Category: Class (Page 9 of 24)

Organic Leader: Potential Problems?

May 2, 2022 / baseblogger

Just about everyone involved in leftist organizing in the last 5 years knows about Jane McAlevey. No Shortcuts became the go-to book for it. There’s a broader debate out there on how well McAlevey’s methods do in the real world. But I want to hone in on one idea from her book – the notion of the ‘organic leader.’

McAlevey advocates for an organizing model whereby the organizer – union organizer for McAlevey, but we could apply the model well beyond unions – starts by identifying organic leaders among workers. From there, the organic leader takes the lead in building support for the org.

There’s a lot I like about McAlevey’s approach. But I also think there’s a lot riding on the very organic leaders she appeals to. If we find problems with the very idea of an organic leader, it could put the org in trouble right from the start. So, let’s talk about that.

The State and Revolution: Leftist Ambiguities

March 7, 2022 / baseblogger

A couple of months ago, I wrote a post on V.I. Lenin‘s essay ‘What is to Be Done?‘. I read it in a collection of essays called the Essential Works of Lenin. The same book contains his work The State and Revolution, which he wrote much later on the eve of the October Revolution.

In the other post, I noted some of the good and bad of Lenin. He thought a great deal about strategy and tactics. Along the way, he laid out a lot of insightful critique of magical thinking and bad strategy on the left. On the other hand, he clearly had an intolerant, authoritarian style and personality. This served him poorly, both as a philosopher and as a leader.

These same issues reappear in The State and Revolution. But we get something new in the later text: Lenin on the verge of power, now using a quasi-religious reading of the classic texts of Marx and Engels to justify his own views. One of Lenin’s uses of Engels struck me in particular.

With that in mind, let’s take a brief look at this line of thought in The State and Revolution.

The Dawn of Everything

February 21, 2022 / baseblogger

This rather weighty tome from David Graeber and David Wengrow – The Dawn of Everything – got lots of attention upon its late 2021 release. I’ll call them the Davids. Some of the attention arrived due to the untimely death of David Graeber. He brought us a number of modern anarchist-leaning leftist classics. Topics range from ‘bullshit jobs’ to rules and debt.

But this book also arrived in a timely way. Insofar as the public hears grand historical narratives, they come from sources like Jared Diamond or Steven Pinker. Diamond and Pinker present a certain ‘standard narrative’ of history. For them, history proceeds in stages: from simplicity to complexity, from agriculture to industry, from ‘primitive stateless society’ to empire, and so on.

The Davids question all this in The Dawn of Everything. And they do some other things. Let’s see how it works out for them.

Politics in the Rural Midwest

February 7, 2022 / baseblogger

So, a few readers know I grew up in rural southern Indiana. The politics out there aren’t great. I mean, really not great. It’s been a bastion of various kinds of far right activity for some time. And it stands in well enough for the rural Midwest as a whole. It’s a bit more southern than, say, rural Iowa. But the politics are close cousins.

At the same time, lots of people – especially liberals – hold various misconceptions about life and politics in the rural Midwest. The truth of the matter is that there’s quite a bit of diversity of thought and opinion in the rural Midwest. Liberals miss that part.

The Baseball Lockout Continues

January 24, 2022 / baseblogger

I know we’re pretty far away from the 2022 baseball season. But for those of you who follow baseball in the off-season, you might have noticed there’s a baseball lockout. Owners started the fight almost two months ago by calling a lockout, and the baseball lockout continues.

What’s happening here?

Category: Class (Page 9 of 24)

Organic Leader: Potential Problems?

The State and Revolution: Leftist Ambiguities

The Dawn of Everything

Politics in the Rural Midwest

The Baseball Lockout Continues

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