The article Action Will Be Taken at the Left Business Observer explores the emerging popularity among progressives of a disturbingly anti-intellectual worldview, which they dub activistism. Rather than go through the long and painful process of developing a better worldview than the Global Free Market Fundamentalism embraced by the elites, many have put their faith in action. But this leads to all sorts of problems, which are expounded upon in the article.
The article closes with a call to action:
We're not calling for leadership by intellectuals. On
the contrary, we challenge left activist culture to live up to its
anti-hierarchical claims: activists should themselves become
intellectuals. Why reproduce the larger society's division between
mental and physical labor? The rousing applause for Noam Chomsky at the
World Social Forum in Porto Allegre was hardly undeserved, but ideas
don't belong on pedestals. They belong in the street, at work, in the
home, at the bar and on the barricades.
Couldn't agree more. Chomsky is a great example. On the one hand we have
young turks claiming the only useful thing Chomsky could do at this
point is set
himself on fire (seen on nettime), on the other we have
people at Chomsky's talks prefacing their questions with self-effacing
statements like I know I'll never understand this as well as you,
but... (heard at MIT). But why do people pin so much on one man?
It's worth spending time with Chomsky's ideas, because he's sharp and
has put a huge amount of his life into working towards democratic
values. But he's only one person, and has his own foibles just like
anyone else. I suspect that it's this very reluctance among many progressives
to do the intellectual heavy lifting that leads to such fixations on
prominent intellectual figures such as Chomsky. Screw that, DIY.
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