighting in it, believing that it would work for us. It didn't. The left (or the progressive movement) does not suffer from a lack of good programs; it suffers, first from money-driven politics which denies us a level-playing field in the "free market" of ideas; and we suffer from (still!) fall-out from the sixties, a political culture that delights in cultural and social provocation for the sake of "putting people down," the comfort of seeing ourselves as alienated outsiders (since we think we can't win, we don't have to follow the rules (customs) of the game (our political culture); a feeling reinforced every time we lose or are attacked); and a knee-jerk anti-Americanism that views everything American as awful, and thus prevents us from using the positive aspects of the American tradition to leverage social change. Each of these sentences deserves an essay of explanation. They form a major part of my book, Abbie Hoffman: American Rebel. Abbie at his best understood a lot of this. At his worst, he undermined his own insights. Marty Jezer At 01:58 PM 10/26/2000 -0500, you wrote: > > >"Lauter, Paul" wrote: > >> Third, I don't buy the theory that anti-Left activity derived mainly >> from a reaction to movement excesses in and after 1968. Yes, that was an >> element. > >There is a fundamental weakness to all arguments that ascribe left weakness to >left excesses. There will *always* be excesses (both "sincere" and created by >police provocateurs) -- so a left that can't flourish despite any and all >excesses is a left that isn't going anyplace. Complaining about left >excesses is >like complaining about the weather. Excesses of all kinds are just part of >capitalist weather. There's a nice passage in the Anti-Duhring where Engels >lists all the hangers-on in any workers' movement. > >Carrol Cox Marty Jezer 22 Prospect Street Brattleboro, Vermont 05301 p/f [802] 257-5644 <mjez@sover.net> website: <http://www.sover.net/~mjez To see my recent columns, click here and then visit the Literati section Subscribe (it's free) to my Friday commentary, send me your e-mail address by reply
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