This does not mean that we shall confront the world with new doctrinaire principles and proclaim: Here is the truth, on your knees before it...We shall not say: Abandon your struggles, they are mere folly; let us provide you with the true campaign-slogans. Instead we shall show the world why it is struggling....
carrol sez:
>Hint: How do 10 million people,
> not in communication with each other
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
vewy vewy carefuwee?
carrol, how the fuck can a slogan work if there's no communication whatsoever. are you stark raving? are you stark nekkid even?
anyhoo, i'm in snitgrrRl.exe mode because i feel like max: just reposting the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over again. loop detect.
------begin paste------ well, i post again since ken lawrence made it clear that he didn't reject the early marx. marx certainly didn't call for slogans and banners, though i guess lenin did. well, i don't get the hero worship and necrophilia myself but hey it takes all kinds! but it seems to me that the passage below explains how engaging in both practical and theoretical debate is important and the reasons for doing so should be historically founded (based on the specificity of time and place, culture, etc)
"For even though the question "where from?" presents no problems, the question "where to?" is a rich source of confusion....
[W]e wish to influence our contemporaries [earlier he notes the importance of recognizing particular historical exigencies within each country that critical theory must attend to and take seriously]...The problem is how best to achieve this. In this context there are two incontestable facts. Both religion and politics are matters of the first importance in contemporary Germany. Our task must be to latch onto these as they are and not to oppose them with any ready-made system such as the _Voyage en Icarie_. [...] Just as religion [by which marx means theory, philosophy] is the table of contents of the theoretical struggles of mankind, so the political state enumerates its practical struggles. Thus the particular form and nature of the political state contains all social struggles, needs and truths within itself. It is therefore anything but beneath its dignity to make even the most specialized political problem--such as the distinction between the representative system and the Estates system--into an object of its criticism. For this problem only expresses at the political level the distinction between the rule of man and the rule of private property. Hence the critic must concern himself with these political questions [which the crude socialists find beneath their dignity]. By demonstrating the superiority of the representative system over the Estates system he will interest a great party in practice. By raising the representative system from its political form to a general one...he will force this party to transcend itself--for its victory is also its defeat.
Nothing prevents us...from taking sides in politics, i.e. from entering into real struggles and identifying ourselves with them. This does not mean that we shall confront the world with new doctrinaire principles and proclaim: Here is the truth, on your knees before it...We shall not say: Abandon your struggles, they are mere folly; let us provide you with the true campaign-slogans. Instead we shall show the world why it is struggling.... [...] Our programme must be: the reform not through dogmas but by analyzing mystical consciousness obscure to itself, whether it appear in religious or political form. It will then become plain that the world has long since dreamed of something of which it needs only to become conscious for it to possess it in reality. It will then become plain that our task is not to draw a sharp mental line between past and future but to complete the thought of the past. Lastly, it will become plain that mankind will not begin any new work, but will consciously bring about the completion of its old work.
1844, from Letters from the Franco-German Yearbooks--a reply to Ruge's claims about the futility of engaging in actually existing political struggles."
--------expect repeat performance for dull and fuckwitted--------