[lbo-talk] more noxious crap

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Sat Oct 3 21:20:51 PDT 2009


Marv Gandall wrote:
>
> 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 I still subscribe to the outdated notion that revolutions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.

O.K. I won't argue the larger point here (which involves such questions as does history have a logic? -- to which I say No). But even on your premises, one has to draw a distinction gbetwen insurrection and revolution. And it's even quite old-fashioned (but I think correct) that the _revolution_ only really _begins_ AFTER the insurrection. And it is the insurrection which social-democrats* oppose as unrealistic.

I forgot to add the Prague Spring (1968), another example of a successful insurrection only suppressed by a foreign invasion.

Carrol

*The classical kind, who still believed in socialism but thought it would have to come through moral persuasion of an electoral majority. Beliefs in the peaceful road to socialism are of course on a slippery slope, since it is an imposible fantasy, but that does not undercut the sincertiy of those who believe in it.



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