If she weighs the same as a duck … she’s made of wood … and therefore

Do Alynskyite’s Dream of Electoral Politics?

It is a well known fact that whatever democrat is nominated for president immediately becomes the libbiest liberal who ever libbed. No point in fighting it.

Okay, a few more:

Flow My Tears, The National Review Man Said
A Scanner Dumbly
Our Friends From Frolix 8*

*Oddly, no alterations necessary on that last one.

Surely a political radical like Le Guin would be better to riff on:

The Word for World is Alinsky

Those Who Walk Away From a Steady Wingnut Welfare Check

Hillary’s college thesis on Alinsky is surprisingly witty.

As for why I think the Filegate charges are true, that’s simple enough. When a subordinate whose previous job experience consisted of carrying out dirty tricks turns out to be in possession of a bunch of FBI records of members of the opposing party, it is somewhat Polyannish to assume it was by accident.

And Filegate–oh, lord are we listening to a “greatest hits of the 90’s” radio station?

“The matter was investigated by the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the Whitewater Independent Counsel. In 1998, Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr exonerated President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton of any involvement in the matter. In 2000 Independent Counsel Robert Ray issued his final report on Filegate, stating that there was no credible evidence of any criminal activity by any individual in the matter and no credible evidence that senior White House figures or the First Lady had requested the files or had acted improperly or testified improperly regarding Livingstone’s hiring. A separate lawsuit on the matter brought by Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, has lingered on for years and was dismissed by a federal judge in 2010.”–Wikipedia

But now that no one remembers what actually happened, Bellmore and his ilk can recycle the same old nonsense. Tell us the one about Mena, Arkansas, Brett!

She’s really a lesbian who murdered her lover Vince Foster, MPAVictoria. It’s those little details that really sold the narrative.

Mistah Kurtz he dead. A penny for the old guy. Such is the absurdity of American politics today — pace Mistahs Kurtz and Bellmore — that had McCain selected Hillary instead of Sarah as his running mate in 2008, he’d be President today, and we’d scarcely have noticed any change in our fortunes, or in Hillary’s ambition.

The alternate universe here is the one we’re living in.

“that had McCain selected Hillary instead of Sarah as his running mate in 2008, he’d be President today, and we’d scarcely have noticed any change in our fortunes, or in Hillary’s ambition.”

I firmly believe that if McCain had been elected in 2008 things would be so bad that the current world would seem like a veritable Eden in comparison. So Obama at least has that going for him.

I suppose you also believe that it was just by accident that the Whitewater files weren’t found until the statute of limitations had expired?

I say the government should have forced her to do something she didn’t want to do.

Brett is usually a little bit better than this. I think two decades of time and tribal affiliation lead to poor memory. Its understandable.

I’m just going to pretend that the post didn’t start out by arguing against something braindead and was instead open to some other reply than “dur hur stupid Repubs” or the counter reply “Was true arglebargle!”

What does it mean that Alinsky inspired these people in their youth (e.g. Clinton, Obama), had them work all the up to the top of the political ladder, and then had them completely disavow both his ideas and his practices? What does it mean that the Tea Party — well here I’ll just quote wiki for convenience:

“Adam Brandon, a spokesman for the conservative non-profit organization FreedomWorks, one of several groups involved in organizing Tea Party protests, says the group gives Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals to its top leadership members. A shortened guide called Rules for Patriots is distributed to its entire network. In a January 2012 story that appeared in The Wall Street Journal, citing the organization’s tactic of sending activists to town-hall meetings, Brandon explained, “his [Alinsky’s] tactics when it comes to grass-roots organizing are incredibly effective.” Former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey also gives copies of Alinsky’s book Rules for Radicals to Tea Party leaders.”

