[lbo-talk] (The 23%...)

[123hop at comcast.net]

" Someone 
here, a few months ago, poo pooed the idea that it matters, for example, 
that people felt transformed by the experience of direct democracy. they 
saw it as crazy and cultish that rational human beings might get caught up 
in something as silly as the effervescent excitement what was going on 
around them. This does make little sense to the manly man approach to 
politics as one where individuals make rational decisions about 
self-interest and public interest."

If you read John Reed's "Ten Days that Shook the World"; if you read Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia"; if you read Olsen's interviews about her political work in the thirties, for which she abandoned a brilliant writing career; if you read Traven's account of the Mexican revolution (in the Jungle novels): they all bear witness to the metamorphosis of consciousness for people engaged in mass action and direct democracy. This was thoroughly villified by all and sundry as "mob" mentality (Hugo through Shirley Jackson). Ehrenreich has a good account of this in "Dancing in the Streets."

The main point is that it is not effervescent excitement; it is the great inner illumnation that can take place when people make history consciously and for the common good. 

Joanna