> This suggests that coercive/institutional/structural change is a more
> effective way of changing popular consciousness than simply giving
> people the right information or out-debating them.
What's wrong with my prose?
I'm not saying that, if you have power, formal or informal, you shouldn't use it to its full extent. If you are an influential leader, a legislator, or hold some powerful public office with plenty of resources, by all means, use your power, use those resources. What I'm saying is not contradicted by the examples you give. You still need people to change their minds in order to get you elected, pass legislation, and then enforce it.
What you are saying is that to end desegregation in the South, at least formally or legally, not all whites in the South had to change their mind. That some of the shift in the white mindset was a passive mental accomodation, a reaction before the legal fait accompli. Well, yes. Still, *before that*, you needed the minds of a significant group of Black people and enlightened whites, those who mobilized, of the whites who didn't oppose the change, to shift from opposition to neutral, etc. It's actual people, subjects, subjective forces, who make history.
Now, would you admit that the end of desegregation is not yet the end of -- say -- racism in the South? How can you completely eliminate racism administratively, by sheer mechanical coercion? And what's the goal of legal coercion anyway? Isn't it to change minds so that people change their behavior and as a result new conditions are engendered?
When people refuse to abide by a legal order or when they oppose it outright, the cost of law enforcement may become so large that the legal order effectively collapses. And people, to the extent they are capable of exercising any measure of free will, *can* oppose a legal order. They don't necessarily have to obey and conform to laws just because they are enacted. The conscious agreement with, the active participation in, the upkeep of a legal order by the people is much better for the stability of that legal order than mere passivity or resistance to the legal order, let alone active opposition to it. No?
Doesn't that show how important it is to work on changing the minds of people prior to the enactment of a law?
Admittedly, a fair amount of people's behaviors result from the repetition of actions that are either unconscious or semi-conscious. Specially of the kind of behaviors that reproduce the crap we are deep into. But a new social order based on mutual cooperation *cannot* be built without a large measure of intentionality. We're talking about entering times in which we people make history consciously. It's highly unlikely, if not impossible, that we'll accidentally bump into such kind of society.
Finally, Zizek's narrow interpretation of the term "facts" in the context of a comment on Chomsky may or may not apply to Zinn's remarks. IMO, Zinn's remarks are not necessarily limited to a mere quantitative accumulation of detailed evidence to reinforce a general conclusion about the status quo (a la Chomsky), especially not at the exclusion of qualitative improvements in the understanding of social life. But, whatever. Even Zizek admits that having more "facts" (a la Chomsky) backing up an idea about how messed up the status quo is "more convincing" than the alternative. Wouldn't you admit that when people are *more* convinced of the necessity of social change (rather than less), they are likely to invest more energy in inducing social change (than otherwise)?
(Sorry about the verbosity. I can't make it shorter now.)