Louis Kontos wrote:
>
> Carrol has a point with regard to the logic of 'crisis' -- Rockefeller et al are not in crisis mode. Yet there is truth to the claim that the center cannot hold, if by center we mean things like ordinary indoctrination around various 'collective concepts', e.g., the free market, the land of the of free, the sanctity of marriage and family, manifest destiny, etc. When people become disillusioned or incredulous the center cannot hold.
> Louis
wrobert at uci.edu wrote:
>
> Actually, I remember reading a book on consciousness raising that was
> written in the early 70's that explicitly referenced the 'speaking bitter'
> sessions that were used in multiplicity of ways in the PRC and in the
> revolutionary movement before that.
And a Mao quote I still like: "If you don't hit it, it won't fall."
I don't know how fruitful the consciousness raising groups were -- I suspect results varied. But _also_ a simple carrying over of "speak bitterness" would illustrate the concreteness _in context_ of various parts of the Chinese Revolution. Those speak bitterness sessions (and _Fanshen_ is illuminating on this) were developed to deal with a very specific difficulty: as a rule, peasants mind their own business, keep their heads down, and don't turn against their betters. That sort of thing only gets them beaten up. But the revolution depended on the peasantry; somehow the peasants had to become something more than peasants; they had to speak! They had to speak to each other and in public, as a public act. (Who coined the expression, "Thorw off the muck of centuries"? That is what we are dealing with here.) By speaking bravely (and at first in such sessions, even in areas the PLA controlled, few dared to speak) they could find their courage. Take them out of that context and "speak bitterness" sessions are apt to be pretty empty. Peasant caution is not the barrier to revolution in the u.s. Similarly with criticism & self-criticism as practiced in China. It was often pretty brutal and destructive there, but transmitted without change to the U.S. and practiced by those who had had their minds fucked over by Freudianism, and it was an unmitigated disaster.
The Chinese Revolution was built on a continually refresshed and expanded grasp of concrete conditions in China at that time. It did not translate very well, and the distinction the Chinese drew between thought and theory points to part of the reason.
And capitalism doesn't really have a center that can fail to hold. (I would not pretend to know exactly what Yeats had in mind in the phrase.) That is one of the reasons it is so difficult to find the modes of ortganization and the tactics with which to hit it. And as long as it is not being hit, it can absorb all sorts of disasters or apparent disasters. (I'm not sure that the sanctity of the "family" is all that necessary to capitalism, but that needs more thought.)
Carrol