Chip Berlet wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> Um, Carrol, there is this whole area of study in Sociology called
> Social Movement Theory where there is a lot of material on how mass
> social movements form--what ingredients are needed--and how people
> with grievances are recruited into social movements--primarily
> face-to-face interaction in the context of an attractive framing of
> issues. Social movements cannot be summoned into existence by
> Marxist study groups or parties. But once a social movement gets
> rolling, leftists can certainly attempt to influence the goals and
> direction of the movement. The Civil Rights Movement is a clear
> example--the progressive Highlander Center played an important role
> in training movement leaders.
I agree. Perhaps that literature you mention covers my next point, but I'll raise it. I suspect that those descriptions of the "ingredients" cover both clusters of activity that _do_ explode into the historically visible movements _and_ the kind of movements that I and a few others have started a number of. And one or two of those even seemed to flourish for a short time.
Many important leaders (locally and regionally) in the '60s had at one time or the other been influenced, trained even, by various CPUSA groups or off-shoots. But I would also suspect that there would have been no way of knowing in advance which "centers" or committees or etc. were going to have profound (even if partly invisible) effects and which were going to be deadends. And that, moreover, the effects could not, even on a backward view, be correlated very closely with the (apparent) strengths or weaknesses of the earlier groups (or grouplets).
I certainly agree that when a social movement gets rolling, leftists can (and some certainly will) have profound influence on the direction of such movements. That is why I try occasionally to argue that threads on this list that focus on the _present_ are backward looking. By the time anything we think _now_ bears fruit (good or bad) condtions will have changed.
And that is why, also, I think that _useful_ class analysis has to be something other than a concern with the "messy reality" around us, because that messy reality will change greatly before our thought ever achieves anything.
Carrol