> Without exception, every major victory the left has ever won,
> anyplace, has been won through focusing on victimization of the
> masses, and then _within_ the masses so mobilized, building a
> positive program. Speak Bitterness sessions, in one form or another
> and under various labels have been the heart and soul of all
> revolutionary movements that made any progress at all.
A 1994 Department of Justice study found that "[a]s many as 24 million people in the United States are victims of fraud crimes each year" and that "[t]he estimated cost of those crimes is more than $45 billion annually" (at <http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/ovc/publications/ infores/fraud/rrr/intro.htm>). That's a lot of people who lost a lot of money, but frauds are very much underreported. According to the AARP, "73 percent of investment fraud victims did not acknowledge having lost money, and only half of lottery fraud victims reported recent losses" (at <http://www.aarp.org/research/press-center/ presscurrentnews/a2003-08-13-telemarketing.html>). What motivates victims of frauds not to report their crime victimization? The AAUP, analyzing the data of its study, describes the "rationalization trap" into which fraud victims often fall: "Fraud crimes place victims in a tension state where they hold two inconsistent thoughts: 'I just did a stupid thing and lost my money' and 'I am not a stupid person.' To resolve the tension, a victim may deny the nature of the crime or avoid the topic (including prevention messages), while feeling embarrassed, worthless, and lacking in personal control" ("Off the Hook: Reducing the Participation in Telemarketing Fraud," 2003, <http://assets.aarp.org/rgcenter/consume/d17812_fraud.pdf>).
If admitting to being a victim of fraud, which is a crime recognized as such under capitalism, is difficult, admitting to being a victim of exploitation and oppression -- of the sort that the middle strata of the working class experience -- is even more so, for their victimization (unlike victimization by scam artists) is not validated as such by any government authorities. It's possible to overcome the rationalization trap even in the case of military recruitment, but it's not possible to do so if we portray the military experience as all debits and no credit, so to speak. If the military experience were all debits, only the dumbest of dumbasses could be expected to join the military, which is neither true nor a very effective message for leftists to propagate. Some leftists sometimes exaggerate debits too much, though, which paradoxically reinforces the rationalization trap and probably makes it more difficult for workers to overcome it.
Yoshie Furuhashi <http://montages.blogspot.com> <http://monthlyreview.org> <http://mrzine.org>