Leftist kooks!
| By RevolutionAM - Jun 19th, 2006 at 4:19 pm EDT |
One of the advantages of living in D.C. is that you're around a whole bunch of crazy radicals. One of the disadvantages of living in D.C. is that you're around a whole bunch of crazy radicals. Specifically, ones that want to sell you stuff. Even more specifically, ones that want to sell you newspapers.
Friday when I went home from work, I ran into not one, not two, but THREE sects trying to get me to buy their rags: the ISO (International Socialist Organization), MIM (Maoist International Movement - you don't see them out much anymore) and the inimitable Lyndon LaRouche organization.
When are these people going to realize that selling newspapers isn't going to start a revolution? (LaRouche doesn't want revolution... though I'm not really sure what he wants at this point, other than intercontinental railroads) Especially when the articles are full of exclamation points, respellings of "America" as "Amerikkka" (seriously, MIMNotes must do a find/replace function on their entire paper), and rhetoric that's dusty and covered in cobwebs from the 1920s.
I recently asked an ISO member point blank what exactly the "revolutionary" point was about selling papers. He told me that primarily it was a way to spread awareness and engage people in conversation. "By charging a dollar for some newsprint?" I asked, incredulously. He replied that it helps keep people informed, that it helps "build the movement." Wow. I asked him that if they, as Trotskyists, feel it's the "proletariat" that need to be organized and led, why the hell are they selling their papers in middle to upper class areas of town? He shrugged and said "this is where I was assigned."
Even more incredulous were the LaRouchers, who, inbetween exhortations to go to his website to see his next live online speech, told me that his ideas were really considered in Congress, and that a number of recent bills that passed were originally LaRouche ideas. Wowie!
Remember kiddies: avoid cultish dogma, even (especially?) secular cultish dogma.
Friday when I went home from work, I ran into not one, not two, but THREE sects trying to get me to buy their rags: the ISO (International Socialist Organization), MIM (Maoist International Movement - you don't see them out much anymore) and the inimitable Lyndon LaRouche organization.
When are these people going to realize that selling newspapers isn't going to start a revolution? (LaRouche doesn't want revolution... though I'm not really sure what he wants at this point, other than intercontinental railroads) Especially when the articles are full of exclamation points, respellings of "America" as "Amerikkka" (seriously, MIMNotes must do a find/replace function on their entire paper), and rhetoric that's dusty and covered in cobwebs from the 1920s.
I recently asked an ISO member point blank what exactly the "revolutionary" point was about selling papers. He told me that primarily it was a way to spread awareness and engage people in conversation. "By charging a dollar for some newsprint?" I asked, incredulously. He replied that it helps keep people informed, that it helps "build the movement." Wow. I asked him that if they, as Trotskyists, feel it's the "proletariat" that need to be organized and led, why the hell are they selling their papers in middle to upper class areas of town? He shrugged and said "this is where I was assigned."
Even more incredulous were the LaRouchers, who, inbetween exhortations to go to his website to see his next live online speech, told me that his ideas were really considered in Congress, and that a number of recent bills that passed were originally LaRouche ideas. Wowie!
Remember kiddies: avoid cultish dogma, even (especially?) secular cultish dogma.
!
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As for the LaRouchies, while they've got some serious crazy problems (like being seriously crazy), they did manage to get something right--the LaRouch newspaper was the first to report, many months before anyone else, that John Hannah, Cheney's national security adviser, was cooperating with Patrick Fitzgerald. Link Scared the hell out of me.
This is something that liberal groups need to absorb; it's not just true for the jackass fringes, it's true for everyone. "Awareness raising" and "movement building" are just feel-good, going-through-the-stale-motion s actions that generally do almost nothing to impact the issues at hand. There are a few exceptions (AIDS awareness), but there are logical reasons why awareness-building made sense for them that aren't present for the vast majority of liberal/leftist causes.
At first I was kind of pissed at the educational system--while I'm no Communist (or Marxist; I'm really more of a Weberian), it seems like that's something that I should have been exposed to at some point during my education, much of which has been in postcommunist studies--I'm now really just unimpressed with the "awareness-raising" of these groups. I mean, they should know that the public schols haven't let kids see a copy of the "Manifesto" for almost a hundred years in the US (because that piece of drivel will make kids give up capitalism, sure it will). Selling an occasional newspaper with an insert to order the book of whatever schmuck that runs their particular organization is a far cry from actually promoting anything.
For a movement with some of the most concise ideological writings out there, these leftists are terrible at promoting them or related works like the "Internationale." Actually, come to think of it, we probably shouldn't refer to them as part of a movement, since that would require at least some cooperation among these groups, and for some odd reason they'd rather fight among each other than work together (heavens forbid that the Marxists and the Trotskyites have a barbecue together some afternoon).
It did for a few kids in my freshman-year philosophy class.
If we had four more years of high school (Which is rapidly what college is becoming), there'd be time to lay out the context in order to introduce it. But as it stands, I think we're better off without. We don't toss 'em Wealth of Nations, either - we give them Macro and Micro econ, and the world spins along alright.
Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Mill, Marx, Aristotle, and Rawls.
Blah.
That's a really eclectic list there. Why Aristotle but not "The Republic"? Why Locke and Rousseau but not Hume--I mean, if you're gonna go learn social contract you might as well get the big three. Marx, but no Smith. AND NO WEBER?!!
I mean, at least you probably hit up "Leviathan" and "On Liberty," (or was the Mill piece "The Subjugation of Women"?), but Jesus, how can you have so many uncontested ideas in a philosophy class? Nothing personal against your classmates, but I doubt anyone there would be able to make a tenth of the points about socialism that Weber does, and nobody understands modern government better.
God, are classes like that really how the other half lives? I'm getting spoiled in my tiny public college.
And then, after a couple of classes covering the high points of Marxist writing, you throw Weber at them.
Worked for me, at least.
Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Mill, Marx, Aristotle, and Rawls.
Blah.
Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Mill, Marx, Aristotle, and Rawls.
Blah.