The SWP tried its best to break this unity in multiplicity with its Single-Issue principle in the anti-war movement. That would have meant that no one did any poltical thinking that was not within the guidance of the SWP. Ultimately that of course is grounded in a profound distrust of the working class and a dogmatic conviction that there exists a science of revolution which only trained revolutionary scientists could grasp. The SWP failed, but in spite of itself became part of a greater coherence. (Its presence forced others to think.)
Shag is interested, and correctly, with the overwhelming demand for democracy that characterized the '60s as a whole -- or, better, the democracy imposed on the '60s by the need to mobilize people in a hostile environment. (Remember -- we were always a minority -- even a rather small minority.)
But none of us, not SNCC, not the southern NAACP chapters, not SDS, not the nmerous local groups such as US in Bloomington/Normal or JOIN in uptown Chciago, not the Panthers were poor little sheep who had lost their way and could only huddle together around a focus on process. We focused on ends; the focus on process was derivative.
Take a look at the list of works cited in MOrgan's book.
Carrol
On 10/16/2011 9:56 AM, shag carpet bomb wrote:
> carrol:
>>
>> P.S. Probably no one has noticed that a month or two ago the word
>> "organize" disappeared from my vocabulary to be replaced by
>> "mobilize."
>> Marv in a post described his ideal "organizer," and in my response to
>> that post I quoted that and said something like "that sounds about
>> right." Then after I clicked the send button I began to think, and the
>> more i thought the more I began to feel that we really did not want
>> Mark's super Organizer; that in fact in so far as we were successful
>> in
>> the '60s it was through mobilization by groups, not by organizers.
>> Organizers belong in the back room keeping the web site up to date.
>> The
>> better ones will of course emerge to work with others in mobilizing, a
>> collective task that needs no superheroes except as part of that.
>> \
>
> I'll do what I can to write about this book, won't have the time or
> patience to sit on my fractured tailbone! In Freedom is an Endless
> Meeting Polletta illustrates what you are saying, discussing the
> benefits and drawbacks of mobilization through prefigurative,
> process-based politics that emphasizes participatory democracy and the
> cultivation of a mobilized citizenry from which leaders emerge in the
> process of ongoing struggle.
>
> One thing I wanted to relate was the role of workers education
> movements in the early 20th century. Most of these efforts (Brookwood,
> ILGWU Unity centers, Bryn Mawr's Summer School for Women) were founded
> on the idea that workers needed a liberal arts education, a sense of
> empowerment through learning how to participate in political
> decision-making, and a kind of Deweyean philosophy of learning through
> doing - chores, fieldwork, etc.)
>
> These schools were initially supported by unions but they did so with
> some trepidation. Later, unions moved to shut them down or defang them
> because they radicalized the workers too much, rendering them too
> radical to put up with the business unionism that dominated the labor
> movement.
>
> The common thread Polletta finds is with people like Myles Horton (who
> later founded the Highlander Folk school integral to the civil rights
> struggle in the South) and Ella Baker who had attended Brookwood.
>
> "Baker and Horton would continue to practice and disseminate the
> radical pedagogy of early workers' education efforts. Participatory
> decision-making should both train ordinary people in the skills needed
> for political leadership and develop their broadest aspirations for
> the movement, they believed. They would treat participatory
> decisionmaking as a critical tool in organizing, and the young civil
> rights workers whom they trained would do the same. But Baker and and
> Hortaon's influence on participatory democracy 1960s style was quiet.
> Few 19602 activists would identify them as sources for their
> understandings of how movement organizations should operate and even
> fewer would cite the tradition of workers' education on what they
> built." (p 36-7)
>
>
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