Sandwichman wrote: > > Demonstrations, lobbying for WHAT? Change? Hope? Anything but the status quo?
My answer would be social peace and our votes each election. That is, _no_ demonstrations. I do not claim to have the slightest knowledge of the private thougts of political leaders, or just how they formulate their goals to themselves. But simply reviewing the history of DP leaders on issue after issue for 100 years, their programs (when they do introduce reasonably substantial change) always turn out to be a diluted version of some demand that is beginning to generate popular disorder. This would describe both Social Security and the Wagner Act, for example. Now we have learned a lot over the last 2 centuries about how to participate in, nurture, build, expand such movements ONCE THEY HAVE STARTED. But NO ONE has ever figured out how to begin one. Marx & Engels had not a clue. Neither did Lenin, Luxemburg, Trotsky, Gramsci, Mao, Ho, or Giap. Such movements ALWAYS catch even those who are trying to strt them by surprise. Lenin assumed (correctly) when he participated in starting Iskra that such movements were started by a spark, but he didn't have any way of predicting what spark under what conditions would actually start (in Mao's phrase) a prairie fire. So all one can do is keep sparking, with the realization that almost all one's sparks, for years or decades, won't start a thing. But we do have to keep clicking our lighters the best we can. Carrol _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
