Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> >Carrol Cox wrote:
> >
> >>Almost all radicals _first_ get
> >>involved in some sort of activity, some sort of struggle for (what will
> >>seem to them) a perfectly simple and achievable goal.
> >
> >For someone who denouces generalizations and mindreading, you do a
> >lot of both. How do you know this? Lots of radicals I know got that
> >way by reading, me included. But maybe I have a biased sample.
> >
> >Doug
>
> I'm sure you (as well as your sample) are unrepresentative. Just how
> many left-wingers have ever joined the Party of the Right? :-0
Ye gods & little pink ribbons. Doug really does go out of his way sometimes.
I have been continually involved for about 35 years with radicals not only from all over the united states but all over the world. (Most of the latter I greatly fear are dead. I'm talking of personal acquaintance, and some oral tradition.) I'm not generalizing. I'm making an abstraction _both_ from that personal experience with so many varied radicals* _and_ from reading history. This is the first time I have _ever_ heard the abstraction questioned by anyone who claims experience in radical movements.
I resisted believing it myself. Agitation and recruitment would be _so_ much easier if it could be done only by talking to people in the abstract or getting them to read radical literature. But especially in the '70s, I found over and over again that bright students would agree completely with me. I didn't particularly politicize my classes, but just a whiff of historical thinking would bring several students a semester to my office to chat with me. I "converted" quite a few of them. But there was no local practice to involve them in, and not one of them is a radical or marxist today as far as I know.
Back in the late '60s and the '70s, when two radicals (or marxists) from different locations met socially, almost the first question we would ask each other would be, "How did you get radicalized?" Practically no exceptions to the description I gave in my preceding post.
Damn it. I think journalists and academics are of _great_ importance. Doug is a hell of a good journalist, and I've beaten the drums for his lbo in various contexts. I would prefer that the exchanges between us on this list be les acrimonious (though not less sharp). But journalists and academics really should be a bit more aware of the scope and limits of their own experience.
Carrol