I have just reread an article I published in 1989 called "Absolute Fruit and Abstract Labor; Remarks on Marx's Use of the Concept of Inversion." It appeared in a collective volume called KNOWLEDGE AND POLITICS: Case Studies in the Relationship Between Epistemology and Political Philosophy, edited by Marcelo Dascal and Ora Gruengard. Some portions are identical with materials in my little book Moneybags Must Be So Lucky, which appeared the previous year, but a good deal of it is original to this essay and has appeared nowhere else. If you have a serious interest in the relationship of Marx's thought to that of Hegel and also in the complex mystified ideologically encoded character of capitalist social reality, I recommend it to you.
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A cheap new copy of Hegel is hard to find these days. USPS says I'm going to get his history book in the mail today. I just want to read those parts where is says history is not a linear progression. Or that certain virtues of civilization are more pronounced than at other times in history. I wanted to know more about Hegel because of this website video:
https://www.google.com/search?q=school+of+life+hegel&oq=s+hool+&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j35i39i305j0i10i433i512j46i10i340i433i512l2j0i10i433i512j0i10i512l2j46i10i175i199i512j46i10i340i512l3j0i10i512l2j46i10i512.3805j0j7&client=ms-android-verizon&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:143b2e08,vid:H5JGE3lhuNo
Michael Llenos--
If you're new to Hegel and particularly interested in his understanding of history, from the bewilderingly vast secondary literature you might want to start with Stephen Houlgate's introduction, subtitled 'Freedom, Truth and History', then for some state of the art reflections go on to Terry Pinkard's Does History Make Sense? Hegel on the Historical Shapes of Justice.--Some of us think the best route into Hegel is through the lectures on Fine Art.
I hew to the ideas of Richard Whately which flips the labor theory of value on its head. A quote from some book (emphasis mine):
Whately then makes some most important observations — It may be worth observing that in examining, framing, or altering definitions in Political Economy, you will find in most persons a tendency to introduce accidental along with or instead of essential circumstances. I mean that the notion they attach to each term, and the explanation they would give of it, shall embrace some circumstances generally, but not always, connected with the thing they are speaking of, and which might accordingly (by the strict account of an accident) be ‘absent or present, the essential character of the subject remaining the same.” A definition framed from such circumstances, though of course incorrect, and likely at some time or other to mislead us, will not unfrequently obtain reception, from its answering the purpose of a correct one, at a particular time and place. . . . .
“A specimen of that introduction of accidental circumstances which I have been describing, may be found, I think, in the language of a great number of writers respecting Wealth and Value; who have usually made Labour an essential ingredient in their definitions. Now it is true, it so happens, by the appointment of Providence, that valuable articles are, in almost all instances, obtained by Labour ; but still, this is an accidental, not an essential circumstance. 1f the aerolites which occasionally fall were diamonds and pearls, and if these articles could be obtained in no other way, but were casually picked up to the same amount as is now obtained by digging and diving, they would be of precisely the same value as now. In this, as in many other points in Political Economy, men are prone to confound cause and effect. It is not that pearls fetch a high price because men have dived for them ; but on the contrary, men dive for them because they fetch a high price.”
Thus Whately has sent a deadly shaft into the whole Economics of Smith and Ricardo. Smith begins his work by describing Wealth as the produce of “land and labour”; thus making materiality and labour as the essence of Wealth; and he entirely omits Exchangeability. Now, as a matter of fact, not twenty per cent. of Economic or Exchangeable quantities have any labour associated with them at all, and not five per cent. of Economic quantities have materiality and labour associated with them, which shows that materiality and labour are only the accidents of Wealth and Value. It is Exchangeability, which is the sole essence of Wealth, as the ancients unanimously held. The Economists also held that Exchangeability is the real essence of Wealth ; but they clogged it also with materiality, which is entirely inadmissible.
Whately then said that pearls do not fetch a high price because men dive for them, but men dive for them because men give a high price for them ; that is, it is not Labour which is the cause of Value, but Value which is the inducement to Labour; just as Condillac said before him; and this is the entire boulversement of the Economics of Smith and Ricardo.
