Jim wrote: > You have to live, so you have to work > for a living, doing something you're > good at.
I didn't mean just working for a living. I meant working to change the social institutions. > If you want to change an institution, > you must be aware of the limits (see > below). But politics is not the only human endeavor that has limits. I asked because you wrote this... > Back in the 1970s, some lefties thought > that they could change government > institutions (etc.) by working within > them. ... as if trying was wrong. (Let alone the implication that lefties only tried it in the 1970s.) > Individuals can't change institutions > _unless_ they work in large groups, > in concert or roughly so. The mass > movements of the 1960s and early 1970s > changed a lot of the preexisting > institutions, pushing them in the > leftward direction. As those movements > faded (and as new right-wing movements > grew), the leftist effort became more > and more individualized and thus less > effective. How could we move from the mere counterposing of mass movements to individual efforts to understanding their relationship? Merely stressing the distinction without showing that they are related (and how) tends to lead to a greater sense of alienation, political impotence. Why is that so sexy among leftists in the U.S.? Is it that it shows how unique they are? I mean, persistent individual efforts are so obviously indispensable to kindle and rekindle the flames of mass movements. Mass movements don't just exist over and above the lives of individuals. Here's a simple, and very recent, story of how mass movements emerge: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vlM3x-GoCA _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
