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 --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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