Calling John Emerson here, but this is all about the failure of left populism. I’ve worked for various organizations inspired by / continuing Alinsky’s tactics. And I think that basically they don’t work. I sort of suspected this ever since I read _Rules For Radicals_ as a teenager: there’s no institutional structure ready to carry forward community organizing into something that can make and hold widespread political gains. Look at the Tea Party itself. It can have a negative effect in that it can stop things that are widely disliked by an active base. But it can’t seem to turn itself into an institutionally self-propagating entity.

So really, Obama and Clinton are model Alinskyites. They were down with community organizing until they realized that it wouldn’t support their continued political careers. That is not a bad thing, in a politician — someone has to go for the top. But it meant that when they had to reject the structure that wouldn’t support them, the ideals animating that structure went too.

But it meant that when they had to reject the structure that wouldn’t support them, the ideals animating that structure went too.

Don’t you mean ‘tactics’ rather than ‘structure?’ Seems to me the structure is our system of campaign finance which forces politicians to spend most of their time raising money. Do you disagree with that assessment? And if so, how is that a “failure of left populism.” If you ask me, it’s a failure of campaign finance law, or from another angle, a triumph of plutocratic interests.

mattski, I think that your entire comment is phrased in a way characteristic of what Emerson in the link above calls interest-group liberalism, in which “structures” are structures of law, and intended to ensure that all parties have a level playing field. I don’t think such structures have worked or can work even in theory — certainly not during “the triumph of plutocratic interests” — and I’m fundamentally not interested in them.

Here’s a quote from an article by Mike Miller:

When I was a young organizer in the late 1960s and 1970s, effective “people power” groups were few and far between. Where they existed, Alinsky-tradition community organizations defeated urban renewal; won jobs for minorities; stopped planned freeways that would destroy working-class neighborhoods; halted redlining; preserved neighborhood shopping strips; defeated slum landlords; achieved education reform; negotiated policy changes in health care, transportation, recreation, and other public services; and even won national anti-redlining public policy victories. But they failed to build permanent institutions that could connect for city, state, and national action, go deeper into local power structures, and do more than win concessions from the powers-that-be. Alinsky himself observed that the life span of one of his organizations was five years; after that it was either absorbed into administering programs (rather than building people power) or died.

The article then goes on to suggest more of the same, bigger, better, avoiding past mistakes. I think that the whole approach may have been a mistake. Urban “machines” and Alinsky groups fundamentally didn’t get along, and I think the machines ended up being more valuable to left politics than community organizing did. Not because machine politics was better — but because it was a structure that actually could supply money and votes. And not because some campaign finance law passed by elites created a level playing field.

@34 There’s a bizarre symmetry behind the idea on the left that because Alinsky organizing can never be carried forward, the successful Democratic politician, by definition, has rejected Alinsky and therefore subjected to a never ending stream of @31 type whinging about the lack of true Alinsky inspired liberals (which are the only kind, duh!) and the idea on the right that a Republican politician who is *unsuccessful* was, by definition, not conservative enough, such that conservatism, like Alinsky/liberalism, by definition, can never be achieved and is always an occasion for whinging.

Except when Ronnie wins. Then it’s morning in America!

@41 Of course you’re correct that Obama is center-right in the sense that the ACA isn’t single payer, and there’s no broad Democratic support for large efforts to better secure FDR’s Four Freedoms.

But “Hillary vs. Romney? In the long run, who cares?” is the statement of someone who has no idea of what’s going on. The Deep State? How about the plain old government of Ferguson, MO? The guy with money coming out of his pockets is on the other team from me on that question, and if that’s all the difference there were, it’d be more than enough difference to get me to the polls, not to mention hosting as many Ready for Hillary parties as there are days until the election.

I did find this part of Hillary letter to Alinsky amusing: “There were rumors of your going to SE Asia to recruit organizers. Is the lack of imagination among my peers really so rampant as that suggests or did you get yourself a CIA-sponsored junket to exotica?”

I thought it was a joke at first but . . . I can almost see some late sixties Ford Foundation-funded group, probably with a name like “Organizing for Democracy”, hiring Alinsky to, I dunno, consult with Catholic priests involved in organizing a South Vietnam Meatpackers Union for Democracy and Friendship with America.

