3 ms·

The organic reasons seem straightforward enough. In its context it’s an interesting perspective on a certain type of left-wing experience from that era. It fit

The organic reasons seem straightforward enough. In its context it’s an interesting perspective on a certain type of left-wing experience from that era. It fits in with a wider discussion. In the mainstream however it gets co-opted as (1) this is how left-wing structures work, they’re all like this, and (2) they’re just tyrannies with extra and indirect steps. Ergo traditional structures were right all along. No need to think about it. That feminist/left-wing stuff is just naive kids.

PaulHoule 2y ago
It wasn't just that era, but the second wave of feminism was coming on strong then and there was a lot of writing about that movement then. I think a right-wing movement is more comfortable with the idea of social hierarchy, whether it is a formally structured group where "he who pays the piper pays the tune" [1] or the kind of group that the article describes where there are people who run the group without formal authority. There have been "left-wing" groups that have a strong hierarchy, such as Lenin's Bolsheviks, but groups like that have limited appeal to most people by the 1960s [2] [3]. There are also the various membership-based groups such as the Sierra Club and NOW which have limited effectiveness because they aren't accountable to members [4] So conflicts like the above vex leftists because they'd like to put their egalitarian values to work. My "3 year" case study was the time I was a leader in the Tompkins County Green Party. After the 2000 Ralph Nader campaign we had a lot of energy and decided we wanted to build an organization to contest local elections. We had luck early on taking advantage of fusion voting [5] to decisively settle a power struggle within the local Democratic party so people perceived we had power. There were about 50 people who turned up to meetings, but 3 or 4 people had the time and energy to do the work, I don't think we formed a clique, we would have accepted just about anyone who was basically aligned with us and willing to put in the work. I ran a web site and plastered the town with posters and mostly did as I pleased except for the few times somebody said "you went too far with that poster", that is, most of the members were basically deferential to the people who did the work. As time went on though the issue of being a spoiler [6] came up over and over again. We got a famous green thinker who was shortlisted for the 2004 Presidential race by the national party [7] to run for mayor, but people in our own party were afraid "if we run Glover, the cop is going to win". Each time we the prospect of running a candidate happened the group would split in half and by the 2004 race we couldn't really go forward because locally, statewide, and nationally we couldn't make up our mind if we even wanted to run a candidate. My strongly held opinion was "Fuck 'em" when it came to the Democrats and that a political party that didn't run candidates had no reason to exist; but I couldn't force that opinion on people that I felt a representative of and the other leaders felt the same way so we folded the organization up. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch_network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch_network [2] https://genius.com/The-beatles-revolution-lyrics https://genius.com/The-beatles-revolution-lyrics [3] A Leninist would say you're a poseur if you aren't part of an organization with the resolve and discipline to smash the capitalist class and the state the supports it. [4] A case study in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty [5] https://ballotpedia.org/Fusion_voting https://ballotpedia.org/Fusion_voting [6] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/reflections-on-the-2000-u-s-presidential-election/ https://www.brookings.edu/articles/reflections-on-the-2000-u... [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Glover_(activist) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Glover_(activist)

PaulHoule 2y ago

It wasn't just that era, but the second wave of feminism was coming on strong then and there was a lot of writing about that movement then. I think a right-wing movement is more comfortable with the idea of social hierarchy, whether it is a formally structured group where "he who pays the piper pays the tune" [1] or the kind of group that the article describes where there are people who run the group without formal authority. There have been "left-wing" groups that have a strong hierarchy, such as Lenin's Bolsheviks, but groups like that have limited appeal to most people by the 1960s [2] [3]. There are also the various membership-based groups such as the Sierra Club and NOW which have limited effectiveness because they aren't accountable to members [4] So conflicts like the above vex leftists because they'd like to put their egalitarian values to work. My "3 year" case study was the time I was a leader in the Tompkins County Green Party. After the 2000 Ralph Nader campaign we had a lot of energy and decided we wanted to build an organization to contest local elections. We had luck early on taking advantage of fusion voting [5] to decisively settle a power struggle within the local Democratic party so people perceived we had power. There were about 50 people who turned up to meetings, but 3 or 4 people had the time and energy to do the work, I don't think we formed a clique, we would have accepted just about anyone who was basically aligned with us and willing to put in the work. I ran a web site and plastered the town with posters and mostly did as I pleased except for the few times somebody said "you went too far with that poster", that is, most of the members were basically deferential to the people who did the work. As time went on though the issue of being a spoiler [6] came up over and over again. We got a famous green thinker who was shortlisted for the 2004 Presidential race by the national party [7] to run for mayor, but people in our own party were afraid "if we run Glover, the cop is going to win". Each time we the prospect of running a candidate happened the group would split in half and by the 2004 race we couldn't really go forward because locally, statewide, and nationally we couldn't make up our mind if we even wanted to run a candidate. My strongly held opinion was "Fuck 'em" when it came to the Democrats and that a political party that didn't run candidates had no reason to exist; but I couldn't force that opinion on people that I felt a representative of and the other leaders felt the same way so we folded the organization up. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch_network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch_network [2] https://genius.com/The-beatles-revolution-lyrics https://genius.com/The-beatles-revolution-lyrics [3] A Leninist would say you're a poseur if you aren't part of an organization with the resolve and discipline to smash the capitalist class and the state the supports it. [4] A case study in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty [5] https://ballotpedia.org/Fusion_voting https://ballotpedia.org/Fusion_voting [6] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/reflections-on-the-2000-u-s-presidential-election/ https://www.brookings.edu/articles/reflections-on-the-2000-u... [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Glover_(activist) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Glover_(activist)