[lbo-talk] The State and Capitalism

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Tue Mar 11 14:31:57 PDT 2008


Doug Henwood wrote:
>


>
> There you go - revolutionary change is like a blind pool!

According to you, any change is like a can of beans on the supermarket shelf -- we stand there and abstractly decide if we want it, which requires that we know what it is in advance -- and that we merely have to decide we want it to get it.

This is absurd.

Revolutionary change is the organization of people in collective resistance to the present order. PERIOD. That resistance flows from resistance to particular features of the present system. Within that process knowledge is gained of the absolute necessity of smashing that system. In the process of that action the collective agent collectively discovers the immediately necessary transformations.

The revolutionary future we are talking about _now_ is not a can of beans on the shelf but a perspective which allows us to understand the present.

The demand that we know the future and how to get there is a concealed demand that we remain in the present forever.

Carrol



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