> The point is to not degrade or shut out any possibility for any revolution or social movement to take place, Communist or not. It is the wrong way to build any social movement...reality will determine what is needed and what will be. [This is the reason why I shun your comment: "This is not going to change." unless you have foreknowledge of the future, this comment can not be taken seriously in any sort of analysis]
It's a terrible mistake to say, how do you knwo what the future will be? All our action is predicated on predictions about how the future will be. We pragmatists (I don't include you in thsi) think that a beliefg is a prediction made about the future that will support an action. Because we might be wrong, all our beliefs are fallible. I might be wrong about Marxism. But it's not an answer to my worry to say, how do you knwo? Ity's not certain. You might be wrong! Of course I might be wrong. Nonetheless, I've explained why I think I am not, I've set out the basis of my prediction. I don't shut out the possibility that there will be radical social change, even something that might be described as a social revolution. Because I think that historical materialism is true, I think there is good basis to say this. But because I am acquainted with the history of Marxism and the broad generalizations that can be made about defeated social movements, I doubt that this change will be Ma
rxist, that is, that it will call itself Marxist, that it will use that vocabulary, those organizational forms, and so forth. At this point, I think the burden is on the believers to show that Marxism is more than a good theory.
jks
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