Right, exactly. And the same goes for oppositional/alternative cultures and traditions more generally.

In recent times, a lot of people on the left (e.g. this from James Petras) have resolved this dilemma by abandoning the idea that the working class, or any other social group in industrialized countries, can provide the social base for radical politics—insofar as they’ve done so, it’s only thanks to inheritances from pre-capitalist forms of solidairy that have now dissipated. Instead, they look to communities in the third world that are not yet fully incorporated into capitalism (e.g. the Zapatistas). There’s a certain logic to this move, for sure, but it’s hard to ebleive that peasant-based revolutionary movements are the right political vehicle today—and if they are that obviously writes off the US completely (which folks like Petras explicitly do.)

Obviously Scialabba didn’t turn in that direction. So I have the same question as Scott McL.: what are the social or cultural reserves that radical politics can draw from in the US today?

Scott, without realizing (or perhaps you did realize it), you’ve touched on one of the central (if usually implicit) controversies present in practically all forms of and justifications for modern communitarian thought and critique. Has modern liberalism/capitalism/individualism/meritocratism killed off community, or not? If it has, then the communitarian critique of liberalism is essentially correct…except that, if such is true, then the goal of attempting to preserve or construct communal arrangements on such ashes is foolish, and probably dangerous. Then again, if it has not, then hurray for humankind’s enduring communitarian foundations!…though, if community in some form can survive modernity’s atomizing changes, then the fierce emphasis on the faults of liberalism seems rather out of place. Neither response to this controversy puts an end to the critique entirely, of course, but either way, it haunts it nonetheless. (I first became aware of this formulation through Michael Walzer, but others have made the same point as well.)

I’m the sort of communitarian that thinks bottom-line communal foundations never really go away, either in social life or the life of the mind. If George cares to relate himself to this spin on your question for him, I wonder which kind he would call himself.