On Fri, 13 Mar 2009 20:43:49 -0500 Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> writes:
> See the passage in Capital in which Marx notes that the English
> working
> class took several decades to recover from the shock of
> industrialization before their struggle for a shorter working day
> began.
> Misery does _not_ automatically trigger resistance ANY PLACE. That
> is
> one thing one can learn from reading books on the Chinese Revolution
> --
> the absolute misery of much of the Chinese Peaantry and the
> incredible
> amount of work it took to get them to move. It's the same every
> place
> and it's really offensive to blame _any_ particular people as a
> people
> at any time or place. I know this doesn't apply to dennis, but for
> the
> most part those who complain about passivity are pretty much as
> shag
> describes in their relationship to any persistent effort to move
> people
> in a collective way.
>
> Carrol
>
Alexis de Tocqueville in his book, *The Ancien Régime and the Revolution*, emphasized the role that increasing prosperity played in generating resistance by increasing people's expectations of future improvements. It's when these expectations turn out not to be met that people will then rebel. So misery by itself tends not to generate rebellion. In fact it usually breeds passivity.
Jim F. ____________________________________________________________ Free information on Digital Photography. Click Now! http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/fc/BLSrjpTDvmSZwyFcnX3gKFtFswUOjLxOD9lBzXqdY2tNyZlNK4bG251u4Dm/