Chuck Grimes wrote:
>
>
> Yeah. I don't know how to evoke that existential turn. I've tried on a
> one to one basis with work buddies in shops. Some see, and think, then
> let it go.
Chuck, this is why Lenin urged "patience, patience, patience" as the three revolutionary virtues, and this is why I tried both to show that I understood your rage _and_ that I thought it needed to be suppressed or somehow channeled.
No one can _evoke_ that existential turn. That does not mean that it won't happen, it just means that we have to have an understanding which is both materialist and historical of how such qualitative leaps occur.
I think Gould's conception of punctuated equilibrium really helps here, at least as a metaphor; and perhaps it could even be translated (with necessary modifications) into social theory.
A core part of reactionary understanding of the world is the belief that revolutions (or mass arisings short of revolution) are caused by agitators. As Oglesby phrased it 40 years ago, Wherever you find them, Communists are from someplace else. But this red-baiting myth is just that, a myth, and moreover a myth believed by too many leftists.
Agitators manure the ground as it were by maintaing a minimal level of political activity throughout the equilibrium periods and by recruiting others during periods of a temporary rise in political activity, and they are also essential to maintaining the force and direction of the "punctuations" when (all unexpected) they explode on us. But you just cannot MAKE them come. And there is no use, during the equilibriums, either in the rage you (and others) express or in the whinings of others who think that if we were just smart enough and just clever enough we could make those punctuations come. We can neither _make_ them come nor predict what will be their specific nature.
A failure to accept this material fact of history can lead to either the choked rage you and others express _or_, in a way more damaging, to giving up hope and preaching the ancient dogmas of "little gains" or "lesser evils." The first error treats (potential) friends as enemies. The second treats enemies as friends. Both in effect see the equilibrium as forever.
Carrol