[lbo-talk] perceptions

[Carrol Cox]

Opinons do not affect action. There is no culture of public involvement
in the United States, and having a 'view' on some issue does not, for
most people, trigger the question of WITBD, but only a general feeling
that "someone ought to do something about it." Only under the most
extraordinary conditions (which cannot be willed into existence) do any
large number of people (left or right) think in terms of any action of
their own making a difference. If you read most letters to the editor,
this is clear. They are not self-consciously participating in a possible
public activity, they are "expressing" themselves, passively. Voting is
the same. It is not an action.

I think it was St. Just who advised citizens to conduct their private
affairs and not interfere in state activities. That is the informing
principle of representative democracy. The important activties are all
private, conducted among friends, family, and work associates. One forms
passive opinons on public affairs, but beyond voting for others on the
hope t hey will do good things, these opinions  aare merely opinions,
part of one's identity as it were, like the color of one's hair or food
preferences. I can't recall the exact quotation, but St. Just argued
that this was the proper course for the mass of citizens: take care of
their private affairs and leave the state alone.

In my pre-political days this  use to vaguely bother me on occasion. I
would read an article in a liberal journal about some public issue, some
injustice, some desperate need not being met by government, and (as I
say, vaguely, wonder what difference having this knowledge made. It took
about five years of expanded public activity in the early '60s, as
reflected in what I read for it to accumulate to the point where I, 
casually to begin with, started attending the weekly meetings of a small
civil-rights group that had been started in Bloomington. Then things
moved faster. Within a year I became bothered by the dependence of our
local goals (if we achieved them) on a wider scope of events. Clearly
others were thinking along the same lines, hence greater involvement in
regional anti-war activities, etc etc etc. But at no point in this whole
process did an abstract idea on a given issue lead to action. Rather,
finding myself inolved in public activity, I and others began asking
ourselves just how that activity could be made effective, what were the
ideas that made sense of what we were doing.

Crudely put, before very many people (and even then a fairly small
minority) take their own activity seriously there has to be a rising
public hullabaloo, creating an atmosphere or culture in which collective
action is first attractive, then actually promises change.

So? I don't know.

Carrol