Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> On Feb 12, 2010, at 10:43 AM, Carrol Cox wrote:
>
> > The discussion on the list regarding popular ignorance has been pretty
> > jumbled and mixed with other matters not necessarily relevant. But
> > it is
> > moe important, I think, to study in depth the _sources_ and _causes_
> > ot
> > that ignorance than to dwell on it merely as an empirical fact.
>
> Well, yes. Ignorance of the sort that pervades the USA is produced,
> not spontaneous or genetically determined. It is, however, essential
> to admit its existence.
>
Let's try it this way.
Were activities going on that attracted a wider audience to you radio show, it would be more effective as agitation than LBO itself, which while clearly written would still baffle large numbers of people who would be able to follow identical material orally presented. And better yet, the same material presented in direcly speaking to a smaller groupd with opportunity for exchange, questionin, etc. So the core of my argument, I guess, is that before the left perspective can _reach_ a larger audience there must first be public activity that draws people to events where they can hear the materialpresented.
In the early '70s Jan & I had pulled togerher a group of about 10 people, at first only as a study & discussion circle. (In fact the first of our 'principles of unity' was that no one should say, "Let's do something." One of the books we read was Wages, Price and Profit. Now one of ourmembers had not gone beyond high school and had a difficult time reading. I taped the whle of that book and she listened to it while looking at the text. It worked beautifully. Though her reading improved during the years the group lasted (and she took a couple college coruses), she was nver as comfortable with printed texts as she was with quite complex material in oral form.
To put it stronger: no democracy without a strong oral culture, which is one of the reasons "representative democracy" is an oxymoron. If such a political culture is not creatable, then the second of Luxemburg's alternatives constitutes our future: barbarism.
And to bring about a socialist movement we have to create such a culture for a substantial minority _inside_ capitalism. And that's another reason we can't aim at creating a majority for socialism. We ahve to achieve socialism with at most (say) 20% of the population actively engaged.
Carrol