>The difference between pretty dresses and gulags is that I think pretty
>dresses don't harm anyone else.
Some people might think that those wearing pretty dresses cause what they get. Likewise, some people might think that those who demand more also cause what they get.
>Gulags and proletarian dictatorships aren't
>"trying hard" but perverting socialist values.
Gulags have a real material reason for appearing, not simply because someone decides to pervert socialist values. You think people in the States won't ever get hauled off to an American gulag.
Proletarian dictatorships are the flip-side of the capitalist dictatorships we all live in now. One person runs the show: Money, The Boss. The bourgeois dictate, we obey. I want to see the proles dictate, the bourgeois obey. Here's a good place to start:
"We have seen above that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.
The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.
Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the mode of production."
Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm
>I'm not arguing the early
>Bolsheviks were all bad, just that they betrayed a lot of principles of
>socialism and thereby helped justify the backlash against the democratic
>left.
If you seriously think that, had the Bolshies been a bunch of saints or merely more "restrained", the capitalists and their strong right arms wouldn't have still demanded their heads on platters, you've got another think coming.
Anything can be used to justify reprisal of some kind. The form it takes depends on how gutsy the perps feel at the moment.
>And on the broader point, if you fuckup by pushing too hard and the result
>is worse than if you had moderated demands and gotten more, than you
>shouldn't "try so hard." Stupid unstrategic militancy is nothing to
>praise.
So who the hell died and made you the last word in deciding on the limits of militancy? No single one of us can tell without a crystal ball exactly how hard to push, when to leave off, etc. I'm all in favour of moderation when the time seems right, but moderation as grand strategy? It's just as stupid and unstrategic as unstrategic militancy. Send me an e-mail when you've figured out the exact method for determining when to fight and when to make peace. I'd be delighted to see it.
>Give me actual social progress any day.
Me too! Now, if we could only agree on what constitutes "actual social progress" . . . .
Face it, Nathan: your words reveal you, by training or instinct, as too cautious. That could cause as much or more trouble as someone who's too militant.
Learn a new damn trick.
Todd
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