Alinsky Re: [lbo-talk] productivity

[Carrol Cox]

For what it's worth, the Back-of-the-Yards organization in Chicago, the
archetypal Alinsky achievement, developed into an aggressively racist
organization existing mostly to defend residential segregation. Local
groups which do not have a national focus (or which are not subordinated
to groups which have such a national focus) go nowhere except to the
right or to the kind of thing Dwayne describes.

The archetype for the kind of services which Kelley seems to have in
mind are the SDP and SDP associated unions in pre-WW1 Germany. They had
resorts for workers even. The Panthers' Breakfast programs, which never
developed their full potential because the Panthers fell apart under
repression and from internal weaknesses, were highly promising (in part
because their potential resources might have come from extortion from
capitalists rather than donations from good people).

The Chinese had a slogan, Serve the People, that perhaps catches up part
of what Kelley seems to be after.

But I would think that the kind of thing Kelley is speaking of comes
further down the road, emerging within resistance movements that have
achieved size and momentum through enunciating loud NOs to power. And if
such movements have enough internal coherence, what Kelley wants almost
automatically emerges. If they don't have such internal coherence, they
won't achieve it by service programs.

Carrol