Sam Gindin comments…

The excellent Sam Gindin, who spent many years with the Canadian Auto Workers as an economist/advisor (and who cannot be dismissed as some armchair pointy-head), writes in response to my recent stuff on Wisconsin:

Very good response; I think you are right on re labour. The one thing I’d add, and I think it is very significant, is that this crisis in labour overlaps with the crisis on the left.  I’m convinced that any renewal in labour won’t happen until there is an organized left with feet inside and outside labour—and even then it would have to be a left of a particularly creative kind. Which raises the unavoidable question of what we do to create such a left if neither the unions nor the democratic party are sites to make this happen and the notion of this happening through the old Leninist structures seems no less of a dead-end. THIS is the challenge that needs taking on….

I like this very much, and I don’t think it’s just because I’m flattered. I love the bit about an organized left that’s both inside and outside labor.