Amen! And the typical Seattle uber-green self-styled "progressives" who dominate the local blogosphere squeal almost as loud when they are called out on their elitism as teabaggers do when people point out their racism.

Thank you, Mr. Morrill, for your eloquent and informed defense of the desperate need for resurrecting our long-suppressed radical instincts – “reconnecting with the left's historic worker and lower middle class base” – not just in Seattle (where in my lifetime radicalism has always been more illusory than real) but throughout our ever-more-oppressed nation.

Nevertheless – and without any diminution of my praise for your courageousness and the parallel courage Crosscut demonstrates by publishing your work – I am compelled to quibble:

I believe the Left – specifically the U.S. Left -- failed because of it's own fourfold failure of analysis.

Firstly it failed to understand the nature of capitalism: infinite greed as maximum virtue, limitless selfishness as ultimate good – literally the antithesis of all humanitarian values.

Secondly, as a direct consequence, the Left failed to recognize that capitalism is implicitly tyrannical – that its momentum (exactly as we are witnessing today) is inevitably toward greater socioeconomic inequality and therefore ever-harsher subjugation of its captive populations.

Thirdly, the Left thus failed to accurately assess the capabilities and intentions of the capitalist Ruling Class.

Fourthly, the Left failed to acknowledge the human need for spiritual expression – mistakenly damning all religion and spirituality rather than condemning only those that specifically serve capitalist purposes.

The most self-destructive manifestation of this multi-pronged syndrome of failures was the Left's portrayal of capitalists as ignorant buffoons rather than what, as we now discovering, capitalists truly are – the most relentlessly savage, most diabolically cunning predators in our planetary history: not H. sapiens sapiens but H. sapiens tyrannosaurus, the perfect hybrid of lizard-brain amorality and the human talent for scheming. Too bad Sun Tzu – with his dictum of “know your enemy” – was never admitted to the West's socialist canon.

This same arrogance – suicidal disregard for one's foe – rendered the Left blind to the fact the post-Civil-War South had become a Ruling Class rat lab, the realm in which the capitalist aristocracy perfected its theocratic/fascist model of governance: churches, mass media and public schools that induce ignorance and therefore submission, and a death squad – the Ku Klux Klan (colloquially known as “the Saturday Night Men's Bible Study Class”) – to deal with labor organizers, nonconformists and anyone else deemed undesirable.

Surely it is no coincidence the Ruling Class has since applied this model of governance to the entire United States.

As to the magnitude of the Left's failure, suffice it to say that during the 1930s, the Communist Party was the third largest – and best organized – political party in the nation. Indeed it was an avowedly radical-leftist coalition of Communists, socialists and Republican (LaFollette/Teddy Roosevelt) progressives that put FDR in office.

And we will never be able to build such a movement again until we learn the lessons of our forebears' defeat.

The process by which the Left was destroyed – process as differentiated from causes – illustrates the malicious genius of the Ruling Class. The destruction took place in three phases.

First were the purges. Misleadingly associated only with Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-WI), they in fact began the day World War II ended and continued well into the 1960s. When completed, they had permanently discredited not just Marxians but socialists of any kind and intellectuals in general as traitors. Intellectuality was thus forever damned as subversion if not actual treason. Worse, the historical truth of class-struggle – probably our most vital tool for understanding history and current events – was so prohibitively tabooed it has since been impossible to re-introduce it into our national dialogue.

Next, the domestic conflicts of the Vietnam Era – the contempt and hatred of the draft-exempt bourgeois elite for those of us who served – were agitated into a blue-collar/white-collar schism that continues even now to shape our national politics. Witness, for example, the fanatical hatred the advocates of mandatory pacifism (and therefore forcible civilian disarmament) have for legal firearms owners, a hatefulness so powerful it prompts many labor-union members to vote Republican simply to preserve their right to self-defense.

This is particularly true since the 1980s: I cannot count the number of times I have heard blue-collar men and women say, “Might as well vote Republican. Ain't a damn bit of difference between the parties anymore – they're both out to screw working people – but at least the Republicans might let us keep our guns.”

Finally, having robbed us of our sources of radicalism and having manipulated Vietnam War conflicts into a permanent white collar/blue collar class schism (the war's real purpose?), the Ruling Class engendered what I call Moron Nation – the realm in which ignorance, police-state terror and intellectual paralysis combine with trinket materialism, the cult of celebrity and other modern-day equivalents of panem et circenses to trap the real Working Class (all of us not part of the Big Business/Wall Street aristocracy) in permanent bondage.

If we are to escape, we first have to recognize the conditions of our subjugation: to admit, as in 12-step programs, that we are truly powerlessness. Only then might we begin to develop appropriate responses.

