Well, among other things, doesn't this gun shoot backwards? If trying to work out big ideas around here is a betrayal of the struggle, what the hell is Carrol doing wasting so much time here?
And who on this list is not devoting huge amounts of time and energy to combating capitalism and trying to stop this war? Nobody, or damn close to nobody.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]
> On Behalf Of Carrol Cox
> Sent: Tuesday, November 23, 2004 1:01 PM
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] When to Talk About Socialism
>
>
> Marvin Gandall wrote:
> >
> > I
> > think his politics tend towards ultraleftism, and he thinks mine go in
> the
> > direction of right opportunism, but so what?
>
> Precisely. One might say that, everyone, at any given moment, is
> unavoidably either ultra-left or ultra-right*. (Plato tried to deny
> this.**) That's one of the reasons organizations with internal freedom
> of debate are so superior to any one person's judgment. It's also why
> principled debate is preferable to attempts at judging the agents
> involved.
>
> > I doubt anyone on this list,
> > Carrol included, would disagree that a) big political changes occur only
> > when there are big changes in social conditions and b) it doesn't follow
> > that you should therefore abstain from political activity aimed at more
> > modest changes at other times.
>
> Agreed. But my core argument has been that such "political activity
> aimed at more modest changes" must (a) be as continuous as possible and
> (b) carried out with awareness that, unpredictably, the activity may (in
> fact, at some point, _will_) find itself part of those "big changes."
>
> > Differences usually turn on whether one has
> > greater respect for the power of "agency" or constraint in human
> affairs,
> > but that's a debate which long predates the socialist movement, one
> which
> > we're not going to resolve here.
>
> I'm not sure that that debate is (a) resolvable in theory or (b) _needs_
> to be resolved in theory. It is continually resolved in practice. This
> is one of the things that can be learned from reading accounts of mass
> struggles (whether immediately successful or not) in different times and
> places. Consider the most (in)famous of such incidents -- the decision
> of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets to declare itself the government
> of Russia. Martov was obviously correct, Lenin and Trotsky wrong: the
> conditions [constraint] were wrong. The objective basis did not exist
> for building a socialist state. The working class was too weak.
> International capital too strong. The point was, however, that when
> revolutionary forces _could_ seize power, they had to, whether or not it
> was correct under the circumstances. This works in even very trivial
> ("super"-reformist) circumstances. The theoretical issue of constraint
> vs agency simply disappears.
>
> Marvin and I disagreed sharply on this an other lists several times
> during the electoral campaign; I kept returning to his arguments for ABB
> precisely because he did not make the issue one of personal rectitude;
> and I argued several times on the marxism list that after the election
> ABBs and anti-DPs would have to work together. (I personally attacked
> John Lacny because of his personal attacks [Traitor! etc.] on those who
> would not support Kerry.)
>
> Carrol
>
> *"Ultra-"- This jargon I believe needs to be kept, but it needs to be
> used with minimal precision (as I believe Marvin does here), not as mere
> cursewords. There are several rough and ready ways to describe the two
> (omnipresent) tendencies. "Ultra-Right" or "Right Opportunism" is
> grounded in an overestimation of the strength of the working class, an
> underestimation of the strength of capital; "Ultra-Left" or "Left
> Opportunism" is grounded on an overestimation of the strength of
> capital, an underestimation of the strength of the working class. The
> result is "right opportunists" tend to treat enemies as friends; "left
> opportunists" tend to treat friends as enemies. Properly used, these
> phrases describe positions, not people; used to describe people they
> lead
>
> **(Cornford translation; Thrasymachus speaking): "Would you [Socrates]
> say a man deserves to be called a physician at the moment when he makes
> amistake in treating a patient and just in respect of that mistake; or a
> mathematician, when he does a sum wrong and just in so far as he gets a
> wrong result? . . .A man is mistaken when his knowledge fails him; and
> at that moment he is no craftsman." This was a fundamental repudiation
> of democracy, of the acceptability of arriving at collective judgments
> through the collective struggle of fallible citizens. One needed
> 'statesmen' who were always correct in power.
>
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