[lbo-talk] more noxious crap

[Marv Gandall]

Carrol writes:
>
> Dante was on a _path_, with a beginning and an end (from birth to heaven
> or hell), a clearly laid-out path. Hence it made sense for him to
> contrast that path with a dark wood in which one could not tell one's
> way. In our terms, history had a definite logic, and by grasping that
> logic, a logic which dismisses contingency as trivial, or even
> non-existent, one can determine the one correct path to a known future.
>
> This is the point I did not take up in my response to Marv Gandall, but
> argued my immediate concern in terms of his premises...
===========================
I was drawing what I believe to be an important distinction between a social
revolution and the much greater frequency of political revolutions and
unsuccessful insurrections, which you and others on this list conflate.
You've read much more into my comments than is warranted.

The Marxist view, that the world socialist revolution was upon us and that
history was unfolding as it should, which gained much impetus after the
Russian Revolution, was not vindicated by the twentieth century,
particularly as it came to a close with the demise of the USSR, the turn to
capitalism in China, the clear evidence that capitalism had not "exhausted
it's historic possibilities", and the decline of the once powerful trade
unions and socialist parties in the advanced capitalist countries in the
West, where the revolution was expected to begin. At best, the early Marxist
belief in an inevitable and imminent world revolution which would do away
with private ownership and capitalist social relations was historically
premature.

As you know, I've made these observations many times before. I plead not
guilty, your honour, to charges of ontology, teleology, metaphysics, and
metanarrative.