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

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Sat May 19 13:14:42 PDT 2012


"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



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