Whately thus laid the foundation of that system of Economics which I have adopted and developed.
@Ahmed The Euthyphro is such an lovely and adaptable form of argument.
John R.
GWF Hegel's The Philosophy of History is not what I expected. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. He came after Gibbon so I'm wondering if he was inspired by Gibbon's Roman history. Thanks for the tip.
Off topic: From the calendar on the SCOTUS website, it looks like the remaining cases of this Sup Ct term are going to drop on Tuesday, including a couple that were the subject of some discussion here.
This is even more off topic, but the most striking news in a while is surely the rebellion of the Wagner group against Putin. They appear to be heading towards Moscow.
Good news for Ukraine.
What do you guys think?
I hadn't heard they were heading toward Moscow.
Assuming the regular Russian military stays loyal to Putin, they're toast. If the regular military - or some parts of it --joins them, on the other hand, that would be a different story.
The Guardian says they're heading there.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/24/wagner-troops-may-reach-moscow-by-evening-as-kremlin-hurries-to-intercept
A little background here as to why this happened. This from Reuters:
Wagner's Prigozhin rebuffs Putin's demand for fighters to sign defence ministry contracts
MOSCOW, June 14 (Reuters) - Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin on Wednesday reiterated the refusal of his Wagner fighters to sign contracts with the defence ministry, a day after President Vladimir Putin said the agreements were needed.
In a rare direct show of defiance towards the Russian leader, Prigozhin said: "None of Wagner's fighters is ready to go down the path of shame again. That's why they will not sign the contracts."
In a televised meeting on Tuesday, Putin backed a call by the defence ministry for "volunteer" fighters in Ukraine to sign contracts with the country's military command, widely seen as a means to assert control over Wagner.
Putin said that contracts were necessary to allow all participants in Russia's campaign in Ukraine to receive the social support payments to which they are entitled. These include compensation to fighters if they are wounded, and to their families if they are killed in action.
That might have been the reason for this, which means Prigozhin was telling the truth when he said:
"A missile attack was launched on the camps of Wagner Group. Many victims. According to eyewitnesses, the attack was launched from the rear, meaning it was launched by the Russian Defense Ministry," Prigozhin said in an audio message shared by his press service.
Having said that, I think it's over. The Daily Mail reports today:
'We are turning back': Wagner chief sensationally agrees to END his mercenary group's march on Moscow following emergency negotiations - after Russian military desperately rushed to build defences around the capital
Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin has confirmed he has ordered his mercenaries to halt their march on Moscow and retreat to their field camps in Ukraine to avoid shedding Russian blood.
'We are turning back our columns and leave in the opposite direction to the field camps according to the plan,' an audio message on his Telegram feed said.
An uneasy calm has now prevailed on the streets of Moscow in a city that had been preparing for war. Soldiers in the Russian capital had been readying themselves to meet a convoy of mutinous mercenaries, setting up machine gun positions and checkpoints around the city.
The announcement from Prigozhin now appears to defuse a growing crisis.
Prigozhin said that while his men are just 200 kilometers (120 miles) from Moscow, he decided to turn them back to avoid 'shedding Russian blood.'
Ahmed Fares,
The Guardian confirms what you say above.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2023/jun/23/russia-ukraine-war-live-russia-investigates-mutiny-as-wagner-chief-says-evil-military-leaders-must-be-stopped
According to a radio news report about 20 mins ago, Lukashenko, the Belarusian dictator, played a mediating role. Not sure how significant that was.
This from Yves Smith (Naked Capitalism) today:
Prigozhin is not trying to oust Putin. He is trying to get officials like defense minister Shoigu ousted because Prigozhin claims he and some other military big dogs are betraying Putin and Russia and the rank and file. Putin does not agree. You might call it a civil war in the military except if every single Wagnerite follow Prigozhin, he’d have 25,000 men, limited munitions, no supply lines or resupply, versus at least 600,000 in the Russian armed forces. The Russian military pays very well and has lots of men signing up to join, so there’s no reason to think there is a lot of unhappiness in the rank and file to exploit.
This is not Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon.
