[lbo-talk] Pre-Primer on Organizing

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Sat Apr 4 17:10:02 PDT 2009


Eric Beck wrote:
>
>
>
> I tend to agree with this, and I definitely like your ideas about
> politics occurring when people are in action. But I also tend to
> bristle when anyone uses the word "education."

I take your point, but I don't think you need to bristle. _If_ you achieve democracy in the group (and that's not as easy as is sometimes thought), _then_ the education is mutual, it emerges from hammering out the politics and the strategy and logistics of the activity. I hope to have more to say about this later. One point, everyone is of course for democracy, but fewer are willing to pay the price of having the wrong decisions made at least part of the time, or putting up with one inevitable element in practically every group aiming at mass politics: the member (usually but by no means always a he) who throws a monkey wrench in everything, but who has to be tolerarated for various reasons.

[clip] I>I suspect that
> you may be agreeing with Badiou when he says that politics, and groups
> practicing politics, *think*, but that's much different than
> "education."

Sounds o.k. to me. Of course this is at the local level -- things get more complicated the more people involved and the more diverse the groups involved.

Carrol



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