From: Jon Johanning
-clip-
I think this helps to explain something that always puzzles me when I hear people making the claim that a lot of high-powered "social theory" or "social science" is needed for effective radical political action: the fact that there have been revolutions going back to ancient Greece, ancient China, ancient nearly everywhere else. If a social science that even its champions admit is still far from being in a mature stage were necessary to pull off a successful revolution, how could it have been possible so long ago?
Clearly, it was possible because folks were just as smart about sizing each other up and getting the lay of the social land then as they have been ever since and are now. In other words, contrary to a common conception, people have not just been wallowing around in the swamp of religious/ideological darkness through all of its history up to -- pick your Age of Enlightenment: 18th, 19th, 20th century? Yes, there is all the "false consciousness" that is so maddeningly prevalent in our species, but we can take care of business, too, when we put our minds to it.
^^^^^^^^
CB: Without necessarily calling it a lot of highpowered stuff, I think one idea is that the next revolution will be better , based on learning from all the earlier ones down through history that you have mentioned. Just as in other sciences, we want a theory of history and revolution, of society , that develo ps based on our accumulation of experience with each other. "We" ( the human race) can do better and better at revolution , and after the insurrection in the ongoing new society, exactly because we learn from mistakes of past generations, etc. , a long term trial and error process, so to speak. One characteristic of the next rev. , the one to transform out of capitalism, the one to really take care of business, might be that it is more explicitly conscious of itself as a revolution to end all class exploitative society, and just in general that the masses of people who make it are more class and revolutionary conscious than previous generations , ancient generations, who made the revolutions and evolutions you refer to. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20031206/966c67ed/attachment.htm>