[lbo-talk] [LBO] Surowecki on unions

Marv Gandall marvgand at gmail.com
Fri Jan 14 14:10:43 PST 2011


On 2011-01-14, at 4:23 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:


> "Working Class Opinion" (working class in general) is irrelevant to a given
> union drive….At the beginning of a war the only relevant opinions are the one or two percent who say
> (without any qualification) Get Out Stop the war. No other opinion is
> relevant. And so forth. Struggles are always concrete and involve only a
> tiny number of people to begin with and even as they (sometimes) triumph
> they never involve a majority.

On 2011-01-14, at 4:42 PM, Wojtek S wrote:


> Marv, I think Carrol is right on this one, even though I would not argue it
> the way he does.

Right. We've been over this ground many times before. Carrol is one hard Blanquist dude. He thinks a tiny core of activists and revolutionaries are all that is needed to effect even the most profound social change, without the corresponding need for majority support. It hasn't happened before, neither in 18th century France nor in the USSR or China in the 20th or anywhere else, and I'm ready to eat crow if that's how it happens next time.



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