In a message dated 97-06-05 16:20:59 EDT, you write:
>Michael, you have a point here, but it's not enough to talk about the grass
>roots. Of course any seriously radical movement needs a mass base, but
>that's not enough. Most ordinary folks are completely confused by what's
>going on and feel utterly alone and powerless. To reinvigorate the grass
>roots requires explaining to people the world as it is and as it might be.
>That's what radical intellectuals are supposed to do, but we're not doing
>much of it.
>Doug
I think Doug is right that not much communication between radical
intellectuals and common people is going on. My question to you (this is a
collective you, not a doug=you) (this is NOT a rhetorical question) is: Has
There Ever Been Communication??? During three periods in United States
history since the inception of capitalism (I am woefully ignorant of other
country histories) there have been three periods of tremendous grass root
movements, and, to my knowledge, radical intellectuals led very small
portions of all of them.
During the period (roughly) 1860 to 1885, the largest percentage of
the United States working class was unionized than at any time before or
since. This period saw not just a huge growth in trade and industry unions,
but the country's first national unions: Knights of Labor (approx 500,000),
the National Labor Union and the Colored National Labor Union. The
intellectual community in the US was somewhere between slim and none--with
most intellectuals falling firmly in the upper classes (there were a few
notable exceptions), and no intellectuals associated with the union movement.
During the Great Rail Strikes of 1877, there were spontaneous, and in some
case sustained, armed uprisings in every rail center and urban area in the
USA. For instance, in Pittsburgh the laborers in the entire city (not just
the rails) won an armed confrontation with the Philadelphia Militia brought
in to quel the strike. They routed the militia.
During the period following the great depression, hundreds of
thousands of people in the US joined the communist party. FDR did not sign
all that social legislation because he thought it was good business.
Hundreds of thousands were marching in the streets, the CIO was taking over
the new industrial heartland, black women tobacco workers unionized, students
marched on Washington, and veterans demanded higher benefits. Granted, there
was a small and active intelligentsia, but was it in charge? The IWW,
started by the communist party, never had a membership base larger than
10,000--very small compared with even unions in the nineteenth century. Were
their ideas the inspiration for all these movements? I really don't know.
Is it that the material conditions change and intellectuals play the role of
summarizing activities that already were in process or that the ideas led the
action? I tend to the idea that intellectuals summarize the movements
already in progress.
The third period of grass roots growth was in the late 50s through
the early 70s. Beginning with the civil rights movement, one can argue that
the ministers, like Martin Luther King, were certainly intellectuals. But to
me, they were activists first. Rosa Parks was not an intellectual, but she
was certainly a great woman. Was the anti war movement really run by the
intellectuals, or did they hop on board following grass roots organizers
against the war? What about the woman's movement? Certainly there were some
very intellectual women in there, but how much of that was the media
advertising and how much of the real movement was women sick of back room
abortions? Let's face it, wealthy white women have always had the abortion
option, it was women with less access to resources who got out there and
fought for the right to choose. And believe me, those women who integrated
blue collar jobs: mines, phone co., construction, rails, were NOT
intellectuals.
So, if it is not the intellectuals communicating which gets
movements going, then what does? What creates the conditions for grass roots
movements? Or is it that the concept of intellectual needs some defining
here?
maggie coleman [EMAIL PROTECTED]
