Dddddd0814 at aol.com wrote:
>
>
> Also, I think it's important to remember that political ideologies cannot
> create-- or act as a substitute for-- actual movements. After all, we're not
> talking about trends in painting, here (Fauvism and post-Fauvism)-- we're
> talking ultimately about real people acting on real things in real life.
"Important" is an understatement. It is also important to recognize that we not only do not know where the next movement will come from or what will trigger it, we don't have a very deep understanding of where _past_ movements (revolutionary or otherwise) have come from. For example, we know that a number of the leaders and instigators of the Black Liberation (Civil Rights) Movement had been exposed to or even participated in, directly or indirectly, activities sponsored and organized by the CPUSA -- but we also know that not a single CP member or anyone else involved (including Rosa Parks, ML King, or Maccolm) had the least idea in advance that they were going to lead (or be drafted to lead) a movement anything like what in fact arose.
Some of us on this list have been pushing this point for years but were usually met only with the sneer that we were against doing anything.
In so far as more or less conscious ideological positions are involved, this indifference to unexpected popular movements may come from the permeation through both "Leninist" and "Anti-Leninist" (even aggressively anti-communist) circles of a gross misunderstanding of WITBD. Many of the same people who attack Lenin for his supposed contempt of "spontaneity" are equally contemptuous of those of us who say you can't jump-start a movement but must be prepared to respond as intelligently as possible to wholly unpredictable mass movements. Lenin of course took for granted that all political movements grow from spontaneous activity -- he merely argued (and this is still true today) against _worshipping_ that spontaneity as being somehow mystically capable of _completing_ what it had begun.
But no spontaneous activivity -- no mass reform or revolutionary movements, no role for political agitators and/or organizers.
This is related to my continuing attempt to explain that it is of no use to give a lecture or sermon (no matter how brilliant in content and masterfully articulated) in an empty auditorium. That is, the question of "what should we say?" is irrelevant unless subordinated to the question, "How can we recruit an audience to listen to what we say" -- and that audience must be recruited while they are NOT listening to us. Hence at the present time only what we say to each other, pointing towards (non-argumentative and non-persuasive) methods of recruiting and audience is of any use to the future.
Carrol