--- Marvin Gandall <marvgandall at videotron.ca> wrote:
> Wojtek and Chuck - the most unlikely of bedfellows -
> are united in building
> an iron wall between political action and social
> action.
Where did I say that the two are separate? I argued to the exact contrary, that social movements need political and instituional support to succeed. Without that support they usually do not get very far.
Nor do I claim that social movements are irrelevant - in fact I said (citing Tilly) that they can be instrumental in social change if a 'window of opportunity' opens. But contributing to a social change and claiming all credits for its are two very different things. No doubt that the Poles or the French contributed to the ally effort in WW II - but that does not mean that they won the war. In fact, they were crushed like a bug by the German Panzer, and if it were not for the Russians, the British and the Americans, today they would all be eating sauerkraut and singing "Die Fahne Hoch."
Likewise, social movements contribute to a social change, but without institutional support their effort would not account to much. Just think about it - the US government, or ruling elite if you will, successfully defeated powerful enemies domestically and abroad. They crushed the Southern rebellion, they defeated the organized labor, they defeated Japan and Germany, not to mention smaller countries, they even outlived the USSR. They have the capacity to neutralize, if not defeat, every enemy on Earth. Can thus anyone in his right mind seriously believe that they succumbed to a bunch of tone throwing youth?
If a social change takes place, be it the Civil Right smovement here, or the Solidaity movement in Poland, or the "velvet revolution" in Czechoslovakia, etc - it is because a window of opportunity has been open - there are power elites controlling institutional resources that were willing to cooperate with social movements to institute changes. The motives and th evisions of power elites and movement leaders may indded be very diffrent but what maters is that their willingness to cooperate, for whatever reason, created a window of opportunitu for a change to take place. Believing that the only or even main thing that broughtt that change or even cooperation with a social movement was a bunch of stone throwing and window-smashing kids is a delusion of grandeur.
Of course, it is a separte question if these social changes would have taken place in the absence of a strong, well-articulated social movement. We can of course speculate without being able to prove anything, as there is no counterfactual to history. My cautious guess is that yes - the changes that did take place would have probably taken place without a well-articualted social movement but in a very different from and on a different time schedule.
The self-deluding mythology that all the Left needs to do to win is to "start organizing" - which is a code word for mob violence - seems oblivious to all realpolitik: the significance of material resources, weaponry, means of communication, political legitimacy, institutional infrastructure to govern a complex economy and society, etc. It reminds me of the characters from the 1970 Akiro Kurosawa flick _Dodes'ka den_ in which two vagrants living on heap of garabge in Tokyo and scavenging for survival spend their pastime making plans for their future mansion - indeed all they need is the power of their imagination, no material resources are necessary.
Wojtek
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com