Several interesting comments concerning “Evolutionary Revolution” have been submitted:
Occupy SF posted it to their site at http://occupysf.org/archives/4765
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Bernard Weiner, co-editor of The Crisis Papers wrote:
hi, wade. important insights. thanks.
thought you might want to check out this old essay from 2010: “The Sounds of Silence: Reactions to Political Despair” http://www.crisispapers.org/essays10w/silence.htm. it ends with the following:
My answer, as it always is when dealing with political funks, is to prepare for revolution while fighting for attainable, probably small victories. Democracy is not a spectator sport; it involves pain, rejection, endless struggle, two steps forward and one step back, two steps backward and one step forward, etc. etc.
Action can be an effective antidote for despair. Working on behalf of others leads to more care and appreciation of one’s own life-direction. The confusion of depression is a ripe time to build, to explore, to be more creative about our approaches. And above all, to organize, Organize, ORGANIZE so that when the tectonic political plates finally start to shift, the Movement is in place and ready to act.
Copyright 2010 by Bernard Weiner
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Ted Chabasinksi commented:
I wholeheartedly agree with this, Wade. A lot of talk about “revolution” is usually just empty rhetoric. Plus, from an organizing point of view, if people don’t see concrete results, the activists will just drift away.
Didn’t Saul Alinsky say something similar to what you wrote here? That in order to build a movement, people have to see some successes?
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One critical response was from Richard Moore, who wrote:
Thanks for your end-of-year philosophical perspective on social change. Very perceptive, in my humble opinion. I agree entirely with your central formula for transformation: pursue winnable incremental objectives, leading up to achieving your long-term goal. I disagree, however, with your characterization of those incremental objectives:
We need to update their vision by articulating it in contemporary language, and unite behind concrete, winnable demands concerning public policy that help us steadily transform our global society. To be winnable, demands must be measurable. It needs to be clear when we have achieved our objective. Movements build momentum with victories.
For numerous reasons, which I won’t go into now, pursuing changes in public policy is no longer a viable path. Indeed, the state is the player that is most proficient at such techniques, the player that mobilizes movements, ribbon-colored and otherwise, domestically and internationally, online and in the streets.
I suggest that we need to go directly for community itself, and that our incremental steps need to be in terms of community-building, and the viral spreading of community-building. I’d like to hear your thoughts on this perspective:
http://cyberjournal.org/Documents/BuildingTheNew.htmlwhich is part of a larger perspective:
http://cyberjournal.org/creating-change.html
I replied, “Incremental changes such as increasing the minimum wage are clearly viable. To oppose such improvements in others’ living conditions is cruel and morally irresponsible.”
Richard responded, “The thing is Wade that the tide of incremental changes is going very much against us. Yes we might be able to build a sand castle, and hold back the tide for a while in some area or another, but that won’t stop the tide.”
I replied, “Your metaphor reaffirms your claim that any such reforms are worthless, which as I said is wrong, cruel, and morally irresponsible. To assert that the tide will wipe out any such castles is arrogant. The future cannot be predicted that precisely.”
Bob Anschuetz sent a lengthy comment:
In reading how your attitude has changed with respect to the desirable pace of social change, I think you strike a very apt analogy in comparing the evolutionary–rather than revolutionary–change you now favor to the model of biological evolution and the very gradual changes in plant and animal species that ensue through the process of natural selection. In this process, every generation of plants or creatures embodies variations that are advantageous for survival and procreation in the hosting environment. In time, the “selected” variations in a given species can lead to the emergence of an entirely new species that is better–even optimally–suited to its environment.
Dr. King, whom you mention, demonstrates the success of such an evolutionary process as it applies to social change. Despite his enduring dedication to peaceful, and therefore slow—progressive, rather than radical—advances in the civil rights and social dignity of American blacks, for which he was belittled by the likes of Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael, the movement he led, based on an appeal to moral conscience, ultimately succeeded in ending institutional Jim Crow in the South.
It’s undoubtedly true that King’s marches and the spin-off demonstrations they spawned failed to soften hearts that had been culturally hardened by prejudice. It also seems plain that racial hatred has continued to be passed on to many in succeeding generations. What is indisputable, however, is that the marches did in time pressure the government to pass laws that gave blacks the right to vote, to have equal access to public facilities, and to eat in any restaurant or sleep in any hotel of their choice at which they could pay their way. In the same way, public pressure ultimately brought an end to the war in Vietnam, though it had little effect in changing America’s imperial ambitions or diminishing the “undue influence” of the military/industrial complex. In the broad scheme of things, the changes wrought by the civil rights and anti-war demonstrations of the Sixties were not transformational, but only steps to an end. Yet, those steps, in addition to their important ad hoc effects, serve as checkpoints on the road to progress. In future debates on issues of social justice and international peace, they will have the continuing effect of broadening the scope of debate.
I think you’re very much on target, Wade, to compare the right pace of social change to the process of biological evolution. Small changes in various activities can accumulate over time until they reach a critical mass. At that stage in biological evolution, they produce irreversible new species of plants and animals. As for their effect on human progress, we can hope that a critical mass of small changes can at some point make justice and peaceful conflict resolution the irreversible norms of our dealings with other humans at the individual, social, and international levels. What we need to do to get to that point is precisely what Dr. King did: continually organize with the many others who also believe in these norms and, in various forms, join with them to urge those in power to take the next legislative steps to bring them closer to reality. The history of the Sixties shows that demonstrations for specific reforms or policies that are morally right can attract more and more supporters and, in the end, force legislators to enforce them by new laws or actions. By following the same course in our day, we can keep the ball moving toward the ultimate transformative end of a more just and peaceful society and world.
Concerning an issue addressed in the essay, the use of deadly force by police, I posted a comment on Facebook concerning the recent clearing of a police officer in Houston:
I’ve read several stories about this event and none of them say anything about how far away the victim was when the officer shot him, or where the bullet hit the victim. A similar lack of attention to those questions, which seem critical to me, has been reflected in stories about other incidents. In Ferguson, the officer said the victim was 8-10 feet away. Even if that is accurate, is deadly force justified under those conditions? What about a shot to the leg, or the stomach? Why does the media not address that question? Why don’t protesters?
In response, Joan Greenfield commented:
I’ve asking myself (and others) this question many times. The official response is that officers are trained to shoot to kill when their own (or other) lives are in danger. It’s obvious to me this isn’t what’s happening when the victims do not show a gun. A knife? Give me a break. A shot to the leg would bring the aggressor down without anyone dying. And protestors? They have their own issues around violence. How can peaceful protestors rid the demonstrations of the ones who aren’t?