On 2014-01-27, at 9:13 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:
>
> Because the poor (aka the working class) don't grasp how the wage system
> makes them the creators of the wealth the rich appropriate.
>
> Mike B)
>
> --
>
> Perhaps, and perhaps they know it but don't imagine anything can be done
> about it.
The working people I know and used to know have a vague intuition that the system is unfairly weighted towards the rich, but don't have any notion that they are the sole creators of the wealth which the rich appropriate. Especially since the restoration of capitalism in the USSR and China, they think of the system as the only natural way to organize an economy, and that is merely broken and needs repair. Especially since the disappearance of militant trade unions and mass parties even nominally committed to socialism, more than ever they "don't imagine anything can be done about it", as Carrol notes.
> Why are most of the people on this list (present and past) not members of
> any activist organization (national or local)?
The left intelligensia is not immune to the mood of despair and hopelessness which affects the working class in the advanced capitalist countries. This is true even of that very small part of it which, like Carrol, engages in local short-lived struggles. These latter are motivated by an "optimism of the will", ie. faith, which allows them to overcome the doubts occasioned by a "pessimism of the intellect" they share with others. The failure of Occupy, the Arab Spring, and other contemporary protest movements at home and abroad to develop as leftists hoped and expected has contributed to the malaise.
However, should be a revival of working class struggle and the rebirth of mass organizations to express it, I have little doubt you'd see a significant involvement in such organizations by most of the people on this list - if for no other reason then they would be encouraged by their friends, neighbours, relatives, and workmates to participate, and would take heart from this.