adam really doesnt get it.

on one hand he asserts that the us economy and two-party system "will not be derailed by a group of student protesters, no matter how large" but then goes on to say "there is also great possibility to change it." but only by elections.

naive.

history does not bear out Adam\'s false belief.

slavery was not abolished through the electoral system.

women\'s voting rights were not achieved through the electoral system.

H.R.2634 Jubilee Act for Responsible Lending and Expanded Debt Collection Act was just passed by the House of Representatives not two weeks ago. This landmark legislation is not the product of the electoral system.

This is what Mr. Solomon needs to understand. We can and must have success in the existing political system but success will not be simply the result of elections. Democracy transcends much futher than ballots.

    It is lamentable, though unsuprising, that you , Mr. Korte, are forced to speak past Mr. Solomon\'s criticisms.  By their very formation--their positioning within the established discourse and exchange with exclusively that same discourse--well, shit, it\'s clear that he just doesn\'t get it.

    I don\'t understand, for instance, how the statement that our generation is made up of "go-getters fully entrenched in the system" supports a case for reform over revolution or transformation; it seems to me that the opposite is true.  Solomon merely states conditions under which radical change is possible or even necessary. 

    Besides, the claim that today\'s protests are "insignificant" compared to those of the Vietnam era is very misleading.  The beginning of the Vietman war is notoriously difficult to pinpoint, but, for the sake of argument, we can put it sometime toward the end of the Eisenhower administration, say 1958 (a late date, I think).  In that case, it\'s more appropriate to compare today\'s domestic anti-war protests with those of 1963, not \'68. By this measure the peace movement against the "War on Terror" has developed far more rapidly.  The vast majority of US citizens did not know what Vietnam was in 1963, let alone what was going on there (Dylan wasn\'t even singing about it yet.)  As for the global protest, one needs only to point to unprecedented formations like the World Social Forum, what Chomsky calls "perhaps the first true International," to see that  there is  no comparison. 

    While it may be true (who really knows?) that the dominat social and economic order will not be "derailed" by organizations like SDS, to make such a absolute statement one must already assume that revolutionary change is impossible.  In this, one betrays a serious dearth of history (look at the 30\'s alone).  Not to mention that Solomon does not seem to consider the possibility that capitalism and the "two-party system" are simply running out of track.

    On another point, Solomon suggests that the student movement articulates no concern for the "common good."  Was this just some kind of bizarre misreading on his part?  As some writers, Antonio Negri, for instance, have brilliantly formulated, the only true desire for common good is revolutionary desire and that the latter is necessarily constructed in common.  Solomon seems to ovelook that the system itself infringes on the common good, that is to say, he misses the point.  His statements are not an engagement of reformatory with revolutionary ideas, they are merely a description of those views.

    It occurs to me, writing that last part, that I\'m giving him too much credit, or perhaps spending too much time engaging the reform strategy as if it were an alternative in the first place. 

    Reform and revolution are less two positionalities on the same plane--two camps sharing ends, disputing means--than they are entirely different grammers.  Permit me a loose metaphor, the reform movement is the cellular membrane of "the system", very much part of it.  The prevailing historical pressure of revolutionary and communal desire on "the system" (shorthand for white-supremacist patriarchal capitalism, which is shorthand for a shitload else) is mediated by this reformist membrane.  The system certainly makes internal changes in response to revolutionary desire, it must.  It is always on its heels.  But it is through the kind of absorbtion of this pressure that reformism appears to be aligned with transformation.  Rather, "reform" is the means by which revolutionary pedagogy and action is most often co-opted by the totality of the system itself. 

    Yes, much has changed since the late 1960\'s, this is clear.  The extent to which we call this "progress," however is less clear if it is relevant at all.   What has this change been if we find ourselves in an historical moment characterized by the most fully integrated and pernicious system of capitalist domination yet seen? Capitalism today, despite our clinging to  traditional leftist icons and rhetoric, is highly decentralized, and while it is no less hierarchal for its being decentralized,  capital has become more and more dependent on cooperative networks, in a word, and perhaps this is strange to say, socialized.  This continuing metamorphosis, in my view, is the direct result of capital\'s defensive response to revolutionary desire, to the people\'s movements of the 60\'s and 70\'s (and of course earlier movements). In this way it is incoherent to say that any movement has ever "failed", if we see revolutionary desire as the driving force of history.  Moreover, it is more difficult to imagine what "The Revolution" forthcoming would look like, because it is already taking place. 