In any case, I'd say that today Ukraine won a huge victory.
With a divided military Putin will be lucky to hold on to whatever Ukrainian territory including Crimea which he already controls.
I'm not claiming that Ukraine will be able to reconquer all occupied territory, but it seems unlikely that Putin will be able to take more territory. He will be able to do a lot of damage with his missile strikes against Ukrainian population centers, but otherwise unless he's crazier than I believe and resorts to nuclear weapons, the war will enter a period of stalemate, I imagine.
More and more, Putin appears less like a classic dictator like Hitler and Stalin and more like a gangster.
Re the quote from Yves Smith: The Russian military has taken high casualties, and the suggestion that there's no unhappiness in the rank-and-file seems to me dubious.
I found it interesting that a small army could waltz into a major city and then head towards Moscow with little to no opposition. Looking at the linked map it seems that Russia is two points of light fairly close together with the rest up for grabs.
https://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/144000/144898/BlackMarble_2016_3km.jpg
That the Wagner folks seem to have been welcomed in Rostov so maybe Russia is ripe for right-sizing.
(The implications for a possible nuclear exchange might be that, while there would be no winners in a classic sense, putting out those two bright dots would be simple. I'm sure that's clear to the folks who matter in Russia.)
s.w., all dictators are thugs at heart. Stalin was a bank robber and Hitler did the beer hall thing as well as cleaning up matters one night. Trump (a wantabe for sure) did Jan 6.
Stalin robbed banks for the cause. Robbing banks is a common practice among leftists dedicated to armed struggle and until a few years ago, in Chile there were armed leftist groups which robbed banks.
Both Stalin and Hitler had an ideology which inspired others to fight and to die. The Germans resisted until the allies conquered all of Germany in World War 2.
After a bad start, Stalin appealed to Russian patriotism instead of Marxism-Leninism to inspire Russians to resist the Germans and they did. Nazi atrocities against the civilian population played a role to be sure.
Putin's ideology apparently inspires no one and that's the reason he depends on mercenaries to fight for him. He is transparently someone on an ultra power trip and there's nothing else to him.
LFC,
You have it exactly backwards.
It's estimated that Ukraine has lost about 340,000 soldiers killed and an equal number of wounded for roughly 700,000 casualties. The normal ratio of 3-to-1 wounded to killed doesn't apply to Ukraine because most of their wounded soldiers are dying in the trenches, i.e., more killed less wounded.
As for the Russians, and noting that most deaths come from artillery where the Russians are firing ten times the number of shells, there would be about 30,000 to 40,000 killed with maybe three times that number wounded.
As for the recent Ukrainian counter-offensive, the Ukrainians didn't even penetrate the first line of defense (the defense lines are three to five lines deep). Most of their tanks were destroyed by the KA-52 (Alligator) Russian helicopters. That and the Lancet drones.
How do we know this? Because no dragon's teeth in any of the footage we've seen. That means the Russian main defense line is still far off.
Further to my comment,
Col. Douglas Macgregor: "300,000 Ukrainian soldiers killed, 10,000 Ukrainian armoured vehicles destroyed, and US has wasted $70 billion.."
The quote is from a month ago so the additional casualities are since that time. Here's a YouTube link, and the quote above is in the first minute or so:
Douglas Macgregor - The next Objective of Russia.
This from Scott Ritter from a couple of months ago:
Ukraine’s military losses surpass 300,000 fatalities, US expert thinks
Scott Ritter noted that the Ukrainian military system was corrupt and intentionally downplayed the number of those killed
NEW YORK, April 8. /TASS/. The permanent losses among Ukrainian military personnel may be up to 300,000, said Scott Ritter, a former United Nations Special Commission weapons inspector.
In a conversation with the host of the US Tour of Duty podcast aired on Friday, Ritter noted that the Ukrainian military system was corrupt and intentionally downplayed the number of those killed.
"Ukraine is trying to minimize the losses but the fact is, they are much larger," he said noting that during a meeting with Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian armed forces Valery Zaluzhny admitted to 257,000 dead and about 83,000 missing out of whom 60,000 are presumed dead.
