[lbo-talk] more noxious crap

[Marv Gandall]

I'm old fashioned. I still subscribe to the outdated notion that revolutions 
are fundamental shifts in class power - broadly speaking, from landlords to 
capitalist bankers and manufacturers to wage and salary earners, each 
identified with a specific mode of production: feudalism, capitalism, 
socialism, and all necessarily violent because the existence of the old 
ruling class is at stake. Political revolutions which change control of the 
state apparatus are many and can be violent or non-violent, but they are not 
the same as thoroughgoing social revolutions which also change the system of 
production and the composition of the ruling class. Failed insurrections are 
not social revolutions.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Carrol Cox" <cbcox at ilstu.edu>
To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org>
Sent: Saturday, October 03, 2009 10:20 PM
Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] more noxious crap


>
>
> Marv Gandall wrote:
>>
>> Carrol Cox:
>>
>> > Just a footnote (taking the above as literal): In developed nations
>> > without a peasantry, "vilent" revolution is not all that violent.
>> =========================================
>> What revolutions in "developed nations without a peasantry" are you 
>> talking
>> about? I don't know of any.
>>
>
> Tyhe USSR. Hungary 1956 untiol the Russian tanks came in. Iran. Franc68
> (DeGaulle checked with the army leadership on what the troops would do
> before he proceeded to quiet things dow). And for that matter, even
> where there is a peasantry (e.g. Russia 1917) if the revolution occurs
> just in the cities, my model applies. It is essentially what Engels said
> in his essay that the SPD censored when they published it.
>
> You can even see something vaguely analogous happening in mini-micro
> form when a street demo is large enough the cops decide not to smash it
> even when it's illegal.
>
> All the denials of the possibility of revolution (socialist or
> otherwise) tend to have a romantic image of what an insurrection must
> be.
>
> I actually didn't need to include my qualifier of "without a peasantry,"
> because even the nations that still have alarge peasantry are probably
> too urbanized for the strategy of "surrounding the cities" to work --
> and that is the romantic image of revolution left over by the wars of
> liberatin at mid-century.
>
> Carrol
>
> P.S. Of course Civil War may follow  a succesful  insurrection If the
> 'reactionary' forces receiveoutside support (as in Russia after the
> Bolsheviks had seqized power). But I doubt there would have been a Civil
> War in Russia had not there been interference by England, France,  & the
> U.S.
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk