[lbo-talk] EU gets serious

[Carrol Cox]

True, but also seriously misleading. In the particular case, a
revolution was not on the agenda, but the abrupt enttteriing of some 10%
of the population into real rather than merely nominal citizenship. (See
Tamas on the nature of 19th & 20th-c struggles as for  equality rather
than freedom.) This was a messy uneven, and complicated process -- NOT
'planned' in advance or even forseen by anyone. The  only partial
adequacvy of the Civil Rights Act of 1965 (or even the act as scuh) was
not scribbled on the agenda of the NAACP when they discussed over
several years before 1955 what they would do when the time came for Rosa
Parks to refuse to move. Nor was the November 1959 Moratorium part of
the PLAN when some people decided to say fuck you to Huac in San
Francisco in 1960.

At a more advanced stage in that struggle, as I've mentioned before,
neighborhoods where the Panthers and dSNCC had done work did not riot
after the murder of King. Nevertheless, the process was not so far
advanced for the apolitical riots of that week not still being part of
the total context. So in retrospece Wattts WAS _part_ of a revolution, a
revolution that overthrew the Second Republic (the foundation of which
is dramatized in _Birth of a Nation_). It took a few more years,
including some disorderly rioting by non-politicied elements) before the
exact terms of that Third Republic in which we now live were worked out.
(Such as that Gays would no longer ber beaten & arrested by police but
still would not have full citizen ship -- no marriage etc.)

So your father was both right in a general way and wrong in the
particular instance in that while Watts was definitely not a Revolution,
it _was_ a marginal (but perhaps important) incident in a long and messy
procesds.  We don't _know_ now whether the Greek riots were merely riots
or part of somethng elsee. That can only be seen looking backwards from
some point in the future. (For a beautiful illustration of your father's
point, see the debate that took place among those engaged in on the
night of the stroming of the Winter Palace -- the debate, on the spot,
concerneed precisely the topic of looting, and after some uncertainty
the non-looting was decided on. But an awful lot had gone on beofre
that!)

The Greek demos/riots may well at this time resemble Watts rather than
the storming of the Winter Palace -- but I would venture that over the
last few days a lot of conversation is going on in living rooms, coffee
shops, parks, etc. What their content or results might be I do not know.

Carrol

123hop at comcast.net wrote:
> 
> As we were driving around Watts during the riots, my father pointed to the people running with TV sets and said: "This is the difference between a riot and a revolution: in a riot, they take TV's; in a revolution, they take over the police stations and radio stations."
> 
> Never forgot that one.
> 
> Joanna
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Carrol Cox" <cbcox at ilstu.edu>
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Sent: Sunday, May 9, 2010 6:57:40 PM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] EU gets serious
> 
> Do you suppose the undisciplined Greek riots (for they were as much
> riots as demonstrations) had anything to do with this?
> 
> There is a fine line between riots and militant but disciplined
> demonstrations, but the line exists. Moreover the former is a promise as
> it were of the human material available for more organized
> demonstrations.
> 
> Carrol
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