me: >>Nathan, to say this kind of thing is an indication that you've never read Yoshie's contributions to lbo-talk. <<
Nathan: >Talking about power in the abstract is not talking about power analysis in the organizing sense-- listing opponents, how to move them to neutrality or even support in specific campaigns, and laying out a strategy that actually gets success. I hear lots of appeals to "if only the unions would do x" but not much power analysis on how to even convince them to do that; instead, I mostly hear union bashing with little constructive suggestions, other than platitudes about "if only the rank-and-file would organize."
>It's all "if only" analysis, not concrete analysis of what resources
exist and how to act now. <
Yoshie answered this, but I'll repeat what I said before: we need not only the "small picture" approach that Nathan is pushing but also the "large picture" approach that Yoshie expresses. It's "abstract," but we need some sense of the forest, not just the trees. We need abstraction, since the "facts on the ground" don't speak for themselves.
My impression is that Nathan's version of activism involves rejection of any kind of big-picture analysis (abstraction). Yoshie's activism seems to involve struggling with how to combine these levels. (I'm not an activist, I admit, because my social skills aren't so hot. I do public speaking.) -- Jim Devine / "There can be no real individual freedom in the presence of economic insecurity." -- Chester Bowles
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