On 2011-01-14, at 7:44 PM, Jim Farmelant wrote:
>
> On Fri, 14 Jan 2011 17:55:04 -0600 "Carrol Cox" <cbcox at ilstu.edu> writes:
>>
>> 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.
>>
>> -----
>>
>>
>
> This also works in the other direction too. When the
> conservative counter-revolution began in earnest in
> the mid-1970s, only a small minority of Americans
> supported things like extensive deregulation. Even
> among self-identified conservatives, there was probably
> only minority support, but that didn't stop the minions
> of capital from plugging away to get what they wanted,
> since they understood that public opinion was
> something that can be shaped and reshaped
> as a result of political victories, rather than
> political victories occuring as a result of
> changes in public opinion. The ruling
> class's perspective on this was outlined
> almost ninety years ago by Walter Lippman
> in his book, "Public Opinion" in which the
> phrase "manufacture of consent" was
> originated.
Of course, Jim. I don't need to be lectured on this point either. I'm all too well aware that the ruling class is a minority which has governed on its own and can continue to do so without the consent of the majority. It has the repressive power to do so, although obviously it prefers the social stability that legitimacy confers.
But leftist intellectuals who believe they can impose their will on the ruling class without their being majority support for their challenge to its rule are badly deluding themselves. Earnest revolutionaries like Bela Kun in Hungary and a long historical parade of garden variety putchists and adventurers paid with their lives and the lives of many of their followers for such disasterous mistakes in judgement.