Al-Q Honcho Hit

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Tue Nov 5 16:48:11 PST 2002


Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> At 3:21 PM -0800 11/5/02, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
> >It's pretty sad when rads like me have to stand up for liberal principles.
>
> Isn't it always rads who stand up for liberal principles in crisis?
> Left to liberals alone, there would be no liberal democracy.
> --

These threads on the anti-war movement hover around the old distinction between reform and revolution, but I don't think that is (directly) the relevant distinction. The distinction is between a direct persuasion of the rulers to be nice (the door-to-door canvassing Nathan has in mind is for the DP) and those who see the necessity of a mass movement separated from the DP/RP apparatus. And as Lenin often implicitly noted, revolutionaries make better reformers than reformers do. You and I can get along with Justin because, despite his adamant refusal of revolution, he _thinks_ like a revolutionary when he thinks about mass struggle.

Anarchists of the Chuck0 persuasion think a lot like Nathan: they want to affect the state apparatus directly. That part of WITBD reads as fresh today as it did in 1902 -- the unity of opportunists and terrorists.

Carrol



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