File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/marxism-international.9706, message 191


Date: Wed, 11 Jun 97 2:26:10 EDT
From: boddhisatva <kbevans-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: M-I: Victory in Europe: To rejoice or not to rejoice? That is





		To whom...,



	I'm sorry I didn't respond to this earlier.  Rob Schaap expresses
with simplicity and exactitude the plight of the left today, and stuns me
with his directness.  We are either social-democrats or revolutionaries. 
Let's get off the carousel and be socialists.  


	Being a socialist is very relaxing in a way.  While all around
you, people struggle with the disillusionment that capitalism creates, a
socialist goes through life like a chap who's already got the answers to
the exam.  We sit in life's lecture hall, watching our fellow classmates
stare balefully at their calculators, wondering why the numbers don't add
up - why living by the rules doesn't make ends meet.  We get a little
frustrated waiting for them to come up with the answer, but we've got the
already finished the exam in Capitalism 101, so why worry.  Let's not be
so clever.  Let's realize that that there are things we have not figured
out - and not just how to get our comrades to see WHY there lives are
miserable, never adding up -  but WHAT, specifically, to do about it. 


	And don't just say "revolution", just forget it.  The Leninist
model, with its fetishism of revolution, is only about getting more people
into the club. That is the gist of Mr. Seattle's cyber-socialism as well. 
The hard questions are about laws, constitutions, ownership, property, and
making socialist commerce work.  It's fun to talk about politics - Stalin
vs. the Nazis, the Spanish Civil War, etc. - to match wits and relatives
breadths of knowledge about the names and the intrigue.  It's useful as
far as it goes, but it ignores the main goal of socialism, not to create
another revolution, but to create a new state.


	Instead, we cling to the small comforts provided by the socially
aware bourgeois democratic state and wait for the shooting to start,
taking time out to rabble-rouse once in a while.  We argue with each other
about what happened, instead of about what should happen.  It's safer, and
it is productive - as far as it goes.  





	peace







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