Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
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> [WS:] The problem is that the change that you are describing almost never occurs by spontaneous social movement - it requires a catastrophic event that will wipe out the elite hegemony, such as a war, foreign occupation or a total economic meltdown. Think of Russia in 1917, or China & Europe after WW2. Or even US in 1929 - economic meltdown coupled with elites legitimately fearing Communism.
But the 1930s brought about less change than the 1960s! It is dismaying how even the let (such as it is) has tended to swallow the grotesque picture of the 60s given by the popular media at the time and carefully built on ever since. That decade (actually Rosa Parks in the '50s to the defeat of ERA in the'70s) is perhaps the most complex period in u.s. history, and discovering that complexity and its internal dynamics (seeing through the chaos on the surface) may well be one key to building a left movemetn in the future.
Note we can't learn from its mistakes; one never learns from past mistakes because they always reappear loooking quite different and one has to go through the old arguments again just as though the world was new.) But one CAN learn from what a period of struggle did ritht, because it will be obvious that those things can't be literally imitated and call for thinking in the new context. Several times on several lists I have heard people babble about learning from the Weatherman fiasco. Nonsense. I agree the Weather people were jerks, but the next Wather will be so different that those in it won't recognize tyhe parallel and will repeat the mistake while thinking that they are avoiding it.
Carrol