Date: Fri, 26 Dec 1997 11:05:29 -0500 (EST)
From: Cornell C Womack <ccwst7+-AT-pitt.edu>
Subject: AUT: Re: filthy lucre and defeat




On Thu, 25 Dec 1997, Gerald Levy wrote:
> 
> 1) re shit: excrement *is* a marketable commodity, particularly as an
> agricultural input. Yet, this has not yet resulted in a change in the
> evolution of human physiology.
> 
> 2) re the Luxemburg quote: in any protracted struggle, there are some
> defeats. Yet, the preparation for revolution is made possible by
> a series of *victories*, perhaps even more than defeats. The reason for
> this is that with even small victories, the working class begins to sense
> its own power and capacity for bringing about social change. 
> 
> First, the quote from the Italian New Left is supposed to be read with a
sense of irony. Although I did not know that human excrement was indeed a
marketable commodity. In which case where is it so? This gives new
meaning to "filthy lucre."


> Second, we must indeed see small victories as preperatory in any
revolutionary organizing, but let us not be afraid to have a more
complicated understanding of defeat. In the 17th century for example, the
defeat of the radicals in the English revolution, through their execution,
deportation, etc., although experienced as a defeat by many, nonetheless
initiated a new cycle of struggles as the dispersal of the radical
elements fused with other rebels around the Atlantic world. This is why in
the 1660's and 1670's we see a rash of servant uprisings, and not a few
times in tandem with slaves and disaffected soldiers. So, the experience
of defeat, something Christopher Hill took a full monograph to think
about, is something which we must contemplate as it is actually
lived by the participants in those struggles. It is in a more complex
analysis of defeat that we find the logic and connections in new cycles
of resistance, and get at the material connections and sharing of
revolutionary experience and taditions among distinct
oppressed populations (in part because they have been subject to
capitalist mechanisms of discipline and punishment).
This may change if our frame of analysis is "class deals," in which our
emphasis is upon the victories wrestled from capital. But we would then
only be analyzing one half of the equation, not sensitive enough to the
to the actual human costs of defeat. This approach does not limit our
hope, I think. It allows us to have a more grassroots and less
theoretical understanding of the price of struggle.

Cornell



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