> Now that I
> have used the word ("conscience") I realise immediately how it (or
> its absence in frameworks) explains why civil disobedience has little
> chance of occurring in modern (global North?) leftist circles.
I don't understand this skepticism that effective civil disobedience can emerge in the North. Woj identified some good reasons why CD doesn't come as naturally to folks in the global North, but that doesn't mean mass CD is impossible or even unlikely. How do you explain the U.S. civil rights movement, a bloody decades-long struggle in which CD was a key strategy? In Mississippi and Alabama, even perfectly legal things like taking an interstate bus ride or being a member of the NAACP were treated as illegal by the authorities -- and that was when things were going well (better to get unconstitutionally arrested by the cops than murdered by the Klan). Nevertheless, the major civil rights leaders were mostly well-educated, middle class African Americans who were risking _a lot_ by participating: they weren't really that different from most of us -- except that they were a hell of a lot more courageous.
-WD
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