> What disappoints and frustrates me a lot is the relative absence of
> attention to the resistance - the other side of the coin.
Indeed -- this resistance is presently most unorganized by leftist groups, and activists in such groups generally only recognize resistance when it is of the type they approve. (Everything else they dismiss as irrelevant or "only supporting the system"). That's why so many of us on the left are so pessimistic; we can't see any of *our* kind of resistance.
> Just as capital is human managed, so can be labor's (working class)
> resistance. As capital is understood with scientific method, so is
> the process of labor's resistance, and I don't mean just the unions.
> We should be talking more about building this resistance, step by
> step, using the huge reservoir or experience and reason that's already
> been accumulated. I think most of us have a fair handle on the world,
> but we're reluctant to search for the practical ways to change it.
> Perhaps certain of our analytical skills are disabled or on hold. But
> It is, after all, just a process of organizing and struggle that takes
> patience and sacrifice.
There is this reservoir of experience, but we can't forget, at the same time, that new types of resistance are always arising. It takes really talented organizers to organize something new without straight-jacketing or stifling it. How, for example, did the civil rights movement in the South in the early sixties manage to organize itself? It seems to me a more amazing story the more I think about it.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ A sympathetic Scot summed it all up very neatly in the remark, 'You should make a point of trying every experience once, excepting incest and folk-dancing.' -- Sir Arnold Bax