That, to me, only means three things: (1) some have already made up their minds about the necessity of abolishing capitalism (a system of production for private profits, not for people's needs and desires), whereas others have not; (2) some are already committed to the work of abolishing all oppressions -- racial oppression, gender oppression, national oppression, oppression of the disabled, etc. -- both because doing so is good in itself and because oppressions divide us and prevent us from creating a socialist society, whereas others are not; and (3) some are, due to experience and other forms of learning, better at some things than others are. In short, it simply means recognition of social and political reality, which informs all political organizing, not just Leninists'.
At 6:19 PM -0500 3/26/03, Doug Henwood wrote:
>the relevance of theory and practice devised for a lightly
>industrialized society to a very advanced "postindustrial" one.
Lenin was born after Marx, if you haven't noticed. By that standard, Marx should be more obsolete than Lenin.
Anyhow, identify the parts of Lenin's ideas that are only relevant to the conditions of "a lightly industrialized society," and you may discard them and keep the rest for US leftists.
>At 6:19 PM -0500 3/26/03, Doug Henwood wrote:
>>As for secrecy, it was not what Lenin and Russian revolutionaries
>>desired -- it was what was imposed upon them as a condition of
>>physical and political survival under an extremely repressive
>>state, with no political rights and freedoms to speak of:
>
>Yeah, I know that too. Which only reinforces the point I made above
>- while there are many aspects of U.S. life that are repressive,
>there are many that aren't, and we still have lots of freedoms, and
>not only in forms.
How do you intend to survive physically and politically if conditions in the USA begin to resemble what revolutionaries in the past had to, and in many poor nations still have to, work under? There is no need to be alarmist and paranoid, but we can't say that's never gonna happen, as the USA is at least clearly heading into that direction. Anti-war protests in the USA have been sometimes big enough to be encouraging, but protests against immigrant detention, racial/ethnic/national profiling, the USA Patriot Act, and other attacks on civil liberties have been tiny and ineffective. What if, for instance, more terrorist attacks are to happen on the mainland USA? What would Bush, Ashcroft, Ridge, & Co. do? What would you do? -- Yoshie
* Calendar of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://solidarity.igc.org/>