Dennis Claxton wrote:
>
> At 07:19 PM 2/4/2010, Carrol Cox wrote:
>
> >In other words, all the posters, though they will deny this loudly,
> >are claiming
> >to be able to rad tea leaves (public opinion now) and on the basis
> >predict the future.
>
> And you're claiming to be able to read minds?
I guess the remark about denial does make tha claim. I withdraw it.
But the rest deals with the rationale of focusing on the present: the present dies as we say this is the present.
Suppose all the des riptions of current u.s. political attitudes are correct. What is the significance for the left in that fact.
My argument is that it has no significance at all; and I refer not just to the "anti-left" views but to the "pro-left" views. For one thing assuming that the present is significant ignores history. Never _once_ have leftists been able to say, if we do this now, many people will joing us and we will have a mass movement.
Now, if you beleive that "progress' comes through persuading voters, then I have nothing to say that will make any sense to you. My premise is that change is brought about ONLY by such movements 'outside' electoral politics, and that such movements have _always_ been minority movements. Moreover, the rise of such movements has always caught by surprise even those whose actions created them. Did you read Eric's post in which he quotes from Anfela. (When she was on the list I wrangled a lot with her; from some of the refereces I have seen to her recetnly, either my views are more closely resembling hers, hers mine, or both.) I do expect _this_ pattern of over two centuries to provide a guide, NOT to actual events in the future but to the _pattern_ of events inside capitalism.
The shift from a more or less conservative period to a period of growing mass activity occurs suddenly, not in any linear progression from the presetn. That does not say that knowledge of the present and near past is not important, it is. (I agree with Michael Yates on that.) But (1) to ground hope or fear on the present is just being silly. And it is worse than silly if leeft action is grounded in attempting to change the present in anyu linear direction. We have to act AS IF people will respond to the kind of calls to mass action that constitute actual left practice. They won't just now. Next year? Who knows. The year after? Who knows. In bloomingotn/Normal we continue to hold ourpathetic little 30-minuteanti-war demo of 15 or so people on the first Thursday of each month: 5;30 to 6:00. Does it do any good? Of course not, but that's a stupid question. Will the regular practice of it make a difference if a change we haven't predicted nor could predict happens? Yes: that kind of activity will suddenly, to our surprise and the surpise of efveryone else carrying out such activity -- it will change the world in tremendous and unheard of ways. It has in the past. It will in the future. The NASCP had been meaninglessly going through its various rituals and talking to each other about how to organize the next one and so forth and suddently that activity generated the Rosa Parks episode, and the wrold began to blow up.
Do you have any idea at all at how overwhelmingly resistant the U.S. public of the '50s was to any kind of disturbing activity? How long liberals (like me) thought it would be before there could be reall change on race? How silly the Montgomery NAACP was. They stupidly didn't bother to pay attention to the public opinion polls.
I think leftists simply are not thinking straight or honoring their own history when they pay so much attention to "how things are."
Carrol