Miles Jackson wrote:
>
>
>
> The assumption here is that everything to understand about the
> social world can be put in terms that "workers in St. P" can
> relate to. This isn't true of physics; why should it be true
> of society? A scientific understanding of X requires a great
> deal of training, creativity, innovation, and outright
> rejection of common sense.
Perhaps the "genius" of all great revolutionary leaders (or leaders of effective mass reform movements) lies _first_ in their own fundamental grasp of the social dynamic (necessity) of their place and time, _secondly_ in identifying what _part_ (not whole) of that understanding it is _necessary_ for all to share, _thirdly_, how that part can be communicated to a widespread leavening of workers, and fourthly, skill in finding and activating that leavening, who are capable of grasping and passing on (only now in the language being called for in this thread) that crucial understanding. And separate but essential: such women and men can recognize when the conditions are such that all of this activity has any chance of success.
This is off the top of my head and probably needs to be pulled about a bit. But I remain convinced that the widespread conviction that "left writers" can't write has its ground _not_ in the ability or willingness of left writers to write well but in the absence of a mass movement that can define and inspire the kind of writing needed.
Everyone writes as well as they can. Hassling an undefined body of "leftists writers" for writing badly is the same as hassling the graduates of u.s. elementary schools for not having learned at least three foreign languages.
I have no read Kelly's post on this thread carefully yet, but it seems to me from a first glance that it is the most important post yet on this general subject of how leftists write and of how the american working class reads and writes.
I'll probably have some disagreements with it, but it along with this post from Miles are the only contributions which seem to point towards something worth thinking about.
Carrol
Carrol
>
> Why do you think understanding
> society is so easy that people can do it by relying on
> everyday concepts and knowledge? That's like saying
> somebody can understand the structure of the solar
> by applying common-sense words like "sunrise" and
> "sunset".
>
> Miles
>
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