But such acknowledgement is prohibited by marketing rules. Ideas are not allowed widespread dissemination unless even the most horrible circumstances are given a positive twist: for example, the cruel myth of death by cancer as “an opportunity for personal growth.”

And even the emergence of a new radical ideology – preferably a hybrid of Marxian economics, Gaea-hypothesis consciousness and political liberty as defined by the U.S. Constitution – is by itself insufficient. Without the other three historical requirements for liberation (see “The Stolen Prerequisites Of Liberation: Why Change Is Impossible,” Outside Agitator's Notebook, 24 June 2010, at lorenbliss.typepad.com), any new ethos is just another momentary distraction.

At least though Mr. Morrill has us thinking...for which again thanks.

Well, if by "glorious radical history" you mean Dave Beck's teamsters, the ILWU, or Group Health, these were very real radical movements that exerted a stabilizing force on society.

The Communists and Socialists, on the other hand, were millenarian movements that depended on the increasing impoverishment of the working class to become reality- an increasing impoverishment that did not happen.

The radical change I've seen since the 60s has been food. Most of the other changes since that time have been progressive in nature and origin, the progressive institution of City Light being corrected, after abuses had developed, by the 70's progressive housecleaning of urban politics.

Seattle Radicals have always loved to puff up the importance of the whole thing, and it suits their rightwing opponents to find Communists under every bed. Dr. Morrill's ideas may be good ones, but they have little to do with any real or imagined radicals of the past.

The contemporary Democratic party liberal is clueless about the rise of the populist right. I see this development as the inevitable consequence of the leftist party’s effective abandonment of the party’s historical worker and lower and middle class base in favor of the myth of having to save the finance and insurance behemoth that brought us the current disaster.

It is true that if you were to visit a Tea Party rally and ask a few people their opinion on the finance/insurance bailouts, you would likely find them to be unpopular. But that's not what the Tea Party is about. The movement is primarily motivated by opposition to Democratic policies, especially the stimulus program and health care reform, as well as movements on cap and trade, taxes, etc. While the Tea Party label is new, it is little more than an umbrella term for a variety of ideologies and movements that have existed for a long time.

There are superficial similarities between the Tea Party and Marxism. Both are mass movements aimed at the working class. Both argue that the working class is being screwed by a parasitic elite. In both cases, that elite is selfish and deems itself superior, when in fact it is the working class that possesses virtue. Both movements employ angry rhetoric and make use of the language of "revolution". But on substance, such as tax policy, public ownership, the role of religion in society, the role of the military, and so on, Tea Party ideas (which I acknowledge are not all uniform) and socialism are almost always polar opposites. It would be a mistake to claim the Tea Party base as naturally belong to the Left on the basis of the superficial similarities listed above.

As additional evidence for my claim, I note that the base of support for the Left has historically been the urban working class and intellectuals. The base of support for the Tea Party is suburban and rural, and it spans income and education levels pretty well. In almost all societies over the past few centuries, the base of support of the Left has been urban and rural for the Right.

I belabor this point because it is quite apparent that the reality of class, economic, racial, education, etc. divisions in the United States does not fit neatly into any particular ideology, and all attempts to fit them such have inevitably lead to confusion. For this reason, the left has never been able to properly identify its potential allies on particular issues--small business on health care reform, the insurance industry on climate policy, fiscal conservatives on military spending, etc.--and they end up getting nowhere.

Interesting article. I was fortunate to take a class or two from Prof. Morrill during my college days, and enjoyed them. I just don't understand his continuing love affair with the "freedom of the car" and suburban sprawl. Whatever one thinks of them, they look to soon be overwhelmed by the twin tidal waves of peak oil and peak debt. Maybe sooner rather than later.

One can pretty much always count on self-styled "New Urbanists" to respond to a factual analysis of the way things are (as opposed to the way they would like things to be) by accusing the person who points out these inconvenient facts of loving sprawl, hating the environment, etc. etc. etc.

I appreciate your comments
Loren Bliss is correct that Marx viewed capitalism as incapable of being tamed, that “tyranny” was inevitable. I believe that social democracy, while difficult to maintain, is possible and the only social order that understands individual creativity and social cooperation as co-equal goods.

Pepper2000 is right that the critical support of the Left has always been the urban working class AND the very intellectuals I complain about. The difference is the latter now exceed the former in number as well as power! I agree that the left has been inept at forging useful coalitions on specific issues at particular times.

Snoqualman and new urbanism. Three things. 1 I’ll stack up my actual environmental credentials against any of my critics, 2 the new urbanists cannot ignore the deep class implications of decrying cars and houses for the less affluent, while condoning exurban estates and second homes for the rich. And 3 absolutely we need to ensure efficient settlement and reduce reliance on the car, but the over-simplified new urbanist formula is not the answer.