I'm delighted all the foreign policy wonks got most of the analysis wrong. My expectation though, is that now Putin will unleash the entire Russian military on Ukraine and end this by Christmas. Slava Ukraine!
Ahmed Fares,
Scott Ritter is a completely unreliable, biased source on this whole subject.
"[On] 16 April 2023, The New York Times reported that documents in the 2023 Pentagon document leaks estimated 189,500 to 223,000 Russian casualties, compared to 124,500 to 131,000 Ukrainian casualties."
Source of quote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine#Casualties
Ritter, to repeat, is not a reliable source on this conflict. It is rather irresponsible to quote him.
I don't intend to debate these matters with you further.
p.s. Given the total Ukrainian population of able-bodied men (and women, but it's mostly men on the front lines, I think), and given that there have been few if any traditional all-out battles in this war afaik, 700,000 alleged total Ukrainian casualties (340,000 dead, 340,000 wounded) seems to me to be a delusional figure. No one really knows right now, but that figure strikes me as way off on the high side.
p.p.s. The British had 20,000 dead and 40,000 wounded on the first day of the Somme in 1916, but this is not that kind of war, despite the presence of trenches.
"...in Chile there were armed leftist groups which robbed banks."
And they were thugs - that one was fund-raising for a cause doesn't clear the ledger. Besides, even thugs and hoodlums can have beliefs and values, "that would be an infamnia"/"after all, we are not Communists"/"they can win." I take it you have never known folks in that side of life. I doubt Stalin had to dig all that deep to find and voice his Russian Soul.
Putin and the Russian Federation are inspired by the same Russian version of "city on a hill/manifest destiny" that drove Imperial Russia and (with a Marxist veneer) the Soviet Union. There is plenty of support for Russian Exceptionalism - more now that those with the ability and foresight to know better have bailed.
AF, Russian troops keep attacking instead of falling back to their defensive lines. As long as they feed the shooting gallery why not just point and shoot? Taking out infrastructure (there was a bridge, etc.) and as many troops as possible before advancing makes sense. Of course, we should have provided F-16s and F-18s months ago.
aaall,
I've known several people who belonged to leftwing groups which robbed banks for the cause.
I shared a house with one of them for several years. He lent me books from his excellent library and we talked extensively.
I find it extremely offensive that you call them "thugs", thus placing them in the same category as "all dictators" according to your comment above.
aaall,
The 1980s F-16 won’t work in Ukraine as it requires a long, absolutely pristine runway.
There can't be a stray bullet or pebble or anything.
Ukraine doesn't have these airfields and the F16s will have to be flown out of Poland. Russia has the right to attack them in Poland.
A country that activates a direct conflict is not covered by NATO Article 5.
"Russia has the right to attack them in Poland."
Um, no. This assertion is utter nonsense. This is not what UN Charter Art. 51 means.
But Russia threw intl law out the window in Feb 2022 (and before, actually) so from a practical standpoint it's irrelevant.
s.w., I'm sure there were some perfectly charming conversations to be had with interesting folks in cafes in Vienna and Zurich back in the day but then Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, et al went home. If your friend was willing to rob banks, he was willing kill innocent people. You don't indicate, or perhaps don't know, how far down that road he had gone or was willing to go and neither you nor he knows how he would handle power. Taken a step at a time, it's often amazing (or disheartening) what we are capable of.
Also revolutions do eat their own so there's that.
AF, broaden out of tankie-land. The F-16 issues are capable of being handled and FA-18s are carrier capable.
I believe the failed coup might be subterfuge so Wagner or Belarus or Russia can later attack Ukraine unexpectedly by invading its northern border. One of two things could happen here. They could either attack Kyiv, or split Ukraine in half, so they can cut off supplies to Ukraine's eastern forces. Ukraine will probably be watching closely to see there is no military build up on Belarus' southern border.
aaall,
If being willing to kill innocent people in the name of a "good" cause makes someone a thug, then all U.S. presidents beginning with FDR are thugs. Zelensky is one too.
Once you take up arms, in a good cause or a bad one, innocent people are going to be killed.
