Julio Huato wrote: > ... politics is not the only human endeavor that has limits. <
right. I never said anything different. >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. ...< No, what I was saying is that they weren't sufficiently aware of the limitations of their efforts. I am sorry if I did not make that clear enough. me: >> 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. Julio: > How could we move from the mere counterposing of mass movements to individual > efforts to understanding their relationship?< good idea. Go for it. > Merely stressing the distinction without showing that they are related (and > how) tends to lead to a greater sense of alienation, political impotence... < It's great to have great morale, but I was trying to state my understanding of political-economic reality as I see it. I wasn't cheer-leading. I'm not into that. > Here's a simple, and very recent, story of how mass movements emerge: > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vlM3x-GoCA < I think it's a mistake to see a mass movement emerging in a speech by a professional politician and a crowd at a highly-managed rally. One can point to mass movements behind Senator Obama's initial rise. But over time, the issues raised by those movements have been more and more restricted to fit with the Obama campaign's needs (i.e., getting elected, period). Similarly, the actions of those movements have become more and more restricted to fit the campaign. It's boiling down to a large number of atomized actions -- i.e., voting -- not a mass movement. There's little or no mass organization independent of the Obama campaign or the DP. (Moveon.org seems to be merely an adjunct of the DP, for example.) And like any U.S. electoral campaign (including Nader's and McCain's) there's an element of a personality cult, which is always a bad sign for a movement. When the election is over, what's left of the movements will fade even more. If Obama wins, the movements will likely enjoy some recovery after a year or so. I think that much of that will be saying that people were "betrayed" by Obama. I expect any complaints that "we were betrayed" to fade quickly, as people accept the "inevitable." IMHO, they shouldn't have had those illusions in the first place: Obama's not about mass movements, but about creating a much more rational version of neoliberalism, i.e., one with less "special interest" politics, less corruption & looting, and less blatant incompetence. These are important matters, within the current political-economic context, but we shouldn't see it as being significantly superior to the version of neoliberalism instituted by Bill Clinton. The similar illusions that people had about JFK did have a role in promoting various movements in the 1960s. But I think that what was much more important were the manifest injustices and crimes (racism, the Vietnam war, sexism, environmental destruction, etc.), peoples' direct experience with them, and their responses. I'd say that the contrast between what people believed were JFK's ideals and the reality on the ground played a role, much more than his actual ideals. (He did almost nothing to promote civil rights, for example.) If Obama loses, there will be an instant revival of the mass movements, complaining that they were cheated (and rightly so). But will that last even as long as the similar complaints after Florida in 2000 or Ohio in 2004? Maybe -- if people realize that we need something more than electoral politics. -- Jim Devine / "Nobody told me there'd be days like these / Strange days indeed -- most peculiar, mama." -- JL. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
