<HTML><HTML>In a message dated 5/2/05 11:32:06 AM Eastern Daylight Time, lbo-talk-request@lbo-talk.org writes: <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">Why are they weaknesses? Why can't our critique of capitalism include its punishing work ethic and its denial of non-commercial aspects of pleasure? As Susie Bright once said in an interview with me, "Workers of the world, unite!" is an erotic concept. Doug </BLOCKQUOTE> I'm not implying that the revolution is all pain and self-sacrifice. I think it was Lenin who called revolutions "festivals of the oppressed." There is a joyous aspect too, not only on those rare occasions when we win, but also in fighting the fight itself. But it is also a serious business, sometimes involving things like sharp clashes of ideas, isolation, persecution, prison, civil war, and so on. This isn't all unmitigated fun. The resistance of the ruling classes is fierce. Too many sixties radicals were possessed of the notion that they could posture and party their way into a classless society, and were completely unprepared when capitalism gave began to show its fangs. Look at the nouveaux philosophes in France, who made the mistake of fucking with the existing order in '68, and spent the next twenty years pleading with the powers that be to readmit them to respectable bourgeois salons.</HTML>