activism

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Sat May 2 08:33:56 PDT 1998


This post from Bill Lear bounced because I was a bit slow at fixing his address.

Doug

----

On Fri, May 1, 1998 at 19:21:43 (-0800) Gar W. Lipow writes:
>...
>What I would like you do is something much harder than a vision of the
>future. I want you to look at your vision, look at where we are now
>and use your creativity, your knowledge and your imagination to create
>a path that gets there from here. Assume your vision will win, and
>imagine yourself a historian fifty years from now explaining how your
>side won.
>
>In short, I am asking you to use some of your intellect and energy
>developing a strategy manual for the marxist, or green or generally
>way left of liberal activist.

Anyone with an iota of common sense will realize that trying to construct such a path from first principles --- connecting "goals" with "visions" --- is a dicey game, at best. You are asking for the impossible, frankly. We have to work slowly, building awareness and understanding through open forums of discussion and information dissemination. We cannot charge up the hill in a hail of bullets, we must fight for every inch, patiently, tenaciously, and tirelessly. I can see no other way to approaching social change via these truisms that has any hope of anything other than random success.

Bill



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list