[lbo-talk] a test scorer's lament

[Carrol Cox]

The real subject here the attack on the working class that begin in 
the'60s and and has grown steadily in its scope and its viciousness. The 
tests the  worker must grade cannot be understood except as parat of the 
attack on teachers's working conditions and job security -merely the 
latest stage in that more general "corporate backlash" that begin in the 
'60s and is still in full swing.

And in this context I want to mention Ted Morgan's book abain. In a 
recent post to me he wrote:

"I still regret the day that I never fought over the publisher's use of 
"failed" in their version of my subtitle --kind of presents the book as 
another book on the 60s, rather than a documented study of how we got 
from there to here."

I doubt that anyone on this list is fully aware of just how systematic 
and extensive was this attack. That is precisely what Ted documents in 
great detail. It is definitely not "just another book on the '60s." I 
would claim that no one who pretends to be interested in the "state of 
the left" can fail to read this book. And, his work links quite 
powerfully with the points made in the book review by Mark Dudzic that 
Micheal Yates recently cited. Were Dudzic himself to wrte the book on 
the '70s Cowie failed to produce it would, in effect, form a second 
volume to Ted's work. The two mesh perfectly.

Were you only to read the many references in the book to the late 
Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr. your view of the past 40 years might be 
radically expanded.

Wisconsin just might mark the opening o f a new era of political 
struggle. If leftists enter that era ignorant of "how we got from there 
to here" their understanding of their present tasks will be severely 
cripdpled. We need both tounderstand the struggles of the '60s more 
deeply _and_ to understand the counterattack by corporate capital which 
undid so many of the gains made in that era.

Carrol