cribbles posted:Hi Rhizzone, long time reader, first time commenter. Serious question, what's "CIA bad," laughable, immediately dismissible about that Jacobin article? It seems elementary that the discourse around left ideas in the United States has failed to capture the populist zeal of neoliberalism, so why not talk about left ideas in a way that seems as reconcilable with civics class American values, what dum dums percieve to be an appeal to reason, etc as libertarianism?
Eh part of it is that this conflates two different kinds of "populism," the zeal for neoliberalism is not exactly populist because it really only exists in the owner class and the bourgeois and labor aristocracy, not the actual populace of oppressed workers, that is migrant laborers, prison population, homeless, veterans and poor soldiers, disabled people, and so on. Whereas leftism needs actual populism. I think it would be more accurate to speak of leftism being fashionable among the "civics class Americans" by which we mean, wealthy white dudes.
cribbles posted:Hi Rhizzone, long time reader, first time commenter. Serious question, what's "CIA bad," laughable, immediately dismissible about that Jacobin article? It seems elementary that the discourse around left ideas in the United States has failed to capture the populist zeal of neoliberalism, so why not talk about left ideas in a way that seems as reconcilable with civics class American values, what dum dums percieve to be an appeal to reason, etc as libertarianism?
also why not just straight up appeal to the revolutionary origins of the american state, etc
swampman posted:I hate their guts but now recognize that a successful revolution requires defection by police and military to the revolutionary cause
not the professional baby killers. past social revolutions hinged upon conscripted workers acquiring discipline, arms and training from the bourgeois state and then turning it against them. the professional soldiers from the middle class always sided against the social revolution - the national guard in 1791, the french army in 1871, the freikorps in 1918
cribbles posted:what's "CIA bad," laughable, immediately dismissible about that Jacobin
``These extreme left-wing intellectuals have nothing to do with the worker’s movement. Rather they exist as the mirror image of that fringe of bourgeois decadence which tried to assimilate itself to feudal strata and admired the Empire in the person of the reserve lieutenant. … Their function, seen from a political point of view, is to form not a Party, but a clique, seen from a literary point of view, not a school but a fad, from an economic point of view not to become producers but agents. Agents or hacks, who make a great show of their poverty and congratulate themselves on the yawning void. It would be impossible to carve a more comfortable position out of an uncomfortable situation.``
—
Walter Benjamin, Left-Wing Melancholy
``Fart Fuck Hell``
—
Bart simpsin, Towards greener Spring-Fields
by Lison, Andrew
New formations, ISSN 0950-2378, 04/2012, Volume 75, Issue 75, pp. 122 - 139
Many post-war cultural commentators have perceived a lack of impetus to the Left-wing project, especially in the wake of the influential but ultimately...
