raghu wrote: > > On Tue, Jun 17, 2008 at 4:22 AM, Max B. Sawicky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > There is plenty of immiseration in the Third World, and in pockets of the > > U.S., but I don't think that can be a central radical criticism. For one, > > people in > > that circumstance aren't in much shape to do anything positive about it. > > Why not? Isn't that where revolutions start?
No. Max is quite right here. Immiseration is simply crushing. And economic recessions or even utter crashes in their early stages generate panic & a scramble for individual safety. (They may _also_ generate support for right populism, i.e. some variety of fascism.) Revolution (or mass struggle, which is potential revolution) depends on hope (e.g., rising expectations) or collective resentment of oppression, of that which is "unfair." I say collective resentment because individual resentment again has fascist rather thann revolutionary potential. It is no accident that the most powerful mass movement in u.s. history, the black liberation struggle from 1955 to 1970 or so, occurred in a period now known as the "Golden Age" of capitalism. Immiseration or economic crash _does_ generate revolutionary impulses in many of those who have more margin and can better grasp the nature of the disaster that has struck. The core cadre of the Civil Rights movement _and_ of the womens and anti-war movements went back directly or indirectly to the growth of the CPUSA in the early days of the Depression, and in that sense can be thought of as a continuation of the the struggles temporarily deflected by the War. The greatest barrier to the forming of a left movement from the 10s of thousands of leftists in the United States is that it has been too fucking long since the last upheaval: 1940 to 1955 vs 1975 to 2005. Hence the limp collapse of most leftists into the waiting arms of the DP. > > > More to the point is the gap between what people expect and what they get, > > which is more about inequality, not absolute deprivation or literal > > starvation. A > > problem is that people use terminology about absolute poverty when they are > > really talking > > about inequality (relative poverty). > > Why is this more important than absolute poverty? Empirically absolute poverty has _never_ generated resisitance. To repeat, reistance depends on _visible_ hope, not merely promise. Carrol _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
