> No introduction to a book on dialectics written in the last days of
> 1991 can ignore the implications of the revolutions in Eastern Europe
> for the validity of Marx's approach. Many writers, of course, have
> interpreted these events as tghe demise not only of particular regimes
> and forms of social organization but of the Marxist world view to which,
> at least verbally, their leaders seemed so attached. Leaving aside such
> obviously important questions as whether and to what extent these rgimes
> were socialist, let alone Marxist, I would just like to point out that
> the most striking feature of all the social explosions of the last few
> -- and remarked upon by virtually every observer -- is just how
> unexpected they were. What existed before, however one valuated it, was
> taken as given and unchanging; just as most people treat the situation
> that has emerged as a new given and equally unchanging. It is the same
> mistake that was made in 1789, again in 1848, and again in 1917. These
> revolutions, too, surprised almost everyone, and as soon as they
> happened almost everyone alive at the time thought -- wrongly -- that
> they were over.**** Bertell Ollman, _Dialectical Investigations_ (New
> York & London: Routledge, 1993), p. 3.
I could not agree more. Likewise, how many people in (say) 1946 would have identified Cuba and Vietnam as the locations of the most significant revolutions of the next 40 years? Revolution has a habit of biting us on the arse, including Marx and Engels in 1848.