My view on the Alinsky thing is this:

If at one point in your life you’re a fan of somebody whose political advice is, “Lie about your views in order to get the power to implement them.”, and later you deny sharing his views in order to get power, don’t be surprised if people think you’re following his advice.

Maybe you’re not, but it’s your own fault people don’t believe you.

Hillary or Romney? In the long run, who cares? It would only matter on the margins.

The millions of us living on the margins?

“The millions of us living on the margins”

The millions of you need to do something about that. But voting for Hillary isn’t it.

46
Brett Bellmore 09.25.14 at 10:41 am
“My view on the Alinsky thing is this:

If at one point in your life you’re a fan of somebody whose political advice is, “Lie about your views in order to get the power to implement them.”, and later you deny sharing his views in order to get power, don’t be surprised if people think you’re following his advice.

Maybe you’re not, but it’s your own fault people don’t believe you.”

Interesting projection, since the basic attitude of right has been to ignore 2001-2008…..

Brett,

Where does Alinsky say people should lie to get their agenda passed?

Again, the right — and it may have started with Beck and his blackboard — have built this monster up out of thin air. The right’s version of Alinsky never existed in reality. Which is the same for their version of Francis Piven, whose life they’ve endangered because of their demonization. And it’s the same for Obama, and soon enough Hillary too.

Again, both are real conservatives (Hillary and Obama. Alinsky was a leftist). They’re not even left of center moderates, except on some social issues. But the right has distorted and invented and demonized them to the point of surreal caricature. And perhaps now they have so much sunk cost in that lie they can never go back to reality.

From 2009 on, rather than doing everything you (as in, the political right) could to sabotage Obama, you should have been supporting him. Because he’s one of you. He’s a conservative at heart and in deed. Again, except on some social issues.

Rich @53,

The organizational aspects are partially a factor. But the real factor is that those liberals who may have given a listen to people like Alinsky in their youth moved further to the right as they aged. Alinsky was to their left all along, if they were ever “liberal” (true or not). Not waaay to their left, but he was never really one of them, even before they shifted rightward.

And the main place of separation is class. Class is the real dividing line between leftists and liberals. If liberals cross over that line, they’re no longer liberals. If class division and class struggle ever become their focus, they’re no longer liberals. They’ve seen the light. And if their goal is to end those class divisions and replace our current economic system, they’re no longer liberal and they have seen the light.

Frankly, the entire emphasis by the right on Alinsky (or Piven, for that matter) is absurd. It’s probably very effective for the conservative base. But it’s still absurd.

“Well, except for the ones who die in the labor camps, or get shot trying to escape.”

Obvious Troll is Obvious.

“Well, except for the ones who die in the labor camps, or get shot trying to escape.”

Why. . . that would be HORRIBLE!

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/08/police-shootings-michael-brown-ferguson-black-men

http://www.prisonpolicy.org/graphs/raceinc.html

The gulag is here, if you don’t avert your gaze.

Rich,

I said Alinsky was never really one of them, even before those young, idealistic liberals shifted rightward.

Good point, however, on Hillary. Her critique does show her distance, even in college, from Alinsky . . . and I actually think she’s correct in putting him in that line of social activists. Though he had less impact than the others, especially MLK. I don’t know if he could write poetry, though . . .

Rich,

I don’t think such structures [of law] have worked or can work even in theory — certainly not during “the triumph of plutocratic interests” — and I’m fundamentally not interested in them.

What do you think can work, in theory or practice?

@63,

Good point on tactics. Tea party “populism,” etc.

