[lbo-talk] what's the matter with...

[Carrol Cox]

I guess it's fun to talk about what's wrong with this or the other
sector of the population, but I'm a bit uncle as to the political
implications of the chat. And if smartness is a precondition for voting 
left, and the population is overwhelmingly dumb, the politics of
Progress, one step at a time by electing smart and good people, seems
_really_ naive. By what procedure, lacking sstate power, large financial
resources, and with all cultural media controlled by the enemy, is the
left supposed to bring all these dumb people up to the level of us
intelligent leftis anddddddddddd persuade them to vote the capitalists
out of business?

Progress is a sort of empty term unless one can identify the forces
which drive it, and how those froces are to be harnessed to educate a
dumb public. A recognition of contingency, of the illusory nature of
systematic progress, and of the necessity of recognizing those
condtions, when they appear, that make possible the making of our own
history, while grim, is far more cheerful than this blind trust in
Progress combined with contempt for people.

Carrol