People need an organizing theory or map, not raw facts, to form political positions.

Evidence

Solitary individuals cannot possibly do all the research necessary to take positions on all the important issues in the world, and nobody can memorize many facts without an implicit theory to hold them. When the activists I met heard a new bit of information, they would ask, ”What organization said that? Why? Who benefits from asking the question that way instead of another way? What organizations say something different? Why should, or shouldn’t, I believe this organization?” Their implicit theory — that too much corporate power was incompatible with grassroots democratic groups like theirs — helped them organize the facts (and if a fact contradicted their theory, then they could remember it because of the clash). In many countries, class-based political parties tell people how to take political positions (Mann 1970).’ People need an organized map of the political world, not just a huge pile of unsorted facts. — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics, 1101

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s mutual-aid research: shared organizational frameworks and questions (‘who benefits?’) are themselves a collective interpretive practice. — connects to: Ideologies are not what is shaped at power’s base; Popular beliefs are themselves material forces needing political education — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2: Identity…, 125

Broader Connections

• Popular beliefs are themselves material forces needing political education #expands (0.82) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 125
• Ideologies are not what is shaped at power’s base #corroborates (0.78)