There is a right and left populism. But, I would argue — and, yeah, I’m biased in favor of the left — that the right’s version is a hall of mirrors and the left’s is the only legitimate form. Reason for that is in the nature of ideologies for both. The right’s longstanding support for the ruling elites; its being the cheerleader for Big Church and Big State ever since the terms right and left came into existence; its insistence that human nature “naturally” breeds inequality, rank, hierarchy . . . . all lead to top down, the few rule the many, the strong rule the weak, etc. And, its false dichotomy of “collectivism versus individualism” pretty much renders group action by the masses (real populism) out of bounds. Hypocrisy shoots into view, of course, because the folks they do support, capitalists, business owners, engage in group action all the time to suppress and control the masses. It’s okay with the right that the business class (and Capital more generally) basically is unionized, for all intents and purposes. But it’s verboten for workers to do the same.

To make a long story short, the left is against all the above. In theory, at least, it’s really the only place along the spectrum where real populism can have a home. That takes egalitarian beliefs and structures. That takes real democracy. That takes putting people first, not profits. And the right is vehemently opposed to that, the tea party folks, especially.

Plume @40: The Deep State.

I hadn’t heard of Mike Lofgren’s version, but Peter Dale Scott has been using the term for many years. It’s an essential notion, and there’s nothing conspiratorial about it. It simply calls attention to the fact that there’s a consensus and a commonality of interests among very powerful institutions that sets effective limits on reform and what gets media exposure.

I voted for Jill Stein too — an amazing woman.

Plume wrote: Hillary or Romney? In the long run, who cares? It would only matter on the margins.

Rich wrote: Anarchism is a way to say that the current system has failed, not a way to say that I have some positive program that I think will work.

geo wrote: It’s an essential notion, and there’s nothing conspiratorial about it.

I want to echo rea here. It is a huge mistake, IMO, to discount the difference between the two major parties even though the difference between them is often frustratingly slight. Because it actually makes a difference who gets elected. And violent revolution is not what it’s cracked up to be.

It is much too easy to observe from a distance and conclude that the situation is hopeless. Except the utility of cynicism is approximately zero. It leads nowhere. We need to remind ourselves that the New Deal actually happened. There were huge advances in civil rights legislation in the 60’s that changed our country for the better.

And as regards geo’s comment, the Deep State is a useful abstraction as long as we don’t take it too seriously. Even further, I don’t think we should be afraid to call “conspiracy” when the evidence warrants it. There is abundant evidence that JFK’s murder was the work of plutocratic interests expressed through the intelligence apparatus.

But it seems to me the best path forward is debate, education, civil disobedience when called for, artistic expression AND the electoral process. It may be painfully slow but it beats the pants off violence.

I, too, voted for Jill Stein.

Pretty much every Jill Stein voter, apparently, reads and comments on CT!

But it seems to me the best path forward is debate, education, civil disobedience when called for, artistic expression AND the electoral process. It may be painfully slow but it beats the pants off violence.

The system is set up to mostly prevent change. You want change. But a revolution — tear up everything and start over — would wind up killing a whole lot of people by accident and a lot of stuff would get torn up.

Is there a third way, that’s happened in history?

There was a time when Athens had something vaguely similar, and rather than fight they agreed to let Solon make up new rules for him. The new rules were good enough for them to limp along a good long time rather than do violence over it.

There was a time when Roman plebes were fed up and rather than fight they agreed to some changes. they got tribunes who could not initiate legislation but who could veto it. I heard it didn’t work out too well but they were sort of able to limp along with it.

Maybe things will reach enough of a crisis that everybody will agree to change the rules. If that happened, what rules would you want?

what rules would you want?

Ultimately, politics is something you do. Doing politics with rules and a standard of fairness is usually symptomatic of a better, more effective politics, but the meta-level determines nothing. What matters is actually playing the game.

The problem of American politics is that we still have the form of a healthier politics, that was driven by a sense of fairness and rationality to adapt to reality, but we no longer have the doing. It is not the rules we need. To some large extent, we have the needed rules. It is the doing we lack.

We lack effective mass participation.

We don’t need the revolution, per se — mattski is generally right about the poor cost-benefit ratios associated with violent revolutions, but he overlooks the frequency with which it is reactionaries, who make revolutions, and make revolutions violent.

