> Others, of course, would argue it was a response to the demands of the
> nascent capitalist class and "improving" landlords who favoured the wage
> relationship and greater freedom of movement of peasants from the
> countryside to the city which it encouraged.
>
These don't contradict each other.
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Chris Doss" <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com>
> To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org>
> Sent: Saturday, October 10, 2009 7:36 PM
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Will 'SNL' skit sink hopes for Obama?
>
>
> I have no opinion about the US Civil Rights movement and its relationship
> to the US government of the time, but an obvious example of a social
> revolution in favor of the lower classes carried out by the government was
> the abolition of serfdom on the decree of the Tsar Liberator Alexander II.
>
> --- On Sat, 10/10/09, Marv Gandall <marvgandall at videotron.ca> wrote:
>
>> 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..."
>>
>>
>> ___________________________________
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>>
>>
>
>
>
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