How to tell a story

How to tell a story

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

The romantic left

There's a faction of progressives who identify with the Wobblies and a time when considerable support came from the working class. That dynamic faded with the rise of the middle class after WWII. When you have something, you tend to protect it. In the sixties, blue collar workers did not embrace the New Left. The Marxist fantasy of a rising working class wasn't in the cards then, and the romantic left looked pretty silly.

But this may change as rich and poor move apart if two other issues don't hijack the more central economic disparities: race war; and a war between native born and immigrants.

Effective radical movements here have been driven by immigrants not raised on American mythology. Will it happen again?