The U.S. needs a high top marginal income tax rate, a 50% corporate income tax rate that actually has to be paid occasionally, and financial repression (usury laws, an end to universal banking, an end to TBTF). The country can not survive an elite that can extract millions from a short sojurn in a c-suite job, because people who can, will, and at the expense of every other value, even risk destroying the institutions they nominally lead. That a predatory financial sector dominates the economy and the government ought to frighten Americans and the world.

Every highly-organized society has an elite, so a revolutionary prescription to abolish hierarchy is pretty useless, as are proposals, say, to do away with money. So, calls to simply overthrow or abolish it all are not helpful or sensible. But, we need reform desperately.

To get that deep reform, though, requires the effective political mobilization and participation of the masses. Politics as a branded consumer good won’t be sufficient. If a politician can win office and power, by representing mass interests, because he can depend on the support of mass-membership organizations, which will advocate for, and vote for, their interests, some of them will. And, they will play mass-membership interest groups off against one another as well as against businesses and the mega-rich, and that’s how politicians become independent and powerful.

Right now, U.S. politics suffers from a power vacuum, created by the reduction of power players to a fairly homogenous group of business groups with a lot of money to spend, all on one side of every issue and one narrow, short-sighted view of their own interests. Politicians are trapped. They cannot play one lobbyist against another, to get support, while maintaining their own independence. We can say they are corrupted by this state of affairs, which is certainly true as far as it goes. But, it doesn’t really matter if you. as say a Congressman, are, or are not, the dirtiest empty shirt in the laundry, the deep problem is that you are an empty shirt, a powerless politician even in office. Congressmen, today, are spokesmodel-politicians, in it for celebrity instead of power, and they make even the minority, who vote for them as powerless as they are, themselves.

Sandwichman opines that the powers-that-be will try to avoid provoking revolution. And, maybe, they will. Barack Obama was fantastically effective in preventing and subverting reform. But, their greed continues to escalate, and the institutional integrity of the political structures continues to decline, along with incomes and personal security.

The Left, in its various guises has been exceedingly weak. The collapse of a left in the 1970s is the other side of the story of the rise of the Right, Reagan, etc. The left turned away from mass-membership organizing and populist politics. The left, in its anti-authoritarianism, doesn’t want to lead. The left is repulsed by the penchant of the common man for nationalism and racism; it doesn’t want to understand the resentments and the naivete of the hard-working follower. The left never gains power without winning the allegiance of the mass of political followers.

I’m more than a little uncomfortable playing Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm to BW’s Lenin, but it seems to me that the national discourse in the U.S. is changing in some fairly unpredicted ways — unpredicted in the late 80s or early 90s anyway — and a change in the discourse has always been one of the first steps to more concrete changes. (First Paul Krugman, then CT, then the world, if you like, and I’m only being half facetious in saying so.) If we’re right about increasing immiseration in the developed world among the 90%, and if the Chinese colossus proves to be as fragile as some of us suspect, what comes next may be the gradual emergence out of the present consumerist ennui of just the kind of mass membership political organizations that all of us acknowledge will be necessary. In the meantime, though, forming political alliances with these guys ain’t gonna be easy (I hope this YouTube link works. If not, I’ll try something else):

http://youtu.be/TlF0RJICGAs

Rich,

Not sure where this came from, since the number of people advocating violence here seems to be zero.

No, I wasn’t suggesting that anyone here was advocating violence! (mcmanus hasn’t made an appearance.)

I asked you what you thought was a good way forward. You didn’t have an answer. What I’m saying is that after we exhaust the prosaic options before us, nothing remains except violence. So, let’s not poop too hard on the unglamorous work before us. Especially since the internet is truly an innovation we’re just starting to understand and utilize.

@78 You aren’t the only one who thinks things could end up going in the right direction from here (although you may not want my vote of confidence).

