Never mind. When you decide to be crotchety, there's no helping anything.
J.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Carrol Cox" <cbcox at ilstu.edu> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Sent: Friday, February 18, 2011 4:26:01 PM Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] A Note on an old slogan
Joanna, this sort of nonsense has been fundamental to the reduction of the '60s to triviality. "Growing up" between 1945 and 1965 is sure as hell a generation. And that is nonsense. In the first place, it's a lie that the movement of the '60s was confined to a single bloc of people. And as far as I know, there is not an iota of evidence that several million people were moved by a single motive.
The driving force of the first part of the struggle were the local NAACPs, and they certainly had more serious concerns than nervous breakdown from possibly getting a nuke dropped on them. The driving force of Mario's _own_ moment of glory was the rebellion of those who had been radicalized by their support of the movement in the South. And then came the increasing recognition that the problem was capitalism.
It's really pretty disgusting to reduce such a huge and complex movement to the nervous breakdown of a lot of kids raised in the nuclear age.
Carrol
-----Original Message----- From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org] On Behalf Of 123hop at comcast.net Sent: Friday, February 18, 2011 5:28 PM To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] A Note on an old slogan
I said NOTHING about generational conflict.
I wrote about the effect of growing up under the threat of nuclear war.
Joanna
----- Original Message ----- From: "Carrol Cox" <cbcox at ilstu.edu> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Sent: Friday, February 18, 2011 1:07:23 PM Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] A Note on an old slogan
I'm sorry to here that Mario fell for the junk about "generational conflict." That explanation of the 60s has seeriusly screwed up understanding of that period, beginning in the '60s. Generations had nothing
to do with it.
Carrol
-----Original Message----- From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org] On Behalf Of 123hop at comcast.net Sent: Friday, February 18, 2011 1:29 PM To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] A Note on an old slogan
I have only run across one explanation of that: of demanding the impossible and demanding it right now. I got it from a Mario Savio interview. He said that the generation who articulated the messages of the 60's had grown up with the possibility of nuclear annihilation as something that could happen at any moment. And that as a result, there was the feeling that there was only ten minutes left to live, so that if there was going to be change, it would have to happen now.
This made a lot of sense to me.
Joanna
----- Original Message ----- From: "Carrol Cox" <cbcox at ilstu.edu>
I have never seen (though they must exist) any analyses of the French '68 slogan, "Be practical, Demand the Impossible."
It's probably regarded by most as mere flippancy. But in fact, it _is_ practical_: A left movement that does not demand the impossible will (a) never discover what is in fact possible and (b) probably won't get anything at all.
Anyone who thinks they can determine what is and what isn't possible should do leftists a favor and go fishing.
Carrol
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