[lbo-talk] Progress a "Law of History"

[Bill Bartlett]

>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Carrol Cox" <cbcox at ilstu.edu>
>
>We're not talking about the laws of history, so far as I am concerned,
>but with the implicit assumptions which tend to structure the response
>to the world of a large mass of the u.s. public. In the past some have
>thought that Progress was a "Law of History," and while perhaps few have
>self-consciously held to that as theory since August 1914,* I think it
>still informs the consciousness of 10s of millions of those who dwell in
>the "City on the Hill" the pilgrim fathers aimed to build: and that
>aspect of american popular consciousness is perhaps the major barrier to
>conceiving of the u.s. as an aggressor nation.

Progress is a law of history, you simply don't understand the meaning 
of the concept, or the limitations of it. You believe the 
limitations, which are that we can in various ways lose the history 
we need to build on to make progress, falsify the notion.

Bill Bartlett
Bracknell tas