There is a complex calculus where the good represented by the cause is weighed against the evil of taking innocent lives. There is no simple formula and since you have no idea of the circumstances which led my friend, Mauricio, to take up arms, your judgement is hasty and rash.
No one claims that one could have had charming conversation with Stalin, even before he took power. Bertrand Russell spoke with Lenin when he travelled to the Soviet Union in the early days of the revolution and found him to be dogmatic and hence, tedious.
Trotsky probably would have been a better conversation partner. Russell was a better conversation partner than all three of them combined.
I believe the failed coup might be a subterfuge to get everyone to turn towards God as the last hope for survival of the human species.
But seriously, what's the point of idle speculation???
Michael Llenos,
You'd have to believe that this was staged:
Russian Ka-52's State of the Art Vitebsk L-370 DIRCM Anti-Missile System Dodges Wagner Manpads
One of the comments below the above video:
Wheels within wheels as the Matryoshka dolls spin and dance.
The inscrutable Bear is at it again. God bless Mother Russia
Matryoshka doll
"complex calculus"
s.w., if your friend had in some way attacked the military, police, or certain political actors you would be correct. "I need money to do X so I go where the money is," is quite simple - ask Willie Sutton or Clyde Barrow. The "cause" calculus is mere rationalization - it seems even some thugs have pretensions.
Most folks working in a bank are low level white or blue collar workers, ditto whatever customers happen to be there. The only difference between robbing a bank and mugging a lone pensioner is slightly higher risk and a higher anticipated return.
Strange you should mention FDR and Zelensky. As I recall the IJN attacked the U.S., Germany declared war on the U.S., and Russia unilaterally and without any rational provocation invaded Ukraine. Just what were FDR and Z supposed to do?
I'll allow that Burr (almost president) and Jackson were thugs. TR was likely bi-polar so ??? Nixon - also a crook and a traitor. Reagan was into dementia way earlier then commonly acknowledged so ???
Short (10 minutes) excerpt from a long interview done by Glenn Loury with Cornel West about why West is running for president.
Loury, who likes to play the devil's advocate and does it well, asks West all the hard questions and West does not give entirely convincing answers (for me), but I'm sure he'll convince some people.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgG2lfXgqv0
What I found interesting was West's take on the third party effects in 2000 and 2016. I assume he's aware of how the system functions so he's being totally dishonest. BTW, Jill Stein will be the VP on the Green line.
Always suspicious, I have to note RFK Jr. is being supported by the horseshoe parts of the left and right and No Labels is constructively backing Trump.
Following the money on all this should be interesting.
Oh, and what's with West's rocking (RFK Jr. based on recent pics appears to be juicing)? Strange timeline we are in.
aaall
I watched the clip s.w. linked and have a somewhat different perspective.
West made the point that Hillary Clinton lost in 2016 because she was a rather mediocre candidate qua candidate -- not mediocre as an intellect (she's smart enough) but as a candidate -- and she made some verbal faux pas (e.g., deplorables) that prob cost her votes. Trump's faux pas didn't seem to cost him, but that just highlights that HRC might have been held to a different standard... because of sexism. So combine sexism, acknowledged or otherwise, w her performance as a campaigner and you have the main reasons she lost.
To obsess about the 12,000 or 15,000 or 17,000 votes or whatever that Jill Stein got in Wisconsin misses the point that if Clinton had run a really good campaign she should never have been in a situation where Wisconsin is so close that Stein's vote matters. Remember the last day of the 2016 campaign w HRC frantically flying for a last bit of campaigning from Wisconsin to Florida, frantically trying to squeeze out one last appearance because her campaign realized too late that she was in trouble? To repeat, the basic reason HRC lost to Trump is that HRC ran a subpar campaign (plus the effects of sexism in the electorate), and to blame Jill Stein for HRC's defeat misses the point.
Cornel West has always been very articulate but I don't think he's going to draw even as many votes as Stein, so I don't think his campaign is going to have a "spoiler" effect. Fulminating vs West's candidacy in the blogosphere is not going to make any difference. Why not? Because neither West himself nor most of his potential supporters likely give a f***** s*** about what's said in the blogosphere.
