[lbo-talk] Footnote on"Trust the People" RE: vox populi: standardize testing

[Carrol Cox]

"Trust the people" is a logically _necessary_ premise if you want to change
the world, NOT an empirical description. Teachers are obviously, at the
present time, in a state of demoralization at best, allies of capital at
worse. But that is irrelevant: IF the school system is to be defended,
_then_ the teachers (collectively) must be the primary agents of that
change. The attack on the working class is focused on the public schools and
the teachers, which puts them in the front line whether they want to be or
not. Only in so far as the teachers raise resistance is it possible for the
embryonic left that has emerged from Wisconsin & OWS to act.

Hence it matters not whether at a given time "the people" are trustworthy or
not: to oppose capitalism requires that we trust the people.

Carrol