    Truly radical politics are therefore completely inconsistent with reform "politics", while still being consistent with so-called "incremental" called (though i\'m not sure that change over a 50-year period cannot be called "spontaneous")

    The drastic transformations will be the huge and irrevocable changes in material conditions (now ecological as much as economic) resulting from a long history of exploitation.  Energy depletion comes first to mind.  These are outside our control, and the control of any social movement.  It is partially for this reason, and partially for my believe that we revolutionaries ought best to disengage completely with reformists, that I was interested and pleased by the form of your response, Mr. Korte, that is by emphasis on creation of new forms of social relations, more than negation.

However, I question whether the formation of organizations whose overt purpose is engagement or confrontation with the system as it exists.  It seems to me that organizations or planes of social relations in general that do not participate are inherently antagonistic to the system. 

Shit.  I\'m actually pretty tired of writin at the moment.  This is my first attempt at contribution to Z of any kind.  So I don\'t even know if you\'ll read this.  But if you do.  Lemme know what you think.  I\'d like to get involved. 

--JJ

Isn\'t there some way to edit out duplicates?  Sorry

I am an older activist in sds/mds who has also been participating (mainly in the ways available, such as online) in electoral politics and debate.   Leaders of the "new" sds/mds (movement for a democratic society) including Barbara Ehrenreich and Carl Davidson have tried to garner active support for Obama from the ranks of sdsers.   So there is no necessary preclusion of the most mainstream of all political activities -- national elections -- and the kind of activism and vision sds represents.   True, I think it is safe to say that most sdsers today regard even the more progressive wing(s) of the Democratic Party with great disdain, and though I have after many years come to a multi-layered approach to politics, one can hardly miss the many reasons that the Democrats, who have disappointed again and again, most recently upon gaining control of both Houses of Congress, might be viewed as simply not the answer.   They are at best AN answer, mainly for making hopefully better changes on such time urgent issues as the environment than the alternative.

But the notion that our society does NOT urgently need some kind of MAJOR force to the left of the Democratic Party begs a large number of practical flesh-and-blood issues.   I look at the issue of "revolution" -- after many decades as an activist -- from the ground up, and from the present to the future, more than thinking of a grand scheme of revolution, and then trying to organize in a specifically \'revolutionary\' movement for such.   But the notion that we do not urgently need massive progressive transformations, clearly beyond the vision, let alone the means, of the mainstream political parties, simply doesn\'t seem even a realistic possibility.    Consider three issues:

* IMPERIALISM  -- on this very simple concept, one that needs to be introduced not just as a "fringe" idea of self-proclaimed revolutionary cadre (not to deny the need for that), but something for a broad swath of constituencies that are coming to make up at least a majority of the Democratic Party,  folk like Solomon usually choke.   To them, the idea of the US as imperialist is just itself an INTRINSICALLY fringe idea at least within the US and the advanced industrial world, like spelling America with three K\'s (Amerikkka).   But after liberals and those who perceive themselves as sophisticated progressives were satisfied that the Vietnam War was an aberration, and that we were moving on from those \'sixties\' ideas like imperialism with the end of the cold war and such crises as the new technological possibilities of terrorism -- we find our country embroiled in TWO wars without end, one clearly opposed by most Americans.   The war of occupation in Iraq is clearly part of the \'great game\' of imperialist politics, the sham of the WMD pretext for going to war having now been exposed for the whole world and in particular our whole society to see.  

Imperialism also has to do more than with Iraq, or with actual and prospective military interventionism in places like Iran.   Imperialism has EVERYTHING to do with "globalization" or, as I prefer to call it "McGlobalization" -- globalization of multinational corporate capitalism, not just the emergence of a single world and modern technology.   Indeed the language used -- \'globalization\' -- makes it seem that those in Ohio and throughout the country opposed to NAFTA and others opposing globalization are just luddites and romantic regressionists.   But when we understand that progressives SUPPORT various kinds of "globalization" -- globalized ecology policies, sustainable ecologically-centered economic development, GLOBAL human rights standards and protection of labor, etc -- and we recognize that the present economic form of internationalism is really IMPERIALISM, why then it becomes clearer that what might be dismissed as romantic radicalism is in fact, as has been true of wave after wave of mass-based movements in modern society, a forward looking and historically progressive force.     This self-consciousness needs to be articulated, and the nature of our militarily interventionist and  economically "McGlobalized" system as , <i>imp     erialist </i>helps focus potentially large and history-determining popular constituencies into a coalition for a new politics.    What sds did in the 60s primarily though not wholly among students could be a mere preamble to a much larger and broader movement, starting with campuses as the main base for a number of years, of progressives.   Clearly students alone cannot make a revolution happen.

