Spending several days cleaning up a database, merge printing
letters of appeal for the campaign of young Ryan Watts, and then wrestling my
cranky HP inkjet printer so as to merge print a corresponding set of envelopes
[the printer every so often seizes up on the envelopes] had a quite unexpected
side effect. It gave me a sense of
peace, however brief. For a few days, I
felt that I was actually doing something about the political disaster unfolding
in plain view. Now, I am painfully aware
that what I was doing did not even rise to the level of a drop in the ocean,
but I was doing it, not just talking
about it. At this point, I do not even
know whether the effort will raise any money. The next two weeks should tell.
As I have observed somewhere before on this blog, so long as
you are just thinking about things,
you might as well think about everything,
since it is no harder than just thinking about something. I mean, why think
about trolley cars when you can think about the world historical mission of
Capitalism? But if you want to actually change the world,
it takes an enormous effort to make a small change, and ten times as much
effort to make a somewhat bigger change.
Taking back the House is really a rather small step, and it
would be fatally easy to sit back and observe that taking the House will have
very little effect on American imperialism or the crushing consequences of
capitalism for the world’s poor. But
taking back the House is at least something. Now that something, small as it is, requires flipping
twenty-three House seats, and flipping just one of them requires an entire four
month political campaign, and an entire four month political campaign requires
raising serious money, and raising serious money requires sending letters to
thousands and thousands of people, and preparing just five hundred of those
letters requires that someone do what I did these past few days.
Academic intellectuals are not accustomed to toiling in the
vineyards. They are not even accustomed
to running a vineyard. They are usually
not satisfied with anything less than considering the theoretical preconditions
of vineyards in general. That is why
good old Karl Marx observed that “philosophers have hitherto only interpreted
the world in various ways; the point is to change it."
10 comments:
Bravo! Each nudge you give the world in the right direction, something or someone pushes back. You sound like a democratic socialist- I guess now isn't the time for Revolution- it's the time for political action one trench at a time
I'm not going to argue that your political strategy is wrong, but it does seem strange that you quote Karl Marx to support it, because I sincerely doubt that Marx's idea of what it means to change the world involves supporting mainstream Democrats.
Speaking of campaigns, the fear of leftists making gains within the Democratic Party is shared by establishment figures of both parties: here's St. Comey:
"Democrats, please, please don’t lose your minds and rush to the socialist left. This president and his Republican Party are counting on you to do exactly that. America’s great middle wants sensible, balanced, ethical leadership."
Sensible, balanced,ethical leadership means ignoring the human catastrophes unfolding in Yemen and Palestine, the electoral collaboration with Israelis, the still growing inequality in the U.S. and the policies that cause it.
All thought, no action
vs.
All action, no thought
I actually always thought that when Marx wrote the passage you quoted he was actually urging that genuine thought and genuine action necessarily went hand in hand. Besides, didn't he spend an inordinate amount of time in the rotunda of the British museum/library trying to figure out how to undertake and encourage the right kind of action? Even in the present moment, maybe it just isn't so evident what the right kind of action may be, no matter that some are insistent they know what the right action is?
I thought I was making myself perfectly clear, but apparently not. I was not arguing for one sort of action rather than another, and certainly not for action AS OPPOSED TO thought!! I was trying, gracefully, to express the depth of my anxiety and fear, and the momentary relief I obtained from doing something, anything, that might in a tiny way make SOME difference in making things marginally better. I could not have been more clear if I had had a T-shirt made with the message or, God help me, learned how to tweet. Is there something about blogging that destroys communication?
I guess people relieve their anxieties in different ways. Some might find the legal novel "Necessity" by D.W. Buffa (who studied, so the dust jacket says, under Leo Strauss at Chicago) remedial. Th story begins with a Californian US Senator killing a US President on Air Force One at SFO. The President is described as a narcissist, a would-be tyrant, treasonous, . . . I've just started reading it so I don't know how the courtroom and other drama works out.
It certainly sounds promising.
Indeed. While others are noble enough, patient enough, public-minded enough graciously to share with us their own anxiety relieving actions which serve however minutely to further the potential common weal (if you appreciate the irony this word might evoke).
Corey Robin on "Russian and the Left"
coreyrobin.com/2018/07/23/the-question-of-russia-and-the-left-a-response-to-ryan-cooper/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzt7JvsYIuI
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