Date: Sun, 3 Aug 1997 16:00:50 -0400 (EDT)
From: Andrew Wayne Austin <aaustin-AT-utkux.utcc.utk.edu>
Subject: Re: M-I: Invention of Marxism-Leninism, part 5


Comrades,

This "what-if" question is so difficult as to perhaps not be practical? 
The causes of the revolution are so complex that reduction to a single or
a few causes seems to me to be impossible. Could the Revolution have
happened had this person not been around? if this historical conjuncture
had not happened when it did? if the revolutionary mass did not possess
this character at this time? Maybe. Maybe not. Lots of different
revolutions have happened in lots of different ways. Revolutions don't
always share all the same features. But they probably do share core
features, and while one of these core features may certainly be a
revolutionary vanguard, this is generally not reducible to the work or
presense of a single individual. In many ways, history is like shit--it
happens. But it is also the product of the collective action, conscious
and unconscious, of the whole of a people, some with more power to make
history than others, and powerless others who have live in the shit
created by the powerful. Lenin was a vital part of the Russian revolution,
but as to whether revolution would have occurred without him? I think it
would have. But I also believe it would have been different. How different
is a question I believe to be unanswerable. 

Peace,
Andy Austin




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