The American left doesn’t understand political power as anything other than that held by the state:
This confused me when I first moved to the US; looking for the left in the Bay Area it seems at first like there’s no there there. The general left-wing sentiment in the area doesn’t seem to be matched by the existence of left-wing organizations. It turns out that that’s not quite right; it’s just that these organizations aren’t political organizations but are, rather, community organizations and non-profits. Some of these have radical rhetoric and a revolutionary pedigree, but they all share the weakness of the Alinskian (non-)understanding of power, where power is not conceived of as something that could be appropriated collectively and used creatively to common ends, but where power is something someone else (the state) has, and the limit of collective action is to force concessions from those who do hold power.
Richard of The Existence Machine says, went even further:
But even that’s a bit strong–we don’t force concessions, we ask, we beg, we beseech. Witness the spectacle of liberals, prominent or otherwise, writing open letters, or blog posts, addressed to Obama–please close Guantanamo, please end the occupation of Iraq, please take time to consider single payer healthcare, please keep your promises, please fulfill our hopes and dreams, please please listen to us!
Part of that –conscious or unconscious– rejection of power and its attending responsibility probably has to do with the peculiar history of the American left, the socialist part of which was always much smaller than in other countries, — and whatever you can say about socialists and communists, they always have a keen grasp of power (if not how to get it or use it). And then this weak communitarian tradition was thoroughly rejected by the sixties New Left as well, making its influence even weaker.
But there’s more going on, I think. I think part of this difficulty with the concept of power as something that can be used by people themselves, directly, as opposed through putting pressure on the state, lies in the influence libertarianism has had on political debate in the States. This after all is a philosophy that in its vulgar form — in which it had has its most influence– denies the existence of any form of power other than that wielded by the state. It may be marginal in its direct influence, but libertarian concepts have seeped through the entire political spectrum in the past three-four decades and with it this ignorance of non-state power.
Which is of course very convenient to the powers that be, as a left that voluntarily rejects its own ability to organise alternative centres of powers, is much easier to control. Interestingly, if there’s one group that still (or again) understands the need to depend on itself, rather than on the benevolence of the political classes, it might just be the teabaggers, attempting to reshape the Republican Party into their own image.