[PEN-L:3650] Re: Re: Re: Don't just offer facts <45a3aa3a.36c6d7b5@aol.com> <v04011707b2f60cb25c77@[166.84.250.86]> <36D060F8.EAE12EF4@mail.ilstu.edu> <v04011716b2f637746a42@[166.84.250.86]> <v04011721b2f65fecef43@[166.84.250.86]>

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx>]

Doug Henwood wrote:

> I should also have said that bourgeois political strategists sure know how
> to work this line. Kevin Phillips, Stanley Greenberg, Dick Morris, Bill
> Clinton...

Bourgeois political strategists work with an essentially passive
constituency to move them to make an x in a box or pull a
lever, and then go home. Our goal is to get people to go out
and stand in the street and make an ass of themselves in the
hope that they will catch the attention of two or three more
who will join them next time, to create the (when it happens,
true) impression that something is happening and hey why
not stick *my* neck out and make it happen.

We never talk to anyone except to those who already agree
with us but always thought it didn't make any difference.

I'm a long way from getting wholly coherent on this, but the
core of it is I take with deadly seriousness, not as a philsosophical
or epistemological premise, or not as something true in "the last
instance," but as something that permeates first, middle and last
instances the premise that practice precedes theory, for where
else can theory come from but from our practice.

We need ourselves to know as many facts as possible, but
facts never have, never will, and never should persuade
anyone to risk his/her neck (or even risk being embarassed
in public)

How in the world were the French of 1789-93 ever able to
get along without Freud and a theory of human motives?.

Carrol