Marvin Gandall wrote:
>
> [clip]
> Everything boils down to the "right circumstances", doesn't it? Given the
> right set of circumstances, you could have a social revolution. But what
> does that tell us? Only that these are or aren't present, which is always
> where the left divides between those who think circumstances are right for a
> particular strategy and those who think they're not.
The thing is that you can never know in advance what those "right circumstances" are or when and under what conditions they will arise. That is why it is worth while for as many people as possible to be continually banging on that door, because there is no other way to tell if it will open but by that banging. In retrospect most of those lives are more or less wasted -- except that they leave behind them other wall bangers.
While is is unpleasant to lose, it is utterly unacceptable to find out after the fact that one could have won but didn't try or wasn't ready. I'm reasonably certain that Chuck0's envisaged tactics are a real waste of time, but I have no objection to his going out and doing it and failing. I'm not going to help him raise the troops is all. I also disagree (along the lines laid out by Ron Jacobs lately in Counterpunch) with those who want to duplicate under current conditions the Mass single-issue demos of the '60s -- but those overlap what I see as possibilities enough so I'll be with them in their efforts to push that strategy, not on the grounds that it will work but that the work will constitute the conditions under which new and better possibilities might emerge.
There is a very good and time-tested theoretical basis for something like but definitely not the same as the "Let's stop talking and do something" tendency, a basis enunciated in Napoleon's statement (I forget the French) that one does something and then sees what happens. _That_ is where new ideas and new theories come from. They don't drop from heaven.
Carrol