Michael Pollak wrote:
>
> On Sat, 6 Feb 2010, Carrol Cox wrote:
>
> > I don't want to _persuade_ anyone, at least not until they express a
> > desire as it were to be persuaded, but rather to involve them in a
> > shared _practice_ which, for some will lead them to see the need for a
> > new perspective. The starting point is similar but not identical to
> > yours. You start with merely a shared opinion; I start with a shared
> > _practice_. The shared practice (which does NOT necessarily stem from
> > trhe same opinions) raises the need for a ratioale beyond the original
> > impulse (whatever that might have been). Over time the various people
> > invovled spend a lot of time talking about this or that or the
> > otherthing, not particularly focused on anyone persuading anyone of
> > anything. That is not _necessary_ because they already share enough to
> > keep the activity going. Within this ongoing conversation, including
> > discussion of tactics, programs, guest speakers, etc, often overe time
> > it appears that one or two people are beginning to feel dissatisfied
> > with their initial reaons for joing the activity, and then you can
> > explore _that_ with them.
>
> I see. So you are only interested in persuading people who are already
> actively involved on our side. Converting the choir, as it were.
>
"Our side" is a bit vague here, since it includes a sort of pyramid of positons, and agreement with some of those opinions by no means indicates aggreement with the more fundamental ones.
And incidentally, I want to include by citation here the post I wrote expanding on my misreading of "clincial" as "chemical." I hold that a really larger proportion of our potential forces cannot be reached by published material because they their intelligence is oral and they are not going even to read, let alone be persuaded by, even the best and clearest left literature. (And the Secvond-International rhetorical theory passed on to us by Lenein in WITBD is still relevant: the distinctions among Theory, Propaganda, and agitation. Agitational material must coincide with the feelings/beliefs of its intended readers/listeners, because it offers no scope for clarification etc. The reader has to be "confinced" by the big-print slogan: and that is possible only if she alreayd beliees it. But even Propaganda in print can offer difficulties to large numbers of intelligent people who simply don't read.)
So the shared practice (say in an anti-war group or in a group working towards a "iving wage" ordinance in some city) may be (and for most will be) grounded on very very restricted shared belief. Certainly, someone can be passionately for a living-wage ordinance and also a supporter of U.S. foreign policy for example. Hence many who join us in particular struggles will certainly NOT be on "our side" in any very fundamental sense. And they cannot, starting from scratch as it were, be "persuaded" to accept 'our' more fundamental positons by the process you describe. We don't share enough with many of them. My argument was on how we can persuade _some_ of them, some quickly, some only over a great stretch of time and shared practice.
> And the idea of using discourse to increase the number of people active on
> our side is outside your interests (and you might even consider it
> impossible (?)).
I'm not sure what you mean by "discourese" here. There has to be a good deal of conversationover time; those who can and have the time to read need to be provided with the right texts at the right time. We are getting into an area here which perhaps escapes our context: that is, this is a pretty generalzied discussion, and the processs of political change is always concreted (and varies from particular case to particular case). Also, as I keep saying, there is a sharp difference between "normal times" (suvch as ours since the mid-70s) and (for lack of a better label) "Left-Surge" periods, those relatively short periods of time (not much over 5 years as Andre Gorz argued) when people come flocking to a mvoement, when the sheer power of growing numbers and of intensifying militancy themselves do much of the persuading and discourse is only needed to cofnirm, deepend, and expand that attraction.
>
> Then it's no mystery why our ideas differ. They are molded with entirely
> different audiences in mind.
What I don't understand in your arguments is where you think you will find any audience at all for your persuasion to work on. My thinking includes as the KEY task that of attracting an audience, and that certainly cannot be done by the kind of perusaion you speak of because that only works, if it workds, when the audience already exists. So I am arguing that you too depend, every bit as muuch as I do, on an audience that is already in some important sense, "on our side." How do you find people to perusad?
I'd like to keep this going a bit longer.
Carrol
>
> Michael
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