And I think you’re right about the start happening in places like Paul Krugman and CT. Bruce is right when he talks about the weakening left that coincided with the rise of the Reaganists. I think that weakness has roots in places like the Princeton Economics Department and all the various academics who lurk here at CT. Critical-this, Post-that Studies don’t build movements (no matter how much they overanalyze them).

A liberal economics that amounts to Lucas-Fama-Prescott plus Brad DeLong muttering “remember imperfect competition and public goods” does not organize ideas in a way that helps the least well off (especially while it’s actively “ending welfare as we know it”).

And a political science establishment that stands idly by while a horseshit left/right spectrum metaphor of American politics is forcibly shoved over a pragmatic American public by Pew and other public opinion researchers is aiding and abetting the nonsense idea that economic royalism is an “ideology” with an equal truth value as social democracy.

And I can’t see any of you, but I know you are all white. And I so know none of you knows what it was like for the older black woman in front of me on the mall at Obama’s inauguration who couldn’t stop saying, “Stevie Wonder is playing the inauguration. Stevie Wonder is playing the inauguration! Do you hear me? Stevie *Wonder* is playing the inauguration!”

Bruce Wilder @ 79

There was a time when the left would have jumped all over stuff like this, rural/urban cultural differences be damned. That time may come again, may in fact be on its way as we speak.

In our era, once the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War revealed the extent to which the Post-WWWII consensus was based on carefully-crafted cultural fictions as much as on economic necessities, we seem to have spent the next 30 years or so making sure we become strangers to one another. I’d anticipate that the first meetings on common ground will produce their share of casualties, but such hale and hearty leftists as still exist should surely press ahead anyway.

I heard that her thesis paper on Alinsky was actually ghost written by Bill Ayers. It contains many of the same verbs and adjectives as Ayers’ book “Dreams From My Father.” Any thoughts?

All this arguing without reference points. Does nobody study history?

This period looks very similar, electorally, for the lead-up to the Civil War. Republicans now == Whigs then. The Whigs purged all the anti-slavery Whigs. Then the Whig Party died. Shortly before that, the Whigs were winning lots of elections….

Economically, the period now looks like the Long Depression of 1873-1896 — also known as the Gilded Age. (The US was busily involved in colonial wars during this period, for another parallel.) This period led to the rise of the Populists, the Grange, the Farmer Party, the Labor Party, the Progressives, and numerous other third parties; it led to small civil wars in a couple of Midwestern states, between competing legislatures; it featured the Communist takeover of Seattle. The stage was set for revolution, but first Teddy Roosevelt and then Woodrow Wilson partially co-opted the platforms of the third parties and so things settled down. Had Wilson not co-opted the left-wing economic platform, we might have seen a very different outcome.

The main difference from the Gilded Age is that the Republican Party is unreformable and will collapse like the Whigs. This means greater odds of a proper left-wing party becoming the Second Party (probably through a party split in the Democratic Party). Unfortunately, if the Democratic Party elite decide to double down on the “security state” fascism which Obama incomprehensibly embraces, we may instead get a government unreformable by election, and then we *will* get revolution.

William Timberman,

“I’m more than a little uncomfortable playing Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm to BW’s Lenin, but it seems to me that the national discourse in the U.S. is changing in some fairly unpredicted ways …”

I don’t think Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm would say “the national discourse in the US is changing in some fairly unexpected ways” – I will give you some examples of her from the book for next time you try to emulate Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, since perhaps you yourself have not read the book except once or twice a very long time ago, and cannot recollect Rebecca to mind very well

In the episode “The Saving of the Colours”/”The Way Little Becky Randall Got the Flag Away From Slippery Simpson” , Rebecca plays The State of Maine and notes unexpected historical changes in Maine in the context of hair dressing decisions (much like Montaigne digresses about the beginnings of euro colonialism is like a river unexpectedly changing its course – not for a reason of flooding and inundation a which is easily understood – but for other harder to discern reasons – in his Of Canibals essay).

