See below---
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> [mailto:owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com]On Behalf Of
JBrown72073 at cs.com
> Sent: Wednesday, August 28, 2002 2:06 PM
> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> Subject: Re: Mass Movements and "The Left"
>
<<SNIP>>
>
> Getting back to Carrol's point about 'starting' a mass
> movement--the Women's
> Liberation Movement of the '60s is a very interesting example.
It's
> portrayed by many academics as a spontaneous simultaneous
> springing up, but
> if you check out the early documents, specific people argued
> for specific
> programs (consciousness-raising, the pro-woman line) against
> very large
> opposition from the 'politicos' who felt socialism was
> sufficient to free
> women and we should all just fight for that. Particular
> women did, in fact,
> call for a separate mass movement of women for women's
> liberation and--not to
> argue causation but simply arranging things
> chronologically--after they
> argued for it and circulated papers arguing for it, it did
> actually burst
> forth on the scene along the lines they argued for.
<<SNIP>>
>
> Jenny Brown
>
This is an important aspect of social movement theory--that frames are designed and field tested by ideologues looking for a particular set of ideas and symbols that reasonate with larger audiences.
I remember reading Shulamith Firestone's the Dialectic of Sex, and The Politics of Housework by Pat Mainardi of Redstockings, both in 1970. Both were widely talked about by feminists in the growing women's movement in the early 1970s, and handed to potential male allies (usually along with brooms.) :-0
These ideological debates and manifestos are very much part of laying the foundations for a successful mass social movement. The left needs to be in a continuous process of linking theory to practice in a way that facilitates the growth of social movements. This is a positive model, as opposed to cadre formations that use a parasitic style. My tirade on this was printed in the RESIST newsletter as "Abstaining from Bad Sects: Understanding Sects, Cadres, and Mass Movement Organizations."
http://resistinc.org/newsletter/issues/1999/12/berlet.html
-Chip Berlet