The Triumph of Hope Over Self-Interest

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Thu Jan 16 18:26:58 PST 2003


JBrown72073 at cs.com wrote:
>
>
> Shucks. I was just trying to cheer up despairing victims of the US polling
> industry, not proposing a new project.
>
:-)

But given the troops and organization to do it, door-to-door surveys (with questions formulated as you illustrate) _is_ an extremely powerful tactic.

Blather for and against "vanguard parties" (variously undefined) tends to blur discussion of the real need for organization and coordination of action. Imagine if we _could_ put around 10,000 "pollsters" on the street around the nation, all asking the same carefully crafted questions, then wherever possible turning the housecall into a political discussion rather than just a series of answers, etc. etc. etc.

It's impossible of course to blueprint such an action or even discuss it in much detail outside the structure of at least a loose organization which might implement it. But thinking about it (and your questions give a taste of the possibilities) might help people focus a bit on what would need to be done before such tactics (and many others) could be implemented.

I agree with what Marta has been writing lately _to a point_. But because she is trying to imagine how such relatively "high level" strategies could be implemented int he world as it is today, she -- or let me shift a bit -- you, Marta, get more pessimistic than you _need_ to get. (Anyhow it's not fair for anyone to be gloomier than me).

Carrol


> Jenny Brown



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