----- Original Message -----
From: "Thomas Seay" <entheogens at yahoo.com>
> <<The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as
> that of all other proletarian parties: Formation of
> the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the
> bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by
> the proletariat>>
>
> Somebody should spit in Hitchen's face.
>
> Thomas
>
===================
"The idea of changing society through the conquest of power thus ends up achieving the opposite of what it sets out to achieve. Instead of the conquest of power being a step towards the abolition of power relations, the attempt to conquer power involves the extension of the field of power relations into the struggle against power. What starts as a scream of protest against power, against the dehumanisation of people, against the treatment of humans as means rather than ends, becomes converted into its opposite, into the assumption of the logic, habits and discourse of power into the very struggle against power. For what is at issue in the revolutionary transformation of the world is not *whose* power but the very existence of power. What is at issue is not *who* exercises power, but how to create a world based on the mutual recogntion of human dignity, on the formation of social relations which are not power relations." [John Holloway]
Being angry at Hitch will, somehow, pass. Whether it leads all parties to the dispute to learn a little about the need to get beyond anger with each other in order to face our real problems is an open question......I don't think spitting in his face will help, Thomas. More discussion and argument by all means, but power and violence are the problem, not the solution.
Ian [just back from Bowling for Columbine]