And btw, finally, I thought West handled Loury's question about how he (West) would relate to a Midwestern Republican small-business owner quite well.
LFC,
I think that you can be Chomsky or you can be Bernie, but you can't be both.
Chomsky, who is a genius and maybe the U.S. figure I most admire, has never run for office.
He participated in social movements, was very active in the campaign against the war in Viet Nam and now at age 94 he gives numerous interviews on zoom on U.S. foreign policy, Chomsky being very critical of the U.S. role in the Ukraine war. He speaks his mind, does not tone down his opinions for anyone and in spite of his age is willing to argue and argue with those who question his point of view.
Chomsky is not a Democrat although he did endorse Biden as the lesser evil against Trump.
Bernie Sanders participated in the Democratic primaries in 2016 and 2020. He has a political discourse, one designed to win over voters and seems to have toned down his criticisms of the U.S. role in world politics because he's now playing the game instead of criticizing the game from a distance as Chomsky does. Although he is not officially a Democrat, he does not criticize the Democrats as Chomsky does.
Cornel West seems to want to be both Bernie and Chomsky. That is, West wants to run for office and to win votes as Bernie does, but he wants to still continue to criticize the Democrats as Chomsky does. I'd say that we all have to choose one option or the other.
People like West and Jill Stein who want to be both Bernie and Chomsky can cause a lot of damage in a political situation where there is the danger of someone like Trump being elected president again.
I'm glad to see LFC pointing out Clinton's poor campaigning. I seem to recall from some of the autopsies of the time that her reliance on a bunch of computer types stuck in some office building while pretty much ignoring the on-the-ground Democratic activists was much criticised. Furthermore, her neglect of Wisconsin among other places followed on Obama's neglect of Wisconsin at key political moments.
Mention of Obama also reminds me that it should have been clear from when she ran so poorly in the primaries against him that Clinton hadn't much of a clue as to how to campaign against anyone of some political sophistication. But those who want to go on blaming those who 'ought to be Democrats' for Democratic failures, rather than blaming the Democrats themselves, will no doubt continue to express their animus.
s.w.
Unlike Bernie Sanders, Cornel West has no realistic expectation of being elected. So he's not running to be elected. He's running, as he said to Loury, to shift or influence "the conversation." I see nothing wrong with that, so long as he doesn't mount campaigns in swing states that, in a close general election, could influence the outcome.
LFC,
Sure.
I guess my point is that activism and politics are two different games.
Chomsky is an activist and he never compromises.
Politicians compromise.
You need both. All the great social changes in the 20th century start with activism, the civil rights movement, feminism, gay rights, end the Viet Nam War, etc.
When activism reaches a certain level and there's a culture or subcultural change (a shift in the conversation), politicians react and legislative changes occur.
I've done a bit of activism in my life and not much politics.
If West can combine the two, more power to him, but it's not easy to combine them.
LFC, West also made the point that Nader and Stein only got one percent or so of the national vote. It's fair to point out that Clinton (and Gore) ran bad campaigns but totally dishonest and a distraction to use the national vote as part of the argument when the state by state vote is what matters.
That the Democrats have a problem with incompetent (and fee taking) campaign operatives is well known. During a brief conversation I had with a person high up in the Gore campaign during the 2000 Democratic convention I poited out that they were going to have a serious problem with Nader in Florida. I was assured they had matters in hand.
Another problem is that the political press is incompetent on policy and in thrall to silly and trivial horse race narratives. They also hated both Gore and Clinton which was reflected in their coverage. 2000 was presented as a low stakes election in which "who would you rather have a beer with" was somehow important. The NYT actually promoted the ridiculous "Clinton Cash" book and the coverage on her emails was simply journalistic malpractice. NBC's "commander-in-Chief forum was an anti-Clinton set-up and Trump's earned media was a journalistic shanda.
We shouldn't forget that in the end Comey's October surprise as well as problems with anti-Clinton elements in SDNY were likely dispositive.
Folks are still responsible for their choices and in our system it's the case that a third party on the right will help Democrats and a third party on the left will help Republicans in marginal situations. Any other calculus is either delusional or malicious.
