Letter: From Minority-to-Majority - Cosmonaut

I very much enjoyed the piece on the abolitionist “dirty break,” a fine piece on what I term “from minority-to-majority” movements. If there ever was total political victory, abolitionism is it. Slavery is no longer a dominant social relation of production as it once was, and ideologically it is taboo to defend the legitimacy of slavery.

I believe that what is needed, in part to inspire hope for socialists at this particularly demoralizing conjunction, is a full-fledged research research programme on “minority-to-majority” movements; that is, those movements that began as either fringe or oppositional movements and became the ascendant power in society. These movements often began as movements of the exploited and oppressed, cohered by a strong ideology, and whose actions and beliefs challenged and changed the status quo. There are two prime examples in the realm of religion: Christianity and Islam.

Now, these movements often were subject to co-option by existing elites. Christianity emerged as a movement of the poor and of the non-Roman, yet it became a state religion. Constantine’s declaration of Christianity as Rome’s state religion had the effect of subjecting it to state control and mediation. In the case of Islam, the victory of the Medina Muslim movement over the Meccan Banu Quarysh was a victory of a movement of the poor and lesser elites over a merchant class with a strong economic interest in preserving existing religion and its lucrative festivals. The first caliphs, termed the Rashidun, continued as leaders of the Muslim polity, until the old elites of Arabia and Syria reasserted influence in the garb of Islam and established the Ummayad dynasty. And yet, still these minority movements came to define their epoch, and though the paths of their victories were jagged, they were victories nonetheless. Today Christianity outlives the Roman empire, Islam perdures beyond the loss of the caliphate.

Such a programme would address the following, though not exhaustive list, of questions: what were the social conditions that explain the emergence of said movements? What were their class bases and dynamics? What ideological elements made them so meaningful and such a moral force i.e. how did it hook the masses? What forms of opposition and repression did they face and how did they counter these resistances? We must probe for the conditions of success from minority to majority. One must also study those movements that failed to make this transition, and ask what they did wrong. My hope is that we, the movement, can execute this research programme and in doing so, not only inspire hope, but produce useful knowledge that will help make socialism the dominant power in society.

-Djamil Lakhdar-Hamina