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On 18 May 2010 23:55, Louis Proyect <l...@panix.com> wrote: > > The real measure of your radicalism is not what emblems you wear > on your clothing (the Che Guevara t-shirt the worst offender) but > your ability to reach people, especially working people, with > socialist ideas. Anything that gets in the way of opening such a > conversation must be rejected. > But the key is *opening* the conversation, and who you're likely to be opening the conversation with. (Especially when you lack a mass audience most of the time) In practice the people who are open to radical ideas are self-selecting. What constitutes a barrier to opening discussion with them may differ from the social norm because we're talking about a small radicalising minority who are distinguished mostly only by their questioning, and their seeking-after-solutions outside the realm of official alternatives. A mass audience of workers may not appreciate explicit communists, but any amount of dressing up isn't going to get you that audience right now anyway. (thinking here of the US SWP and their insistence on dressing straight and normal under a variety of circumstances in maybe a formalistic application of Louis's advice.) Experimentation is good, and learning the direct way what works and what doesn't is good. -AA. -- Ambrose Andrews LPO box 8274 ANU Acton ACT 0200 Australia http://www.vrvl.net/~ambrose/ mailto:ambr...@vrvl.net voicemail:+61_261112936 work:+61_261256749 mobile:+61_415544621 irc:{undernet|freenode|oftc}:znalo xmpp:ambr...@jabber.fsfe.org skype:znalo7 CE38 8B79 C0A7 DF4A 4F54 E352 2647 19A1 DB3B F823 556A 6D19 0904 827C 9DB8 3697 32D0 1E11 403F 2BE1 ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
