[lbo-talk] USA and protests -or lack thereof-

Eric Beck ersatzdog at gmail.com
Sat Mar 14 16:05:23 PDT 2009


On Sat, Mar 14, 2009 at 5:21 AM, Jim Farmelant <farmelantj at juno.com> wrote:
> 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.

Why would ever want to prescribe the conditions necessary for change and "revolution"? This is where Leninist (the ripening of conditions) and social democratic (the technocratic achievement of equality) politics march in step with classic liberalism: the (economic) base determines the (political) superstructure.

I'm generally pretty critical of cult-stud/Negrian theses that resistance is everywhere, but subscribing to this list almost makes me want to convert. Reading the (mostly middle-aged white) guys here, you'd never know that people collaboratively dig tunnels to cross borders or that Pakistani health care and sex workers form their own unions or that people engage in informal mutual aid every day. No, the revolutionary politics (which had a pretty strong Oedipal component) they grew up with don't exist anymore so they assume politics don't exist anymore. Fortunately, most people don't care what progressive mailing lists have to say.



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