Doug Henwood wrote:
>
>
> I don't think activists should wait until conditions are right (and
> Lenin would agree, no?). But there's a difference in how well
> activism is received, and whether it spreads beyond a hard core.
>
One way, I suppose, to define _activist_ is "someone who doesn't wait for conditions." But recognizes _also_ that we never _know_, not only when conditions responsive to change will arise, but even _whether_ or not such conditions alaready exist. And the reference to Lenin is highly appropriate here, because what one primarily picks up from studying Lenin's practice and writings over 20 years or so is less any specific set of principles or any specific theoretical position but a sense, precisely, that one must always be acting _as if_ the "conditions" were either already present or just around the corner. Because if one _waits_ for the "right" conditions, one will only learn about them after they have departed. They never come.
But according to a friend from the '60s (I don't know the original source; it may be apocryphal) Lenin also declared that the three revolutionary virtues were Patience, Patience, & Patience. That should be AND at the beginning of the last sentence rather than BUT, for _usually_ the conditions are not right, and there is little or not visible return for one's expense of time, energy (and usually money). Hence the need for Patience.
The CPUSA in the '20s; Black activists in the South in the '50s. The defense of the Rosenbergs. The early stages of the campaign against HUAC. All that work turned out to be crucial, but at the time it must have appeared to be mostly fruitless.
Usually the workd will _not_ "spread beyond a hard core"; the test than is whether (a) it at least maintains and expands the "hard core"; and (b) whether that core can recognize when the whether changes and respond accordingly.
Carrol