Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> On Sep 1, 2010, at 4:31 PM, Shane Mage wrote:
>
> > On Sep 1, 2010, at 4:20 PM, Marv Gandall wrote:
> >> The great historic social movements[aside from the only one that succeeded. abolitionism] - for trade union rights and social insurance, for equal rights for women, minorities, and gays, for an end to US wars of aggression, for safe and clean energy, for civil liberties, etc. - have all sought to reform rather than overthrow the existing system and have perforce attached themselves to the Democratic Party...
> >
> > Which is why all of them have either accomplished nothing or have had whatever modest accomplishments they took credit for whittled away to almost nothing by the bipartisan political swindlers
>
> You'd think, from reading this sort of thing (which I have about 1,000 times), that there's a great untapped vein of radicalism in the U.S. population that's frustrated by the constant sellouts of the Dem Party. There isn't, as far as I know.
At times when gains have been mae there was a previously 'untapped' 5% of the population that became _militant_, resulting in _some_ movement among those who were either apolitical or DP voters (who may have continued to be DP voters even as they responded most strongly to the militant movement. So it depends on what you mean by a " a great untapped vein of radicalism." There is of course no majority or even a remotely possible majority of the population that is radical, but there are certainly one or two million! In the mid-60s it took about 200 or so of us out of a population of 40,00 to bring Open Housing ordinances to both Normal and Bloomington and the establishment of Human Relatoins Commissions. And we didn't reall have much support from any larger part of the community. We just disturbed the smooth operation of the two cities.
Social change (including revolution) is always the result of the work of a fairly small part of the total population.
Carrol