Bringing Revolutionary Ideas to the Mainstream

I am a slow reader. So I am still reading The ABC of Anarchism.

Berkman does a great job of making Anarchism make sense. His arguments are logical and well-thought out, even if they could use some more evidence.

This is different from most revolutionary thinkers that I come across, on paper or in person. Case in point: Months ago, Alyssa and I went to see Kevin Zeese, who is running for senate in Maryland, speak in San Francisco. At this event were many other liberal speakers. One of them was an immigrant to this country, and she was simply railing against the US population as a whole. Does liberalism not claim to represent the working class? I wonder what percentage of our country she would have fathomed to think belongs to the working class? You can be sure that it is a large majority.

And I have seen this plenty of times – speakers or politicians insulting their audience. Perhaps they don’t realize who their audience is? More likely is that they are elitist. You aren’t going to win anyone over with your ideas this way unless you are in fact speaking to the elite.

Now, even if you think that the masses don’t “get” it, as Berkman argues, then you should look at why they don’t get it, and not just jump to conclusions like “they are all stupid.” Berkman looks at this very closely, and essentially comes to the conclusion that the masses don’t get it because they are being trained their whole lives to not get it. Chomsky put it another way – that of course the system is not going to let ideas succeed which are harmful to the system itself. It’s just not something that makes sense.

Anyway, I hope that after I finish this book and a few others, I can be a little bit more coherent. I hope you all are doing well 🙂