Any move in politics inevitably creates grumbling. There are two basic responses to Open Left from people who are finding what we're doing here annoying. One is from women who are upset that we haven't yet featured female bloggers, and took offense to the Emily's List discussion. I'll have more on that soon, but we are very aware that the balance here skews male, so far. Two is from older organizers that look at the blogroll and see 'Old Left' and 'New Left' and 'Open Left' and find my categorizations laughable and/or ignorant.
Part of the stated goal of Open Left is to bring ideology back into the blogs and move them past purely partisan politics. When talking about the ideological underpinnings of the left, you can't leave out Marxism.
The perils of editing Marx out from the ideological story come in Matt's description of the Old Left and the New Left. Yes, the Old Left included labor and yes, the New Left included women. That said, a huge part of the distinction was based on their underlying, Marxist ideology. The Old Left was down with the USSR, at least before 1956. The New Left was into the anti-colonial Marxist ideologies that sprung out of Maoism and Frantz Fanon. They took their Marx seriously and it is key to understanding them.
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