from Herbert Docena: Rulers like telling themselves that when they do try to improve their rule--to pass some incremental reforms, give some material concessions, or throw away some crumbs to the ruled--it is only because they are benevolent, with nothing but good faith towards those they rule. No ruler will publicly admit that--if they are forced to pass reforms at all--it is because they were driven to do so by mass mobilisation or the direct action of social movements. No one likes to admit that they were haunted by the nightmare of people awakening and taking matters into their own hands if they refuse to change their ways. And their advisers too--all these modern-day counsellors of power--like to think that it is because of the brilliance of their arguments, by their strategic manoeuvres inside the palace that their pet reforms were adopted. None of them will admit that if their advocacies ever become more attractive inside the palace, it is only because mass mobilisations outside the palace--by the very people they mock and denigrate--made the alternatives even more threatening to power. Indeed this is one of the additional injustices always suffered by the oppressed: that even their ability to shape how they are ruled, their ability to make their lives more bearable, and thus to shape history is taken away from them by rulers and their advisers who want to grab all of the credit. Let them grab the credit. Those of us who know what it is that really strikes fear in the heart of our rulers--what really drives them to try to undertake reforms or give concessions--will march on not because we want the credit, not because we want to feel good about ourselves, but because we know in our bones that, as Frederick Douglass put it: power concedes nothing without a fight, it never has and it never will.
Posted on: Tue, 29 Jul 2014 07:40:59 +0000
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