[lbo-talk] A Note on the Middle 75%

[Carrol Cox]

There was a fuss made over this a week or so ago. It is true that the middle
75% make the revolution (or the mass movement that substantially changes the
present). It is NOT true that therefore the central slogans of the Movement
focus on the "interests" of this group. For example, there are few better
slogans with which to reach those of the 75% (who can be reached) than
Abolish the Prison System. The Middle 75% yawn at their own interests;
substantial numbers of them can become outraged a injustice and the
immiseration and/or oppression of others.

For Marxists there is of course a contradiction here. We see capitalism as
history, not as evil. Yet most who join the struggle do so out of rage at
injustice ("evil"). But it is only a nominal contradiction. Most of those
who make a revolution are not revolutionaries. Most revolutionaries are not
Marxists. Marxism (as differentiated from the personal thinking of Marx) is
the analysis of an abstract capitalism, and it is in analysis that it is
crucial to put aside all moralism, all appeals to some founationless Good.
(See Ollman, et al). The moral outrage against injustice which rallies
millions to the cause of the oppressed remains a simple historical fact, not
requiring "philosophical justification."

In any case, it is crucial to see that that 'middle 75%' will rally to the
cause of the oppressed or to the outrage of social corruption (and prisons
are part of that social corruption) far more vigorously than they will rally
to their own directly stated "interests." 

And of course this is another reason for a left in action to ignore the
tears of those who want it to have "demands" that stem from abstract policy
analysis rather than on what enrages people.

Carrol