[lbo-talk] Punctuations

[Carrol Cox]

On another list I came across the speculation (reworded here), "If Paine
had written Common Sense in 1770 instead of 1776 it would have been dead
on arrival."

Somewhere John Adams remarks that the ideas behind the revolution
developed in the 15 years after 1760.

I have at various times on this list argued that (a) it is necessry to
keep trying to organize, to kick up excitement, at all times, but the
_success_ of such efforts is (almost completely) outside the control of
the organizers. This has by some been called fatalism or various similar
epithets. But that is clearly nonsense. Lenin's spark only works if
there is tinder; tiner dries in complex historical ways which we cannot
formulate in any exact way, and hence its presence or absence is never
predictable, and it is not even recognizable in the present _except_
through constant organizing efforts.

So mass movements depend on constant efforts to create them in periods
when _no conceivable_ efforts would in fact create them.

Carrol