Weak-links

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Fri Dec 13 15:39:20 PST 2002


joanna bujes wrote:
>
> At 02:42 PM 12/13/2002 -0500, you wrote:
> >Yes, but that condition also tells us that capturing the main political
> >institutions - government, the army, police, mass media etc. - is a
> >condition sine qua non of any successful movement. Trying to cobble a
> >revolution in somebody basement or a garage looks very amateurish abd
> >cannot be taken seriously.

I don't know who wrote this or what the context was, but it's a bit groutesque. Taken literally, it is plain ignorant, since no one has ever thought of trying such cobbling. Taken more or less metaphorically, it's a fairly good description of what Lenin, Castro, Mao, Ho, & a few others did. What is the point of this setting up of fantastic scenarios to treat with cheap scorn? Actually it also describes what Rosa Parks, and a few hundred others in the south did. They may not have set up utopia, but they sure as hell shook up things.

Carrol
>
> On the other hand, I wonder how complicated/expensive it would be to own a
> radio station that could broadcast to a city, say, Oakland??? If you had a
> coalition of groups: ethnic, religious, cultural, political to
> run/broadcast on such a station...it seems doable....without violence or
> insurrection, etc. A first step.
>
> Joanna



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list