Roger, I wasn't criticizing you. I began thinking about what you wrote in
response to me, in particular the words you used, and then I thought about how
people like Brian Becker and Richard Wolfe talk to their podcast audiences.
Talk about dumbing down what you say! They explain bits and pieces of theory
in very concrete terms, repeatedly. They never use terms like "class enemyy"
I'm not sure they even talk about "the ruling class". Well, maybe Brian Becker
does, but not Richard Wolfe.
Miriam.
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx On Behalf Of Roger Loran Bailey
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Sent: Friday, December 13, 2019 3:00 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: observation
That is pretty much what socialists do. You certainly would not approach a
picket line and demand that the strikers must agree with your political
analysis on every point in order to get your solidarity.
I don't understand why you want to make a point of this. I,myself
sometimes feel like I am dumbing down what I have to say on this list in order
to explain my points, but I do realize that I can't get too technical to an
audience that is unschooled in what I am talking about.
___
Carl Sagan
“Who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind
and accepts whatever the universe has to teach us, or somebody who says
everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the
fallibility of all the human beings involved?”
― Carl Sagan
On 12/13/2019 9:44 AM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
As you know, I listen to a lot of lefty podcasts. On many of them, I
hear socialists whose purpose for having a podcast or for being on it,
is to educate people about socialist theory, to show them how it
applies to our lives, to propagandize or organize. They never use the
orthodox terms that one would find in serious books on the subject
like "class enemy" or "ruling class" or the terms for the classes as
defined in Marxist theory. I suspect that the reason is that the terms
are offputting. The idea is to communicate with large masses of
people. The idea is to convince people of certain ideas so they use
the words that will be most useful to them., words that won't turn
people off. Also, I would think that if one wanted to build a mass
movement, one would want to be as inclusive as possible. You'd want as
many people as possible to feel welcome and valued. In order to do that, you
wouldn't criticize people who didn't accept every precept of your group.
You'd emphasize the beliefs that people had in common rather than derogate
them for ideas that didn't conform to your's. So, in order to fight
against the current hyper capitalistic international power structure
which is killing our planet, you'd gather together people who were in
favor of everything from a social welfare state to those who want no
state at all, but small democratically organized economies and communities.
Miriam
