rc-am wrote:
> you accused me of slandering vlad when i wrote of his theory of the
> party. here's the citation again: "The history of all countries shows
> that the working class, *exclusively by its own effort* is able to
> develop *only* trade-union consciousness... The Theory of Socialism,
> however, grew out of the philosophic, historical, and economic theories
> elaborated by *educated representatives of the propertied classes, by
> intellectuals*... in Russia, the theoretical doctrine of Social
> Democracy arose *altogether independently* of the spontaneous growth of
> the working class movement; it arose as a *natural and inevitable
> outcome of the development of thought* amongst the revolutionary
> socialist intelligentsia" (my emphases).
*What Is To Be Done* needs to be sorted out into different themes. The bulk of the book consists not in answering the title question but in an empirical survey of what is, which in turn divides into a survey of what was in Russia at a specific time and descriptions of what is generally true. The passages Angela cites are reasonably accurate empirical observations. They are not a conclusion or an argument but a sort of summary of "where to begin from."
I don't quite see what the debate is about here.
Carrol