[lbo-talk] The Sixties and Platonic Farts

[Carrol Cox]

May I suggest that the biggest mistake the movement of the '60s (which
actually run from mid-50s to mid-70s) occurred at the very beginning,
when the women of the Montgomery Alabama NAACP, after carefully
preparing for years for the initial 'blow' -- Rosa Park's refusal to
move to the back of the bus -- then gave in to pressure from above to
the effect that they needed a "male voice" to speak to them, thus
turning their movement (and the importance of their intelligence,
planning, and really quite professional execution of their plans over to
King & a male leadership, which then infected all the other black
organizations to follow -- SNCC, Panthers, DRUM, etac.) By that craven
surrender they foredoomed the eventual defeat of ERA, which I would see
as ending the period.

I'm not being facetious. That criticism is obviously correct -- and also
obviusly, given the realities of mid-century U.S., utter nonsense.

That is what I mean by a Platonic Fart. Criticism of Mao for creating an
authoritarian state is just as accurate -- and just as nonsensical. It
is a Platonic Fart.

Carrol