Mazeppism is an Expression of Native Radicalism

As the Mazeppist has noted from time to time, this country has produced a native strain of Leftism with luminaries like H. D. Thoreau, James Baldwin, Richard Wright, W.E.B. DuBois, C. Wright Mills, Joe Hill, Emma Goldman, Norman O. Brown, etc. With the recent death of Howard Zinn, we lost a great scholar-activist. Noam Chomsky, God bless him, seems determined not to go gentle into that good night. But, on the whole, the large pool of native Leftists that the 1960's counter-culture promised us--the cohort preternaturally destined to realize the Invisible Whitmanian Republic right under the bulbous noses of the Nixonian Right--has proved, to say the least, disappointing. Anymore, Boomers give me an acute case of dyspepsia.

In the Spring 2011 issue of Tikkun magazine, Michael Lerner interviews Professor Chomsky ("Overcoming Despair as the Republicans Take Over"). There is some light there but, I have to say, not as much as I'd hoped to find. Fortunately, the same issue contains Richard Wolff's "Prospects for the U.S. Left: Not Bad At All." It's late here in Dar al-Hijra and I've had a long day--my usual Mazeppist skeptical irony may need recharging; be that as it may, I found Wolff's positive assessments reassuring. Wolff writes:

"Millions of people have been impacted by high unemployment and home foreclosures, by decreased job benefits and job security, and by the realization that none of these afflictions will end soon. A sense of betrayal is settling into the popular consciousness" (p. 21)

.

Sadly, if this is true, it is good news for the beleaguered American Left.

What Wolff terms the "hegemonic alliance of big business, the richest 5 percent of citizens, and the state" is, he asserts, "becoming more visible to the American public" and, as the visibility of the plutocratic corporatocracy increases, "public discourse in the United States has rediscovered and opened up" to "those voices on the U.S. left" who are reviving "debates over capitalism itself." The time is ripe, he says, for a "left resurgence ... in the consciousness of masses of American citizens" (p. 22).

Perhaps even more astonishing is Wolff's claim that the "U.S. Left is constructing analyses and programs that have large and growing audiences and constituencies in the country." These analyses and programs "increasingly include transformation of enterprises such that workers collectively, cooperatively, and democratically owning and operating enterprises would become a growing business sector." In addition, "the U.S. Left is working its way to a comprehensive alternative program to exit the [current economic] crisis, one taxing the corporations and the richest 5 percent--those who contributed most to the crisis, who are most able to pay for resolving it, and who have received the most state aid so far and therefore 'recovered' the most" (p. 44).

Wolff seems to find hope in the rise of the Tea Party; he finds it symptomatic of popular American discontent with the status quo and a blind groping towards radical solutions. He is confident that the Tea Party will only disappoint those who are presently looking towards it for solutions and, when the day of disillusionment arrives, he seems to feel that the Left will be poised to reap the harvest of the inevitable Tea Party fall-out.

From Richard Wolff's word-processor to God's ear, I say.

But I'm not holding my breath. Instead, I plan to sleep on this, get up again in the morning, and don the threadbare mantle of my Mazeppism.

Nobody said overthrowing Leviathan through non-violent persuasion was going to be easy.

Let's see what tomorrow brings.