(It also doesn't hurt to reflect on things like Manafort working for free and passing proprietary polling to Kilimnik and where did the NRA get thirty million dollars?)
West's "conversation with some random Republican voter" comment is simply silly. Should it even happen in say Mississippi it will have no effect on the outcome. In a Wisconsin it might well divert a persuadable democratic vote.
By joining the Green ticket with Stein, West is setting himself up to campaign in swing states because that's what the Green Party does and (I suspect) what its cadres and funders expect it to do.
The U.S. as a representative democracy is verging on terminal because an ideological movement was willing to spend decades taking over an established political party. There were those in that movement that talked third party (Bill Rusher wrote a book in the mid-1970s) but they lost. But a third party can "change the conversation" sure!
In our ridiculous system you have to go seat by seat. That takes time, money, and committed cadres (e.g. the last anti-abortion Democrat in the Virginia legislature was just primaried out). Running for president on a third party ticket is at best a vanity project (I have other suspicions as my inner Eeyore is strong).
s.w., activism is over-rated and often counter productive. Civil Rights advancements depended as much on skillful litigating, Kennedy's assassination, Goldwater's nomination, and a different Republican Party. Ending the draft damped down campus activism and activism began working on Vietnam when it became clear that the war was a fiasco.
Also activists don't understand that we never win. As soon as there was civil rights legislation the efforts to roll back those gain began. Ditto the environment and LGBTQ gains. Reaction has plenty of money and folks eager to swallow the kayfabe.
aaall
I don't understand your comments on activism. The relation between activism and electoral politics is not either-or; it's both-and. That seems completely obvious.
"Activists don't understand" that gains are reversible? Of course they do. The notion that as soon as the Civil Rights Act of '64 and Voting Rights Act of '65 were signed, the civil rights movement said "mission accomplished" and ended all efforts on all fronts is absurd. There was important litigation obvs., but the street-level protests going back to the 1955 bus boycott and the 1960 lunch-counter sit-ins were very important too. If you want to see how activism and electoral politics are complementary, just look for ex. at John Lewis's career, or Julian Bond's. I think you know all this perfectly well.
p.s. As for the anti-Vietnam War movement, demonstrations in 1969 played a major role in leading Nixon and Kissinger to pull the plug on what was known as operation Duck Hook, which included plans for possible use of U.S. tactical nuclear strikes.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/movement-and-madman/
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/nixons-nuclear-specter-the-secret-alert-1969-madman-diplomacy-and-the-vietnam-war
Dr. Wolff,
i recall when, in about 1979, you suggested I should read "The Mystery of Speculative Construction, aka, "The Absolute Fruit." It is perhaps the most clearly articulated take down of idealism while also funny in the sense of having devastatingly destroyed one's opponent while having fun doing it. It is my sense that Marx was enjoying writing this. It is commodity fetishism explained and should be taught with the commodity fetishism section of Capital.
"I think you know all this perfectly well."
Of course I do as "over-rated'" implies but activism without the politics goes nowhere. There was labor activism since at least the 1830s but it took the Depression and Douglas MacArthur (bungled response to Bonus March activism) to get FDR and congressional majorities elected and Perkins (activist motivated by the Shirtwaist fire, etc. into politics) appointed as well as a politically intimidated Supreme Court to get the Wagner Act (N.B Obama appointing Emanuel, Geithner, and Summers). A mere twelve years later and the common clay in their wisdom gave the Republicans control of the Congress and we got the Taft-Hartley Act.
Mentioning the Supreme Court to Green activists back in 2016 got one accused of using the Court and Roe, etc. as "blackmail."
Duck Hook was, of course, insane (elect a crook/traitor thug who appoints a war criminal thug) but there was also internal opposition. The activism reflected wide-spread dissatisfaction with was by then an unwinnable war. Of course our neo-con, neo-lib rulers were back to meddling in Central/South America in a few years and then came St. Ralph and Iraq.
Activists are very good at moving on to the next shiny thing with out calculating how today's action will effect yesterday's gains.
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