In this what I wanted to establish was that one point of view was
being mistated. I don't confuse stating a point of view correctly
with proving it.
> Social Movements force politicians to make reforms - but those reforms are
> crafted by those politicians and have no necessary relation to what the
> given social movement demanded.
Hence, the statement you snipped "I think a more reasonable statement of disagreement is that some people would claim that such reforms are such an unpredictable side effect that they should seldom or never be goal, while others would claim than organizing with such reforms as one goal is usually worthwhile, and more likely to make them happen (2 separate assertions by the way). "
Incidentally your particular phrasing here is kind of deliberately the raising the barrier for your opponent. "necessary relation". The claim that organizing with reforms as goal does not claim a "necessary relation" which would require 100% correlation, but that organizing with reforms as one goal can sometimes make an outcome resembling demands more likely.
(That's one of the reasons demands are a
> trivial concern.) For example, in the'40s a Socaial Movement demanded
> universal old age pensdions funded by a corporate tax; what the politicians
> gave them was Social Security, grounded in a regressive tax and tied to the
> lifetime earnings (from specified sources) of the worker. A really shitty
> affair subject to constant meddling and ultimate sabotage. Another movement
> demanded the right to organize; what it got was the Wagner Act and the
> Taft-Hartley Act, which pretty much eventually crippled the union movment.
> And so forth.
Umm, I don't know if you noticed. But time or at least the illusion of time exist. For decades Social Security improved over time, constant shitty meddling happened starting in past 40 years or so. I'm pretty certain that if we had universal pensions based on progressive taxation, that meddling would have still happened - as proved in other nations that did have truly universal public pensions, though seldom based on progressive taxation. Taft-Hartley was a modification of the right to organize which happened well after the Wagner Act. No one claims that demands are implemented exactly. That most likely happens in a truly revolutionary situation. But the idea that demands did not shape results in those cases seems to assume what you are out to prove. And a claim that demands (by a group able to scare elites to begin with) don't (often, not saying always) shape the nature of elite responses as well the existence of those responses is rather breathtaking. I think the burden of proof of that one is one on you.
In saying that reforms weakened movements in those days you are
implicitly assuming a counterfactual: successful revolution in the
absence of reforms. In the case of the New Deal, I think a more
likely countefactual would have been an UNSUCCESSFUL revolution
leading to a successful fascist counter revolution. As to Black
Liberation, it is hard for me to imagine that having been a successful
revolution either. It seems to me that in the two cases you cite, not
winning the particular reforms that were won would have led to worse
outcomes not better. In the case of Roosevelt there were documented
attempts at fascist coups.
>
> Don't cite the Civil-Rights movement: that movement only deanded that the
> abstract civil right of bourgeois equality be extended to Blacks. That
> reform was vital, but it was also the groundwork for completely defeating
> the actual aims of the Black Liberation Movement.
>
> The experts you want to count as "allies" are the experts who "counsel"
> Congress to pass these reforms that cripple the movements and to "counsel"
> the mvements to be "practial" (Crackpot realism) and accept without complain
> this submerging of their own actual aims in the "gifts" the state offers
> them.
>
> Sachs remains not just not an ally but a serious enemy. If #OIWS can make
> use of him fine; if they accept his counsel as relevant to _their_ actions
> and not merely to the information of their members, then they are seriously
> endangering their purposes.
>
> Carrol
>
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