[lbo-talk] Re: Signs of hope?

JBrown72073 at cs.com JBrown72073 at cs.com
Sat Jun 14 07:10:09 PDT 2003


Carrol wrote:
>The lines Justin and Jenny quote catch up (in the phrase coined by Gould
>and Eldredge)the punctuated equilibrium which characterizes the 'rhythm'
>of left politics over decades and generations. The lines from "Men of
>England" are closer to the tone of the post from Chuck Grimes to which
>I responded.

That's charmingly understated. I have a few guesses about what causes the 'rhythm' (or cycle) of politics and I wonder if they have analogy in punctuated equilibrium theory: the cycle of buy off, wherein the initial strong push is met by both repression and cooptation--the first exhausting people after a time and the second appeasing and incorporating large sympathetic portions of the movement; that lessons learned by one generation are not entirely grasped by the next, due to lack of direct experience; the tendency of ideas spread to spread wide and not deep, which may lead to large initial leaps followed by backtracking when the territory won cannot be held; that those who innovate pay a price for the energy put into innovation while the beneficiaries benefit without the cost (free rider) sidelining the innovators. All these happened in U.S. Women's Liberation, I'm sure there are others.

Jenny Brown



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