[lbo-talk] Waterboarding etc.

shag carpet bomb shag at cleandraws.com
Tue Jan 27 03:25:06 PST 2009


and yet, that is precisely *not* what Carrol is about. he's never been interested in smashing and destroying. he repeatedly says that we must organize -- which means creating the very "germs of new institutions" Chomsky says we need in order to have a successful revolution.

even ChuckO who liked to use the anarchist smash and destroy rhetoric believed that you had to create new institutions on a local level in order to achieve anarchist goals.

At 02:22 AM 1/27/2009, SA wrote:
>Doug Henwood wrote:
>
>>>Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>>>Obama is the current leader of the enemy of the human
>>>>species.
>>Don't you think there's at least a touch of narcissistic grandiosity in
>>CC's formulation?
>
>Anger, outrage, confessions of overwhelming guilt may be good therapy;
>they can also become a barrier to effective action, which can always be
>made to seem incommensurable with the enormity of the crime. Nothing is
>easier than to adopt a new form of self-indulgence, no less debilitating
>than the old apathy. The danger is substantial. It is hardly a novel
>insight that confessions of guilt can be institutionalized as a technique
>for evading what must be done. It is even possible to achieve a feeling of
>satisfaction by contemplating one's evil nature. No less insidious is the
>cry for 'revolution' at a time when not even the germs of new institutions
>exist, let alone the moral and political consciousness that could lead to
>a basic modification of social life. If there will be a 'revolution' in
>America today, it will no doubt be a move towards some variety of fascism.
>We must guard against the kind of revolutionary rhetoric that would have
>had Karl Marx burn down the British Museum because it was merely part of
>repressive society. It would be criminal to overlook the serious flaws and
>inadequacies in our institutions, or to fail to utilize the substantial
>degree of freedom that most of us enjoy, within the framework of these
>flawed institutions, to modify them or even replace them by a better
>social order. One who pays some attention to history will not be surprised
>if those who cry most loudly that we must smash and destroy are later
>found among the administrators of some new system of repression.
>
>Noam Chomsky, _American Power and the New Mandarins_, 1967.
>
>
>
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