Gordon Fitch wrote:
>
>
> If people won't do this, then there's not much use imposing
> righteous institutions on them from above. They won't stick.
>
Serfdom & related forms of surplus extraction through political coercion was imposed from above, & the 90% on whom it was so imposed learned both to live under it and (when opportunities arose) to resist it.
Individualism was imposed on people from behind their backs through the rise of capitalism (never _intended_ by anyone until after it had happened). If what I suppose one might call "unrighteous" institutions eventually produce people who live them, why should not "righteous" institutions. The problem is that while righteous institutions (no matter how created/imposed) would almost certainly transform people eventually, such institutions cannot be created in the first place through 'outside' imposition. See Marx on the question of educating the educator.
Carrol