The Democratic Revolution
By Lawrence Goodwyn
I've been studying social movements for about 35 years and the more I
study, the more I feel a distance between what I think I know and what
is generally thought to be the essence of politics in this culture. And
that distance keeps growing.
George Bernard Shaw once said that when people learn something profound
that affects long-held beliefs, their first reaction is not elation but,
on the contrary, a sense of loss. They lament the passing of their long-held
belief. Such is the fate of people who study social movements. We bring
to the study the assumptions of our time as to what politics is and what
progressive politics is, what the word grassroots means, and then the
movements we study contradict these assumptions.
In the case of Populism I looked at the cooperative movement for five
years before I understood that it was an organizing - a recruiting - device.
There wasn't anything in my culture that taught me that to build a movement
one has to create social relations among people that would cause them
to be in a room where politics is the center of discussion. I'd been taught
that what mattered politically was what people said in the room. But the
key question is how to get people into the room to hear - and respond
- to whatever is being said there.
The Populists recruited two million people. How did they do that? They
did it through the cooperative movement. As I say, it took me years to
understand that was the point of the cooperatives. Eventually I came to
see that 'recruiting' is not a category of political science. It was not
a category in my head. It was, however, in the heads of the Populists.
I was able to make my intellectual contribution to understanding their
great achievements only because I didn't go away during the five years
that I was clueless about what I was studying.
This elaborate preface enables me to suggest that very little that I wish
to say tonight will be what you expect to hear. Is there a device by which,
when we come together on occasions like this we can find ways gracefully
and constructively, and in ways that enhance all participants, to disagree?
What would a democratic argument - or a democratic marriage, or a democratic
classroom - look like? What would a meeting of democrats like this look
like? Maybe it should be turned inside out. Perhaps the purpose of such
meetings should be to bring together 100 people so they could talk to
each other about the organizing problems they face, rather than hear wisdom
from a panel. The only 'wisdom' from a panel that would be permitted would
be advice on how to organize. Discourse on visible injustices that undermine
the credibility of those in power would not be cultivated because righteous
exhortations or speechifying that doesn't bear on organizing produce a
kind of politics that is programmatically empty. The words that are spoken
might prove entertaining to some people in the room. But - sorry to repeat
myself - what we need to be thinking about is how to induce people to
come to the room in the first place. Where there exists no concrete plan
of recruitment, there can be no organizing. And there will be no social
movement. The historical evidence is mountainous; such movements happen
only when they are organized. When people are required merely to appear
but are not presented with a plan of collaborative activity in which they
can participate, there transparently can be no activity that proceeds
as a result of the meeting. No activity, no life!
The sinew of social movements does not come from 'learned' people who
bring clarity to the poor or 'raise their consciousness.' The poor know
they're poor; they know who oppresses them. Their problem is not that
they're ignorant of these facts. Their problem is that they don't know
what to do about it. And neither do we. That's the crushing problem that
we face as a people.
We can begin to address that problem here only if we accept that every
person in this room by virtue of being in it has earned the credentials
to have a major voice in how we organize our relationship with each other
during this time we're going to be together. What functioning cultural
assumptions would have been required last Wednesday and Thursday and Friday
in order for us to come together in a new way, with new expectations that
would lead to political activity? Revising our current assumptions is
the beginning of the Revolution - the Democratic Revolution. It would
surely put a lot of heat on speechmakers. Everyone's readiness to tolerate
orators who go on and on would diminish rapidly.
In politics, it's my understanding that with respect to your opponents
you have two options; you can either negotiate with them or you can shoot
them. As an advocate of non-violence I come down heavily on the side of
negotiation. Having a democratic conversation with one's opponent is not
corrupting. Once we accept that politics is negotiation, and that the
strength one brings to the table is a function of prior organizing, we
can begin to have a serious conversation about recruiting. A discussion
of radical networking or coalition building that's not tied to the problem
of recruitment isn't going to address the looming historical task in front
of us.
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