Ian Murray wrote:
>
> --
>
> Of course, class-in-itself and class-for-itself aren't metaphysical
> entities............
>
The movement as a whole is its history -- which in moralistic terms would mean it "takes responsibility" for that history, including defeats, crimes, intellectual errors, clumsy language, you name it. But I'm not the movement as a whole. ;-( ? ;-) ?
On this maillist I'm only going to take responsibility for what I (and a few others) specifically claim. (And to some extent, only to what I explicitly claim in a given thread: a few who have made a habit of looking through my or my comrades' posts for the last year or so looking for contradictions, etc. got put in my killfile.)
All this a long windup to noting that I have never (on this list or elsewhere) used these terms. :-)
In practical terms, incidentally, whether we are talking about a revolution or a mass reform movement, only a fairly small proportion of the category in movement is in movement. I once saw an estimation that only about 15% of the colonists were in favor of independence in 1775, or at least only that number were actively in favor at all. I think that percentage of activively involved working people might well mean the collapse of the present u.s. state (which is not to say that it would be a socialist revolution which would replace it).
Or at least that number would mean that the present regime ruled only by force -- and when nothing is left but force, nothing is left.
Carrol