Carl Remick wrote:
>
> Been there, discussed that. Emerson's supposed complacence and indifference
> to the poor came up on the list 12/15/01, at which time I posted: "Emerson
> ... thought that no meaningful social revolution could occur without a
> change in the consciousness of individuals. . . ."
This is exactly Milton's position developed in the last two books of Paradise Lost. But what no one has ever been able to explain, beginning from an individualist premise, is _how_ the many (separated, independent, nominally autnomous) persons constituting a society are to transform their consciousness. Auden, if I remember correctly, in one of his early political poems wrote something like "New styles of archictecture lead to new kinds of people" -- but then he did not show where those new styles would come from. _Both_ forms that the workers' movements have taken, that of the Second and of the Third Internationals broke down on this reef. I'm implying that there is no fundamental difference among the following: Kautsky, Debs, Stalin, Trotsky, George Meany. (Some of them might personally have beenn nicer persons then the other, but I'm not interested in people either Hell nor Heaven.) They were all in traditions that were both grounded in and generated bureaucracies which could not solve the problem of who would educate the educator. The Third Thesis on Feuerbach names the problem and gives a general label (revolutionizing practice) for the solution, but it seems incredibly difficult to transform that general formula into concrete practice under particular conditions. Mao, Cabral, the Sandinistas, Ho, probably others led revolutions which wrestled with the 'problem' but eventually failed. The Cubans are still struggling, and the Venezuelans are as well. We will see.
Carrol
P.S. We can learn immensely from acquaintance with what I prefer to call Lenin Thought rather than "Leninism" (we ought to be chary of churning out isms), but there is no abstract Theory to be derived from his thought.