Marv Gandall
Of course, I understand that. But in your haste to agree with Carrol, you ignore his view that social struggles, even as they triumph, "never involve a majority", which is profoundly ahistorical.
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Do you really think that during the American Revolution a majority supported the struggle. A small number carried it out; another small number opposed it, and the bulk of the population just tried to stay alive and live from day to day. The unions in the u.s. had quite an impact from 1940 to 1970. And they were always a minority of the work force, and large numbers of their membership were passive. And if a plebiscite had been held in the 1960s, the gains of Blacks, women, and gays would have been wiped out. The abolitionists were a _really_ tiny force -- but they scared shit out of the slavedrivers and forced them to commit suicide. When profound changes are won, then a majority develops, but not before. When this doesn't happen, the results can be reversed.
I don't know whether the u.s. schools and the teaching force can be preserved from the current attack, but if teachers and their supporters keep on paying attention to polls and to "what people think," they are doomed. It a determined minority fights and in that fight reaches out -- they just might tap a potential reserve of support and make the attack too costly. The money can only come from higher taxes; the elite powers will have to be made to choose between raising taxes and seeing public disruption that threatens to spread.
Marv continues:
Carrol may or may not be familiar with Blanqui, but that is his ideological pedigree, and it is well outside and opposed to the classical Marxist and social democratic traditions. "Blanquism", Lenin wrote scornfully, "expects that mankind will be emancipated from wage slavery...through a conspiracy hatched by a small minority of intellectuals."
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And Lenin got called a Blankquist! He wasn't, neither am I, but I don't think labels are worth debating.
Carrol