The connection between the examples is a thin one, but it is this: absent any real evidence about public opinion, nothing can be safely assumed about nonvoters (or for that matter voters) based on the notion that they did not vote, whether the election took place in the US in 1996 or in Russia in 1917.The subjectivity of the people, the REAL, empirically-determined subjectivity of the people, is an essential element of social change that cannot be papered over with quotations of one's favorite saint. It has to be LISTENED TO.
And education of the type that merely broadcasts communiques while disparaging their nonbelievers is education of the type that teaches people not to learn. The youth of America are bludgeoned with communiques exhorting them to memorize a catechism of basic facts in math, English, history, and science, and opinion poll after opinion poll shows America's ignorance of such facts. Similarly, one can bludgeon fencesitters such as Lark enough with Trotskyist dogma, and sure enough their politics will move to the right.
The Spartacists aren't even close to starting a revolution -- I think it has something to do with their tactics.
None.
