> Marv writes:
>
> 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. 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."
>
>
> I've been reading Carrol for ten years now, and your attributions simply don't match what I've been hearing him say.
I've been reading Carrol over the same period, sometimes fruitfully, more often with exasperation. I stand by my comments today, though I could have expressed myself more temperately at times, and my apologies to Carrol for any which personally offended him.
They were prompted by Carrol's assertion earlier today that "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." He repeats below that "when profound changes are won" it is only after the struggle has been waged that "a majority develops but not before."
On 2011-01-14, at 6:55 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:
> 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..
While it is indisputable that the number of active participants in a struggle is only a fraction of the whole, it is equally true that they must have the support of the passive majority before the struggle is won.
The consensus of scholarly opinion, to my knowledge, does not support Carrol's view that that the majority of American colonists who did not take up arms were by inference indifferent to the outcome of the colonial struggle against the British.
My initial post today cited evidence that the majority of Americans in the 30's supported the right of the unions to organize and strike, and that "large numbers" of CIO trade unionists, contrary to Carrol, were not "passive"; if they and their families had not been supportive, the sitdown strikes could not have succeeded in forcing union recognition.
The legislation outlawing discriminatory practices against blacks, gays, and women not only had the support of these constituencies, but dovetailed with corporate needs in the expanding service economy. Though there was a strong backlash in the South and elsewhere against these reforms, it never acquired the support required to reverse them, and there is no reason to suppose, as Carrol does, that a repeal plebiscite opposed by these mobilized communities, the labour movement, big capital, the mass media, and the governing Demcratic majority would have carried. That is pure speculation.
As is Carrol's speculation about the the abolitionists forcing the slaveholders to "commit suicide"; slavery was ended for economic and military reasons by the Lincoln and the Northern armies, without which it would have continued until further economic development moreso than abolitionist agitation rendered it outdated.