-----Original Message----- From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org] On Behalf Of Eric Beck Sent: Friday, November 18, 2011 5:21 PM To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] A Note on the Middle 75%
On Fri, Nov 18, 2011 at 1:50 PM, <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> As much as I agree with Carrol on abolishing prisons, I do not believe
this demand will appear to more than a minute fraction of the 99% or 75% or
10%. Even on this list, the abolish prisons view is a minority view. And
this list represents a fairly radical slice of the population.
Does it? It seems like you are right that most people here not against the US carcaral system per se, only its occasional overuse. It's a fact that still amazes me, and would seem to argue against your opinion that this place is exceptionally radical.
But I'm not understanding your logic here. You are for the abolition of prisons, but are also averse to a mass movement's exploring whether other people are for abolition? It's surely worth exploring at least, isn't it?
It might be helpful to go back to Carrol's original statement and its parenthetical qualification, which perhaps shouldn't have been bracketed: "to reach those of the 75% (who can be reached)."
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We are talking of those who "can be reached" to take to the streets, and potentially to the barricades, not just those who can be reached on the prison issue. My assumption is that those two categories pretty much overlap. I doubt that anyone in the '60s joined the anti-war movement with the expectation that it would be of direct benefit to them. The draft was of great importance -- because it kept the war on the front pages and in everyone's attention -- but a young man would have had to be extraordinarily simple-mined had he thought that standing in asilent vigil for 30 minutes in a little burg in the middle of the corn fields was going to end the war before the draft got him. What drove that young man and 10s of thousands others was simply the horror of what was happening in Vietnam. I've just never met anyone at a demonstration who was there to defend "interests": they are always there out of outrage of some sort. Those "interests" get _added_ to the mix of issues; awareness of them comes from the internal education of the movement.
Andre Gorz has an essay essentially on this, which had a great impact on me back in the mid-60s. Unortunately I've long misplaced the pamphlet that included it.
Even the vast majority of Blacks in the Black Liberatin Movement were there out of outrage at the principle of white supremacy, not primarily out of self-interet. You really don't get yourself killed or beaten to a pulp out of self-interest.
Sure, once in the movement people will focus on the fact that "people like them" are going to get screwed by the attack on Social Security. But that attack itself, or rather resistance to it, won't be what brings them to the movement.
As Eric says, why should a left movement, a movement which at its core wants the edn to capitalism, not even explore the possibility that rather large numbers of people, even millions, can if they are brought to look at it, become enraged over the horror of the prison system in the u.s. And the very system is a Horror, nto just a bad thing or a misused thing. It is an unreformable Horror. And as I said in a post a couple weeks ago, a left that won't fight that horror doesn't have the guts or the perception to fight anything.
Carrol