joanna bujes wrote:
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> Is it possible to have a revolution without a change in consciousness?
>
Actually, yes, yes, and no. :- But sort of Yes.
Tahir: The yes is that you can have an insurrection without a change in consciousness of any significance. Many people of course simply equate revolution with the moment of insurrection. So October 1917 was a 'revolution' in this view. However the fate of that revolution and all that are similar to it is always the same, counter-revolution portraying itself as revolution.
That's what the Third Thesis on Feuerbach is about essentially. Some kine of revolutionary activity, if only at a superficial level, has to initiate the process.
Tahir: Yes but that is only the most superficial outer shell, if what you are referring to as revolutionary activity is simply leadership. Of course a change in consciousness on the part of the masses must lead to revolutionary activity. To argue otherwise would be absurd. But 'revolutionary activity' in the sense of agitation and propaganda certainly doesn't imply a revolution, even if the masses are 'mobilised' for a while to attack some existing power structure. The typical 19th century romantic revolutionary figure surely has no more appeal now that we know what that sort of person aims to do is to wield state power on behalf of the masses and to establish a paternalistic relationship with them. There are too many vivid examples by now and zero counter-examples.
Despite its profound difference from the conditions we confront, _Fanshen_ is still the best 'imaging' of this process (and its painful fits & starts, advances & retreats) that I know of.
I don't think one can generalize or abstract from _Fanshen_ (or from other accounts of "Third World" revolutionary activity) in a way to provide any very focused principles that cut across cultural lines, but it can still help with imagining the general possibility of change (and its extreme difficulty).
Tahir: Ah but this is the difficulty of some in relation to others, where the vision of some is such that the others must fulfil their vision in order for the revolution to count as a success. How long can we continue to take failed revolutionary models as our successes? The irony in this notion of revolution is that it is not post-Hegel as marxist-leninists tend to imagine, it is pre-Hegelian. Revolution since Hegel can only MEAN a change in consciousness and therefore in custom. The 'difficulty' in this is a different difficulty, it is not the burden of some, who initiate 'revolutionary activity' for others (i.e. mobilising them for the purposes of taking state power - the bourgeois revolution model), it is the difficulty of us all in our common struggle against capital, a return to ethical substance in which we can all partake. Virtually everybody resists capital in some form or other because capital cannot avoid showing its inhuman face to all, at least at some moments, ! an! d that is what one should celebrate, that is the real revolution. What we should mourn is when a part of that very inhumanity has successfuly posited itself as the 'revolution'.