[lbo-talk] Jerry Lewis as worst-case scenario

[Wojtek Sokolowski]

> Carl Remick wrote:
> >
> > Been there, discussed that.  Emerson's supposed complacence and
indifference
> > to the poor came up on the list 12/15/01, at which time I posted:
"Emerson
> > ... thought that no meaningful social revolution could occur without a
> > change in the consciousness of individuals. . . ."
> 
> This is exactly Milton's position developed in the last two  books of
> Paradise Lost. But what no one has ever been able to explain, beginning
> from an individualist premise, is _how_ the many (separated,
> independent, nominally autnomous) persons constituting a society are to
> transform their consciousness. Auden, if I remember correctly, in one of
> his early political poems wrote something like "New styles of
> archictecture lead to new kinds of people" -- but then he did not show
> where those new styles would come from. _Both_ forms that the workers'
> movements have taken, that of the Second and of the Third Internationals
> broke down on this reef. I'm implying that there is no fundamental
> difference among the following: Kautsky, Debs, Stalin, Trotsky, George
> Meany. (Some of them might personally have beenn nicer persons then the
> other, but I'm not interested in people either Hell nor Heaven.) They
> were all in traditions that were both grounded in and generated
> bureaucracies which could not solve the problem of who would educate the
> educator. The Third Thesis on Feuerbach names the problem and gives a
> general label (revolutionizing practice) for the solution, but it seems
> incredibly difficult to transform that general formula into concrete
> practice under particular conditions. Mao, Cabral, the Sandinistas, Ho,
> probably others led revolutions which wrestled with the 'problem' but
> eventually failed. The Cubans are still struggling, and the Venezuelans
> are as well. We will see.
> 
> Carrol

The problem of this argument is its implicit egg-and-chicken fallacy.  The
fallacy exists only from the point of view of ahistorical abstractions,
binary dichotomies and all or none choices.  

In reality, the change occurs gradually and by small increments at a time
(just live evolution of the species).  That means only a small number of
people change only a bit at a time, and some people do not change at all.
If the latter were extinct like dinosaurs, the problem would be solved, but
in reality they live a parallel coexistence with the first category.  As a
consequence, you will always have people with "changed" consciousness that
conforms to the new social order, and people who are "left behind" in that
process.  You may try to "re-educate" them as the Chinese did, but in all
likelihood these efforts can be at best only partially successful.  In other
words, you will always have "false consciousness" "lumpenproletariat and
kindred species - even after the Revolution finally comes.

Consequently, two observations are in order:

1. You cannot judge the success or failure or a transformative social
movement by the existence of those who were "left behind" - for that
existence is inevitable.  A better measuring stick is to what degree those
movements implemented institutions that facilitate the social reproduction
of revolutionary ideals (e.g. equal opportunity, distributive justice, etc.)

2.  Even if a social movement is a successful Revolution (i.e. it manages to
impose its institutional order on society) - this is no guarantee that
social problems of the "old regime" will go away.  They will not - and they
will have to be dealt with pretty much in the same way they have been dealt
with under the old regime.

Wojtek