And there is  nothing in the nature of the two parties that suggest they have even the vision let alone the wherewithal to confront what minds like Solomon just don\'t grasp about our system -- Iraq wasn\'t just a chance mistake, but part of a systemic problem.   This war was not inevitable (we probably wouldn\'t be there if Gore had been allowed his victory, in my arrogant opinion) but this KIND of crisis is the INEVITABLY recurring large and small scale product of the kind of system we have.   Imperialism must first be recognized, and then be opposed, and publics, starting where it is most feasible, like campuses, mobilized against it.   And this kind of entrenched systemic reality doesn\'t just get transcended with a few reforms, like the formalities of Jim Crow were.   The Civil Rights movement would have to be muliplied over several times in size, and be more sustained, and then we can hardly expect the system -- which has proven so totally unresponsive now TWICE to popular opposition to interventionist adventures, often easy to sell at first, but harder to sell even at first after a while -- to somehow bend and completely renegotiate the system of the WTO (World Trade Organization) and the other elements of the present imperialist system.

Obviously there are volumes more to say about this.

Consider also the specific issue of the environment.    While even the liberal "heroes" on issues like \'global warming\' are talking about a catastrophically INADEQUATE goal of 80% reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050, the truth is that we need to reach not 20% of present levels of emissions even globally but NET NEGATIVE GHG emissions, and not in 40+ years but in less than half that time.   This from, among others, leading climatologist Jim Hansen.     Now how in the world can we expect the Democratic Party, or the usual liberal reform groups, to grapple with a need to completely transform our economic system as this requires, and to invest the TRILLIONS (though well worth it and profitable over time) that will be required, without the kind of political activism that sds/mds envision?    Who is going to stop the planet from becoming a place where the very idea of nature being the general condition of the planet is replaced with a planet in ecological ruins -- and with the ruling class, possibly in some Tory-horseshit form, presiding over the ruins -- without the kind of radical and indeed REVOLUTIONARY vision that animates groups like sds/mds?   And how can such a politics be meaningful if limited only to students or any other similar minority segment of society?    What is needed is a political movement that is both BROAD and RADICAL -- and that is the animating vision of the new sds/mds.

Revolutions are not started by a few people with a radically different vision somehow convincing people of some alternative, like parecon, but when the exigencies of a system -- people\'s jobs, not having sea levels rise 20 feet or more, as is the likely result of even the more reform-minded visions addressing the greenhouse effect, protecting world peace from a state of ceaseless war and chaos, basic health, etc. -- force the kinds of changes that a particular polity is simply not prepared to make.    So we need to organize for those necessary changes -- no war, no warming, AGAINST imperialism and its crucial element, McGlobalization -- and see in what ways they can be accomplished, through actual political struggle.    If those struggles eventually lead to some kind of revolution, or maybe some kind of transformation that present language doesn\'t yet describe, then what we MUST do, as a species not as individuals obeying a system, we must do!

I am an older activist in sds/mds who has also been participating (mainly in the ways available, such as online) in electoral politics and debate.   Leaders of the "new" sds/mds (movement for a democratic society) including Barbara Ehrenreich and Carl Davidson have tried to garner active support for Obama from the ranks of sdsers.   So there is no necessary preclusion of the most mainstream of all political activities -- national elections -- and the kind of activism and vision sds represents.   True, I think it is safe to say that most sdsers today regard even the more progressive wing(s) of the Democratic Party with great disdain, and though I have after many years come to a multi-layered approach to politics, one can hardly miss the many reasons that the Democrats, who have disappointed again and again, most recently upon gaining control of both Houses of Congress, might be viewed as simply not the answer.   They are at best AN answer, mainly for making hopefully better changes on such time urgent issues as the environment than the alternative.

But the notion that our society does NOT urgently need some kind of MAJOR force to the left of the Democratic Party begs a large number of practical flesh-and-blood issues.   I look at the issue of "revolution" -- after many decades as an activist -- from the ground up, and from the present to the future, more than thinking of a grand scheme of revolution, and then trying to organize in a specifically \'revolutionary\' movement for such.   But the notion that we do not urgently need massive progressive transformations, clearly beyond the vision, let alone the means, of the mainstream political parties, simply doesn\'t seem even a realistic possibility.    Consider three issues:

* IMPERIALISM  -- on this very simple concept, one that needs to be introduced not just as a "fringe" idea of self-proclaimed revolutionary cadre (not to deny the need for that), but something for a broad swath of constituencies that are coming to make up at least a majority of the Democratic Party,  folk like Solomon usually choke.   To them, the idea of the US as imperialist is just itself an INTRINSICALLY fringe idea at least within the US and the advanced industrial world, like spelling America with three K\'s (Amerikkka).   But after liberals and those who perceive themselves as sophisticated progressives were satisfied that the Vietnam War was an aberration, and that we were moving on from those \'sixties\' ideas like imperialism with the end of the cold war and such crises as the new technological possibilities of terrorism -- we find our country embroiled in TWO wars without end, one clearly opposed by most Americans.   The war of occupation in Iraq is clearly part of the \'great game\' of imperialist politics, the sham of the WMD pretext for going to war having now been exposed for the whole world and in particular our whole society to see.  

