Shag writes: but these planks have always been part of the anti-corporate personhood movement. I can remember them being discussed at public policty insitutions like my alma mater. WTF?
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The main difficulty lies not in the correctness or incorrectness of the panks, nor in their originality as expressed by Sanders & Michael.
A brief digression: I do write out of a certain radical narrowing of perspective: I want to see the wonderful beginnings in Wisconsin & OWSS grow into a mass movement within which eventually millions might (a) experience the joy of democratic participation in politics while changing, developing, deepening or acquiring an understanding of the enemy they have set themselves to oppose, in a struggle in which the balance of forces is overwhelmingly on the side of the enemy. In dubious conflict indeed.
And whatever my particular topic is, the driving purpose is always to identify the barriers to the growth of that movement. Currently I see a major barrier (among leftists) is the Myth of Education and the ideological grounds of that myth. That is the 'red thread' that runs through most of my posting for the last month.
A second major barrier is the belief that mass struggles should focus on what social analysis reveals to be the most important changes in the present social order. The most important issues are those which grip the attention of those out there who must make up the movement if it flourishes. That is the basis of my admiration for the 'analysis' at which Doug sneered a few months ago: "There's bad shit out there." That won't quite do as an organizing slogan but it certainly points in the right direction, and the correct slogans must be discovered through practice, not by analyzing what's wrong with u.s. society or what most needs to be done. That barrier is intertwined with misunderstanding of both the nature and the _limits_ of theoretical investigation. And so forth.
Carrol
Carrol