Somebody somebody writes:
> MG: Demonstrations, especially, when they turn violent or threaten to
> radicalize a segment of the population, are destabilizing - even when they
> are contained. I think the demos and marches made more of an impression on
> LBJ and the rest of the administration and congress than any particular
> committment he had to the civil rights movement, especially as they
> attracted increasing support from within his party's core black and
> liberal base. It was this powerful "public opinion" from below which
> influenced the administration and the rest of political and media
> establishment, rather than the other way round, as you have it.
>
> Somebody: While not being a fan of hers, I have to say that comments like
> these make me agree with Hannah Arendt, who opined that Marxists weren't
> really interested in politics as such, but only in political epiphenomena.
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Nope. Sorry. There's nothing particularly "Marxist" in my disputing Wojtek's
contention that "the civil rights movement (CRM) succeeded not because
'people were in the streets' ...but because the LBJ administration and the
mainstream media establishment wanted it to succeed and gave it all the
support they could to sway the public opinion in its favor." You'd get the
same objection pretty much across the political spectrum. The notion that
the Johnson administration somehow led rather than accommodated to the
agitation for civil rights legislation is farcical, and, quite frankly, a
slander against the the black community whose long struggle preceded LBJ and
progressed in the face of his own previous opposition and that of other
politicians and the "mainstream media establishment", until such pressures
became intolerable.
The same can be said of the Roosevelt administration which did not lead but accommodated to the earlier agitation for trade union rights, and of later Democratic party leaders' support for demands for equality by the representative organizations of women and gays. This isn't an indictment of those Democratic administrations which moved to satisfy these demands for reform, even if not fully and with the system's needs uppermost in mind, but recognition that it was the political struggle from below, not government, which was the catalyst for change - political struggles which Woj, with your approval, disparages.
Hannah Arendt's authority notwithstanding, what a strange comment it is then that "The Marxists", presumed to include myself, are the ones who "aren't really interested in politics as such..."