As I was reading the previous discussion on voting, I was reminded of The Christian Coalition. The Christian Coalition did (does?) an interesting thing-- Handing out/mailing a voting guide to Christians, to churches, colleges etc. etc. This voting guide lists each candidate running for office and her/his views on key issues (the abortion issue being at the top of the CC's list).

In this way they informed the uniformed voter, literally, how to vote.

This seems to be the sort of recruitment that has worked for the Right. The average voter is not required to participate in a lengthy discussion about political theory or why one policy is better than the other. All they have to do is get their handy pamphlet out when they go to the polls and poof! they have voted their conscience.

Granted, this tactic may be deplorable to the academics who would rather talk about stuff. But for a general population who would much rather watch reruns of MacGyver than talk about politics, it seems to have been effective.

Is their some sort of recruitment strategy similar to this that would work for the left? And if so, what would it look like?
chiefjason | Homepage | 02.02.06 - 1:44 pm | #

I think it's interesting to note that an advantage for Christian Coalition types is that they have a constituency that meets every week, without that being immediately linked to casting a vote.

So in this sense, while there is a sort of command to vote that is given, there is also a sense in which the republican is taken as a real delegation of the church's thought and ethos.

With this recruitment process, it seems as if the recruit would be recruited not simply to vote, but to share in and contribute to the practices of the autonomous community. The community must be constituted by its recruitment, and only then can there be a delegation. One does not recruit people on behalf of a delegate, one recruits people with regard to the community, and the community then delegates.

And with theorizing, i think the main problem we have in the US is that theory is so disconnected from political practice. In communities that I've known (directly and indirectly), theory is valued as part (and of course, only part) and parcel of the political practice. For what it's worth, coming back to American academia, we hardly ever treat thinkers (or "theorists") in relation to their politics. Negri without Autonomia, Deleuze without his interest in Black Panthers, Autonomia, and others, Badiou without Maoism and the need for a new politics, etc. My experience has been that these thinkers serve primarily as diffuse material which serve the ends of disserations and tenure-track positions.
discard the name | 02.02.06 - 2:00 pm | #

"this recrutiment process" being the one old is suggesting...
discard the name | 02.02.06 - 2:01 pm | #

Old, I think you are dead on. And this goes beyond the outreach in Churches. The right constantly is bragging about how folks like Judge Roberts and Alito were recruited for the cause back in college. They continued cultivating "young talent" with organizations like the Federalist Society. It is this long term recruitment of talent that keeps the conservative movement in power.
Alain | 02.02.06 - 2:53 pm | #

With the exception of Paul, who came quite late to the discussion, and perhaps also Luke, everyone in the discussion agreed that voting was not really the primary locus of political action.

I read The Weblog not infrequently, but I've never really participated in the discussions; additionally, I'm only passingly familiar with many of the theorists the people here study, so, first, my apologies if I'm the guy who suddenly pops up in the middle of a conversation and says something trite.

But just to be clear, I don't think voting is the primary locus of political action. Voting is a form of political action I see no reason to abandon at this time, but by no means do I think it's the only or even the most important form of political action. And I've no quarrel with the value of local organizing or local collectives. I just don't know of any political options that necessarily preclude the additional exercise of tactical voting (and would be skeptical of any that claimed to be such, I confess).
Paul | 02.02.06 - 2:53 pm | #

Oh yea, and cheating on elections (just in case).
Alain | 02.02.06 - 2:54 pm | #

So, um... about these Westerners who are sympathetic to radical Islam. Have you met any? I'm talking about something other than "in absolute terms, they're bad, but in the context of American empire I can understand that some would be led to extreme action...."
Adam Kotsko | Homepage | 02.02.06 - 10:42 pm | #

Haven't met 'em, but Matt at *Long Sunday*, slightly sympathetic with this recently:

"Interesting that, of all the countries in the world, Iran is today the cyberspace capital of blogging;whereas Iraq has a mere few dozen bloggers reporting on the US invasion, Iran has a few hundred thousand bloggers, the otherwise repressive Iranian regime covertly permitting virtual freedom to the country's vast population of educated youth (60 per cent of Iran's university places are occupied by women, while less than 2 per cent of Iran's population regularly attends a Mosque ...)."

Lots of folks in Foucault's circle were deeply sympathetic with the initial revolution. Foucault went and reported enthusiastically himself for an Italian periodical (many of those things still untranslated). And, if I'm not mistaken, Foucault continued to have a bit of a soft spot for Iran even after the severity of repression became clear. Badiou drops references to '79 that make me think he's still somewhat sympathetic.

Matt's comment is especially telling. There is a large element of folks in Iran who are clamoring against the hardliners, but, nevertheless, still very much can't stand the U.S. and are proud as hell of the nuclear program.
old | 02.03.06 - 1:40 am | #

More in repsonse to others tomorrow.
old | 02.03.06 - 1:41 am | #

Great discussion here.
I just want to add two short thing to Discard's comments about academic context-lite receptions of thinkers (this is certainly my experience as well), which is that the image of the thinker distorts (limits) perception of the degree to which (and the means by which) movements think collectively. Also, there's a sort of prior set of decisions made about who is a thinker (a distribution of status as possessing thought) or theorist, a valued position which seems to be granted as much by the academic commodity/spectacle markets as by any kind of other merit. These and the other things Discard names are effects that those of us working in universities should be careful of in our thought, especially when it comes to politics.
Nate | Homepage | 02.14.06 - 12:51 am | #