[lbo-talk] Is Obama Running Interference to ProtectBankers' Pay?

[Miles Jackson]

Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> I can agree with this. We live in a society that shapes a certain 
> moral sense, so that exploitation, for example, isn't merely 
> normalized, it's virtually invisible. But on the other hand, I don't 
> see how you can generate any serious political movement to transform 
> and/or surpass capitalism without changing that sense of the normal. 
> There's a tendency among Marxists to drain agency completely out of 
> human affairs - we're just puppets manipulated by objective reality. 
> Related to that is the unfortunate notion of economic crisis doing a 
> lot of the political work for us.
>
> Doug
As I study various social movements, I am more and more skeptical that 
changing individuals' psychological characteristics is a necessary 
precondition for social change.   As demonstrated by the civil rights 
movement in the fifties, we didn't need all the white people in the 
South to agree with desegregation before that social change could occur; 
we needed a social movement (supported by the minority of the population 
in the South!) to make it happen.  --The American Revolution is a 
similar example.

Miles