Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> Doug says:
>
> >You don't need to convince anyone that you've got a better idea,
>
> No, what Carrol is saying is that, instead of trying to broadcast
> your idea indiscriminately, you (1) start with what you got (i.e.,
> organizers and activists who already agree with you and are eager to
> work with you) and then . . . .
Yoshie sums up the perspective beautifully. Just one footnote, on a point I've made several times over the last few years.
There is absolutely _nothing_ original in the account I give of organizing. It is simply a description of what organizers spontaneously do whether they know it or not. If in third grade you decided to circulate a petition asking for a less restrictive dress code, you followed the description I give of organizing. If in Oakland in the 1960s you wanted a stop sign at a dangerous school crossing, you followed this pattern. If in South Vietnam in 1957 you wanted to organize resistance to the terror that descended on the countryside after the partition, this is the pattern you followed. If in the 1930s you tried to organize a Ford plant for the UAW, this is the pattern you followed. If you want to pick up some change giving Tupper Ware Parties, you pretty much follow this pattern. There is no other pattern.
Now usually (almost always) spontaneous patterns can be carried out more effectively if they are "raised to a level of theory." My posts, and those of others agreeing with me, have been nothing but attempts (at the level of formality or informality imposed by maillist conditions) to do this. But I'm beginning to think it is possible that organizing does fall in the category of kneading bread or frying eggs rather than of making chili or baking a devils food cake. The point is that one can provide verbal instructions for the latter two and have different people produce the same result, while there is no good way to provide a verbal formula (a raising to the level of theory) for the former and thereby allow someone to carry out the operation exactly. For those tasks the knowledge needs to be in the fingertips more than in the brain. (That's metaphorical; don't write silly carpings of it.)
Carrol
P.S. The distinction the Second International made between propaganda and agitation (most conveniently available now in WITBD -- but it was not a new invention of Lenin) might be somewhat relevant. Agitation, aimed at reaching new people, must appeal directly to their immediate experience: i.e., to what they already know but don't know they know. And it usually takes the form of short leaflets or individual conversation. Obviously (so obvious that no one ever bothers to make the point, but apparently it does need to be made for some on this list) there can be no agitation without some people to write the leaflet and, more importantly, distribute it, and talk about it afterwards. And those people have to be the ones who are already not only convinced of goal aimed at but think it so important that they will spend a lot of their time (and in some situations lose their job or their life) arguing with each other over the exact content and style of the leaflet, writing it, producing it, distributing it, talking to all sorts of personal acquaintances about it, and so forth. And if there are only three of you to begin with, before you try to reach thousands you damn well better try to find three or four more who already agree with you. Isn't that simply self-evident?