From Empty to full Auditoriums: How, was post-leftism or something

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Wed Aug 14 10:53:51 PDT 2002


Carrol Cox wrote:


>"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.

[...]


>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.

But you've also disparaged the notion of recruitment in the past, and even in the first part of this paragraph, since nothing "we" can say can persuade the unpersuaded. And you've expressed the fatalism of the first graf many times. So is this the Waiting for Godot theory of revolution? If we sit around talking among ourselves, eventually the right circs will materialize, we know not how? "Nothing to be done," as Vlad and Esty used to say - the other Vlad, not the Impaler, and certainly not the Vlad of What Is To Be Done?

Doug



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