>Charles: Of course there is a dispute, but of these there is a good
argument that Leninism did change the world,
> move subjects to action
^^^^^^^^^^^^
that's what is troubling: theory moves subjects to action? intellectual vanguards as sheep herders?
i know you don't mean this....
> and create a lot of working class agency. Thus, it is a source of theory
on how to do the >same in a different time and place.
well good grief but i surely don't want any intellectual vanguard to lead us to the glory land. do you honestly want to subscribe to a theory which presumes ppl to be too ignorant to reach anything other than trade-union consciousness? to a theory that posits intellectuals as more capable of enlightenment and thus leadership simply by virtue of their social location? when i read you, i don't read this at all, particularly since variants of leninism seem so receptive to racist and sexist practices. in any event, it seems to me that, if you do subscribe to some variant of this type of theory-or even the possibility of locating a 'subject of revolutionary activity' --then you would need to provide an adequate epistemological justification for doing so because this is one of the claims that the post structuralist and postmodernist critique of the phil. of the subject attacked as inadequate.
playing devil's advocate, kelley