“Your hair is so long and thick and dark and straight,” [Alice] said, “that you’ll look like an Injun!”
“I am the State of Maine; it all belonged to the Indians once,” Rebecca remarked gloomily…

the episode “The Green Isle”* also features Simpson, but he has been turning over a new leaf since trying to steal the flag in the earlier episode. He lives near Pliny’s Pond, named after Pliny, the eldest son of Colonel Richardson. Mrs Simpson has fallen gravely ill, and Rebecca writes to Mr Simpson “Dear Mr Simpson , This is a secret letter. I heard that the Acreville people weren’t nice to Mrs Simpson because she didn’t have a wedding ring like all the others. I know you’ve always been poor , dear Mr Simpson, and troubled with a large family like ours at the farm: but you really ought to have given Mrs Simpson a ring when you were married to her, right at the very first; for then it would have been over and done with, as they are solid gold and last forever…. So I send you a nice new wedding ring to save your buying…. and I believe now perhaps you DID think the flag was a bundle of washing when you took it that day; so no more from your Trusted friend, Rebecca Rowena Randall.

Hopefully this will assist for next time in discussions of the rural-urban divide.

* Taken from Shelley “Many a green isle needs must be/ In the deep sea of misery / Or the mariner worn and wan / Never thus could voyage on / Day and night and night and day / Drifting on his weary way [you can read the day and night night and day bit in your best imitation of Fred Astaire or frank Sinatra to add more musical comedy to the poem]

Rich,

We should try to analyze reasons for past failures because we should try to avoid them in similar attempts in the future. That was really where I started with Alinsky — trying to figure out why his particular organizational attempt at left populism failed.

Would you agree that there is a danger of over-emphasizing “failure”?

How do we know such-and-such was a failure? Maybe it was an important step on the path to the place we want to go? I just wonder if there is something backward-looking about your approach.

Certainly, in some cases mistakes (big, consequential ones) are made which become apparent in hindsight. But not in all cases. Sometimes a battle is lost because a) our skills aren’t honed enough b) our conditioning [determination] isn’t strong enough c) our organization isn’t efficient enough d) the larger culture isn’t ready–the time isn’t ripe.

Nathanael: “The problem is dysfunctional political machines: ones which don’t serve their function. ”

Yes, I was really intending to more narrowly refer to political machines in the sense used here.

What I remember about Alinsky organizations was that they continually shed leadership. They were very good about finding leaders in a neighborhood that was being organized and giving those people leadership training. But then, lo and behold, the trained leader wasn’t really part of the neighborhood any more. They were now suited for a better job than they could find there, and solidarity could only go so far if it meant voluntarily staying poor in a bad area. So mostly they’d leave, and the organization didn’t have anywhere upwards they could go. A machine is more corrupt, but it has upward paths for the ambitious.

mattski: “I think this implies that excessive theorizing is a trap–self imposed–to be avoided. We can’t figure things out from a distance, we have to get in the game and play it.”

I can’t count the number of times people have told me that we have to get in the game and play it as I try to write about what I’ve learned from participation in some movement or other. It makes no sense.

Previous mattski: “Sometimes a battle is lost because a) our skills aren’t honed enough b) our conditioning [determination] isn’t strong enough c) our organization isn’t efficient enough d) the larger culture isn’t ready–the time isn’t ripe.”

And those are causes of failure. If you were building a bridge and it collapsed because a girder broke, you wouldn’t say “Oh, the metal just wasn’t strong enough. That doesn’t mean the bridge was a failure.” To take just the last one, if the larger culture isn’t ready, then maybe you should do something it’s ready for, or contrariwise carry out actions intended to shock. Calculations of what the culture is or isn’t ready for are routine among people who attempt social movements. Certainly Alinsky had a lot to say about it.

If you want a leftism that hasn’t recently failed, try reading James Livingston. But note that in his scheme, there really isn’t a great role for radical activists who go out and do things. If you want people to “get in the game and play it” (ick, by the way, it’s not a sport) then you can’t simultaneously say it’s impossible to lose.