andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>
>
> I don't normally quote Lenin, but he boiled down his
> sales point to three words: Bread, Land, and Peace.
>
> What's our slogan?
I don't believe Lenin coined that slogan in 1895, or even 1907.
This is not a period in which we can expect to be able to "boil down our sales point," since as of now we don't have (and ought not to have) a comprehensive product to sell. "We" are even, as I have consistently argued on this list, a coherent We yet, and in the _immediately_ foreseeable future are not apt to become such a coherent agency.
It is not quite accurate, either, to call that slogan a "sales point": Rather, I believe, it was a way of articulating what the mass of the Russian people had already "bought" as it were. His _sales point_ was somewhat different, and you can find it recorded in Lincoln Steffens' _Autobiography_. I'm too lazy to look it up just now, but it was something like "Go on and have your fun now, you deserve it, but when you are ready to go to work, come to the Bolsheviks." That was a message he repeated over and over again in the streets of St. Petersburg in a voice that only reached the nearest 50, who would then back off to allow 50 more to crowd around the speaker.
"We" are not a We yet, nor do we have an audience yet who would be interested in hearing our "sales point," no matter how powerful.
On the other hand, during the '90s "we" (Jan & I) had no audience at all for the first time since the '60s, but now "we" have a rather interested audience of about 35, all of whom are interested in becoming salespersons themselves.
A friend once quoted Lenin as saying there are three revolutionary virtues: "Patience, Patience, and Patience." Not bad for the present anyhow. (If Lenin did say this, it must be recorded in someone's anecdotes, because I don't think it is in his published works. I still like it, whether Lenin ever said it or not.)
Carrol