> Sorry, the sentence was fucked up. The difference between the effort
> it takes to reclaim what the working class have lost and the effort it
> takes to obtain what we should have is negligible.
I still don't quite get it. What is it that the working class has lost? I don't see that the working class has ever had much vis-a-vis the capitalists so far -- it's always been the people who have to sell their labor power because they don't own the productive forces, no? So it's the difference between nothing -- what the working class "once had" -- and a hell of a lot -- "what we should have" -- which is not negligible, it seems to me.
> How people vote and how elected politicians translate voter sentiments
> into their power and work out their policy agenda aren't the same
> thing. The ruling class have more impacts on the latter than the
> former, in places where elections are relatively free such as Spain,
> France, and India. After all, the ruling class need only to control
> the latter.
So the ruling classes in Spain, France, India, etc., don't have much influence on how people vote, but the ruling class in the U.S. has a lot more? I somehow doubt it.
> "Realism and pragmatism were the other two _isms_ that guided his
> actions as [Amilcar Cabral] he struggled tirelessly to not only
> understand the reality of Guinea but as he put it, to "transform it
> towards progress and justice. In the pursuit of such objective, he
> underscored the importance of being honest and transparent with the
> people, and strongly urged his comrades to: 'Hide nothing from the
> masses of our people. Tell no lies. Expose lies wherever they are
> told. Mask no difficulties, mistakes, failures. Claim no easy
> victories'28 [Amilcar Cabral, Revolution in Guinea, p.72]" (Peter
> Karibe Mendy, "Amilcar Cabral in Colonial Guinea-Bissau: Context,
> Challenges and Conquests," July 6, 2002,
> <http://www.rihphc.state.ri.us/heritage/cv/
> amilcarcabral&guineabissaux.pdf>).
Admirable sentiments! But my jaded view of revolutionary movements (and non-revolutionary ones, too) is that they usually have to tell a lot of lies, because it's very hard to mobilize large masses of people without doing so.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ Belinda: Ay, but you know we must return good for evil. Lady Brute: That may be a mistake in the translation.
-- Sir John Vanbrugh: The Provok’d Wife (1697), I.i.