> Joke.
Somehow my sense of humor and yours don't quite match up. I treat everything you write as serious. Perhaps you might try putting in some ":-)"s.
> Anyway, Trotsky, according to Chris said
> "infallibility" of some event. That's not saying Communist people
> don't make
> mistakes. Nobody's that stupid to say they never make mistakes. It's an
> anti-Communist caricature.
[snip]
> Part of the reason for expressing significant confidence and certainty
> is
> that who is going to follow somebody who says, "Well I think maybe,
> I'm not
> sure, but I'm pretty sure that perhaps , you know well, maybe there is
> going
> to be a revolution , but don't quote me on that, I have to maintain my
> Kantian critical attitude, and you know we can't be sure, I'm actually
> agnostic..." See what I mean.
That's exactly my point. Marx, Engels, Lenin, and all the other luminaries of the movement were prone to claim that they could tell "scientifically" where history was going when they were speaking to the masses because they thought that would make them appear to be leaders that the masses should follow. I suppose this worked with some of said masses, though others, I am sure, were rather skeptical. In any case, it was bunk, because neither "scientists" nor astrologers can look at a social system and see that it is going to destroy itself through "inevitable contradictions, etc." In his more lucid moments, even Marx realized that the tendencies to declining profit rate, etc., were balanced by contrary tendencies, making prediction of the ultimate outcome impossible. And his notions about where the working class was going were completely off, as subsequent history has shown.
Lenin, when he came to try to apply Marx to the Russian situation, had to throw them out completely, in favor of various combinations of workers and peasants, or one or the other by itself, which he cooked up from year to year, as conditions changed -- eventually decreeing, in fact, a return to capitalism, the NEP, which he again veered away from. He did this, of course, because he was trying to maintain the survival a revolutionary government which was faced with very difficult choices. But (in my estimation) he swerved so often, while, as he admitted, keeping the old Tsarist secret police apparatus going to support his government, that in the end a dictatorial regime was practically inevitable. His tragedy was that he started in his youth as a sincere believer that a new kind of society and a new humanity was possible, and ended up at his death having gone in just the opposite direction. And none of this was foreseen by Marx.
> CB: I don't understand. Are you saying that's it ? There can't be such
> a
> revolution in an advanced capitalist country in the future ? You are
> predicting that capitalism is now the permanent human mode of
> production ?
No, I'm not predicting anything. I'm saying that I don't see any way in which capitalism can "perish from its own contradictions" in the classic Marxist way. No one has persuaded me yet that such contradictions exist in the system. So if it is going to be replaced by another system, it looks as though it will have to happen by a majority (or at least a very sizable minority) coming to hold the view that this new system is preferable. In other words, it will have to be voted democratically (as Marx himself, by the way, allowed was possible in a country like the U.S.)
> My point is Marx's time frame is not up yet. He never said there would
> be a
> revolution by the year 2004.
No, but judging by most of what he wrote, I think he would have been very surprised that it would have taken this long. And, I would further claim, there is no evidence of a workers' movement being organized at this point that would lead to such a revolution *ever.* There just ain't no revolutionary workers' movement in this country, despite the various little grouplets that call themselves "revolutionary parties," and I haven't found any believable accounts by any of them that explain how such a movement is going to arise.
They're all going on faith, which is why us "anti-communists" say they are actually preaching a religion. Their position is precisely analogous to the Christians who say, "Jesus' time frame is not up yet. The Bible never said that Christ would return by the year 2004." (You see -- all one has to do is substitute "Marx" for "Jesus" and "Christ's return" for "revolution" in what you wrote.)
> So, there
> are lots of Marxists everywhere preparing for the next generation of
> revolutions.
Not many in the U.S.
> Are you saying you never think there will be a revolution again ?
I'm saying, at the risk of becoming repetitious, that any revolution that I can foresee is going to be legislative -- enacting laws that will change the ownership system of the country from capitalist to socialist. And I don't see that happening in my lifetime, for sure. Possibly in my grandchildren's, at the earliest (actually I don't have grandchildren yet, but I have a couple of sons who may produce some before long). If the earth survives that long.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ A sympathetic Scot summed it all up very neatly in the remark, 'You should make a point of trying every experience once, excepting incest and folk-dancing.' -- Sir Arnold Bax