Imperialism also has to do more than with Iraq, or with actual and prospective military interventionism in places like Iran.   Imperialism has EVERYTHING to do with "globalization" or, as I prefer to call it "McGlobalization" -- globalization of multinational corporate capitalism, not just the emergence of a single world and modern technology.   Indeed the language used -- \'globalization\' -- makes it seem that those in Ohio and throughout the country opposed to NAFTA and others opposing globalization are just luddites and romantic regressionists.   But when we understand that progressives SUPPORT various kinds of "globalization" -- globalized ecology policies, sustainable ecologically-centered economic development, GLOBAL human rights standards and protection of labor, etc -- and we recognize that the present economic form of internationalism is really IMPERIALISM, why then it becomes clearer that what might be dismissed as romantic radicalism is in fact, as has been true of wave after wave of mass-based movements in modern society, a forward looking and historically progressive force.     This self-consciousness needs to be articulated, and the nature of our militarily interventionist and  economically "McGlobalized" system as , <i>imp     erialist </i>helps focus potentially large and history-determining popular constituencies into a coalition for a new politics.    What sds did in the 60s primarily though not wholly among students could be a mere preamble to a much larger and broader movement, starting with campuses as the main base for a number of years, of progressives.   Clearly students alone cannot make a revolution happen.

And there is  nothing in the nature of the two parties that suggest they have even the vision let alone the wherewithal to confront what minds like Solomon just don\'t grasp about our system -- Iraq wasn\'t just a chance mistake, but part of a systemic problem.   This war was not inevitable (we probably wouldn\'t be there if Gore had been allowed his victory, in my arrogant opinion) but this KIND of crisis is the INEVITABLY recurring large and small scale product of the kind of system we have.   Imperialism must first be recognized, and then be opposed, and publics, starting where it is most feasible, like campuses, mobilized against it.   And this kind of entrenched systemic reality doesn\'t just get transcended with a few reforms, like the formalities of Jim Crow were.   The Civil Rights movement would have to be muliplied over several times in size, and be more sustained, and then we can hardly expect the system -- which has proven so totally unresponsive now TWICE to popular opposition to interventionist adventures, often easy to sell at first, but harder to sell even at first after a while -- to somehow bend and completely renegotiate the system of the WTO (World Trade Organization) and the other elements of the present imperialist system.

Obviously there are volumes more to say about this.

Consider also the specific issue of the environment.    While even the liberal "heroes" on issues like \'global warming\' are talking about a catastrophically INADEQUATE goal of 80% reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050, the truth is that we need to reach not 20% of present levels of emissions even globally but NET NEGATIVE GHG emissions, and not in 40+ years but in less than half that time.   This from, among others, leading climatologist Jim Hansen.     Now how in the world can we expect the Democratic Party, or the usual liberal reform groups, to grapple with a need to completely transform our economic system as this requires, and to invest the TRILLIONS (though well worth it and profitable over time) that will be required, without the kind of political activism that sds/mds envision?    Who is going to stop the planet from becoming a place where the very idea of nature being the general condition of the planet is replaced with a planet in ecological ruins -- and with the ruling class, possibly in some Tory-horseshit form, presiding over the ruins -- without the kind of radical and indeed REVOLUTIONARY vision that animates groups like sds/mds?   And how can such a politics be meaningful if limited only to students or any other similar minority segment of society?    What is needed is a political movement that is both BROAD and RADICAL -- and that is the animating vision of the new sds/mds.

Revolutions are not started by a few people with a radically different vision somehow convincing people of some alternative, like parecon, but when the exigencies of a system -- people\'s jobs, not having sea levels rise 20 feet or more, as is the likely result of even the more reform-minded visions addressing the greenhouse effect, protecting world peace from a state of ceaseless war and chaos, basic health, etc. -- force the kinds of changes that a particular polity is simply not prepared to make.    So we need to organize for those necessary changes -- no war, no warming, AGAINST imperialism and its crucial element, McGlobalization -- and see in what ways they can be accomplished, through actual political struggle.    If those struggles eventually lead to some kind of revolution, or maybe some kind of transformation that present language doesn\'t yet describe, then what we MUST do, as a species not as individuals obeying a system, we must do!